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Idle

Floating +Pool: river swimming for New Yorkers->

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes "Three young entrepreneurs have proposed a way of getting New Yorkers into the Hudson, East and/or Bronx Rivers. It's called the +Pool (Plus Pool) — a public swimming pool that would float in the river, allowing people to swim in filtered river water. River water would flow into the pool through permeable walls, which would be composed of three layers filtering out the river nasties."
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Comment: Re:Thanks Guys (Score 1) 344

by Alystair (#36431152) Attached to: LulzSec Hacks the US Senate
This is the exact concern I've had since the start of these highly publicized intrusions. Instead of blaming lax security guidelines and policy at the places of intrusion, the public media is placing the blame in the hands of the people bringing making this knowledge public. Surly there are better ways to notify the companies at fault, but with the new development of "let's only solve problems when the public makes a giant scene out of it" (ex. people complaining on Twitter about issues they are having) this was bound to happen sooner rather than later. I really hope the people in power see the true issue and don't use it as an excuse to lock down and regulate even further (ha, yeah right). Prevention is the key measure, not treatment of the problem once it happens.
Businesses

OCZ acquires Indilinx; but it's not monogamous->

Submitted by
auld_wyrm
auld_wyrm writes "The fabless SSD controller manufacturer Indilinx has been acquired by one time DRAM mogul now turned solid state storage leader, OCZ. It seems that OCZ won't be quitting it's Vertex relationship nor will Indilinx stop it's partnership with other vendors, which should lead to a rich and possibly diverse lineage. This obviously has nothing to do with the recent drop in price of the 240GB Vertex 2."
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Businesses

Taco Bell Programming 394

Posted by timothy
from the how-dare-you-insult-the-code-monkeys dept.
theodp writes "Think outside the box? Nah, think outside the bun. Ted Dziuba argues there's a programming lesson to be learned from observing how Taco Bell manages to pull down $1.9 billion by mixing-and-matching roughly eight ingredients: 'The more I write code and design systems, the more I understand that many times, you can achieve the desired functionality simply with clever reconfigurations of the basic Unix tool set. After all, functionality is an asset, but code is a liability. This is the opposite of a trend of nonsense called DevOps, where system administrators start writing unit tests and other things to help the developers warm up to them — Taco Bell Programming is about developers knowing enough about Ops (and Unix in general) so that they don't overthink things, and arrive at simple, scalable solutions.'"
Hardware Hacking

Grad Student Invents Cheap Laser Cutter 137

Posted by samzenpus
from the frugal-cutting dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Peter Jansen, a PhD student and member of the RepRap community, has constructed a working prototype of an inexpensive table-top laser cutter built out of old CD/DVD drives as an offshoot of his efforts to design an under $200 open-source Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) 3D printer. Where traditional laser cutters use powerful, fixed-focus beams, this new technique dynamically adjusts the focal point of the laser using a reciprocating motion similar to a reciprocating saw, allowing a far less powerful and inexpensive laser diode to be used. The technique is currently limited to cutting black materials to a depth of only a few millimeters, but should still be useful and enabling for Makers and other crafters. The end-goal is to create a hybrid inexpensive 3D printer that can be easily reconfigured for 2D laser cutting, providing powerful making tools to the desktop."

NuCaptcha video's are harder for bots, not humans-> 1

Submitted by ZigiSamblak
ZigiSamblak writes "NuCaptcha’s technology substitutes a brief video display of characters for the usual smash or squiggle of letters. It’s definitely easier on the human eye, and its creators say it’s also much more secure. Moreover, if humans find NuCaptcha as legible as machines find it illegible, it should help increase signups while decreasing spambots for web services and applications.

The article isn't much more informative but they do have an effective example of this new technology which was easier on my eyes than the captcha for this submission."

