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Hardware Hacking

MakerBot Thing-o-Matic 3D Printer Assembly, In Pictures 105

Posted by timothy from the doesn't-yet-self-assemble dept.
ConMotto writes "After an estimated 16 man-hour assembly effort, these are some of the first high-quality user photographs of the Thing-o-Matic 3D printer and completed component assemblies, released December, 2010 by MakerBot. The Thing-o-Matic is a commercial-supported open source 3D printer (similar to the RepRap), allowing hardware hackers to print their own 3D objects out of Lego-like plastic."

Comment Don't just use software; use common sense... (Score 2, Insightful) 510

by Lewah (#34231170) Attached to: Where Do I Go Now That Oracle Owns OpenOffice.org?

If what you have now works for what you're doing, use it.

If something better comes out that tickles your fancy, install the shiny.

If you're not contributing to the project and directly involved in the squabble between Oracle and The Document Foundation, then why in the hell do you care? It's not /that/ hard to install new software on your OS is it?

Let Oracle screw it up (like they always do), and then jump ship like everyone else; otherwise, get in the mix and start helping make the alternative better.

In my opinion, this thread is moot.

Comment Re:The thing with ASCII (Score 1) 728

by Lewah (#34090166) Attached to: Mr. Pike, Tear Down This ASCII Wall!

Nine times out of ten even Nihon-jin (damn you /. for not letting me type in Unicode!) type in romaji. I don't get the "tediously"-bit.

When I think "wakarinai" in response to your comment, I simply type "wakarinai" and (assuming I'm not actually trying to post it to /.) viola!; the kana simply appear. What's tedious about that?

What people are failing to realize from a development perspective is that while it may take you more keystrokes to type fewer symbols (in the case of kana/kanji), ultimately, reading it back and quickly identifying variables, routines, etc... at a glance is the end goal - not typing less.
The Internet

Blekko Launches a Search Engine With Bias 133

Posted by CmdrTaco from the quite-the-name-you-got-there dept.
Pickens writes "Previous specialized search engines including Cuil, Hakia, Powerset, Clusty, and RedZ — each had a special trick, but they've all faded from memory, some after crashing in flames, some after making their founders rich. Now Rafe Needleman reports at Cnet that along comes Blekko, whose claim to fame is that you can tilt your search results in the direction you like by using a category of bias, like 'liberal' or 'conservative.' Categorization lists are applied by appending a 'slashtag.' The query, 'climate change /conservative' will give you politically slanted results, for example. 'Climate change /science' will restrict your results to hits from scientific Web sites. Blekko won't have a real, Web-wide impact unless its concept — that bias is good and more aggressive search filtering is needed — gets some traction, writes Needleman. But 'Blekko is a solid alternative to Google and Bing for anyone, and more importantly it's got great potential for researchers, librarians, journalists, or anyone who's willing to put some work into how their search engine functions in order to get better results.'"
Canada

The Binary Code In Canada's Gov-Gen Coat of Arms 486

Posted by samzenpus from the always-drink-your-ovaltine dept.
Lev13than writes "Dr. David Johnston, formerly the president of the University of Waterloo, was installed as Canada's new Governor-General on Friday. As de facto head of state and the Queen's representative in Canada he is required to design a personal coat of arms. One modern detail has attracted particular attention - a 33-digit palindromic binary stream at the base. Efforts to decode the meaning of the number using ASCII, Morse, grouping by 3/11 and other theories has so far come up empty (right now it's a toss up between random, the phone number 683-077-0643 and Morse code for 'send help - trapped in a coat of arms factory.') Is 110010111001001010100100111010011 the combination to his luggage, or just a random stream of digits?"

Comment Re:And if the information is wrong or fake (Score 1) 554

by Lewah (#33746150) Attached to: "Pre-Crime" Comes To the HR Dept.

I'm continually surprised how many /.ers are really right wing, pro-corporate, anti-union, anti-tax freeloaders. 40 years of "government is bad" has become a lifestyle for a lot of people here.

They are right-wing, anti-union, anti-high-tax citizens. The left wing faction unfairly tacks on "pro-corporate" and "anti-tax freeloaders" to demonize them.

You should be ashamed. WWGWBD?

FTFY: "demonificate"

Oh, and don't forget "pro-talk-radio".
Image

Steve Jobs Tries To Sneak Shurikens On a Plane 661

Posted by samzenpus from the there's-a-throwing-star-for-that dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Steve Jobs, while on a family vacation to Japan in July, picked himself up some Shuriken, otherwise known as Ninja throwing stars, as a souvenir. In his wisdom he decided to put them in his carry on luggage for the return journey. As it was a private plane he probably thought there would be no issue, but he was wrong. Even private plane passengers have to have all their baggage scanned, and the throwing stars were detected and deemed a hazard. It's alleged that Jobs argued that he could take them on the plane as no one could steal them on his private jet and use them. Security at the airport disagreed and demanded he remove the stars. Jobs, clearly angry at losing his throwing weapons, stated he would not be returning to the country." Undoubtedly this is part of the iNinja project.
Social Networks

Journalist Tricked Captors Into Twitter Access 141

Posted by Soulskill from the 140-characters-of-freedom dept.
itwbennett writes "Kosuke Tsuneoka, a Japanese freelance journalist held captive in Afghanistan since April 1, was released over the weekend. His freedom came a day after he sent two Twitter messages from a captor's phone. 'i am still allive [sic], but in jail,' read a message sent at 1:15 p.m. GMT on Friday. It was followed a few minutes later with a second message, also in English, that read, 'here is archi in kunduz. in the jail of commander lativ.' The message referred to the Dasht-e-Archi district of Kunduz where he was being held. On Tuesday, speaking in Tokyo, Tsuneoka revealed how he managed to convince his captors to give him access to the Internet. 'He asked me if I knew how to use it, so I had a look and explained it to him,' said Tsuneoka. 'I called the customer care number and activated the phone,' he said."
Encryption

Hackers Eavesdrop On Quantum Crypto With Lasers 161

Posted by timothy from the wool-over-your-own-eyes dept.
Martin Hellman writes "According to an article in Nature magazine, quantum hackers have performed the first 'invisible' attack on two commercial quantum cryptographic systems. By using lasers on the systems — which use quantum states of light to encrypt information for transmission —' they have fully cracked their encryption keys, yet left no trace of the hack.'"
Image

Drunken Employee Shoots Server 309

Posted by samzenpus from the pc-load-letter dept.
Target Practice writes "A drunken mortgage worker at RANLife Home Loans decided for unknown reasons to take out the company's $100,000 server with a .45-caliber automatic, blaming the damage on an imagined assailant who: mugged him, assaulted him with his own weapon, drugged him, and then broke into his office to shoot said server. According to acquaintances, he had threatened earlier that day to shoot the server and maybe himself."

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