envelope - Slashdot User

Submission + - New Mail Boxes Pay Tribute to Star Wars

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10, 2007 @02:24AM

An anonymous reader writes: With the 30th anniversary of Star Wars this year, the Postal Service has come up with a unique tribute: R2D2 mail boxes. Pictures of legions of them lined up can be found here.

Submission + - RIAA now settling suits online

Submitted by Achan on Thursday March 08, 2007 @02:43PM

Achan writes: The RIAA has set up a website where you can settle any lawsuits online. From the FAQ "What payment methods can I use? Payments can be made by check or credit card (MasterCard, Visa and Discover)."

Submission + - 50 ways to kill an asteroid

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Thursday March 08, 2007 @02:15PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "It is almost certain that a big asteroid will one day land on Earth and provoke a huge catastrophe. This is why hundreds of scientists have attended the Planetary Defense Conference 2007, held this week in Washington, D.C., to try to develop plans to protect the Earth from such an asteroid. All these researchers have lots of ideas, some which look feasible, some not. Some of them want to destroy asteroids with nuclear weapons. Other scientists want to use a robotic tugboat to push a dangerous flying object out of the Earth's path. And others want to send unmanned robots to the asteroid, drill into it and send the debris into space to alter the course of the asteroid. And this is just a sample... Read more for additional details and an illustration showing one of the methods which could be used in the future to modify the orbit of an asteroid before it hits the Earth."

Journal Journal: An Implication of the Zeroth Law of Robotics

Journal by Morosoph on Thursday March 08, 2007 @01:08PM

Most of us will be familiar with Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics, which, by simple virtue of their popularity, are bound to have an influence upon robot design.

In practice, however, human nature being what it is, we are bound to create war machines. Even if we do not, we should make ourselves aware of an implication of the zeroth law:

Submission + - HP Sees Huge Linux Desktop Deals, May Do Preloads

Submitted by digihome on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @11:16AM

digihome writes: Hewlett-Packard is closing custom deals for thousands of desktop PCs running Linux, which has the company assessing the possibility of offering factory-loaded Linux systems, an HP executive said. http://www.crn.com/hardware/197800591

Submission + - What Bosses should know: software requirements

Submitted by

Esther Schindler

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @08:19PM

Esther Schindler writes: "CIO.com asked developers to name the ONE thing that they wished the CIO understood about software requirements. The summary is several pages long, but it pulls no punches: from the role of requirements, to defining who creates the requirements (and in how much detail), to the need to shake the boss to get him to understand that requirements change, to paying attention to the process. It's all here, in Five Things CIOs Should Know About Software Requirements, with a few dozen developer's voices loud and clear. For instance, one developer comments, "The CIO has to realize that if there is no bad news, there is something very wrong. Smiling people nodding 'Yes' in meetings is not a sign of great intelligence at work.""

Submission + - Top-shelf domain names fetched a bundle in '06

Submitted by

netbuzz

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @01:30PM

netbuzz writes: "The domain name aftermarket — or, if you prefer, speculation/ransom market — eclipsed the $100 million mark for the first time in '06. Five names went for more than a mil, including the record $12-million undressing for sex.com."

Submission + - F-22 Raptor Gets Zapped by International Date Line

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @01:12PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Lockheed's F-22 Raptor is the most advanced fighter in the world with its stealth capabilities, advanced radar, state of the art weapons systems and ultra-efficient turbofans.

But while the simulated war games were a somewhat easy feat for the Raptor, something more mundane was able to cripple six aircraft on a 12 to 15 hours flight from Hawaii to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. The U.S. Air Force's mighty Raptor was felled by the International Date Line (IDL).

When the group of Raptors crossed over the IDL, multiple computer systems crashed on the planes. Everything from fuel subsystems, to navigation and partial communications were completely taken offline. Numerous attempts were made to "reboot" the systems to no avail.

http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Gets +Zapped+by+International+Date+Line/article6225.htm "

Journal Journal: Rocketeers Find Large Impact Crater In Nevada 29

Journal by SEWilco on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @11:54AM

While participating in amateur rocket launches in Black Rock Desert (Burning Man site), Ian Kluft KO6YQ noticed rocks with some oddities. Through the Internet he learned the characteristics of impact craters, then found some clues in photographs and Google Maps. Examining the area he got samples of rock with impact patterns in them and other evidence. Previous geological puzzles in the region are well explained as impact structures. Volunteers are finding peculiarities in satellite imagery

Submission + - Novell drives nail into Microsoft Office coffin

Submitted by Tookis on Monday March 05, 2007 @06:44PM

Tookis writes: The news that Novell has released an Office Open XML (OOXML) translator for OpenOffice.org is yet another nail in the coffin of the office productivity franchise known as Microsoft Office. However, if the open source crowd is really serious about denting Microsoft's dominance in this space, what is needed is a little Evolution. http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/10185/1023/

Submission + - AMD CEO talks about earnings, future of x86

Submitted by

Jeff Pierce

on Monday March 05, 2007 @06:33PM

Jeff Pierce writes: "AMD's CEO, Hector Ruiz, explained today why AMD's revenues won't meet expectations this quarter. According to Ruiz, this is because the company couldn't produce enough chips to meet growing OEM demand. (Funny he didn't mention the price war with Intel.) Also covered in the presentation is Ruiz's vision of what you might call "x86 everywhere." Ruiz thinks that the x86 processor market is by no means "mature," and that x86 will expand into home entertainment devices, appliances, education, and lots of other places where we don't even currently use microprocessors. AMD intends to have a big slice of that growing pie."

Submission + - Scientists Break Speed of Light

Submitted by PreacherTom on Monday March 05, 2007 @06:25PM

PreacherTom writes: Scientists at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, NJ are reporting that they have broken the speed of light. For the experiment, the researchers manipulated a vapor of laser-irradiated atoms, causing a pulse that shoots about 300 times faster than it would take the pulse to go the same distance in a vacuum, to the point where the pulse seemed to exit the chamber before even entering it. Apparently, Uncle Albert is still resting comfortably: relativity only states that an object with mass cannot travel faster than light. Still, the results are sufficient to merit publication in the prestigious journal, Nature.

Submission + - The 50 Most Important People on the Web

Submitted by

Tiny Tuba

on Monday March 05, 2007 @02:31PM

Tiny Tuba writes: "Who's shaping what you read, watch, hear, write, buy, sell, befriend, flame, and otherwise do online. Rob Malda, founder of Slashdot comes in at #44.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129301-page,10-c ,techindustrytrends/article.html"

Submission + - Red Hat announces open-source developer tools

Submitted by jcatcw on Monday March 05, 2007 @02:28PM

jcatcw writes: Red Hat and Exadel announced a partnership to bring Eclipse-based developer tools geared toward developing service-oriented architecture and Web 2.0 applications to JBoss Middleware. The tools will be made available as open source under the JBoss.org community. Red Hat says it plans to provide open-source access to all its tools, unlike other vendors, such as IBM and Borland, which have built programming tools on top of the Eclipse IDE and then focused on the proprietary customization of the tools.

Diebold to Withdraw from E-Voting? 329

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 05, 2007 @02:03PM from the lots-of-polishing-to-do dept.

ICA writes "It appears after years of criticism, Diebold may be ready to withdraw from electronic voting entirely. The company is concerned that this relatively small and marginally profitable unit is hurting the company's overall image."

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