Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Hardware Hacking

Home-Built Turing Machine 123

stronghawk writes "The creator of the Nickel-O-Matic is back at it and has now built a Turing Machine from a Parallax Propeller chip-based controller, motors, a dry-erase marker and a non-infinite supply of shiny 35mm leader film. From his FAQ: 'While thinking about Turing machines I found that no one had ever actually built one, at least not one that looked like Turing's original concept (if someone does know of one, please let me know). There have been a few other physical Turing machines like the Logo of Doom, but none were immediately recognizable as Turing machines. As I am always looking for a new challenge, I set out to build what you see here.'"
Image

College To Save Money By Switching Email Font 306

The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has come up with an unusual way of saving money: changing their email font. The school expects to use 30% less ink by switching from Arial to Century Gothic. From the article: "Diane Blohowiak is the school's director of computing. She says the new font uses about 30 percent less ink than the previous one. That could add up to real savings, since the cost of printer ink works out to about $10,000 per gallon. Blohowiak says the decision is part of the school's five-year plan to go green. She tells Wisconsin Public Radio it's great that a change that's eco-friendly also saves money."

Comment Re:Options (Score 1) 242

Actually, I work in a laser machine shop & we run several (5+) 50W lasers on a single 208V 100A bus. The small objects they talk about would be pretty simple to get rid of if they could be hit & the lasers themselves run around the $100k range. We manage to outfit 747s with lasers that track & destroy ICBMs, I think we can hit a bit of space junk if we put our minds to it.

Comment Re:Slashvertisment? (Score 1) 200

Back in school I managed to make a little 3d shooting gallery with Director (Shockwave). The rendering engine was poor, but Havok worked well & as long as things were kept simple it ran pretty well. I'd imagine 7 years of hardware improvements would make life easier for someone trying to get 3d apps in a browser.

Slashdot Top Deals

Testing can show the presense of bugs, but not their absence. -- Dijkstra

Working...