Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror
Power

The Whole House-Off Switch 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Wouldn't it be convenient if you had just one switch to power-off the whole house? Something like what you have at hotels, but over there it's your room key that does the trick. For homes its better to fit the Whole House-Off Switch by designer Jack Godfrey Wood. The idea behind the concept is to turn off of the unnecessary power in the house when you step out, with a single switch. The Whole House-Off Switch was designed to make "the green way the most convenient way," and was part of a larger project to "encourage 'green' action among the environmentally disenfranchised.""
Communications

DirecTV to Offer Internet Over Power Lines->

Submitted by
sonsonete
sonsonete writes "Satellite-television provider DirecTV has plans to offer high-speed Internet service carried over electric power lines.

According to the Wall Street Journal under the agreement, which is expected to be signed today, DirecTV will market a bundled package of Current's broadband and VOIP services under the DirecTV brand.... According to the report, DirecTV has yet to determine pricing, but says TV, Internet and phone services packages will be competitive with those offered by phone companies.
"
Link to Original Source
NASA

Images of Endeavour's Damaged Tiles 331

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the that-sure-doesn't-look-good dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Neptec Design Group, a Canadian company and a NASA prime contractor for 25 space missions, was kind enough to send me exclusive images of Endeavour's damaged tiles during its last take-off. So here are some of these pictures" The pictures are pretty amazing and make the urgency of this whole thing much more amazing.
Google

Google, Sun to finally take on Microsoft?

Submitted by Trion
Trion writes "Nearly two years after they were expected to announce a Microsoft Office killer (or is it even likely?), Sun Microsystems and Google may finally be planning to do it. Or not. Mary Jo Foley, in her ZDNet blog, has reported that she got confirmation from a Sun representative that the company plans to make a StarOffice-related announcement on Wednesday that will have a "significant impact in the industry about the adoption of Open Document Format and availability of free MS Office-compatible comprehensive office suite". Google had also secretly added Sun's StarOffice software suite to its Google Pack of recommended applications. StarOffice is integrated with Google Search and Google Desktop."
Displays

3D Animations in Mid-Air Using Plasma Balls->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Japanese boffins are now making animations by creating small plasma balls in mid-air. The technology doesn't use vapor or strange gases, just lasers to heat up oxygen and nitrogen molecules: up to 1,000 brilliant dots per second, which makes smooth motion possible. They could be used as street signs, advertising or to create giant plasma monsters to destroy entire cities. Maybe."
Link to Original Source
Programming

Red Hat Developer Studio first contact->

Submitted by
juanignaciosl
juanignaciosl writes "First beta of Red Hat Developer Studio has just been published. This IDE is a bunch of Eclipse plugins which comes out from JBoss IDE and Exadel Studio fusion. The main advantages it offers are: JSF development improved, specially integrating RichFaces and Ajax4JSF libraries; Seam (next J2EE middleware standard?) integration; it also includes plugins for JBoss, Hibernate...

RHDS seems promising. Is finally the time Java development meets Visual Whatever integration?

If anybody wants to read on first impressions you can check my software engineering blog post on Red Hat Developer Studio installation."
Link to Original Source
Music

Unforgiven: Metallica sues Red Octane, Activision,-> 1

Submitted by antek9
antek9 writes "Remember Metallica? Those hairy guys that wanted to sue everyone who obtained their music minus an appropriate license? They're at it again, suing even those video game makers who legitimately licensed their music for music-centered franchises.

From the article: "[...] the counsel for Red Octane and Activision had this to say:
Our company paid a licensing fee to feature the track 'One' by Metallica in Guitar Hero III. We don't understand why Metallica would turn around and sue us, unless they've gone from insane to completely batshit insane since 2001, but we're confident that the law and our contracts will be enough to have this thrown out.

Metallica's counsel, on the other hand, explained that the band is fearful that album sales will decline because consumers can easily get hold of their songs just by purchasing video game titles. The lawyer added, "The band learned its lesson the hard way with file sharing in the late 90s. This time they want to do a pre-emptive strike before the music gets out there"."

Any lawyer using the expression 'batshit insane' is a good lawyer by default, so this should be fun."
Link to Original Source
Robotics

Humorous 'Robot'->

Submitted by
allengineering
allengineering writes "There does not exist yet but American researchers already carried out an able this software — to a certain extent — to detect the puns.


"That I lay? What do I lay?" "The last word which was useful to you was: I lay." "Terry towel! Perfect..."

This small dialogue has what to make bugger a software of analysis of text. The program developed at the university of Cincinnati by Julia Taylor and Lawrence Mazlack, to determine that it is about a pun.

Taylor had the distinct task of "training" the computer by providing it with information relative to American English at a child's level. They developed an extensive list of knock-knock jokes that turn on people's names, particularly.

Knock, Knock
Who is there?
Dawn
Dawn who?
Dawn by the station, early in the morning

Knock, Knock
Who is there?
Wendy
Wendy who?
Wendy last time you took a bath?

All bad jokes aside, their research represents a step forward in computers reaching the capability of a human mind."
Link to Original Source
Operating Systems

The $2,500 Question - A New Computer 2

Submitted by mdrebelx
mdrebelx writes "For the first time in almost 30 years of computer use I am completely stymied about my next computer purchase. This will be a personal home computer and I am prepared to spend around $2,500 for my rig. Right now I am currently using a dual-boot computer with Windows XP and Kubuntu Linux. I use the computer to Web surf, listen to music, photo-editing, create music, some light word processing and spreadsheets, finances, taxes, and playing World of Warcraft or Half-Life 2 mods. Were it not for the games my decision would be so much easier. So my choices as I see it are: Kubuntu only, using Wine for the games. I got the games to run on my current system but the load times were excessive (2-3 minutes) and my framerates were pitiful. I am hoping this is only a limitation of my current computer but I have to say the games run well when I boot XP. Kubuntu/XP dual booting. I already have that and it gets bothersome to switch back and forth. Microsoft XP only. Yes it works and has the fewest hassles but I was hoping for an experience that says this is 2007. Also this OS has been marked for elimination and that just doesn't seem like a good place to start. Microsoft Vita. Everything tells me this would be a bad choice. Mac OS X. This is the system I know the least about but I am the most intrigued by. Mac has a positive spin. It is sleek and sexy and the recent Unix certification gives it a good pedigree. But will I be satisfied, because this choice has the largest degree of lock-in or commitment as it costs the most and it seems silly to wipe the drive for another OS if I'm unsatisfied. If someone would just make a virtual machine that could be allowed full access to the video card this would be a no-brainer. Opinions? Suggestions? Alternatives I might have missed?"

A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected.