crackpot - Slashdot User

Comment: Re:Let's not leap to conclusions. (Score 1) 1079

by crackpot on Friday December 11 2009, @09:06PM (#30409902) Attached to: Sci-Fi Author Peter Watts Beaten, Charged During Border Crossing

Right on target and I couldn't agree more. I can't count how many times I've crossed the border having had to endure the clearly condescending "how are you sir?"; "please exit the vehicle sir"; "what is your business in the U.S. sir?"; "please open the trunk sir"; "you may return to your vehicle sir", "blah, blah, blah, blah" all the time knowing that these untrained armed goons purportedly there to "protect the border" are all really nothing more than sociopathic power freaks.

This is a clear indication of the decline of western society. We all know that it's our god given right to be rude, uncooperative, beligerent and generally unsocial towards "authority" without having to concern ourselves with the consequences of our actions. These guards are probably all redneck dog-beaters anyway that deserve whatever unholy hell Watts' attorney can dish.

We all know the same applies to all social activists, librarians, transit workers and tech support personnel...

Are Women Getting More Beautiful? 834

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday July 27 2009, @10:00AM
from the or-are-you-just-less-picky dept.

FelxH writes "Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors. The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern." I just thought my standards were changing as I got older, but it turns out it's just science!

Faulty Chips Could Cripple U.S. Attack On Iran

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2007, @02:58AM

An anonymous reader writes "Is this at all possible or verifiable? http://www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/Fault y_Chips_US_Military.htm"

big ram laptops? (beyond 4gb)

Submitted by Fubari on Sunday February 25 2007, @02:48AM

Fubari writes "Anybody know when laptops over 4gb might be coming out? Some of the devtools I want to run are just obscene ram-pigs. On the desktop I'm using now (win2003), it sucks up 1.6gb just to boot. By the time I log in and start doing work, it is stretching 2gb.

Move that to vista, add a vm-ware session or two, and I'm worried I'll be pushing 4gb.

I'm torn between buying a 4gb-max laptop now, or some mini-desktop that can fit in a set of luggage wheels. A friend of mine suggested something like this, but my first choice would be something designed to be portable."

SWIFT applies for Safe Harbor Protections

Submitted by KDR_11k on Sunday February 25 2007, @02:42AM

KDR_11k writes "The Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT, the system used for all international bank transfers) is now applying for Safe Harbor protections in the US following a dispute with the EU over handing data to US authorities (of course with subpoenas). EU data protection laws don't allow giving peronal information to other entities without the consent of the person the information is about which already caused the dispute over handing passenger data to US authorities. SWIFT hopes that with these Safe Harbor protections they will no longer be forced to give up information they aren't allowed to but Safe Harbor does not apply to banking organizations. Now it depends on whether SWIFT is a banking institution (they claim they aren't) and whether they are a data processor or controller (they claim the former, apparently data protection laws only apply to the latter).

The EU's proposed solution is that SWIFT should abandon its US data center to bring its data out of range of US officials."

Xbox Live Marketplace Digital Rights MISManagement

Submitted by

Divalent

on Sunday February 25 2007, @02:38AM

Divalent writes "For over fourteen months, Microsoft has been aware of a problem that is presented to a user if they attempt to play an XBL arcade game or a game with premium paid downloadable content on any other machine than the one it was originally downloaded on. (See forum thread begun on 12/18/05)

MS has not come forward and publicly acknowledged the problem. Their representatives on the forums have even gone so far as to say, despite it's frank illegality, that those that had consoles stolen or replaced, in or out of warranty, from retailers will not have the workaround solution applied to their accounts unless they have explicit proof of said replacement. This means if your box breaks out of warranty, you cannot simply trash it and head to a store and buy a new one. You must somehow show continuity and PROVE to Microsoft that your old box is broken and has been replaced by the one you say it has been replaced by. Whatever happened to content being tied to your Gamertag, an ID that is uncopy-able and can only be logged onto one console at any one time? Where was the mention prior to launch of tying content to Gamertag AND the first console used to download the content before launch? That little detail wasn't even brought up until the Fall Update in October '06.

Currently there is a group of users who have had enough of this mismanagement of the growing segment of users with this problem. It is felt that Microsoft has its choice of a myriad of solutions such as Apples (de)authorizing protocol for iTunes. You can get a synopsis of the problem at Parallax Abstraction's blog on the matter here along with his recommendations of what to do. Included in the suggestions, whether you've personally been effected by the problem or not, is the urging to sign a petition that asks Microsoft to change the Digital Rights (Mis)Managment scheme currently in place."

XP On 8-MHz Pentium With 20 MB RAM 410

Posted by kdawson on Sunday February 25 2007, @12:55AM
from the golden-hourglass dept.

swehack writes "The guys over at winhistory.de managed to get their Windows XP Professional running on a very minimal box: an Intel Pentium clocked down to 8 MHz with 20 MB of RAM. (The installer won't work with less than 64 MB, but after installing you can remove memory.) The link has plenty of pictures of their progress in achieving this dubious milestone. They deserve a Golden Hourglass award for 'extreme waste of time.' What obscure hardware configurations have you managed to get Windows running on?"

DragonFly BSD to develop own filesystem

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2007, @12:40AM

An anonymous reader writes "Matt Dillon has decided to develop a new filesystem from scratch to support DragonFly's clustering, rather than port an existing one. From his post: "There are currently two rough spots in the design. First, how to handle segment overflows in a multi-master environment. Such overflows can occur when the individual masters or slaves have different historical data retention policies. Second, where to store the regeneratable indexes.""

Is backwards compatibility important?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2007, @12:34AM

An anonymous reader writes "http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/2/ 24/7211

A debate about the importance of backwards compatibility towards the success of a console."

Is RFID A Security Risk?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2007, @12:13AM

An anonymous reader writes "From ABC news: "All it takes is a second, and it's gone — a modern day pick-pocket can snatch your credit card and other personal information without ever touching your wallet. The thieves need only a little know how, and about a hundred bucks. The technology we rely on everyday — is being abused." Video at http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=7on_your_ side&id=5065414"