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Privacy

Submission + - The NSA wiretapping story nobody wanted (computerworld.com)

CWmike writes: "They sometimes call national security the third rail of politics. Touch it and, politically, you're dead. The cliché doesn't seem far off the mark after reading Mark Klein's new book, "Wiring up the Big Brother Machine ... and Fighting It." It's an account of his experiences as the whistleblower who exposed a secret room at a Folsom Street facility in San Francisco that was apparently used to monitor the Internet communications of ordinary Americans. Amazingly, however, nobody wanted to hear his story. In his book he talks about meetings with reporters and privacy groups that went nowhere until a fateful January 20, 2006, meeting with Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Bankston was preparing a lawsuit that he hoped would put a stop to the wiretap program, and Klein was just the kind of witness the EFF was looking for. He spoke with Robert McMillan for an interview."
Television

Submission + - Neighbourhood Cable Co. ? 1

An anonymous reader writes: With the US deadline for transition to over the air digital TV and Canada not far behind, everyone is buying antennas and amplifiers to receive the best signal possible. Being that I live in a house and have a 50ft tower for ham radio, I had an idea. Since I have no problem receiving distant stations but none of my neighbours have such a beast, why can't we some how share what channels I receive? Running coax isn't an option and kinda defeats another goal of being open to everyone. Privacy is also of utmost importance so slingboxes probably wouldn't work too well for this.

I have a few ideas about how it can be done and one I'm leaning toward is sharing over a mesh type network (ala wifi) via multicast to anyone who can hear. Obviously that presents some issues of its own. Ideal would be something small and embedded I could mount on the tower or a single box with multiple dual tuner cards in it.

Having two tier service by running cat5 or fiber is possible (their cost to run the cable) as well but there should still be an open way to watch over wifi. I'm not looking to make a profit off it though.

So what are some other possibilities to consider? Has anyone else tried this? In trailer parks or apartment buildings for example?

Comment Re:Cute robot (Score 5, Interesting) 197

Your post reminds me a little of the "Postal Experiments" that I remember reading about amongst some comments here on Slashdot nearly 10 years ago:

We sent a variety of unpackaged items to U.S. destinations, appropriately stamped for weight and size, as well as a few items packaged as noted. We sent items that loosely fit into the following general categories: valuable, sentimental, unwieldy, pointless, potentially suspicious, and disgusting.

It's tough to say what my personal favorite was, but I think the helium-filled balloon at least deserves special mention. :-)

Comment Re:Why number pads? (Score 5, Informative) 523

> why did the phone guys make theirs upside-down?

Go to the "Keyboards" section of this course outline and follow the link to the PDF copy of the "Bell Labs 1960 study". In short, it's because that configuration ranked highly for inputting phone numbers. If you take a look at the image provided of the button-based phone's predecessor you'll see that 7, 8, 9, and 0 are at the bottom and 1, 2, and 3 are at the top. I'd guess that made that structure more familiar to the test subjects, along with the fact that English is read from left to right, and from ... in case you hadn't noticed ... top to bottom. With those two points in mind, my question to you is, why are the keys on numeric keypads and calculators upside-down? :-)
Transportation

Submission + - SPAM: Europe to mix unmanned and commercial aircraft

coondoggie writes: "The European Defense Agency is projecting unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs) will be able to operate with civilian air traffic within eight years and it has signed a an $8.9 million with a consortium of aerospace companies to develop a detailed roadmap for integrating UAVs into European airspace. The EDA conducted a 16 month study on the feasibility of integrating UAV operations with existing technology and found that no new systems would need to be developed to supplement mid-air collision avoidance systems (MIDICAS) to handle UAV operations, though complementary developments and engineering are required to provide a UAV-specific system. Meanwhile, There are rumblings that the US will be doing more to safely integrate UAVs into the commercial airspace system but the Federal Aviation Administration has kept a tight reign on the situation. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
United States

Submission + - Lifesaving hospital hygiene checklist banned (nytimes.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: From the article:
Johns Hopkins University published a simple five-step checklist designed to prevent certain hospital infections. It reminds doctors to make sure, for example, that before putting large intravenous lines into patients, they actually wash their hands and don a sterile gown and gloves.

