Comment Re:It's part of the risk/fun! (Score 1) 417
Convenient.
Esther Dyson Grudgingly Defends Internet Anonymity 516
An anonymous reader writes "In an interview, Esther Dyson, chairman of EDventure Holdings, describes anonymity on the Internet as similar to abortion: a bad practice that people should still have rights to. Calling anonymity one of the greatest disappointments of the Internet's evolution, Dyson said: 'I'm pro choice, but I think abortion is an unfortunate thing. I think the same thing about anonymity: Everybody should have the right to it, but it's not something one wants to encourage.'"
Comment Re:Obligatory review comment (Score 2, Informative) 169
however many you want.
curve of constant width Known of since the 1800s at the latest. Oo, found it; this video is more fun and has been around for almost 50 yrs.
curve of constant width Known of since the 1800s at the latest. Oo, found it; this video is more fun and has been around for almost 50 yrs.
Xbox 360 Laptop Creator Unveils Sleek New Design 46
A couple years ago we discussed Benjamin Heckendorn's modification which turned the Xbox 360 into a laptop. Now, he's completed a new, revamped design which includes a removable Xbox 360 hard drive, an internal Wi-fi module and a new button layout. It looks a lot nicer, too. He's also posted a description of how he did it.
Losing My Software Rights? 440
vintagepc writes "Having written a piece of software as part of my research employment, I now face (and will later face again, with other software I've developed), the issue of intellectual property rights. The legal department stated that if I was paid by the University to produce the software, the University would own all rights to it. This is supposedly black and white, not a gray area. However, I was hired as a research student, not directly by the University, and also via a research award (NSERC). Furthermore, it turns out that faculty members here, in fact, retain their intellectual rights to any software they write. At this point, I can still back out, since I have not explicitly agreed to the conditions, but this decision must be made soon. So, I turn to the Slashdot community to ask: Are they allowed to completely strip my rights to the software? If anyone has had any similar experiences, then what was the outcome? Additionally, is this a normal action, or do I have some maneuvering room?"
Comment wow (Score 1) 204
You're seriously comparing the historical significance one individual's recognition in her own time or her "social station" to the holocaust, slavery, and the "morons" of the American Revolution. Did I get all that right? Maybe her social strata is still relevant today, but I'm edging toward "bring up the nazis and you immediately lose."
"Reality Mining" Resets the Privacy Debate 209
An anonymous reader sends us to the NYTimes for a sobering look at the frontiers of "collective intelligence," also called in the article "reality mining." These techniques go several steps beyond the pedestrian version of "data mining" with which the Pentagon and/or DHS have been flirting. The article profiles projects at MIT, UCLA, Google, and elsewhere in networked sensor research and other forms of collective intelligence. "About 100 students at MIT agreed to completely give away their privacy to get a free smartphone. 'Now, when he dials another student, researchers know. When he sends an e-mail or text message, they also know. When he listens to music, they know the song. Every moment he has his Windows Mobile smartphone with him, they know where he is, and who's nearby.' ... Indeed, some collective-intelligence researchers argue that strong concerns about privacy rights are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. ... 'For most of human history, people have lived in small tribes where everything they did was known by everyone they knew,' Dr. Malone said. 'In some sense we're becoming a global village. Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly.'"
Down's Symptoms May Be Treatable In the Womb 170
missb writes "US researchers have found that prenatal treatment for Down syndrome works in mice. This raises the possibility that a pregnant woman who knows her unborn child has Down syndrome might be able to forestall some of the symptoms before giving birth. When fetal mouse pups that had a syndrome similar to Down's were treated with nerve-protecting chemicals, some of the developmental delays that are part of the condition — such as motor and sensory abilities — were removed."
Comment limitations (Score 2, Insightful) 152
I'm utterly convinced those hardware limitations are well beyond the performance we trudge through. As a gamer and programmer, this just irks me to no end.
