Comment Re:Basement can be huge. (Score 1) 487
Quite. I find I play a lot of Left 4 Dead as therapy...
Comment Re:Basement can be huge. (Score 1) 487
"Sticky paper" lol.
The rats would walk around unhindered inside the two-hundred-year-old walls; they had free access from the adjoining properties. The pest control man said at least one sounded like a very big one - you could hear it padding around like a small dog. They found their way through the wall into a bedroom cupboard, so we abandoned that room and barricaded the door behind us. Eventually, the poison killed them. As they slowly decomposed somewhere in the wall, we were subjected to months of an odour similar to blue cheese and bacon.
Apart from that, it was a great place to live.
Comment Basement can be huge. (Score 2, Funny) 487
I lived in a basement that used to be William IV's wine cellar. You could play football in the largest room. Eventually the rats drove us out; we thought they might eat the baby...
UK Teen Cited For Calling Scientology a "Cult" 995
An anonymous reader writes "A 15-year-old in the UK is facing prosecution for using the word 'cult' to describe the Church of Scientology at an anti-Scientology demonstration in London earlier this month. According to the City of London police at the scene, the teen was violating the Public Order Act, which 'prohibits signs which have representations or words which are threatening, abusive or insulting.' There's a video of the teen receiving the summons from the City of London police at the demonstration (starting about 1 minute in), and now he's asking for advice on how to handle the court case."
Submission + - Safest Seat on a Plane: How to Survive a Crash (popularmechanics.com)
Ant writes: "Popular Mechanics shares a short article on an exclusive look at 36 years' worth of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports and seating charts to determine the best way to live through a disaster in the sky. Move to the back of the Airbus (Boeing too?).
Seen on Boing Boing."
Deathbed Confession Says Aliens Were at Roswell 1267
xnuandax writes "The army's explanation of weather balloons in the Roswell, New Mexico incident 60 years ago has been dealt a serious public relations blow. Late Army Lt. Walter Haut had signed a sealed affidavit prior to his death last year asserting that he had witnessed the wreckage of an egg-shaped craft and its extraterrestrial crew while working at the Roswell Army Air Field. An article at News.com.au reviews how Haut had worked as public relations officer for the Roswell base and was involved in the original weather balloon explanation of events at the time. This recent evidence would seem to confirm speculation that egg-shaped saucers are notoriously difficult to fly safely at low altitude."
Flying the Airbus A380 281
FloatsomNJetsom writes "So the largest passenger airplane in the world actually is pretty large inside — Popular Mechanics has a great article and video from their test flight on the brand new double-decker Airbus A380. This includes footage of takeoff, interviews with the pilot and test engineer, a rundown on the bar, the two staircases, and an attempt to walk down a crowded aisle from one end of the plane to the other without having to say 'excuse me.'"
Windows Vista, More Than Just a Pretty Face 381
Nash writes "Ars Technica takes a look under the hood of Vista, discussing the need for a new API and comparing the graphics engine in Vista to that of Mac OS X. 'With Windows Vista it will be possible to implement Exposé properly-with live window updates and low system overhead. That said, it doesn't thus far look like Microsoft will be doing anything so useful as Exposé. Though the blurred glass effect is rather attractive, it's not exactly useful. Other visual effects include miniature window previews when the mouse cursor is hovered over taskbar buttons and an upgraded alt-tab device, and Flip3D.'"
Submission + - The Air Car - Zero pollution and incredibly cheap
torok writes: According to this article on Gizmag, Tata, India's largest automotive manufacturer, has developed a car that runs on compressed air. It costs less than $3 USD to fill a tank on which it can run for 200 to 300km. The car will cost about USD $7,300 and has a top speed of 68mph. About once every 50,000 km you have to change the oil (1 litre of vegetable oil). Initial plans are to produce 3,000 cars per year. I think the world needs about 100x that.
Beef Up Your Wireless Router 189
Doctor High writes "Josh Kuo's article Beef Up Your Wireless Router talks about the OpenWRT embedded Linux distro for the the Linksys WRT series wireless routers (and more). The article lays out some of the amazing things you can do with your Linux-enabled wireless router such as using it as a VoIP gateway, a wireless hotspot, or even an encrypted layer 2 tunnel endpoint for remote troubleshooting."
Submission + - Genetically Engineered Maize Is Toxic
gandracu writes: It appears that a variety of Genetically Engineered maze produced by Monsanto is toxic for the liver and kidneys. What's worse, Monsanto knew about it, but tried to conceal the facts in its own publications. Greenpeace had to fight in court to obtain the incriminatory data and had it analyzed by a team of experts. MON863, the variety of GE maze in question, has been authorised for markets in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, the Phillipines, and USA, besides the EU. Here is a link[PDF] to Greenpeace's brief on the study, and here is their account[PDF] of how the story was unearthed.
Feed Top Secret: We're Wiretapping You (wired.com)
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