CptnHarlock - Slashdot User

Submission + - A Spherical Flying Robot (i-programmer.info) 2

Submitted by mikejuk on Saturday November 05, 2011 @09:49AM

mikejuk writes: This is a really clever device. It's a spherical flying robot that can hover in a sinister and spooky way and zoom about at high speed. When it lands it just rolls to get about. The really clever bit that when it needs to fly fast it rotates so that the propeller delivers horizontal thrust and the control surfaces act as wings to provide lift. When it wants to hover it rotates so that the propeller provides vertical thrust and the wings act as control surfaces.
Who needs a quadrotor — this is so much more threatening.

Submission + - Best Star Wars episode to begin 2

Submitted by Cuban Devil on Friday November 04, 2011 @11:50PM

Cuban Devil writes: My 6 years old kid is asking to watch Star Wars. He's seen the characters, played some games and is now interested in the story. Which movie would you chose to begin, Episode IV or Episode I?
Episode I makes sense chronologically, but I am afraid these crappy new movies would make him hate Start Wars. On the other hand, beginning from the middle of the story may cause some confusion. Maybe I should never tell him about Episodes I to III...

Submission + - Guru Tries to Kill Man Via Magic on Live TV &F (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by

Lord Xenu

on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @06:44AM

Lord Xenu writes: "When Pandit Surender Sharma, a famous Indian guru, made a boast about being able to kill people with his mind on live TV, someone actually took him up on the offer and asked him to prove it by killing him. After doing all kinds of things like chanting mantras and waving a knife around for hours, the guru was forced to admit defeat when his victim somehow avoided dying from laughter. It's not subtitled, but you can see the video on YouTube (part 2 | part 3) if you want to see it for yourself."

Submission + - France planing tax for Google, Yahoo and Facebook (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by CptnHarlock on Sunday January 10, 2010 @08:39AM

CptnHarlock writes: The at times luddite French government is in the early stages of preparing a tax on ad revenues for big online firms according to the BBC. The incomes will be used to "fund legal alternatives for buying books, films and music on the internet". Disregarding that the wording implies that big online firms are involved in ilegal activities Google replies that this will "slow down innovation" and that it's better "to find new business models that help consumers find great content and rewards artists and publishers for their work"

Method To Repair Damaged Adult Nerves Discovered 128

Posted by kdawson on Friday December 11, 2009 @01:25PM from the reconnecting-the-dots dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have discovered a promising method to regrow damaged nerves in adults. Brain and spinal-cord injuries typically leave people with permanent impairment because the injured nerve fibers (axons) cannot regrow. A study from Harvard and Carleton University, published in the December 10 issue of the journal Neuron, shows that axons can regenerate vigorously in a mouse model when a gene that suppresses natural growth factors is deleted. Here is the journal article (subscription required to view more than the abstract)."

FreeNAS Switching From FreeBSD To Debian Linux 206

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 06, 2009 @12:29PM from the changing-horses dept.

dnaumov writes "FreeNAS, a popular, free NAS solution, is moving away from using FreeBSD as its underlying core OS and switching to Debian Linux. Version 0.8 of FreeNAS as well as all further releases are going to be based on Linux, while the FreeBSD-based 0.7 branch of FreeNAS is going into maintenance-only mode, according to main developer Volker Theile. A discussion about the switch, including comments from the developers, can be found on the FreeNAS SourceForge discussion forum. Some users applaud the change, which promises improved hardware compatibility, while others voice concerns regarding the future of their existing setups and lack of ZFS support in Linux."

Submission + - Danish anti-piracy agency throw in the towel (freeform101.org)

Submitted by ChristianVillum on Saturday November 07, 2009 @07:08AM

ChristianVillum writes: Just now it has been announced in the press by the official Danish Anti-Piracy agency, Antipiratgruppen, that they are throwing in the towel and will seize their operations completely; to find and prosecute music copyright offenders. Here is a translation of the article from todays Danish press.

