jeffw - Slashdot User

Inexpensive wifi/radius for home hobbyists? 0

Submitted by TWX on Thursday October 14 2010, @03:22PM

TWX writes "I'm looking to get some hands-on experience with Radius and commercial-style Wifi. I'll also soon have an environment where three or four APs will be necessary to cover everywhere, so there's a practical side as well. The trouble is, all of the equipment that I can find is prohibitively expensive, and while I expect to spend something on APs and cabling, I really would like to avoid paying for expensive commercial APs if I can avoid it. I'm looking for consumer-priced solutions, if any exist, and documentation. I know that several consumer APs are marketed as friendly to hobbyists who wish to modify them, so I'm hoping that some project for those APs to make them work with Radius is available..."

Day traders convicted for tricking trading machine-> 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14 2010, @03:06PM

An anonymous reader writes "Financial Times reports that day traders Svend Egil Larsen and Peder Veiby have been fined and handed suspended prison sentences for working out how a computerized trading system would respond to certain trades and profiting from "illegal trades." While sympathy for the two day traders, and admiration for their triumph of of man versus machine, is widespread, "Christian Stenberg, the Norwegian police attorney responsible for the case, said any admiration for the men was misplaced. 'This is a new kind of manipulation but it is still at the expense of other investors in the market,' he said.""
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Artist Envisions Poo-Powered Cities-> 0

Submitted by RedEaredSlider on Thursday October 14 2010, @03:03PM

RedEaredSlider writes "Anyone who owns a dog knows the chore of taking walks, and in some cities, cleaning up. But what if your best friend also produced cleaner energy?

Conceptual artist Matthew Mazzotta came up with an answer. He welded together a pipe and a large tank, and created the Park Spark project. Using dog waste for fuel, the tank produces methane — otherwise known as natural gas.

Mazzotta, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., says he got the idea when he was sitting in a dog run at a local park. He had been to India in 2009, when he noticed that people used animal waste such as cow dung for fuel. "I looked at all this dog waste, and thought that in other countries people use that for energy.""
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Webvention Demanding $80k for Rollover Images-> 0

Submitted by

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

on Thursday October 14 2010, @02:47PM

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Webvention is demanding that websites with rollover images pay $80,000 or face a patent lawsuit based on US patent 5,251,294, which it bought from Intellectual Ventures. Webvention claims to already have licensing deals with Apple, Google, Nokia, Sears, Sony and Orbitz. Right now, they're suing Abercrombie and Fitch, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dell, Gamestop, E*Trade, Neiman Marcus, Visa and ten others in a court in east Texas."
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Wikileaks donations account blacklisted-> 2

Submitted by Scrameustache on Thursday October 14 2010, @02:45PM

Scrameustache writes "The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government.

Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.

The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan."
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Chertoff advocates cyber Cold War-> 0

Submitted by Jack Spine on Thursday October 14 2010, @02:34PM

Jack Spine writes "The US and allied countries should formulate a doctrine to apply the principles of nuclear deterrence to cyber attacks and cyber espionage, according to former US Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff. No matter that it's very difficult to attribute the source of cyber attacks — just take punitive action against the platform being used to attack, says Chertoff."
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Google Chrome 8 Gets Instant Search As Option!-> 0

Submitted by Tech18 on Thursday October 14 2010, @02:23PM

Tech18 writes "Google Chrome 8 latest build 8.0.555.0 has got Instant Search as user friendly option with GPU acceleration and print preview as lab features."
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FCC approves changes to cable box rules-> 0

Submitted by GovTechGuy on Thursday October 14 2010, @01:10PM

GovTechGuy writes "The FCC issued an order Thursday that should make it much easier and cheaper for consumers to purchase and install third-party cable boxes made by manufacturers such as TiVo. The rules are aimed at spurring competition in the cable box market; currently consumers overwhelmingly choose to rent a box from their cable provider rather than buy their own. Lawmakers have complained the current cable box technology is outdated and doesn't allow consumers to leverage new sources of video content such as the Web or streaming services from providers such as Netflix. The new rules should result in a smarter, more advanced cable box in the near future."
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Fortified Satellite will Nearly Touch the Sun-> 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Friday September 03 2010, @05:34PM

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that NASA plans to plunge a car-sized unmanned spacecraft called the Solar Probe Plus (SPP) into the outer atmosphere of earth's nearest star sometime before 2018 and that the spacecraft is destroyed its instruments will be protected from radiation and the 1400C temperatures by a huge carbon-composite heat shield. "Trying to understand how the Sun influences the Earth is quite a big thing these days," says solar physicist Richard Harrison. "The one thing we've never done is actually go there." One of the aims of the SPP mission is to understand the nature of the "solar wind", the mass of charged particles that billows away from the Sun into space. "The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics: why is the Sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the Sun's visible surface, and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our Solar System," says Dick Fisher, director of Nasa's Heliophysics Division. "We've been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers.""
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Toddler PC software (and apppriate input device?) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 03 2010, @04:48PM

An anonymous reader writes "I have an 18-month-old who loves bright screens (TV and computer), loves loud noises, and loves to mash buttons. He targets my laptop with the button-mashing, and I sort of hate having to tell him "no" when he wants to explore a computer. I was wondering if anyone knows of some fun (and maybe educational) age-specific PC software that also comes with an age-appropriate input device. I've seen those big-button devices in retail stores that seem to just hook up to the TV, and I've also seen some PC software that requires keyboard/mouse input, which does not seem like the right input device for a toddler."