Comment: Shrinking Your Market (Score 5, Insightful) 450
Hooray for video captcha ads in expensive bandwidth countries!
Lenovo Requires NDA for Windows License Refund->
Submitted
by
tykev
tykev writes "A customer wanted to return the license for preinstalled Windows Vista Business that came with his Lenovo laptop. After some lengthy negotiations with representatives of Lenovo's technical support and management, he was offered financial compensation for returning the license in the amount of CZK 1950 (USD 130, EUR 78), pending his acceptance of a non-disclosure agreement that would cover the entire negotiations with the company and its results. He declined and published his experiences on a Czech Linux website. The website editors decided to reward the customer for publishing the article by paying him an author's royalty in the same amount as was the offered compensation for returning the license."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Comment: Unresistable (Score 1) 113
All your face are belong to us!
BOINC is now Available for GPU/CUDA->
Submitted
by
GDI Lord
GDI Lord writes "BOINC, open-source software for volunteer computing and grid computing, has posted a news item that
GPU computing has arrived to BOINC! The GPUGRID.net project from the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) uses CUDA-capable NVIDIA chips to create an infrastructure for biomolecular simulations. (Currently available for Linux64; other platforms to follow soon. To participate, follow the instructions on the web site).
I think that this is great news as GPUs have shown amazing potential for parallel computing."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of every->
Submitted
by
GDI Lord
GDI Lord writes ""An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists. Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt)... his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.
Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year...
Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 — a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year
after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.""
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Fan-Made C&C:Red Alert Tesla Coil->
Submitted
by
GDI Lord
GDI Lord writes "RADen has posted the news about a fan made Tesla Coil from C&C:RA.
From RADEN:
Link to Original Source
From RADEN:
"Peter Terren of the Red Alert website Telsa Down Under has recreated the Soviet Tesla coil straight out of the game! It took him about 100 hours of work to make the models and equipment. Obviously he's a very devoted C&C fan. On his website he details how he created the Tesla Coil and the other models you see in that picture below. Quite ingenious indeed!
Link to Original Source
Boston Globe to Blogger — "Stop Using Opera" 465
Posted
by
kdawson
from the what-part-of-'modern'-do-you-not-understand dept.
from the what-part-of-'modern'-do-you-not-understand dept.
PetManimal writes "Mac Daniels of the Boston Globe weighed in on a prickly debate involving the updated local mass transit website. The Globe's advice to one complainer named 'derspatchel': Stop using Opera. Derspatchel's response is to go medieval on Daniels' ass, and ask the question: Why should Opera users give up their browser? Quoting: 'I don't give two whoops about the "percentage of the Internet population" or whatever. I don't care if a website works on someone else's choice of browser; I care if it works or not on my choice of browser. It's a modern browser, it's in active development, and it's free. Once dev stops on the Opera browser and the last version becomes outdated and unable to support newer Web innovations, then I'll "stop using it." How's that, Chuckles?'" After a day the transit authority took the new site offline to "improve performance," reverting to the old version.
AMD Reveals Plans to Move Beyond the Core Race 227
Posted
by
CowboyNeal
from the eye-to-the-future dept.
from the eye-to-the-future dept.
J. Dzhugashvili writes "The Tech Report has caught wind of AMD's plans for processors over the coming years. Intel may be counting on cramming 'tens to hundreds' of cores in future CPUs, but AMD thinks the core race is just a repeat of the megahertz race that took place a few years ago. Instead, AMD is counting on Accelerated Processing Units, chips that mix and match general-purpose CPU cores with dedicated application processors for graphics and other tasks. In the meantime, AMD is cooking up some new desktop and mobile processors that it hopes will give Intel a run for its money."
David X. Cohen Interviewed on New Futurama 240
Posted
by
Zonk
from the everybody-loves-hypnotoad dept.
from the everybody-loves-hypnotoad dept.
eldavojohn writes "Toyfare has a short but exclusive interview with co-creator of Futurama David X. Cohen. There's a lot of information about how they plan to continue the series. He also reveals they're halfway through writing the new season and just starting animation. When asked about his favorite minor character of the show, Cohen responded 'Hypnotoad. By the way, we are looking into producing a full 22-minute episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad for the DVD release. I am serious.'"
MySpace Users Have Stronger Passwords Than Employees 263
Posted
by
Zonk
from the hardly-surprising dept.
from the hardly-surprising dept.
