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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Star Wars Prequels

Submission + - Police Tazers no match for Rampaging Man Armed wit (kgw.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: KGW Television has the news (http://www.kgw.com/news/local/Hillsboro-man-in-custody-after-Star-War-light-saber-attack-135654188.html) that Portland Police Tasers were no match for a rampaging man "swinging two 'Star Wars' light sabers at customers in a Toys R Us store at Jantzen Beach", Oregon.

According to the article, "An officer tried to use a Taser, but the device failed. A second Taser also failed after the man used the light sabers to break one of the wires." Officers were then forced to wrestle the man to the ground.

Hopefully, this tactic of utilizing toy lightsabers to disable tasers will be fully exploited by the 15,070 Czechs who described themselves as Knights of the Jedi and believers in 'the Force' (http://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/12/16/0344218/czech-nationwide-census-shows-jump-in-jedi-knights) in their fight against religious intolerance.
Security

Submission + - Rare Earth Magnets Pose Threat to Children

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Many of today's toys contain rare-earth magnets which are much more powerful than the magnets of yesteryear and the magnets pose a serious threat to children when more than one is ingested because as the magnets attract one another they can cause a range of serious injuries, including holes through internal organs, blood poisoning and death (PDF). Braden Eberle, 4, swallowed two tiny magnets from his older brother's construction kit on two successive days last spring and his mother's first reaction was that the magnet would pass through her son's system without a problem. "People swallow pennies of the same size every day," said Jill Eberle. "They're smaller than an eraser." But next morning, with Braden still in pain, the family's doctor told them to go straight to the emergency room where an X-ray revealed two magnets were stuck together. "They were attracted to each other with the wall of each segment they were in stuck together," said Dr. Sanjeev Dutta, the pediatric surgeon at Good Samaritan Hospital who would operate on Braden later that day. "Because they were so powerful, the wall of the intestine was getting squeezed, squeezed, squeezed, and then it just necrosed, or kind of rotted away, and created a hole between the two." The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says at least 33 children have been injured from ingesting magnets (PDF) with a 20 month-old dying, and at least 19 other children requiring surgery."
Displays

Submission + - Cheap, Flexible Electronic Skin Developed by Berke (lbl.gov)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at Berkeley Lab have developed a new, inexpensive technique for imprinting electronic circuitry on backplanes that are both flexible and stretchable – essentially creating a form of electronic skin. The team has already demonstrated an artificial electronic skin (e-skin) that is able to detect and respond to touch, and the technology could open the door to a new age of flexible computers.
Censorship

Submission + - Belgium Expands Blocks On The Pirate Bay (activepolitic.com) 1

Submitted by bs0d3
bs0d3 writes: The Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation (BAF), has been threatening ISPs into expanding their blockade of thepiratebay. Recently they have been sending threatening letters to various additional ISPs who were not involved with the original judgment to block thepiratebay. The letter "kindly requests" that all ISPs voluntarily block thepiratebay or BAF will bring legal action against them. The ISP "BASE" has succumb to these legal threats. Also many of the same Belgian ISPs have taken it one step further and also blocked the dns for depiraatbaai.be. depiraatbaai.be was setup by thepiratebay as an alternative domain which directs users to the piratebay's servers to circumvent dns type censorship. For those who can't wait for The Pirate Bay to set up new alternative domains, a full working mirror of the site still exists at malaysiabay.org, which was originally set up to circumvent the piratebay block in Malaysia.

Comment Re:My PS3 (Score 1) 255

by cyachallenge (#38403570) Attached to: Aging Consoles Find New Life As Video Streamers
I'm 24 and I used to be an avid gamer as a kid through teens. Now I find myself rarely gaming, instead I stream movies on netflix with PS3 when I'm not reading or with buddies. I don't use my computer for games anymore partly because it's outdated and mostly because I'm not interested.

Submission + - DynDNS going to pay-only model (dyndns.com) 1

Submitted by LazyBoyWrangler
LazyBoyWrangler writes: Just noticed the "free" non-commercial service from DynDNS has been deprecated. Not my place to argue with their business model changes, but the home router infrastructure out there has been built around the promise of free dynamic DNS service. Most manufacturers only offer DynDNS as their option.

Removing the free service for non-commercial folks seems disingenuous when they are the only option for many users. I know people need to make a buck, but this seems like extortion as they are effectively the only game in town.

Submission + - Moammar Gadhafi Gets Scientific Paper Published in (phdchallenge.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The PhD Challenge website just announced the winner of this year's contest. Even though he was on the run from Libyan rebels, Moammar "Dirty Old Man" Gadhafi was still able to find time to publish a scientific paper in this year's Conference on Artificial General Intelligence. The AGI conference was held in Mountain View, CA and was organized with the help of Peter Norvig. Given that Moammar was killed in October, his co-author, Tom Schaul will be accepting the PhD Challenge prize.
Christmas Cheer

Submission + - Flying Spaghetti Monster visits Leesburg VA (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by Doofus
Doofus writes: The Washington Post has an interesting article about the growing local conflicts over the use of the Loudoun County Courthouse grounds for holiday themed and religious displays. The Flying Spaghetti Monster has made an appearance, along with pirates.

Submission + - US incomes less equal than imperial Rome's (persquaremile.com)

Submitted by TimmyDee
TimmyDee writes: Over the last 30 years, wealth in the United States has been steadily concentrating in the upper economic echelons. Whereas the top 1 percent used to control a little over 30 percent of the wealth, they now control 40 percent. It's a trend that was for decades brushed under the rug but is now on the tops of minds and at the tips of tongues. Since too much inequality can foment revolt and instability, the CIA regularly updates statistics on income distribution for countries around the world, including the U.S. Between 1997 and 2007, inequality in the U.S. grew by almost 10 percent, making it more unequal than Russia, infamous for its powerful oligarchs. The U.S. is not faring well historically, either. Even the Roman Empire, a society built on conquest and slave labor, had a more equitable income distribution.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." -- Mark Twain

Close