Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror
Image

Powering Restaurants WIth Deep Fried Fuel 148 Screenshot-sm

Posted by samzenpus
from the the-power-of-grease dept.
Mike writes "Here's a brilliant idea for biofuels: rather than filtering used fry oil for use in vehicles, why not simplify matters and use it to heat and power the restaurant itself? The VegaWatt turns used vegetable oil into clean heat and energy for restaurants, eliminating the dirty and costly mess of oil disposal while producing 10-25% of the electricity needed to run a small restaurant. It also produces fuel free of chemicals or fossil fuels, unlike standard biodiesel."

Comment: Like Radar Detecting (Score 4, Funny) 244

by Aix (#25708821) Attached to: Halliburton Applies For Patent-Trolling Patent
I'm reminded of something that happened to me a few years ago in a Circuit City or Sears or someplace. I was looking for a radar detector for my car. The salesman was trying to upsell and said "You know, cops can detect radar detectors now, so you should get this upgrade with a radar-detector detector." I said, "Why do I want a radar-detector detector? Obviously I want a radar-detector-detector detector." The salesguy did not appreciate my point. I ended up just buying my original level of detection.
Education

Voters Swayed By Candidates Who Share Their Looks 266

Posted by samzenpus
from the govern-by-proxy dept.
iandoh writes "Stanford researchers have found that voters are subconsciously swayed by candidates who share their facial features. In three experiments, researchers at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab worked with cheap, easy-to-use computer software to morph pictures of about 600 test subjects with photos of politicians. And they kept coming up with the same results: For the would-be voters who weren't very familiar with the candidates or in perfect lockstep with their positions or political parties, the facial similarity was enough to clinch their votes."
The Almighty Buck

Economic Crisis Will Eliminate Open Source 753

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the why-so-gloomy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The economic crisis will ultimately eliminate open source projects and the 'Web 2.0 free economy,' says Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur. Along with the economic downturn and record job loss, he says, we will see the elimination of projects including Wikipedia, CNN's iReport, and much of the blogosphere. Instead of users offering their services 'for free,' he says, we're about to see a 'sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor' and a rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash. Companies that will survive, he says, include Hulu, iTunes, and Mahalo. 'The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren't going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some "back end" revenue,' says Keen."
Unix

Persistent Terminals For a Dedicated Computing Box? 288

Posted by Soulskill
from the persistence-pays-off dept.
Theovon writes "I just built a high-end quad-core Linux PC dedicated to number-crunching. Its job is to sit in the corner with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor and do nothing but compute (genetic algorithms, neural nets, and other research). My issue is that I would like to have something like persistent terminal sessions. I've considered using Xvnc in a completely headless configuration (some useful documentation here, here, here, and here). However, for most of my uses, this is overkill. Total waste of memory and compute time. However, if I decided to run FPGA synthesis software under WINE, this will become necessary. Unfortunately, I can't quite figure out how to get persistent X11 session where I'm automatically logged in (or can stay logged in), while maintaining enough security that I don't mind opening the VNC port on my firewall (with a changed port number, of course). I'm also going to check out Xpra, but I've only just heard about it and have no idea how to use it. For the short term, the main need is just terminals. I'd like to be able to connect and see how something is going. One option is to just run things with nohup and then login and 'tail -f' to watch the log file. I've also heard of screen, but I'm unfamiliar with it. Have other Slashdot users encountered this situation? What did you use? What's hard, what's easy, and what works well?"
The Almighty Buck

Video Game Actors Say They Don't Get Their Due 573

Posted by timothy
from the 100k-isn't-exactly-peanuts dept.
Dekortage writes "The New York Times reports today about Michael Hollick, the actor who provided the voice of Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV. Although the game has made more than $600 million in sales for Rockstar Games, Hollick earns nothing beyond the original $100K he was paid. If this was television, film, or radio, Hollick and the other GTA actors could have made millions by now. Hollick says, 'I don't blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.' Is it time for video game actors to be treated as well as those in other mediums?"
Privacy

Soldiers Can't Blog Without Approval 358

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the how-else-will-we-know-what-they-ate-for-lunch dept.
denebian devil writes "Wired.com has obtained a copy of updated US Army rules (pdf) that force soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages without first clearing the content with a superior officer. Previous editions of the rules asked Army personnel to "consult with their immediate supervisor" before posting a document "that might contain sensitive and/or critical information in a public forum." The new version, in contrast, requires "an OPSEC review prior to publishing" anything — from "web log (blog) postings" to comments on internet message boards, from resumes to letters home. Under the strictest reading of the rule, a soldier must check with his or her superior officer before every blog entry posted and every email sent, though the method of enforcing these regulations is subject to choices made by the unit commanders. According to Wired, active-duty troops aren't the only ones affected by the new guidelines. Civilians working for the military, Army contractors — even soldiers' families — are all subject to the directive as well, though many of the people affected by these new regulations can't even access them because they are being kept on the military's restricted Army Knowledge Online intranet. Wired also interviewed Major Ray Ceralde, author of the new regulations, about why this change has been made."
Programming

Getting the Most Out of a CS Curriculum? 124

Posted by Cliff
from the it's-not-just-about-code dept.
Henry asks: "In September I start on a CS-type degree course. I am probably a fairly typical newbie programmer, in that most of my knowledge centers around scripting and high to very high level programming. There's much to choose from: languages, concepts, mathematics, and so on. From previous stories, I know that many readers have strong opinions on the failings and weaknesses of university courses and students. Apart from all of the coding that I will do, what can I do in the coming months to maximize what I get out of this? "
Communications

Mobile Carriers Cry "Less Operating Systems" 217

Posted by Hemos
from the less-qq-more-pew-pew dept.
A NYTimes story says "Multiple systems have hampered the growth of new services, mobile phone executives say. " The story does a good job of capturing some of the changing dynamics in the mobile OS market — but rightly raises the point that given the sheer size of the mobile market, it's unlikely we're going to see the homogenization we have in the desktop market.

Chip Power Breakthrough Reported by Startup 174

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
from the processor-still-suit dept.
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that a tiny Silicon Valley firm, Multigig, is proposing a novel way to synchronize the operations of computer chips, addressing power-consumption problems facing the semiconductor industry. From the article: 'John Wood, a British engineer who founded Multigig in 2000, devised an approach that involves sending electrical signals around square loop structures, said Haris Basit, Multigig's chief operating officer. The regular rotation works like the tick of a conventional clock, while most of the electrical power is recycled, he said. The technology can achieve 75% power savings over conventional clocking approaches, the company says.'"

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves. -- Sophocles