Comment rust... not Rust. (Score 1) 89
I was confused for a minute.
Comment Been there, done that! Back in 2008... (Score 1) 132
when the analog cell phone networks were shutdown.
I had a 2002 model vehicle with Onstar.
They never did an upgrade kit for my vehicle.
Comment Re:Only 10 years? (Score 1) 196
68 subs... but how many different crews over the 10 years?
Comment WWZ (Score 1) 110
WWZ
Comment Re:He's got chops (Score 4, Insightful) 117
The other benefit of a golf course is doctors!
WD, Intel, Corsair, Kingston, Plextor SSDs Collide 56
J. Dzhugashvili writes "New SSDs just keep coming out from all corners of the market, and keeping track of all of them isn't the easiest job in the world. Good thing SSD roundups pop up every once in a while. This time, Western Digital's recently launched SiliconEdge Blue solid-state drive has been compared against new entrants from Corsair, Kingston, and Plextor. The newcomers faced off against not just each other, but also Intel's famous X25-M G2, WD's new VelociRaptor VR200M mechanical hard drive, and a plain-old WD Caviar Black 2TB thrown in for good measure. Who came out on top? Priced at about the same level, the WD and Plextor drives each seem to have deal-breaking performance weaknesses. The Kingston drive is more affordable than the rest, but it yielded poor IOMeter results. In the end, the winner appeared to be Corsair's Nova V128, which had similar all-around performance as Intel's 160GB X25-M G2 but with a slightly lower capacity and a more attractive price." Thanks to that summary, you might not need to wade through all 10 of the pages into which the linked article's been split.
Attractive Open Source Search Interfaces? 65
An anonymous reader writes "I work for a company that manages an online database for the political market. We add to this DB daily with updates from a variety of sources and our customers then search through this content via our Solr/Lucene search engine. My problem is, our search interface is a little, well, basic and I would love to know if there are any feature-rich open source alternatives out there. The only one I can find is Flamenco, and while that seems strong on categorisation, that seems to be about the height of it."
M.U.L.E. Is Back 110
jmp_nyc writes "The developers at Turborilla have remade the 1983 classic game M.U.L.E. The game is free, and has slightly updated graphics, but more or less the same gameplay as the original version. As with the original game, up to four players can play against each other (or fewer than four with AI players taking the other spots). Unlike the original version, the four players can play against each other online. For those of you not familiar with M.U.L.E., it was one of the earliest economic simulation games, revolving around the colonization of the fictitious planet Irata (Atari spelled backwards). I have fond memories of spending what seemed like days at a time playing the game, as it's quite addictive, with the gameplay seeming simpler than it turns out to be. I'm sure I'm not the only Slashdotter who had a nasty M.U.L.E. addiction back in the day and would like a dose of nostalgia every now and then."
Submission + - Comparing Microsoft and Apple Websites' Usability (infoq.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: In the article entitled Apple vs. Microsoft — A Website Usability Study, Dmitry Fadeyev, co-founder of Pixelshell, compares Apple's and Microsoft's web sites from a usability perspective, and Apple is the winner. Scott Barnes, PM at Microsoft, agrees with him and suggests the problem is because various site sub-domains have different management.
Submission + - Does your college or university support Linux? 4
yuna49 writes: Lately I have been visiting colleges with my daughter who's a senior in high school. Every school has proudly announced that they support both Windows and Macs, and most of these schools report having about a 50-50 split between the two technologies. However we've been a Linux household for many years now, and my daughter routinely uses a laptop running Kubuntu 9.04. Sometimes I would ask the student tour guide if Linux was supported and was usually met with a blank stare. We're obviously not concerned about whether she can write papers using OpenOffice and Linux. Rather we've been wondering about using other computing services on campus like classroom applications, remote printing, VPNs, or wifi support (nearly all these campuses have ubiquitous wifi). Given the composition of Slashdot's readership, I thought I'd pose the question here. Does your school support Linux? Have you found it difficult or impossible to use Linux in concert with the school's computing services?
Submission + - A History of Star Raiders (gamasutra.com)
blacklily8 writes: "Gamasutra has just published our history of Doug Neubauer's Star Raiders, a 1979 game for the Atari 8-bit that offered "high-speed first-person perspective through a fully navigable 3D-like environment in just 8K of RAM (memory) and 8K of ROM (storage)." Designed by the creator of the Atari's POKEY chip, Star Raiders was a hit on its home platform but now seems to have fallen into obscurity: "Star Raiders is a shining example of what happens when a developer is told that something can't be done, does it anyway, and then is promptly forgotten for having done it." In addition to describing the game itself, the article focuses on its impact on later games such as Wing Commander, X-Wing, and Elite."
Comment Re:Different pockets, same taxpayers' money (Score 1) 1026
Extreme wealth is certainly rare. Moderate wealth is not. It just takes a moderate desire to get there. Ready for the magical unicorn way of ending your life making 200k a year?
Wealth is not the amount made, but the difference between the the amount made and amount spend.
Submission + - Mars Rover Ready for Risky Descent into Crater (nasa.gov)
Riding with Robots writes: "After months of scoping out the terrain, the robotic geologist Opportunity is ready to drive down into Victoria Crater on the Meridiani Plains of Mars. Mission managers acknowledge the hardy rover may never come back out, but say they think the potential for discovery is worth it."
Submission + - Citizens Given Video Cameras to Monitor Police (foxnews.com)
atommota writes: After years of complaints of police misconduct, some residents of high-crime neighborhoods in St. Louis are being
given free video cameras
to help them monitor officers.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri launched the project Wednesday after television crews last year broadcast video of officers punching and kicking a suspect who led police on a car chase.
"The idea here is to level the playing field, so it's not just your word against the police's word," said Brenda Jones, executive director of the ACLU chapter.
This is in stark contrast to a report out of PA (and seen on Slashdot), where someone was arrested for felony wiretapping for doing the same thing.
This is in stark contrast to a report out of PA (and seen on Slashdot), where someone was arrested for felony wiretapping for doing the same thing.
Submission + - Congress Considers Forcing Travel Registration (iht.com)
macduffman writes: Congress and the Department of Homeland Security are considering several new visa restrictions, including forcing some foreign travelers to register their travel plans online 48 hours in advance. What would this mean for foreign relations and the economy?
