flipper9 - Slashdot User

Happy 40th Birthday, Internet RFCs 58

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @12:34PM from the more-pigeons-what-say-ye dept.

WayHomer was one of several readers to point out the 40th birthday of an important tool in the formation of the Internet, and a look back at it by the author of the first of many. "Stephen Crocker in the New York Times writes, 'Today is an important date in the history of the Internet: the 40th anniversary of what is known as the Request for Comments (RFC).' 'RFC1 — Host Software' was published 40 years ago today, establishing a framework for documenting how networking technologies and the Internet itself work. Distribution of this memo is unlimited."

Beware the Perils of Caffeine Withdrawal 700

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @11:50AM from the to-make-a-grown-man-cry dept.

palegray.net writes "CNN is running an article on the notorious effects of caffeine withdrawal, a problem that seems to be affecting an increasing number of people. Citing numerous reasons why people might need to cut back on their caffeine intake (pregnancy, pre-surgery requirements, etc), the story notes a significant number of people who are simply unable to quit. I drink around eight cups of coffee a day, along with a soda or two, and I definitely suffer from nasty withdrawal symptoms without my fix."

Solar Powered Car Can Get Close To 60 mph 119

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @11:32AM from the australians-still-on-about-transportation dept.

Jason Sahler writes with this excerpt from Inhabit: "The World Solar Challenge across the Australian outback is coming up, and we're already seeing some truly incredible vehicles going for the gold. Take the Bethany, a solar powered vehicle designed by Cambridge University students. The vehicle is capable of achieving close to 60 miles per hour. Doesn't sound too impressive? Try doing it by using the power required to run a hairdryer."

Obama Administration Defends Warrantless Wiretapping 788

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @11:08AM from the high-moral-ground-is-a-grassy-knoll dept.

a whoabot writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Obama administration has stepped in to defend AT&T in the case over their participation in the warrantless wiretapping program started by Bush. The Obama administration argues that that continuation of the case will lead to the disclosure of important 'state secrets.' The Electronic Frontier Foundation has described the action as an 'embrace' of the Bush policy." Update: 04/07 15:18 GMT by T : Glenn Greenwald of Salon has up an analysis of this move, including excerpts from the actual brief filed. Excerpt: "This brief and this case are exclusively the Obama DOJ's, and the ample time that elapsed — almost three full months — makes clear that it was fully considered by Obama officials."

Comment A kid might put it in their mouth? (Score 1) 4

by flipper9 on Wednesday March 04, 2009 @05:42PM (#27069799) Attached to: Woman Discovers Nokia Phone In Her Bag Of Chips

She's concerned that a child might have put the phone in their mouth? It's huge! I'd be more concerned about smaller stuff that might get lodged in their throat, than them sucking on a giant cellphone.

Comment This will only result in hurting the disabled (Score 1) 370

by flipper9 on Saturday February 28, 2009 @11:53AM (#27023067) Attached to: Amazon Caves On Kindle 2 Text-To-Speech

This will only result in hurting the disabled who rely on text-to-speech to enable them to read books and print publications.

Nobody in their right mind would want to listen to text-to-speech generated audio versus human-read books. I tried listening to a PDF once while in the car, and I couldn't stand it. I would have gladly paid for an audio-book of the same material. This would not have impacted their "business" as much as they thought.

What will happen now is that publishers will make their material inaccessible to the disabled because not every book is available in audio-book format.

Just shows you how far business goes to further greed instead of producing quality products, and being a part of a profession. Thumbs down to those in the author's guild. Very unprofessional IMHO.

Submission + - Plant grown insulin could be a diabetes cure. (ucf.edu) 2

Submitted by

MamaEri

on Monday July 30, 2007 @06:17PM

MamaEri writes: "In a study by UCF professor Henry Daniell, he found that by genetically splicing insulin into Tobacco and Lettuce plants, these produce an insulin laced plant. Then he gave a freeze-dried powder of these plants to mice with diabetes. After 8 weeks the mice had normal sugar levels and were producing their own insulin."

Global Internet Censorship On the Rise 185

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 18, 2007 @10:15AM from the shout-if-you-can-hear-me dept.

An anonymous reader writes "State-led internet censorship is on the rise around the world. According to a study conducted by the Open Net Initiative and reported by the BBC, some 25 of 41 countries surveyed were filtering at least some content. Skype and Google Maps were two of the most often-censored sites, according to the article. 'The filtering had three primary rationales, according to the report: politics and power, security concerns and social norms. The report said: 'In a growing number of states around the world, internet filtering has huge implications for how connected citizens will be to the events unfolding around them, to their own cultures, and to other cultures and shared knowledge around the world.'"