Ant writes "A Wired News column reports on Bruce Schneier's analysis of data from a successful phishing attack on MySpace, and compares the captured user-passwords to an earlier data-set from a corporation. He concludes that MySpace users are better at coming up with good passwords than corporate drones." From the article: "We used to quip that 'password' is the most common password. Now it's 'password1.' Who said users haven't learned anything about security? But seriously, passwords are getting better. I'm impressed that less than 4 percent were dictionary words and that the great majority were at least alphanumeric. Writing in 1989, Daniel Klein was able to crack (.gz) 24 percent of his sample passwords with a small dictionary of just 63,000 words, and found that the average password was 6.4 characters long."
Open Source Laser Business Opens In New York 96
Posted
by
kdawson
from the burn-baby-burn dept.
from the burn-baby-burn dept.
ptorrone writes "If you can't stand the idea of a cookie-cutter laptop and you live in New York City, you have a new option: laser-etching. Phil Torrone, an editor at Make magazine, and Limor Fried, a former fellow at the tech-focused art studio Eyebeam R&D, are working together on Adafruit Laser Services, a new, by-appointment-only business in Manhattan that etches custom artwork onto customers' laptops, iPods, cell phones, and other gadgets." The entire business will be open source. From the Adafruit Laser Services site: "We are publishing how to use the high powered laser system, set up, techniques, business practices and templates. You could start your own laser business, we'll even help you."
TSA Now Investigating Boarding Pass Hacker 270
Posted
by
Zonk
from the make-up-your-mind dept.
from the make-up-your-mind dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A week after the Justice Department cleared him of any wrongdoing, Chris Soghoian, the Indiana University PhD student who created an online boarding pass generator for Northwest Airlines to highlight security holes is on the government's 'no-fly' list. The Transportation Security Administration has now launched its own investigation, says Wired blog 27strokeB. The TSA is claiming that Soghoian 'attempted to circumvent an established civil aviation security program established in the Transportation Security Regulations,' violations of which carry fines of up to $11,000 per violation. That could be a steep fine, says Washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog: 'Something like 35,000 people viewed and possibly used the boarding pass generator during the less than 72 hours that it was live on his site in November. Soghoian told WaPo: "If they decide that the only safe way for me to leave the country is by boat, then that's pretty much the end of my career here in the States. It's one thing to harass researchers, but if they can chase them out of the country, then that's a real chilling effect."'"
NASA Finds Evidence of Recent Flowing Water on Mars 238
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the some-bound-to-claim-theory-is-all-wet dept.
from the some-bound-to-claim-theory-is-all-wet dept.
SonicSpike writes to mention that Scientists are claiming that they have evidence of water flowing on Mars within the last five years. From the article: "Subsurface aquifers or melting ground ice were floated as possible sources of the water. One of the springs even appears at a fault line, according to Malin, just as they often do on Earth. The shortness of the gulleys, which seem to flow for but a few hundred yards, might be accounted for by a process similar to a volcano's eruption on Earth, with water instead of magma building up underground, and ice, instead of fire, characterizing the resulting flow."
Millimeter-Wave Weapon Certified For Use In Iraq 806
Posted
by
kdawson
from the bang-you're-hot dept.
from the bang-you're-hot dept.
jdray writes "Wired has a story on the certification of the Active Denial System for use in Iraq. The ADS is a millimeter-wave weapon that uses a reportedly non-lethal energy beam to inflict short-term pain on its targets, encouraging them to leave an area. Experimenters call this the 'Goodbye effect.' I can see using this in a wartime situation, but how long before we see these things mounted to the top of S.W.A.T. vans for domestic crowd control? And, is that a bad idea?" From the article: The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves — 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven... while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, 'some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters'... There has been no independent checking of the military's claims." Wired use Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain documents on the military's testing program.
Mars Probe Probably Lost Forever 167
Posted
by
kdawson
from the alas-poor-MGS dept.
from the alas-poor-MGS dept.
David Shiga writes, "NASA's silent Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft is likely lost forever. The space agency attempted to take a picture of the 10-year-old spacecraft using the newer Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, but did not detect it, either because its orbit has shifted since last contact, or because it isn't reflecting enough sunlight to be visible. NASA has now ordered its Opportunity rover to listen from the planet's surface for MGS's radio beacon. If that fails, the agency may call on the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft to join the search. But MGS may already have run out of power and NASA officials are not optimistic about recovering it."