Jac_no_k - Slashdot User

Submission + - Cash Machine turns 40 years old (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

01100111

on Monday June 25, 2007 @03:40AM

01100111 writes: "The world's first ATM was installed in a branch of Barclays in Enfield, north London, 40 years ago this week.

Inspiration had struck Mr Shepherd-Barron, now 82, while he was in the bath. The machine paid out a maximum of £10 a time." It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world or the UK. I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash."

Plastic cards had not been invented, so Mr Shepherd-Barron's machine used cheques that were impregnated with carbon 14, a mildly radioactive substance. However, Mr Shepherd-Barron denies there were any health concerns: "I later worked out you would have to eat 136,000 such cheques for it to have any effect on you.""

Submission + - Which all-in-one inkjet printer is cheapest to use

Submitted by

Ray

on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @10:46PM

Ray writes: "A year or so ago I got my dad a new computer system that included a Canon PX-160 printer/scanner/copier to replace his aging Lexmark with similar capabilities. On my next visit I asked him how the new printer was working and he said the ink was killing him. The cartridges are expensive, they don't have much ink in them and there are no third party or refilled carts for it or apparently any other Canon. It looks like HP and Lexmark are the most likely to have (relatively) inexpensive supplies but what has your experience been with inkjet all-in-ones as far as TCO goes?"

Submission + - Linux finally getting XBMC

Submitted by B47h0ry'5 CuR53 on Wednesday May 30, 2007 @03:33AM

B47h0ry'5 CuR53 writes: XBMC is getting ported to Linux. A few developers of Team-XBMC have begun the porting of XBMC to Linux using OpenGL and the SDL toolkit. In this effort, they are recruiting developers. XBMC is, by far, one of the finest projects to come out of the open source community; and to think it is homebrew. XBMC is a massive project, with the current SVN branch weighing about 350M before compilation. Porting it will be a big effort and any hackers willing to contribute should check out the Linux port project.

Submission + - Google's "supplemental index", according t

Submitted by whoever57 on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @02:47AM

whoever57 writes: Forbes has an interesting article on the consequences of being dumped into a claimed "supplemental index", also known as "Google Hell". It uses the example of Skyfacet.com, a site selling diamonds rings and other jewelery, which has dropped in Google's rankings and saw a $500,000 drop in revenue in only three months after the site owner paid a marketing consultant to improve the sites. Google rankings. The article claims that sites in the supposed "supplemental index" may be visited by Google's spiders as infrequently as once per year. The problem? Google's cache shows that Google's spiders visited the site ss recently as April 28 and April 24

Feed Solo's bus stop ad enables life-size chatting with strangers (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Thursday April 26, 2007 @02:32AM

Filed under: Cellphones

Hot on the heels of Nokia's own bus stop gimmick comes none other than Solo, which has erected a clever display on a number of waiting areas to allow perfect strangers to yap it up on giant mobiles. The interactive billboards each sport a larger-than-usual flip phone, which allows curious onlookers to mash an enlarged walkie talkie button and get on the horn with a faraway stranger. The active two-way radio setup was reportedly installed in transit shelters in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, and Calgary, and the system supposedly connects users in the different cities to one another when a conversation is initiated. Unfortunately, Engadget HQ doesn't happen to reside in the land of the Canucks, so for our brethren in the north, why not stop on by and give a shout to a fellow Canadian, eh?

[Via Core77]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Submission + - High-Capacity Bandwidth Testing Software

Submitted by on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @11:33PM

An anonymous reader writes: I work for an ISP which specializes in high bandwidth (100+ megabit) fiber-based delivery solutions. As with any other ISP we sometimes have to perform troubleshooting with customers whom are reporting slow throughput. We currently have a home-grown bandwidth testing server in order to point-to-point test the throughput across our own network. Unfortunately (fortunately), customers have begun purchasing amounts of bandwidth that are capable of exceeding our testing capacity. Given a multi-gigabit network infrastructure and an on-net server with a gigabit Ethernet port, what software packages are available which can reliably test throughput approaching one gigabit? Cross-browser compatibility and 'click-here-to-test' usability should be considerations.

Feed Takara Tomy's Transformers earphones (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @10:52PM

Filed under: Portable Audio

The same folks that brought you the Optimus Prime iPod speaker dock are lobbying for your head-earned dollars once more, as Takara Tomy is betting that you just can't resist yet another Transformers gizmo to stack in your collection. This time it's throwing down a nifty set of morphing earphones, dubbed the Music Label Frenzy & Rumble, which boast a clip-on design coupled with a fold-out robot. Of course, we have sincere doubts about the sheer sound quality of these things, but let's be honest, you'll be listening a lot more intently to geeky comments as you stroll by than the LCD Soundsystem track quietly playing in the background. Start saving those pennies, fanboys and girls, as this treasure should land in the July timeframe for just ¥3,950 ($33).

[Via TokyoMango]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Submission + - Keeping Google's In-house Database Ticking

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @09:54PM

An anonymous reader writes: Short but interesting piece on the what Google did with its 12GB database when it became a challenge for the finance department. The database was split into three, says Chris Schulze, technical program manager for Google — one for the current financial planning projections, one for the actual current data from existing HR and general ledger systems, and one storing historic information. The article says Google has been using a variety of products from Hyperion (recently bought by Oracle) to manage its internal financial systems since 2001.

Journal Journal: Dazzling image captures violent birth of stars

Journal by slayermet420 on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @08:20PM

CNN is reporting about the amazing new image captured by the Hubble telescope. The image, released by NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, is more than 50 light years wide. It shows the chaotic Carina Nebula, through the birth and death of stars. It really is an amazing picture, available directly

Submission + - E8 structure finally decoded

Submitted by arobic on Monday March 19, 2007 @05:25AM

arobic writes: A group of mathematicians from US and Europe succeeded in mapping the E8 structure, an example of a Lie group. These were developed by the well-known mathematician Sophus Lie (pronounce Lee) in the last century and are used for many applications, mainly in theoretical physics. This is an important breakthrough as it could help physicists working on Grand Unified Theories (aka GUTs).

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