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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 54 declined, 15 accepted (69 total, 21.74% accepted)

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Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Bending the rules: CRTs for heat? 6

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "My university prohibits electric (or any other) heaters in the dorms. A dorm-dwelling friend asked me to formulate a solution for her, so I suggested that she plug in as many CRT monitors that she could before the fuse pops. Does anyone know of a more compact source of heat? How about some old 400W power supplies not connected to anything? Ovens, toasters, kettles, and the like are banned."
Space

Submission + - Mars Avoids Asteroid Strike (discovery.com)

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "The possibility of a collision between Mars and an approaching asteroid has been effectively ruled out, according to scientists watching the space rock. Tracking measurements of asteroid 2007 WD5 taken from four observatories have greatly reduced uncertainties about its Jan. 30 close approach to Mars so that the odds of impact have dropped to 1 in 10,000, the Near-Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a posting on its Web site."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft apologizes for Office 2003 SP3 muck-up (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "Microsoft Corp. apologized yesterday for saying its file format posed a security risk and issued new tools to let users of Office 2003 SP3 unblock a host of barred file types. In a posting to his own blog, David LeBlanc, a senior software development engineer with the Microsoft Office team, admitted the company's mistake in blaming insecure file formats."
Software

Submission + - Slutbot passes turning test. (roughtype.com)

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "
Russian crooks have unleashed an artificial intelligence, called CyberLover, that poses as a would-be paramour in sex chat rooms, enticing randy gentlemen to reveal personal information that can then be put to criminal use. Amazingly, the slutbot appears to be successful in convincing targets that it's a real person.
Even CmdrTaco hasn't yet convinced me that [it||he] is a real person. I can't wait to get scammed by this thing."
Input Devices

Submission + - Device to Smoke Weed During Brain Scan (wired.com)

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "
Harvard Scientists Build a Device to Smoke Weed During Brain Scan. Why would you want to smoke pot during a brain scan? Because functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allows researchers to observe activity in the brain, and doing so while smoking could enhance our understanding of addiction and how to treat it. Last Friday, Scott Lukas, the ringmaster for these studies and director of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory was informed that he will receive a grant to conduct further studies with marijuana.
"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - MS Explorer sinks for real this time. (abc.net.au)

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "
All 154 passengers and crew of a cruise ship that sank in Antarctic waters have now been flown to safety in mainland Chile. The MS Explorer went down after hitting an iceberg and the passengers spent several hours in lifeboats in sub-zero temperatures.
I find this symbolic and very fitting for /. trolls. Carry on."
The Media

Submission + - Saudi Court sentences rape victim (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "From TFA:

...Saudi court sentenced a woman who had been gang raped to six months in jail and 200 lashes — more than doubling her initial penalty for being in the car of a man who was not a relative...
Apparently, she did not have a very good defense:

...The court also banned the lawyer from defending her, confiscated his license to practice law and summoned him to a disciplinary hearing....
"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - What to do with system that has only one error cod

Submitted by
Dotan Cohen
Dotan Cohen writes: "The wife recently brought home some new hardware. It's mostly reliable, and kind of fun to play with, but it errs often. The problem is, gives the same error code for all faults. Sometimes in the middle of the night it will start erring with code "wawawa". Often, this means that it needs a recharge, and I pass it on to the wife. But I've discovered that the same error code could also mean that it needs a filter change. During the day, if left alone, the device seems to go into sleep mode after either some as-yet determined time, or possibly at a certain hour. If that fails, then it gives the same "wawawa" error code.

I've grepped for a log file, but I believe that it is devnulled with the filter change. Have any /.ers experience with similar devices? How to troubleshoot?"
Software

Submission + - Checklist software for Linux?

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "With the purchase of a Dell Inspiron laptop, I'm moving my workflow from a Dell Axim x50v to the KDE environment. The Kontact PIM is great but I need a replacement for ListPro (http://www.iliumsoft.com/site/lp/listpro.php). Specifically, I need collapsable hierarchical notes with a resetable checkbox field. Other nice features would be date, integer, enum, and longtext fields, a global search function, and hierarchical list of notes (not only do the notes have internal hierarchies, but the list of notes would be hierarchal as well).

Note that I would prefer a GUI-based program to avoid upsetting our household's delicate wife-linux balance. I'm not the only one who will use this program. I have looked at Basket, Kontact, Evolution, and lots of other Linux PIMs, but have found nothing that meets my needs. What other software is out there?"
Networking

Submission + - How do slashdotters manage email on their laptops?

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "I'll soon be getting a new Dell laptop that'll be running Fedora Core 5 or 6. I need to access the email stored on my home box from the laptop, and also to read new email sent to me while I'm not home (and the home box is shut down). If I run an IMAP server at home, then I can't read the mail when the home box is down. But if I pull from the POP3 server (and leave the mail on the server) then I won't be able to sort and file the mail while on the go. Is there anyway to sync the mail accounts between two linux boxen, assuming that I'm using the same mail client? I currently use Kmail, but I might switch to Eudora in April/March when it becomes available for Linux.

Thanks in advance."

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