Limb - Slashdot User

Passenger Avoids Delay By Fixing Plane Himself 178

Posted by samzenpus on Monday July 06, 2009 @01:11PM from the flying-the-diy-skies dept.

It would be a shame if an engineer on a recent Thomas Cook Airlines flight doesn't get a complimentary first class upgrade every time he flies. The engineer was on flight TCX9641 when it was announced that the trip would be delayed eight hours, while a mechanic was flown in to fix a problem. Luckily for the other passengers, the engineer happened to work for Thomsonfly Airlines, which has a reciprocal maintenance agreement with Thomas Cook. After about 35 minutes the man fixed the problem and the flight was on its way. A spokeswoman for Thomas Cook said, "When they announced there was a technical problem he came forward and said who he was. We checked his licence and verified he was who he said he was, and he was able to fix the problem to avoid the delay. We are very grateful that he was on the flight that day."

Comment Re:He needs to think twice (Score 1) 264

by Limb on Friday January 16, 2009 @06:36PM (#26489887) Attached to: Wireless Internet Access Uses Visible Light, Not Radio Waves

. Why don't we stick to that instead of trying to use something that does?

Because that wouldn't make for a very slashdot worthy story, now would it? Useful information finding itself onto the front page? BLASPHEMY!

Comment Re:Pictures? (Score 1) 86

by Limb on Sunday January 11, 2009 @03:24PM (#26408815) Attached to: Chandrayaan Maps Apollo Missions

Thats exactly what I'm wondering... no mention at all in the article.

Comment I'm gonna venture a guess.. (Score 1) 301

by Limb on Sunday November 09, 2008 @10:53PM (#25699553) Attached to: Study Finds iPhone Twice As Reliable As BlackBerry

And say that the reason blackberry's have such a higher failure rate, is due to the business aspect. How many iPhones are actually being used as enterprise devices as opposed to iPhones? The iPhone is hardly a real enterprise device, no matter how hard apple is trying to push it. It lacks true Word processing support, hell even copy and paste is missing. If I had a job that required me to have a reliable phone that fit the needs of my job in the field, I'd trade in my iPhone in for a blackberry or any other smart device. Consumers are far less to get a phone replaced then a business user. I know people who have iPhones that I would barely describe as usable, but haven't gotten them repaired. Why? Because it's not a necessity to something like their job. Does anyone know what the actual iPhone vs Blackberry/Other Smartphone share is in actual enterprises?

A History of Copy Protection 536

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday June 09, 2008 @05:30PM from the you-can-never-have-too-many-secret-decoder-rings dept.

GamerGirll1138 writes to tell us Next-gen has an amusing walk down memory lane with their history of copy protection. There have been some crazy schemes over the years to ensure that you paid for your software, everything from super-secret decoder rings to ridiculous document checks. "With bandwidth expanding and more and more games publishers exploring digital distribution, there's little doubt that we're entering a new phase in the history of copy protection and those who would defeat it. What's more, the demand for games as a chosen form of entertainment has never been higher. All this considered, it's impossible to believe that the cat-and-mouse game of piracy and copy protection will not reach new levels of intensity, with new technologies deployed on each side, and that some of them will surely create new hurdles for even those who simply wish to purchase and play the newest games. Ah, for the heady days of the code wheel."

Submission + - Mission-critical hospital systems on Linux (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

jcatcw

on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @10:09AM

jcatcw writes: "Health care software vendor McKesson Provider Technologies is focusing on ways to cut IT costs for customers, including hospitals and medical offices. The cure is moving many of McKesson's medical software applications to Linux, which can then be used on less expensive commodity hardware instead of expensive mainframes. A deal with Red Hat allows McKesson to offer its software in a top-to-bottom package for mission-critical hospital IT systems."

Remains of Shattered Moon Found in Saturn's Rings 112

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 24, 2007 @11:43PM from the deathstar-wanted-for-questioning dept.

Riding with Robots writes "Scientists have announced that they have used images from the robotic spacecraft Cassini to find moonlets embedded in Saturn's outer rings that are likely the remains of a larger moon that was shattered by an asteroid or comet. The team from the University of Colorado at Boulder that made the discovery has now posted details and pictures."

Identity Thieves Not Big On Technology 94

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 23, 2007 @08:05PM from the not-much-hacking-involved dept.

alphadogg sends us to Network World, as is his wont, for a summary of a new study of identity theft based on the outcomes of more than 500 Secret Service cases from 2000 to 2006. Here is the study report (PDF). The AP has coverage emphasizing other slants on the findings. Among the surprises: just 51% of convicted ID thieves were sent to prison. Only 20% of the cases involved use of the Internet, and such cases may be on the decline. More perpetrators used good old-fashioned dumpster diving and stealing stuff out of mailboxes.

FBI Coerced Confession Deemed "Classified" 456

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 22, 2007 @01:24PM from the united-states-of-embarrassment dept.

