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Technology

Submission + - Wearable Air Filter Transforms CO2 Into Energy (ecouterre.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: Brazilian designers Martina Pagura and Pedro Nakazato Andrade have created an oxygen-filtering breathing device that removes carbon dioxide from the air, stores it in a battery-like device, and then converts it into electricity for later use. Dubbed the W/Air, the mask pumps in fresh oxygen while distilling carbon dioxide from respiration and the environment. It is capable of producing enough energy to power a cellphone or portable music player.

Comment Re:New from Gawker Games: Grand Theft iPhone! (Score 1) 1204

How is the LOST iPhone stolen goods? It was lost. The guy who found it reported it to Apple, and they didn't know what to do with it. He then sold it to Gizmodo. The phone wasn't stolen, it wasn't taken at gunpoint from the engineer, it was FOUND on the floor! Now do I agree that selling it was the right thing to do? No, not really. But it's not stolen.

Um read the parent...

property laws that go back to the 1800s that say if you find something worth more than $400 and use it for your own purposes you can be charged with Grand Theft

He found it, did not turn it over to the appropriate place then sold it. He stole it.

Comment Re:A false choice, of course... (Score 1) 2044

And that is why we insure groups of people and not individual people. Yes he may have a $1000 a month health issue, but I generally never go above my deductible. The idea with the bill is to force everyone to buy insurance so that us cheap people balance out the expensive people.

Also, that way we can't just skip getting insurance until something goes wrong with us, so we have to pay into the system during our healthy years.

Games

Euro Parliament Wants "Red Button" For Shutting Down Games 167

GamePolitics writes "The European Parliament has actually requested that red, panic-style buttons be set up for use by parents whose children play online games. The buttons would allow the parents to quickly shut the game down should something inappropriate occur. Wouldn't the old-school on-off switch work just as well?" To be fair, the report isn't entirely crazy; it says games "can also be used for educational and medical purposes," and acknowledges that the "presence of violence in video games does not automatically lead to violent behaviour."
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Slashdot's Disagree Mail 100

Ernest Hemingway's micro-story, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn," is one of my favorite examples of how less is sometimes more. Sometimes a few sentences say it all; you don't always need a hundred pages to convey an idea. Most of the mail I get is brief and to the point. Others are just brief. To be honest, I appreciate the short, crazy email more than the long rants, and they can be just as funny. Read below for this week's mail snippets.
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Slashdot's Disagree Mail 202

Slashdot has one of the best discussion systems there is. It's grown and adapted over the years to meet various challenges and suit the needs of our users. A lot of time and effort has gone into it and we are always open to user input to help make it better. Some of our best ideas start as user suggestions and we appreciate the feedback. Of course they can't all be gems and sometimes the suggestions we get are unworkable or just bizarre. Here are a few of my favorite unhelpful, helpful suggestions.
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Slashdot's Disagree Mail 206

Being in a relationship is not easy, more than half of all first marriages fail in this country. That statistic doesn't improve if you spend most of your time reading your favorite website and not tending to the needs of your family. Instead of asking me to help fix your relationship maybe you should try playing with your kids, talking to your wife, and not staring at a computer screen all day. You should realize that the help link doesn't provide help with your life. It's mostly for getting passwords and stuff. Below you'll find a collection of people that should have reached out to Dr. Phil and not Dr. Sam.
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - PS3 Recalls 3 Downloadable Games (thegamereviews.com)

The Game Reviews writes: "3 PS One classics from the PS3 online store have been removed ue to technical flaws. Crash Bandicoot 2, Spyro 2, and MediEvil have all been removed while Sony tries to fix mainly emulation issues. "This investigation is highly technical and requires some time to work through," wrote a Sony official response to a message board discussion on Playstation.com http://www.thegamereviews.com/story-4-PS3-Recall-T hree-downloadable-PS3-games.html"
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Xbox 360 DVD Size Is Too Small (gamesindustry.biz) 3

An anonymous reader writes: Well, it's official: the team working on Project Gotham Racing 4 for the Xbox 360 have stated that they are cutting features from the final game, such as real time day/night cycles. Why? Because there's not enough space on a standard DVD9 to hold all of the required data. Sony have helpfully pointed out that there is at least one console on the market that could potentially alleviate this problem, stating "We took a lot of heat at launch for including Blu-ray in PS3. Now it looks like that investment is being justified."
United States

Submission + - Mercury for Everyone! (The Shiny Stuff)

phyrebyrd writes: "How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health."

Feed Has The DVR Resulted In More Reality TV Programming? (techdirt.com)

Economist Austan Goolsbee had a column in the NY Times last week looking at the economic rationale for why reality TV programming has become so popular these days. It goes well beyond the simple answer that it's cheap to produce. As Goolsbee notes, if that were the case, it would have caught on much earlier. Instead, the argument is that with the rise of satellite and cable TV adding many more options for people's viewing time (and you could argue plenty of other entertainment options as well), the pool from which network TV operators can expect to get viewers is shrinking, forcing them to search out cheaper programming.

However, a separate NY Times article may offer another potential reason (whether on purpose or not). It looks at a new study of what programs people record on DVRs and finds that people are less likely to record "timely" programs on their DVRs, preferring to watch them live. This includes the obvious things like news and sports -- but also reality TV programming. That's because who gets kicked off American Idol is likely to be talked about the next morning at work, and people want to make sure they've seen the latest so they can talk about it. That creates fewer incentives to record the program and watch it later. So, whether or not TV programming execs recognize it, reality TV programming may actually get more people watching, rather than skipping, commercials.

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