Sneakernets - Slashdot User

Submission + - Red Cross sued for using... a red cross (iht.com) 4

Submitted by

Swampash

on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @11:25PM

Swampash writes: "Johnson & Johnson, the health-products giant that uses a red cross as its trademark, is suing the American Red Cross, demanding the charity halt its use of the red cross symbol on products it sells to the public."

Submission + - OpenMosix dies

Submitted by paleshadows on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @02:19AM

paleshadows writes: OpenMosix dies. The MOSIX project (which more or less makes a Linux cluster resemble an SMP system) was started at the early 1980s and is still going strong. A few years ago it was GPLed for a short while, but in late 2001 it went proprietary again. Moshe Bar, a former student of Prof. Amnon Barak (which heads the MOSIX project) decided to keep the GPLed version alive, and dubbed it OpenMosix. The latter become quite popular and (according to its homepage) "enjoyed tens of thousands of installation". On July 15, 2007, Bar announced plans to end the OpenMosix project effective March 1, 2008, stating that "the increasing power and availability of low cost multi-core processors is rapidly making single-system image (SSI) clustering less of a factor in computing."

Submission + - AA dumps Open Office in favour of MS Office

Submitted by (Score.5, Interestin on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @02:11AM

(Score.5, Interestin writes: The NZ Automobile Association has just announced that it's dropping Open Office and switching back to MS Office. According to their CIO, "Microsoft Office is not any cheaper, but it was almost impossible to work out what open-source was actually costing because of issues such as incompatibility and training". In addition "you have no idea where open-source products are going, whereas vendors like Microsoft provide a roadmap for the future".

Submission + - U.S. has lost ability to build its own roads

Submitted by

michaelmalak

on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @01:55AM

michaelmalak writes: "The land famous for its love of the automobile and construction of Interstates and other highways, with high-elevation tunnels, viaducts snaking through canyons, and water crossings of up to 20 miles is now outsourcing design and construction of its roads to Asia — not because it's cheaper, but because the U.S. has lost the expertise. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer regarding the newly opened span across the Tacoma Narrows, "the American steel industry had imploded, while steel-making — and the expertise needed to build suspension bridges — had moved to Asia" and "the detailed engineering and fieldwork and all the spinning and cable-wrapping equipment ... were provided by ... Japanese construction giants""

Submission + - Couple Neglect Child for Internet

Submitted by 12AU7A on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @12:26AM

12AU7A writes: A couple who authorities say were so obsessed with the Internet and video games that they left their babies starving and suffering other health problems have pleaded guilty to child neglect. "Viloria said the Reno couple were too distracted by online video games, mainly the fantasy role-playing "Dungeons & Dragons" series, to give their children proper care."

Submission + - MPAA are pirates too

Submitted by pdtp on Monday July 16, 2007 @07:16PM

pdtp writes: Just ran across this on Break.com where Director Kirby Dick has submitted his film to be rated by CARA only to find out that there have been illegal copies of the film made by the MPAA, and distributed.

Submission + - 10th Annual AUV Competition Results

Submitted by

UFgatorSean

on Monday July 16, 2007 @05:02PM

UFgatorSean writes: "The tenth annual international Autonomous Underwater Vehicle competition was held in San Diego this past weekend. For the first time in the history of the competition, the University of Florida has accomplished a three-peat. The appropriately named SubjuGator swam by the competition by completing five tasks: navigating through a validation gate, docking with a simulated sea-mine, dropping markers into a bin while following a segmented pipeline, locating an acoutic pinger, and retrieving a simulated treasure. All tasks were completed in a single run with the vehicle submerged and with no human interaction. Of interest to the slashdot community is the fact that while most teams continue to use open source, the SubjuGator used the new Misrosoft Robotics Studio software framework, and ran Windows XP Professional on a 3.5" embedded computer."

"Tubes" Senator Being Investigated For Corruption 613

Posted by kdawson on Monday July 16, 2007 @02:48AM from the cozy-relationships dept.

DragonTHC writes "Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, is being investigated in a federal corruption probe that has implicated his son Ben. Part of the case involves a fishing co-op whose members allegedly paid Ben Stevens $500,000 to get a federal bailout from his father." The other Alaskan senator, also a Republican, is under a cloud as well.

Submission + - Moebius strip riddle solved at last (abc.net.au) 2

Submitted by

BigLug

on Sunday July 15, 2007 @06:32PM

BigLug writes: "In a study to appear in Nature Materials, two experts in non-linear dynamics, Gert van der Heijden and Eugene Starostin of University College London, resolve the Moebius Strip algebraically.

From the ABC (Australia):

What determines the strip's shape is its differing areas of "energy density," they say.

