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Comment Re:What would motivate me (Score 1) 547

by ChrisGoodwin (#42022263) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Make a DVD-Rental Store More Relevant?

3) It would let me keep the DVD for as long as I want with no late fees (just a linear rate like a buck a day until I bring it back, and that's it).

There actually is such a thing. You pay a flat fee, take the DVD home for as long as you want, and then when you're done with it you bring it back, and they actually give you money back for it. Or store credit, which is usually a little more. You can use that store credit toward the "rental" of another DVD, and the process repeats.

They call them "used DVD stores". Sometimes "thrift shops" or "pawn shops".

It actually used to be you could rent software that way (late 80's/early 90's). You'd pick the software you wanted, then place a "deposit" equal to the purchase price of the software. If you kept it then they treated it as a sale, or if you brought it back you got part of your deposit back.
ISS

Space Station Spacewalkers Stymied By Stubborn Bolt 290

Posted by samzenpus from the stripped-threads dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Reuters reports that astronauts at the International Space Station ran into problems after removing the station's 100-kg power-switching unit, one of four used in a system that distributes electrical power generated by the station's solar array wings, and were stymied after repeated attempts to attach the new device failed when a bolt jammed, preventing astronauts from hooking it up into the station's power grid. Japanese Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide got the bolt to turn nine times but engineers need 15 turns to secure the power-switching unit. 'We're kind of at a loss of what else we can try,' said astronaut Jack Fischer at NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston after more than an hour of trouble-shooting. 'If you guys have any thoughts or ideas or brilliant schemes on what we can do, let us know.' Hoshide suggested using a tool that provides more force on bolts, but NASA engineers are reluctant to try anything that could make the situation worse and as the spacewalk slipped past seven hours, flight controllers told the astronauts to tether the unit in place, clean up their tools and head back into the station's airlock. NASA officials says the failure to secure the new unit won't disrupt station operations but it will force engineers to carefully distribute electrical power from three operating units to various station systems and says another attempt to install the power distributor could come as early as next week if engineers can figure out what to do with the stubborn bolt. 'We're going to figure it out another day,' says Fischer."
Math

Stanford Researchers Discover the 'Anternet' 133

Posted by samzenpus from the ant-power dept.
stoilis writes "A collaboration between Deborah Gordon, a Stanford ant biologist, and Balaji Prabhakar, a computer scientist, has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants, as they forage for food, mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet. From the article: 'Prabhakar wrote an ant algorithm to predict foraging behavior depending on the amount of food – i.e., bandwidth – available. Gordon's experiments manipulate the rate of forager return. Working with Stanford student Katie Dektar, they found that the TCP-influenced algorithm almost exactly matched the ant behavior found in Gordon's experiments. "Ants have discovered an algorithm that we know well, and they've been doing it for millions of years," Prabhakar said.' The abstract is published in the Aug. 23 issue of PLoS Computational Biology."

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