Submission + - Open standard for biometric passwords

Submitted by

A student from the University of Amsterdam:

on Friday May 18, 2007 @09:39AM

A student from the University of Amsterdam: writes: "Students of the University of Amsterdam are doing research to a make a 'weak' password 'strong'. This will be done by analyzing and registering the typing behaviour of individual users and add the gathered information to the password. The students comment: "Our goal is to create an open standard for stronger passwords by adding biometric properties of typing behaviour." Because there needs to be a lot data to analyze biometric properties of typing behaviour, they created a test at http://keystroke.projects.os3.nl. After doing this test there will be a description of the typing behaviour in comparison with the typing behaviour of another person. The students hope that there will be a lot of individuals (as well IT as non-IT) that do the test so that they can gather enough data. For more information — http://keystroke.projects.os3.nl."

Documents Reveal US Incompetence with Word, Iraq 419

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 18, 2007 @09:27AM from the see-there's-this-thing-called-covering-your-tracks dept.

notNeilCasey writes "The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, which formerly governed Iraq, accidentally published Microsoft Word documents containing information never meant for the public, according to an article in Salon. By viewing the documents using the Track Changes feature in Word (.doc), the author has been able to reconstruct internal discussions from 2004 which reflect the optimism, isolation and incompetence of the American occupation. Download the author's source document or look for more yourself. 'Presumably, staffers at the CPA's Information Management Unit, which produced the weekly reports, were cutting and pasting large sections of text into the reports and then eliminating all but the few short passages they needed. Much of the material they were cribbing seems to have come from the kind of sensitive, security-related documents that were never meant to be available to the public. In fact, about half of the 20 improperly redacted documents I downloaded, including the March 28 report, contain deleted portions that all seem to come from one single, 1,000-word security memo. The editors kept pulling text from a document titled "Why Are the Attacks Down in Al-Anbar Province -- Several Theories." (The security memo and the last page of the March 28 report can be seen here, along with several other CPA documents that can be downloaded.)'"

Submission + - New Vista Crack Released - "Best" crack to

Submitted by

Gary

on Friday May 18, 2007 @09:22AM

Gary writes: "The NoPE release has a major key difference to other previous pirated copies of Vista — it is completely cracked, the product appears activated, updates work, and no key needs to be entered, straight from the installation media.It remains to be seen if Microsoft's new anti-piracy measures, coupled with Windows Update, will be able to counter this."

Submission + - Planet could harbor Life

Submitted by

BlueMorpho

on Friday May 18, 2007 @09:15AM

BlueMorpho writes: "Planet of Promise: Small, Rocky World Could Harbor Life

For the first time, astronomers have discovered a planet far, far away that might be similar to Earth. This distant world, which pirouettes around a dim bulb of a star with the unglamorous name Gliese 581, may possibly sport a landscape that would be vaguely familiar to us — a panorama of liquid oceans and drifting continents. If so, there's the chance that it's a home to life — perhaps even advanced life.

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/070517_seti_pla net.html"

Submission + - Imperial College members demand software freedom

Submitted by on Friday May 18, 2007 @09:14AM

An anonymous reader writes: Imperial College London, run by former GlaxoSmithKline chairman Sir Richard Sykes (salary in 2006: £305,000/$600,000) and well-known for its corporatism, is undergoing a revolt from staff and students who demand greater software freedom at the University. Software Freedom for Imperial College has garnered support from over 160 members, including several professors and a Fellow of the Royal Society. From the the website charter: "Open access to information is fundamental to scientific progress. A college committed to excellence in science and technology should do everything to promote this. Non-discriminatory access has been undermined by powerful anti-competitive interests in the IT industry. We wish to persuade senior members of Imperial College that they should free the College from unnecessary dependence on proprietary software producers, permit access of information to all members of the College regardless of their software choices and maximise the return from the College's financial resources by promoting free and open source software."

Submission + - US Patent Office granting patent on yoga?

Submitted by Vulcann on Friday May 18, 2007 @09:07AM

Vulcann writes: If you thought software was the only area abused by patents, think again. The 10,000 year old art of yoga has a patent pending on it.

All the major Indian newspapers are carrying the story. Experts are almost unanimous on the fact that yoga originated in India and to patent it is positively ludicrous.

Yoga enthusiasts and gurus have said that the move is unjustified as yoga belongs to the entire human race. The US Patent and Trademark office has reportedly issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 trademarks on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks.

Another reason to take a good hard look at the way patents are granted.

Submission + - Police copyright raid on free subtitle site

Submitted by

destinyland

on Friday May 18, 2007 @03:17AM

destinyland writes: "At 6 a.m. yesterday, German and Polish police raided the homes of nine people providing free subtitles for movies. The recording industry is working with police to identify violators of a law prohibiting the translating of movies without first getting permission from copyright owners. The translaters had voluntarily uploaded their subtitles to a free web site hosted in Germany — and could now each face two years in prison."

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