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Movies

What Happens After the Super-Hero Movie Bubble? 339

Posted by CmdrTaco from the reboot-retool-recycle dept.
mattnyc99 writes "In the wake of a not-that-exciting Comic-Con come some (perhaps premature) reports on the so-called "Death of Superheroes" — what one financial group calls "the top of the (comic book) character remonetization cycle." In response, Esquire.com's Paul Schrodt has an interesting look down Hollywood geek road. From the article: "What happens after The Avengers, or Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman movie — after we've seen all there is to see of the best comic-book blockbusters ever made?""

Comment Re:In other words (Score 1) 566

by keith_nt4 (#36889602) Attached to: 35% Consumers Want iPhone 5... Sight Unseen

Blackberry was a single manufacturer outselling all others combined for years on end so I don't really buy this logic. If Android wasn't appealing in some way it wouldn't matter how many manufactures and variations there were, iPhone would still outsell them all combined.

I believe it's a combination of things including variations in prices and form factors as well as the general appeal of the OS itself over iOS. Personally I'm too cheap to buy a turn-by-turn gps device so the free one in the phone effectively keeps me on Android. That and I hate iTunes with a passion (among other reasons).

Comment NAS+2 online stores (Score 1) 397

by keith_nt4 (#36819850) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Offline Storage Method For Large Archives?

I guess this isn't a very popular suggestion. And you seemed to imply you wanted a local archive for your data, something you do yourself.

I would just a large iSCSI NAS. 2TB Drives are really cheap these days. FreeNAS even lets you flag a drive as a hotspare so you don't have to as much about failures.

Then back this NAS up to at least two online storage services. Make sure they're not both the same thing on the back end (like amazon's S3). Actually Carbonite personal can't distinguish iSCSI from a local drive and is unlimited storage for personal use. I'm sure that violates some terms some where but technically it's possible. Pick another high capacity online service for redundancy.

Also, encrypt the data locally *before* it's uploaded (it's just a good idea).

You didn't say how much total data you have to archive or how fast if at all it is growing nor how often you would need to access it. I have seen amateurs making 40TB storage servers from component parts. Honestly I can't think of a reason to go with anything other large capacity drives. I assume 2TB drives don't have any where to go but down in price.

Comment Swing shift (Score 1) 203

by keith_nt4 (#36770228) Attached to: IT Night Shift Workers: Fat and Undersexed
Well I'm only the "swing" shift so maybe this doesn't apply to me (from 2pm to 11pm). I get home around 11:30pm. I have trained myself over the last year to be able to shower and go straight to bed when I get home (asleep by midnight). No TV or computer games. That way I have the next day to take a walk in the sun and go grocery shopping. I also haven't bothered with any kind of cable TV. No point in that really. I mean if I had a PVR of some kind then I could what? Spend several hours every day when i wake up watching last night's TV? No thanks. In fact even things I could following on Hulu I've instead found other stuff to do instead. If I really want to watching something it's on Netflix like ST:TNG. I try to have a semi-normal time breakfast and lunch and dinner at work around 7pm. Just can't do anything with friends and family at normal times like between 5pm and 10pm. No WoW raids (not necessarily a bad thing) and no dinner visits with family (would be nice sometimes). I am actually really tired and generally lacking in energy but then I was like that when I had normal hours. At least going to bed at midnight I have the option of staying in bed until noon if I really feel like it...
Privacy

Law Enforcement Still Wants Mandatory ISP Log Retention 226

Posted by Soulskill from the they-know-how-often-you-google-bieber dept.
schwit1 writes with this snippet from CNet: "Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months. ... Michael Brown, sheriff in Bedford County, Va., and a board member and executive committee member of the National Sheriffs' Association, is planning to argue that a new law is necessary because Internet providers do not store customer records long enough. 'The limited data retention time and lack of uniformity among retention from company to company significantly hinders law enforcement's ability to identify predators when they come across child pornography,' according to a copy of Brown's remarks. Any stored logs could, however, be used to prosecute any type of crime."
Shark

New Approach For Laser Weapons 188

Posted by Soulskill from the phasers-on-stun-good-luck-kirk-out dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Laser guns and other 'directed energy weapons' have remained in sci-fi lore because of their inefficiency, bulkiness, and poor beam quality. Now an MIT Lincoln Lab spinoff called TeraDiode is developing a diode laser that uses 'wavelength beam combining' to create what it calls the brightest and most powerful laser of its kind. The two-year-old company, backed by $3 million from the U.S. Department of Defense and $4 million from venture capitalists, is working on a compact airborne laser system for planes to shoot down heat-seeking missiles. Eventually, the lasers could be mounted on a tank or ship to destroy enemy UAVs or even incoming artillery shells. That's still at least three to five years away, but with advances in semiconductor lasers there seems to be quite a renewed interest in weaponry."
Earth

China's Coal Power Plants Mask Climate Change 464

Posted by Soulskill from the blowing-smoke dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports on new research revealing that the huge increase in coal-fired power stations in China, up from just over 10 gigawatts (GW) in 2002 to over 80GW in 2006, has masked the impact of global warming in the last decade because of the cooling effect of their sulphur emissions. But scientists warn that rapid warming is likely to resume when the short-lived sulphur pollution – which also causes acid rain – is cleaned up and the full heating effect of long-lived carbon dioxide is felt. 'Reductions in carbon emissions will be more important as China installs scrubbers [on its coal-fired power stations], which reduce sulphur emissions,' says Dr. Robert Kaufman. 'This, and solar insolation increasing as part of the normal solar cycle, [will mean] temperature is likely to increase faster.' The effect also explains the lack of global temperature rise seen between 1940 and 1970 as the effect of the sulphur emissions from increased coal burning outpaced that of carbon emissions, until acid rain controls were introduced, after which temperature rose quickly. 'Warming due to the CO2 released by Chinese industrialization has been partially masked by cooling due to reflection of solar radiation by sulphur emissions,' says Prof Joanna Haigh. 'On longer timescales, with cleaner emissions, the warming effect will be more marked.'"

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