Submission + - Googles free sat-nav

Submitted by CptnHarlock on Thursday October 29, 2009 @01:42PM

CptnHarlock writes: CNBC and BBC report that as Google steps into yet another market shares in conventional GPS devices fell hard today after the search giant unveiled its free Google Maps Navigation sat-nav application for mobile devices on wednsday. Tom-tom fell 13% and Garmin 18%. When the Motorola Droid arrives and other "Swiss Army knife" smartphones follow — will conventional standalone GPS devices go away? Will they go without a fight or will they try to sue their way back into our hearts (or wallets)?

Submission + - Pirate Bay sold for $7.8 million

Submitted by paulraps on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @04:24AM

paulraps writes: The Pirate Bay is to be bought for $7.8 million by Global Gaming Factory X (GGF), a Swedish company specializing in internet café management software, the company has announced. As well as taking over the controversial brand, GGF has also bought Peerialism, a small IT company with roots at Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology, which has developed a new file sharing technology. The acquisitions mean that GGF will be at the heart of "the international digital distribution market", allowing it to introduce a new pay model for file sharing.

Submission + - Swedish Noted coampany buys The Pirate Bay (globalgamingfactory.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @04:01AM

An anonymous reader writes: Acording to news sources in Sweden a publicly traded software comapany called Global Gaming Factory which has it's core business in netcafés has aquired The Pirate Bay website and domain, the deal will go though in August 2009 if the news holds up. The company is real, and the pressrelease on thier homepage Global Gaming Factory is quite clear. Unless the site has been hacked this is huge and shocking news, if it's fake then someone at Global Gaming Factory is probably facing charges as Publicly traded Stock Ventures shouldn't be posting false pressreleases.

Faction Changes Coming To World of Warcraft 209

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @03:41AM from the you-still-won't-win-battlegrounds dept.

A Blizzard representative today announced that they're working on a service for players to switch factions in World of Warcraft, going from Horde to Alliance or vice versa. "There's still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we're pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it." They also said there would be "some rules involved with when and how the service can be used."

Submission + - Snakes on a Plane - IRL version (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by

CptnHarlock

on Thursday April 16, 2009 @02:15PM

CptnHarlock writes: "Among others TimesOnline, the Telegraph and the BBC are running a bizarre story which tells us that "An Australian airliner was grounded after four baby pythons escaped from their container in the aircraft's hold." Unfortunately Samuel L. Jackson was not on the flight from Alice Springs to Melbourne and the plane had to be landed before action could be taken on the ground to try and remove the MF snakes from the MF plane."

Comment What about other languages? (Score 1) 599

by CptnHarlock on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @05:13PM (#26986955) Attached to: I Count In

I'm a Latino (from Chile), lived in a slavic country (Bulgaria) untill I was 13 and there I learned to count. Today I live in a country with a germanic language (Sweden) but still count through items, money, whatever in Bulgarian although I hardly use that language - maybe twice a year... *head explodes*

Submission + - Gmail and GoogleDocs are down 2

Submitted by CptnHarlock on Tuesday February 24, 2009 @07:52AM

CptnHarlock writes: As notet on BBC and by many geeks and non-geeks worldwide Gmail and Google Docs have been having problems for about an hour now. The mail is accessible through IMAP clients and the chat is accessible through external applications. Twitter is ablaze and here's the BBC coverage.

FBI Raids Home of Suspected NSA Leaker 608

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @02:37AM from the real-enemies dept.

During the hours that Congress was debating codifying the Bush administration's wiretapping by revising the FISA law, the Department of Justice was raiding the home of former Justice official Thomas M. Tamm to identify the person who first brought the illicit program to light: "The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files... the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media... James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the raid was 'amazing' and shows the administration's misplaced priorities: using FBI agents to track down leakers instead of processing intel warrants to close the [purported surveillance] gaps."

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