Agg - Slashdot User

PlayStation Controller Coffee Table-> 0

Submitted by Agg on Sunday August 22 2010, @09:26PM

Agg writes "I made the Playstation controller coffee table for my year 12 major work, as an Industrial Technology project. I made the whole controller out of Plywood, MDF and Veneer on Veneer. The whole project took me 20 weeks on and off during school time, in and out of class."
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Stained Glass Motherboard Window-> 0

Submitted by Agg on Wednesday June 02 2010, @12:01AM

Agg writes "I donated some motherboards to a mate for use in an artwork. Dan has finished the artwork now and sent along some photos for us to check out. As you can probably guess he's a stonemason by trade and he's used the different coloured motherboards to make a stained-glass effect in a sandstone tracery window. The windows themselves have a "good vs evil blues" theme."
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CSIRO Sues US Carriers Over Wi-Fi Patent 308

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 01 2010, @06:09PM
from the milking-it dept.

An anonymous reader notes that CSIRO has sued Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile in — wait for it — East Texas District Court. "Australia's peak science body stands to reap more than $1 billion from its lucrative Wi-Fi patent after already netting about $250 million from the world's biggest technology companies, an intellectual property lawyer says. The CSIRO has spent years battling 14 technology giants including Dell, HP, Microsoft, Intel, Nintendo, and Toshiba for royalties and made a major breakthrough in April last year when the companies opted to avoid a jury hearing and settle for an estimated $250 million. Now, the organization is bringing the fight to the top three US mobile carriers in a new suit targeting Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile. It argues they have been selling devices that infringe its patents."

The Muppets' 1967 IBM Sales Films 63

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 01 2010, @03:33PM
from the skinny-black-tie dept.

harrymcc writes "Forty-three years ago, before most people had ever heard of the Muppets, IBM contracted with Jim Henson for a series of short films that it used to educate and entertain its sales staff. These little-known movies — some of which feature cutting-edge office automation equipment such as very early word-processing systems — remain fresh, funny, and surprisingly irreverent. And one of them features the first appearance of the Cookie Monster, who got his big break on Sesame Street a couple of years later."

Up Close and Personal with Google Street View Car-> 0

Submitted by Agg on Monday January 25 2010, @07:21AM

Agg writes "Google's Got Wood! In this Google Maps Street View car, at least. An OCAU reader spotted one awaiting service and took lots of photos detailing the somewhat kludged-together camera car."
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Behold - the Microwave PC!-> 0

Submitted by Agg on Monday January 11 2010, @07:42AM

Agg writes "With all the CES whizzbangery going on, it's nice to see some good old-fashioned PC modding. Like this guy, who turned a microwave into a PC — complete with a screensaver of food cooking, of course."
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Computer troubleshooting and falsification-> 0

Submitted by blarkon on Monday January 11 2010, @07:37AM

blarkon writes "Ever wasted time troubleshooting an IT problem because you’d jumped to the wrong conclusion and compounded the error by looking for evidence to support your intuition? Orin Thomas suggests that we should try to disprove troubleshooting conclusions we’ve arrived at through intuition. Looking for disproof rather than proof as a way of testing an idea was first proposed in the 1930’s by philosopher Karl Popper."
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SPAM: The Most Useless Machine Ever 0

Submitted by roelbj on Monday January 11 2010, @06:49AM

roelbj writes "Instructables has a video and build instructions for the most useless machine ever. It's so clever that describing it here would ruin the fun. Readers with electronics and woodworking knowledge who are looking for a fun winter project (assuming you are in the Northern hemisphere) might want to give this a try."
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BBC Journalist Breaks 'Unbreakable' Phone At CES 0

Submitted by andylim on Monday January 11 2010, @06:24AM

andylim writes "A lesson for anyone claiming their product is unbreakable. Bob Plaschke, Sonim's CEO, told the BBC: "You can drop it from at least 10 storeys, you can go under water 20ft for a half hour... you can hammer a nail with it. It is basically unbreakable." Seconds later a BBC journalist smashed the screen against the side of a fish tank."

How Earth Avoided a Fiery Premature Death 114

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 10 2010, @07:59PM
from the flood-next-time dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Space.com has a piece about changing theories of planet migration. The classic picture suggests that planets like Earth should have plummeted into the sun while they were still planetesimals, asteroid-sized building blocks that eventually collide to form full-fledged planets. 'Well, this contradicts basic observational evidence, like We. Are. Here,' says astronomer Moredecai-Mark Mac Low. Researchers investigating this discrepancy came up with a new model that explains how planets can migrate as they're forming and still avoid a fiery premature death. One problem with the classic view of planet formation and migration is that it assumes that the temperature of the protoplanetary disk around a star is constant across its whole span. It turns out that portions of the disk are opaque and so cannot cool quickly by radiating heat out to space. So in the new model, temperature differences in the space around the sun, 4.6 billion years ago, caused Earth to migrate outward as much as gravity was trying to pull it inward, and so the fledgling world found equilibrium in its current, habitable, orbit. 'We are trying to understand how planets interact with the gas disks from which they form as the disk evolves over its lifetime,' adds Mac Low. 'We show that the planetoids from which the Earth formed can survive their immersion in the gas disk without falling into the Sun.'"