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Music

Submission + - How to get back at the noisy nextdoor neighbor 2

MindPrison writes: After a long time with that annoying downstairs neighbor playing too loud music, I've been contemplating HOW to deal with it, being a teenager AND a female — you know the drill — asking nicely is NOT an option, teenagers usually get angry because you should NOT tell them what to do etc...so I came up with a quite devious way to solve the issue, and the trick is fighting fire with fire, for once :)

Here's how I did it:

I made a small low-frequency microphone amplifier, hot glued an electret microphone to the floor, and made sure there were no leaks around the microphone (to avoid audio-feedback). I connected this to an active subwoofer (this is a subwoofer that has an power amplifier built in, typically the thing you have in your average surround amplifier, and placed the subwoofer in the room next door to the mike (to avoid feedback!). Now — it's very important to disconnect any surround speakers as you ONLY want the BASS to distribute into the structure of the building itself, this makes it IMPOSSIBLE to locate the sound from YOUR flat, and the penetrating middle-tones that comes from your noisy neighbors stereo — will reveal that it is YOUR NEIGHBOR that plays the loud music.

It worked flawlessly, the entire building shook with the sound of the neighbors stereo, and the teenager had to turn down the sound several times due to multiple complaints from the ENTIRE neighborhood.

Revenge is SOO sweet ;)
GNOME

Submission + - Gnome to Split Off from GNU Project? (pwnage.ca)

blozza2070 writes: According to a recent posting from Philip Van Hoof, he suggests that Gnome split off from the GNU Project and proposes a vote. He has been informed he will need 5% of members to agree for there to be a vote put forth. At the same time David Schlesinger (on the Gnome Advisory Board) has agreed on a vote. Stormy Peters claims she doesn’t agree with this but then gives everyone instructions on how to achieve this goal. She mentions that roughly 20 members are needed to agree.

Submission + - Malware Hidden Inside Screensaver on Gnome-Look (omgubuntu.co.uk) 2

AndGodSed writes: "OMG! UBUNTU! Reports the following:
Malware has been found hidden inside an innocuous 'waterfall' screensaver .deb file made available on popular artwork sharing site Gnome-Look.org. The .deb file installs a script with elevated privileges designed to perform a DDoS attack as well as keep itself updated via downloads. The dodgy screensaver in question has since been removed from gnome-look and this incident was a very basic, if potentially successful, attempt."

Politics

Submission + - Scientists step down after CRU Hack fallout (wsj.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In the wake of the recent release of thousands of private files and emails after a server of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia was hacked, Prof. Phil Jones is stepping down as head of the CRU. Prof. Michael Mann, another prominent climate scientist is also under inquiry by Penn State University.
Microsoft

Submission + - Seattle CTO and OpenSource... NOT (wordpress.com)

An anonymous reader writes: This post by the CTO of the City of Seattle is vehemently pro Microsoft. What is amazing is just how much so. Consider the opening rationale: "Microsoft provides 40,000 jobs in my area" and then another gem: "But I’m somewhat baffled that any CIO of a large government would seriously consider using open source software for our mission critical systems and services. This seems a little bit like using cell phones to dispatch police officers and firefighters or outsourcing your help desk to India. It will save money in the short term and work pretty well “most” of the time "
Science

Submission + - Machine converts CO2 into fuel (physorg.com)

krou writes: Called the Counter-Rotating-Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5), researchers at Sandia National Laboratories believe it is capable of using the sun's energy to convert CO2 waste from power plants into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

the cylindrical machine consists of two chambers on the sides and 14 rotating rings in the center. The outer edges of the rings are made of iron oxide. When the scientists heat the inside of one chamber to 1,500C with a solar concentrator, the iron oxide undergoes a thermo-chemical reaction where it gives up oxygen molecules. As the rings rotate (at one revolution per minute), the hot side approaches the opposite chamber and begins to cool down. When carbon dioxide is pumped into this chamber, the iron oxide retrieves oxygen molecules from the carbon dioxide, transforming it into carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide could then serve as a building block to create a liquid combustible fuel.

They also note that the machine is capable of producing syngas, and hydrogen. It's still 15-20 years from being marketable, and they still need to increase overall efficiency of the machine, hoping to at least "get in the range of 10% sunlight-to-fuels".

The Internet

Submission + - Mininova limits its activities (mininova.org)

dazaris writes: "Complying with court order Mininova a popular bittorrent search engine has taken it's services offline except as a Content Distribution service. According to the verdict they would have to prevent uploads of torrents to Mininova that refer to certain titles or to similar-looking titles. They had tested some different filtering systems in the last couple of months, but had found that it’s neither technically nor operationally possible to implement a 100% working filter system. Therefore, they decided that the only option is to limit Mininova to Content Distribution torrents from now on. They are still considering an appeal."
Google

Submission + - Google-Microsoft Crossfire Will Hit Consumers 1

theodp writes: Newsweek's Dan Lyons doesn't know who will be the winner in Google and Microsoft's search battle, but that's not stopping him from picking a loser — consumers. As we head towards a world where some devices may be free or really cheap, consumers should prepare to be bombarded by ads or pay a premium to escape them. 'The sad truth is that Google and Microsoft care less about making cool products than they do about hurting each other,' concludes Lyons. 'Their fighting has little to do with helping customers and a lot to do with helping themselves to a bigger slice of the money we all spend to buy computers and surf the Internet. Microsoft wants to ruin Google's search business. Google wants to ruin Microsoft's OS business. At the end of the day, they both seem like overgrown nerdy schoolboys fighting over each other's toys.'
Games

Submission + - Japanese Man Marries a DS Game Character (yahoo.com) 1

uncholowapo writes: "In another sign that the world is about to collapse, multiple blogs are reporting that a fan of the Nintendo DS dating sim Love Plus (you know, the really creepy one) liked his virtual lady so much that he decided to marry her. For real.

Apparently, a Japanese gamer known as 'Sal9000' was officially wed to Nene Anegasaki, one of the game's three virtual girlfriends, in what must have been the weirdest ceremony in the history of ceremonies. We can only assume that Ms. Pac-Man was the maid of honor."

I can't imagine how the children will look like...

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's top devs don't seem to like own tools (computerworld.com)

ericatcw writes: Through tools such as Visual Basic and Visual Studio, Microsoft may have done more than any other vendor to make drag and drop-style programming mainstream. But its superstar developers seem to prefer old-school modes of hacking code. During the panel at the Professional Developers Conference earlier this month, the devs also revealed why they think writing tight, bare-metal code will come back into fashion, and why parallel programming hasn't caught up with the processors yet.

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