Comment Re:Already underway (Score 4, Informative) 56
Tim Robinson, the man behind the Meccano construction you link to, is a trustee of the Plan 28 charity mentioned above.
Comment Re:It's not hard to do, just moderately expensive (Score 5, Informative) 56
You are quite correct that we have not built a single demo part. In the two years since I started talking about this project the following has happened:
1. Persuaded the Science Museum to digitize all of Babbage's plans and notebooks (this in itself was a non-trivial task involving a great deal of effort at all levels and they should be thanked for taking on the task).
2. Got the leading Babbage experts to join and work with me (Doron Swade who built the Difference Engine No. 2 and Tim Robinson)
3. Started a UK-based charity (again these things take time as there are legal requirements and the recruitment of a board of trustees)
4. Started research on the Babbage archive itself
5. Begun fund-raising.
No. 4 is non-trivial because there are literally thousands of pages of notes and > 230 large scale plans to decipher. Plus there's a hardware description language to work with. And the archive is not well documented. There are a number of different cross references that conflict with each other. I realize that all this stuff is boring and people would like to see an immediate result, but that's not going to happen. It's years of work to properly study this stuff and build a historically accurate machine.
Note that we have not proposed building the 1,000 memory location machine. That's far too much to demonstrate that it would work and would add to the cost and size. As for the number of parts, until we've deciphered all the plans and come up with a definitive plan that it's hard to answer but we believe there will be roughly 40,000 to 50,000 components to be made.
Comment Re:Great idea, probably not happening (Score 5, Informative) 132
You are correct that I care about the PR side of things. I need to because I need to raise a substantial amount of money.
But it's far from all PR. There's now a registered British charity with a board of trustees and the pre-eminent Babbage expert, Doron Swade, who built the Difference Engine No. 2 at the Science Museum is running the technical side of the project.
Study of the digitized plans has been underway since February and some first results will be announced this summer. We actively want to build a 3D working model in a tool like Autodesk.
Submission + - A hacked WiFi Router, an API and a toy bus: it's the ambient bus arrival monitor (jgc.org)
JohnGrahamCumming writes: "In this simple project a hacked Linksys WRT54GL talks to a public API to get real-time bus information and displays the times of the next buses on a model bus. Never miss the bus again!"
Submission + - The GCHQ Challenge hasn't been solved... completel (jgc.org)
JohnGrahamCumming writes: "It's been reported that the GCHQ code challenge has been solved and 'complete' solutions posted on the web, but there's more to it than meets the eye. There's a whole block of undecrypted data just waiting to be examined."
Submission + - GE Color Effects Christmas lights get hacked into (jgc.org)
JohnGrahamCumming writes: "Unable to resist a string of programmable Christmas lights I cut them up and built and 7x7 color display from them. The string is controlled by an Arduino Pro and hidden in a picture frame."
Submission + - The 100-year leap (oreilly.com)
JohnGrahamCumming writes: "In 1837 Charles Babbage laid down plans for a general purpose digital computer with memory, a CPU, a printer and a plotter. Now there a project afoot to actual build the massive steam-powered machine."
Comment Re:No 3d? (Score 1) 249
The problem isn't tits. There are other things in porn that would jump out of the screen and nearly hit you in the face.
Comment Baseball has been using this for years (Score 1) 56
Coaches and players have been issuing signals and commands by touching different parts of their body for as long as I can remember.
Submission + - Scammer Karma: Pwning a Petty Con Man (zug.com)
French Mailman writes: A man who pretends to be a businessman with a fancy car in order to scam people out of their loose change gets bitten back by sweet, sweet karma. A comedy article posted on ZUG.com.
Submission + - Why We Gain Weight As We Age (npr.org)
Ant writes: "National Public Radio (NPR), with its streaming audio, reports that "... the idea that you just can't eat what you used to. But why is that so? And is it avoidable? There are a number of reasons why we put on the pounds as years go by, but take heart: There are ways to fight back — and win!
There are some particular biological changes that happen as we age. For one, aging muscles actually contribute to the increase in the amount of fat we store in our bodies, ... ... In large part, that's because we lose muscle cells as we age. When younger muscle cells get damaged, they're quickly repaired. That's not the case with older muscles..."
Seen on Neatorama."
There are some particular biological changes that happen as we age. For one, aging muscles actually contribute to the increase in the amount of fat we store in our bodies,
Seen on Neatorama."
Submission + - YouTube to kill IE6 support on March 13
Joel writes: Over six months ago, Google announced it would start phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 on Orkut and YouTube, and started pushing its users to modern browsers. The search giant has now given a specific kill date for old browser support on the video website: "Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won't work in older browsers."
YouTube will have an interstitial appear when users on older browser try to watch a video on YouTube. Google says the interstitial will show up indefinitely every two weeks until the user upgrades to the most recent version of their browser. Google deems anything below IE7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0, and Safari 3.0 as an "older browser."Users on these browsers will still be able to watch YouTube videos, but additional features that Google plans to roll out may not be supported in these older browsers.
YouTube will have an interstitial appear when users on older browser try to watch a video on YouTube. Google says the interstitial will show up indefinitely every two weeks until the user upgrades to the most recent version of their browser. Google deems anything below IE7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0, and Safari 3.0 as an "older browser."Users on these browsers will still be able to watch YouTube videos, but additional features that Google plans to roll out may not be supported in these older browsers.
Submission + - Secure Password Management
Itninja writes: My organization supports hundreds of large databases. Most of the support requires the Tier I staff to log into dozens of different databases each day via the web. Until recently, all the support staff had used a single god-level account. But management are finally coming to realization (after many years of prodding from IS) that this is a security issue. However asking staff to 'just remember' so many passwords is unrealistic.
We want to avoid another security problem (i.e. users printing out a list of passwords) so are looking for some
kind of device to provide secure password management. I am looking at the IronKey, but want to ask the Slashdot community if there are other solutions they have found for similar dilemmas.
We want to avoid another security problem (i.e. users printing out a list of passwords) so are looking for some
kind of device to provide secure password management. I am looking at the IronKey, but want to ask the Slashdot community if there are other solutions they have found for similar dilemmas.
Submission + - Canadian internet is still slow and expensive (www.cbc.ca)
h3xdec writes: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/02/22/harvard-broadband-report.html
Despite what Telus, Rogers and CRTC continue claiming, Canadian internet stays one of the slowest and most expensive among the countries in the developed world.
Despite what Telus, Rogers and CRTC continue claiming, Canadian internet stays one of the slowest and most expensive among the countries in the developed world.
Comment Re:You surrendered. (Score 1) 521
It is supposed to be a public unique identifier, nothing more, but it is being routinely (mis-)used as a secret piece of information, for instance, to authenticate people.