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Data Storage

The Limits To Perpendicular Recording 222

Posted by kdawson
from the moore-was-a-piker dept.
peterkern writes "Samsung has a new hard drive and says it can now store 667 GB on one disk, which comes out to be about 739 Gb/sq. in. That is more than five times the density when perpendicular recording was introduced back in 2006, and it is getting close to the generally expected soft limit of 1 Tb/sq. in. It's great that we can now store 2 TB on one hard drive and that 3-TB hard drives are already feasible. But how far can it go? It appears that the hard drive industry may start talking about heat-assisted magnetic recording again, soon."
Microsoft

Bill Gates Doesn't Work At Microsoft Anymore 497

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the permanent-vacation dept.
itwbennett writes "The recent Fortune article on Bill Gates' post-Microsoft life made one thing very clear to blogger Steven Vaughan-Nichols: 'Bill Gates was, and still is, the face of Microsoft. What Microsoft doesn't want you to know though is that Gates has almost nothing to do with the company anymore.' The fact is that Microsoft doesn't want to draw attention to Gates' absence because the company 'has been tanking in recent years,' says Vaughan-Nichols. 'While Microsoft's last quarter was far better than it was a year ago, thanks largely to Windows 7 finally picking up steam, neither Microsoft's growth nor its profits are what they were like when Gates was at the helm.'"
Government

Court Takes Away Some of the Public Domain 431

Posted by kdawson
from the congress-shall-make-no-law dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In yet another bad ruling concerning copyright, a federal appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling, and said that it's okay for Congress retroactively to remove works from the public domain, even if publishers are already making use of those public-domain works. The lower court had said this was a First Amendment violation, but the appeals court said that if Congress felt taking away from the public domain was in its best interests, then there was no First Amendment violation at all. The ruling effectively says that Congress can violate the First Amendment, so long as it feels it has heard from enough people (in this case, RIAA and MPAA execs) to convince it that it needs to do what it has done." TechDirt notes that the case will almost certainly be appealed.

Comment: Re:Be warned, the community is noxious (Score 1) 118

by Alystair (#31684948) Attached to: <em>Heroes of Newerth</em> Open Beta About To Start
I fully support watching the tutorial and reading strategy guides online (the ones from DOTA might apply as well , however as it stands the "match making" system still requires tweaking and can cause much angst. I'd recommend playing the low level public games if you don't know what you're doing and wait until they fix the quirks in match making, as it stands public games work perfectly but MM games have issues with leavers.
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Heroes of Newerth Open Beta About To Start 118

Posted by Soulskill
from the getting-closer dept.
You may recall last summer when we discussed Heroes of Newerth, a title from S2 Games that's based on the popular Defense of the Ancients mod from Warcraft III. We passed out some closed beta keys, and there seemed to be a ton of interest, in part due to the fact that they have a Linux client. Well, if any of you missed it or want to see how the game has progressed since then, now is your chance — the open beta begins tonight (March 31). There's a countdown on the sign-up page that shows when you can register.
The Media

Popular Science Frees Its 137-Year Archives 135

Posted by kdawson
from the whole-lotta-rocket-ships dept.
DesScorp writes "Popular Science magazine has scanned every issue they've ever produced, and posted the archives at their website, at no charge. 'We've partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It's an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology's incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.'" First search: the history of the flying car.
Apple

Is iPhone the New Internet Explorer 6->

Submitted by
brajesh
brajesh writes "In a long blog post, Quirksmode blog argues that the iPhone is the Internet Explorer 6 once again. FTFA — "The iPhone has become an obsession. If we don't pay attention, we'll have a mobile web that only works on the iPhone. And then we'll have the real mobile web that wasn't made by us and doesn't give a shit about web standards and best practices." and "We have come full-circle back to developing for only one browser. Worse, we are congratulating ourselves on that bit of cleverness. Christ, do we really have to go through the whole standards movement once again?""
Link to Original Source
Science

Why Time Flies By As You Get Older 252

Posted by kdawson
from the like-a-banana dept.
Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.

"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker

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