When a game is first launching, screw the 3d map loading to display behind the main menu (*cough* HL2, et al.), just give us text and load the pretty if it has time to idle. While a cut/intro movie is playing, the disc drive's lens motor should be going nuts, scanning back and forth between buffering the movie and reading data for the next level (or better yet, the disc would be laid out appropriately for this). With the same tack, do something awesome during the unavoidable en masse loadings; have us read a briefing, let us tweak our tires, show us eye candy, whatever! If Pacman was 13.4 Kb, Dr. Mario was on a 28 Kb chip, and a pair of hackers fit .kkrieger into 97 Kb, deep pocketed houses should manage more than a spinning icon. Again on en masse loadings, why do we need them at all? When you walk through an areaportal, it shouldn't just take the nearby rooms' load off of the graphics card, it should start trashing and loading distant geometry.
It's like they're not trying. On the flip side, some recent loading screen news off the top of my head:
Dungeon Siege http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/09/08/0354231.shtml
Resistance 2 interview
When a game is first launching, screw the 3d map loading to display behind the main menu (*cough* HL2, et al.), just give us text and load the pretty if it has time to idle. While a cut/intro movie is playing, the disc drive's lens motor should be going nuts, scanning back and forth between buffering the movie and reading data for the next level (or better yet, the disc would be laid out appropriately for this). With the same tack, do something awesome during the unavoidable en masse loadings; have us read a briefing, let us tweak our tires, show us eye candy, whatever! If Pacman was 13.4 Kb, Dr. Mario was on a 28 Kb chip, and a pair of hackers fit
It's like they're not trying. On the flip side, some recent loading screen news off the top of my head:
Dungeon Siege http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/09/08/0354231.shtml
Resistance 2 interview
The Shady Business Practices of Classmates.com 275
eldavojohn writes ""Some of your classmates are trying to contact you!" reads one e-mail. Attempts to remove yourself from the mailing list may only result in more mailings from the site of ill repute. Well, Ars Techica brings us news of a suit against Classmates.com. You don't need to look far for anti-classmates.com sentiment spreading like wild fire across the tubes." Good next target: ads that say "you've already won" some expensive toy.
Comment the company line (Score 1) 3709
I actually dislike twisted applications of peoples' faith and politics, and furthermore want no part of this discussion, heh. But I know the logical response when any theistic system is confronted with your reduction to "omnipotent or impotent?". That question assumes that their deity is only motivated to make everything perfect. It usually boils down to the God or gods or whatever not wanting a world of 'mindless robot people' and, accordingly, leaving us free to screw it up (even by very circuitous or elaborate means like drunk airline pilots and corrupt politicians).
Comment Re:This isn't "green" (Score 1) 262
It follows, then, that in order for it to take more energy to produce the device than it will generate over its useful lifetime, the manufacturer would effectively need to spend twice as much on electricity as they sell the finished product for... And that ignores other overhead such as labor and raw materials.
Uh. Or they could just set the price above their total costs and still manage to sell them. Companies sell lots of things that make no sense, and successfully. Particularly in this case, people will obviously pay more for something "green" and their 'pay'ing price doesn't not have to have anything to do with the 'pay'back period.
Your overall point is still, of course, correct. This subject has been around long enough that even Googling finds some straight talk. The closest to the doom-and-gloom, "don't use solar power at all" articles and papers I could find were about heavy metal emissions, but even they put the ratio at 9:1 in favor of solar. http://www.livescience.com/environment/080227-solar-power-green.html
I did find one that clearly says solar may sometimes be bad for a bad install location (duh), and that solar is universally bad for gadget-scale use: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/03/the-ugly-side-o.html
The Walking House 304
What is 10' tall, has six hydraulic legs, and is powered by the wind and solar panels? The prototype pod house built by art collective N55 in Copenhagen, Denmark. With the help of MIT, N55 built the pod over a two-year period at a cost of £30,000. Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods. One of the designers says, "This house is not just for travellers but also for anyone interested in a more general way of nomadic living." It won't be long now until the Japanese make Howl's Moving Castle.