"Energy density" means the stored, elastic energy that is contained in the strip as a result of the folding. Places where the strip is most bent have the highest energy density; conversely, places that are flat and unstressed by a fold have the least energy density.

"

Submission + - Magic inside: Intel's new Penryn chip

Submitted by Z80xxc! on Sunday July 15, 2007 @06:29PM

Z80xxc! writes: The Oregonian has an interesting story regarding Intel's new Penryn chip, currently the fastest one out there, and totally redesigned. Although they aren't yet being sold, Intel expects them to be available by the end of the year.

They worked in secret, 600 of Intel's top engineers, forbidden even from telling their families what they were doing.

Their task was nothing less than the reinvention of the microprocessor, "open-heart surgery" on the electronic brain that will do the thinking in several generations of computers to come.

Although this chip itself is not news, this is the first time that Intel has really opened up on the details of what they did to build it. Original story | Print version (no ads)

Submission + - In Soviet Oregon, skateboard shreds you

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27, 2007 @01:45PM

An anonymous reader writes: If you have an old torpedo or Asteroids console game lying around, how are you going to get rid of it?
From TFA:
The document-shredders at Enron's accounting firm had nothing on SSI Shredding Systems.
The Wilsonville industrial shredding company (www.ssiworld.com) sneers at mere paper. SSI doesn't even blink at shredding a torpedo — and has the video to prove it.
Every month, SSI's "Shred of the Month" features a YouTube video of an SSI shredder making mincemeat of yet another unlikely object.
April's shredding video shows a defused torpedo being torpedoed by a Dual-Shear M100 hydraulic shredder. The result was a pile of metal shards, measuring 2 inches to 6 inches across.
A link to SSI's Top 10 videos takes you to mattresses (No. 10), an entire boat (No. 5), a couch (No. 3) and a BMW (No. 1).

SSI "Watch it Shred" page:
http://www.ssiworld.com/watch/watch-en.htm

Submission + - DARPA developing defensive plasma shield

Submitted by galactic_grub on Friday April 27, 2007 @06:33AM

galactic_grub writes: According to this article at New Scientist, DARPA is developing a plasma shield that would allow troops to stun and disorientate enemies. The system will use a technology known as dynamic pulse detonation (DPD), which involves producing a ball of plasma with an intense laser pulse creates, and then a supersonic shockwave within the plasma using another pulse. The result is a gigantic flash and a loud bang in a the air.

Submission + - Simulated mouse-brain running at 1/10 speed

Submitted by

Waylon

on Thursday April 26, 2007 @06:44PM

Waylon writes: "IBM researchers have modeled a mouse's brain at 10 percent speed — and what can be done at 10 percent speed today can be done at 1000 percent in a couple cycles of Moore's Law. (Let me be the first to say that I, for one, welcome our Super-intelligent virtual mice overlords!) From the article: "We deployed the simulator on a 4096-processor BlueGene/L supercomputer with 256 MB per CPU. We were able to represent 8,000,000 neurons (80% excitatory) and 6,300 synapses per neuron in the 1 TB main memory of the system. Using a synthetic pattern of neuronal interconnections, at a 1 ms resolution and an average firing rate of 1 Hz, we were able to run 1s of model time in 10s of real time...""

Submission + - Uncovering lost text of the ancients

Submitted by

jd

on Thursday April 26, 2007 @05:38PM

jd writes: "A very real once-in-a-lifetime three-for-the-price-of-one deal by Alexexander of Aphrodisias is being uncovered by the Walters Art Museum, in collaboration with a vast array of science labs armed with the latest in particle accelerators. It was discovered some time back that a medieval prayer book had re-used parchment previously used to record texts by Archimedes and Hyperides. By bombarding the ancient ink with high energy particles, it was possible to see the lost text even though the surface had been largely scrubbed clean of it. There had been a fuzzy region, though, that they could not read and it was driving them nuts. By subtly adjusting their techniques, the letters finally swam into view — but not anything they had expected. A far more ancient lost text, a critique on the work of Aristotle, has been uncovered. Speaking to the very origins of logic and classification, this is a glimpse into the first steps by the Greeks towards science and a rational explanation of the world."

Submission + - Skype Stole My Credit

Submitted by

Syphtor

on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @03:59AM

Syphtor writes: "Recently found out that after 180 days if I don't use some of my Skype Credit (which I paid for), I lose it. They don't refund it, they keep the money. I've logged my complaints with Skype, and am hopeful of getting it back, but it does raise the question for these kind of 'buy credit' businesses. How long is reasonable for them to keep your credit open? 180 days? I think that's bad, obviously Skype disagrees."

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