The results were stunning. Within three months, the rate of bloodstream infections from these I.V. lines fell by two-thirds. The average I.C.U. cut its infection rate from 4 percent to zero. Over 18 months, the program saved more than 1,500 lives and nearly $200 million.

Yet this past month, the Office for Human Research Protections shut the program down.

Data Storage

Submission + - USB 3 optical connection in 2008-10 times as fast

psychicsword writes:
"Intel and others plan to release a new version of the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus technology in the first half of 2008, a revamp the chipmaker said will make data transfer rates more than 10 times as fast by adding fiber-optic links alongside the traditional copper wires."
"The current USB 2.0 version has a top data-transfer rate of 480 megabits per second, so a tenfold increase would be 4.8 gigabits per second."
This should make USB hard drives easier and faster to use. The article can be seen here http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9780794-7.html
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Airline sacrificing goats to fix a Boeing 757? (reuters.com)

Flower Skunk writes: There's a news story on Reuter's about a airline company in Nepal that sacrificed 2 goats to an Hindu god in order to fix two Boeing 757's with 'technical problems'. So..can someone recommend a god to sacrifice to in order to get an old, broken powerbook to work again?
Biotech

Submission + - Beeborne Virus Possible Cause of Colony Collaspe (iht.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The project involved an unusual partnership between entomologists and scientists working at the leading edge of human genetic research. It employed the same technology being used to decode Neanderthal DNA and the personal genome of James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA.

Turns out it's entirely possible a VIRUS previously unnoticed until recent sequencing technology might be the cause of bee colony collapses...imagine that, it might not be the evil cell-phone radiation after all.

Security

Submission + - Hackers Hold Monster.com Users' Files Hostage 1

Hypercoyote writes: Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in the U.S., have been exposed to the risk of file ransom after the Web site of the world's largest online recruiter was hacked. Personal details stored on Monster.com, a Web site that lists job seekers and job opportunities, were taken after a raid by hackers who posed as employers to gain access to the site. Read more about it here
Biotech

Submission + - The Whys of Mating: 237 Reasons and Counting (nytimes.com)

gollum123 writes: "Scholars in antiquity began counting the ways that humans have sex, but they weren't so diligent in cataloging the reasons humans wanted to get into all those positions ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/science/31tier.h tml?em&ex=1186113600&en=193f3472d7a6827b&ei=5087%0 A ). Perhaps you thought that the motivations for sex were pretty obvious. Or maybe you never really wanted to know what was going on inside other people's minds, in which case you should stop reading immediately. For now, thanks to psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin, we can at last count the whys. After asking nearly 2,000 people why they'd had sex, the researchers have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons — everything from "I wanted to feel closer to God" to "I was drunk." They even found a few people who claimed to have been motivated by the desire to have a child. some respondents said they did it to "help me fall asleep," "make my partner feel powerful," "burn calories," "return a favor," "keep warm," "hurt an enemy" or "change the topic of conversation." The lamest may have been, "It seemed like good exercise," although there is also this: "Someone dared me." The researchers collected the data by first asking more than 400 people to list their reasons for having sex, and then asking more than 1,500 others to rate how important each reason was to them. Although it was a fairly homogenous sample of students at the University of Texas, nearly every one of the 237 reasons was rated by at least some people as their most important motive for having sex."
Space

Submission + - Blast at Virgin Galactic desert spaceport kills 2 (cnn.com)

yourdog writes: An explosion killed two people Thursday at the airport HQ of a company building the first private manned rocket for Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's space tourism venture. Aerial video showed a wrecked flatbed trailer with a large silver tank next to it, and large pieces of debris appeared to be strewn for hundreds of yards.
Space

Submission + - 2 killed in SpaceShipTwo motor test explosion (cnn.com)

RZG writes: Two people were killed and 4 were injured during a "cold fire test" of the motor for SpaceShipTwo. This obviously is a setback for Virgin Galactic and the non-government space community in general. "Aerial video of the blast aftermath showed a charred and twisted flatbed trailer attached to a truck cab with a large silver tank next to it. Large pieces of debris appeared to be strewn for hundreds of yards from the center."

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