Steve Bergstein is one of several who have blogged about a recent court ruling that reads like most any bestselling crime novel. Apparently, when the court originally posted their decision (complete with backstory) it detailed how a coerced confession was obtained by the FBI from Abdallah Higazy in relation to the 9/11 attacks. The details, however, were later removed and deemed "classified". "As I read the opinion I realized it was a 44 page epic, too long for me to print out. I blogged about the opinion while I read it online and then posted the blog as I ate lunch. Then something strange happened: a few minutes after I posted the blog, the opinion vanished from the Court of Appeals website! [...] The next day, the Court of Appeals reissued the Higazy opinion. With a redaction. The court simply omitted from the revised decision facts about how the FBI agent extracted the false confession from Higazy. For some reason, this information is classified."

Submission + - Viacom Wants Industry Wide Copyright Filter (pcworld.com)

Submitted by slashqwerty on Sunday October 21, 2007 @01:30AM

slashqwerty writes: Unsatisfied with the proprietary copyright filter Google recently unveiled, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman has called for an industry standard to filter copyrighted material. Mr. Dauman has the backing of Microsoft, Disney, and Universal. "They reflect the fact that there ought to be a filtering system in place on the part of technology companies," he noted. "Most responsible companies have followed that path. What no one wants is a proprietary system that benefits one company. It is a big drain to a company like ours to have to deal with incompatible systems." How would an industry standard impact freedom of speech and in particular censorship on the internet? How would it affect small, independent web sites?

Submission + - Provider of Free Public Domain Music Shuts Down (imslp.org)

Submitted by

Mark Rogers

on Sunday October 21, 2007 @12:18AM

Mark Rogers writes: "The International Music Score Library Project has provided access to copies of many musical scores that are in the public domain. It has just been shut down due to a cease-and-desist letter sent to the site operator by a European Union music publisher (Universal Edition). A majority of the scores recently available at IMSLP were in the public domain worldwide. Other scores were not in the public domain in the United States or the EU (where copyright extends for 70 years after the composer's death), but were legal in Canada (where the site is hosted) and many other countries. The site's maintainers clearly labeled the copyright status of such scores and warned users to follow their respective country's copyright law. Apparently this wasn't enough for Universal Edition, who found it necessary to protect the interests of their (long-dead) composers and shut down a site that has proved useful to many students, professors, and other musicians worldwide."

Canada May Tax Legal Music Downloads 246

Posted by Zonk on Saturday October 20, 2007 @09:42PM from the more-like-a-half-pounder-of-flesh dept.

FuriousBalancing writes "MacNN is reporting that Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download. This fee is the work of a measure proposed by the Copyright Board of Canada. About two cents would be added to every song downloaded, with 1.5 cents being added to album downloads. Streaming services and subscriptions would also be taxed, to the tune of about 6% of the monthly fee. Most interesting - the tax would be retroactively applied to every transaction processed since 1996. 'The surcharge would help compensate artists for piracy, according to SOCAN's reasoning. The publishing group draws similarities between this and a 21-cent fee already applied to blank CDs in the country; the right to copy a song from an online store demands the same sort of levy applied to copying a retail CD, SOCAN argues. The tax may have a significant impact for online stores such as iTunes and Canada-based Puretracks, which will have to factor the amount both into future and past sales.' The full text of the measure is available in PDF format."

Spirit and Opportunity Are Back Online 145

Posted by kdawson on Sunday September 02, 2007 @10:27PM from the back-after-a-good-long-hunker dept.

PinkyGigglebrain sends us news that the Mars rovers have survived the dust storms that have swept the surface of Mars for the last 6 weeks. How well they survived remains to be seen. Due to a combination of dust still suspended in the atmosphere and dust on the rovers' solar panels, they are only producing about half the power they normally would. The article is a little sparse on the exact health of the rovers but it's good to know they are still with us.

ODF Vs. OOXML File Counts On the Web 154

Posted by kdawson on Friday August 17, 2007 @02:54PM from the numbers-not-lying dept.

mrcgran writes "In eight months since Office 2007 was released to the general public (10 months since release to enterprise customers), there are fewer than 2,000 of these office documents posted on the Web. In the last three months, 13,400 more ODF documents have been added to the Web, with only 1,329 OOXML documents added. It would be hard for the Microsoft camp to spin ten times as many ODF documents added as OOXML documents, especially since 34% of those new documents were added on Microsoft.com. That isn't what I would call good traction for Microsoft's overwhelmingly dominant office suite."

How Much Are Ad Servers Slowing the Web? 363

Posted by kdawson on Friday August 17, 2007 @12:56PM from the but-not-for-firefox dept.

vipermac writes "Most of the times I have a problem with a Web page loading slow or freezing temporarily, I look down at the status bar and see that it's waiting on an ad server, Google Analytics, or the like. It seems to me that on popular Web sites the bottleneck is overwhelmingly on the ad servers now and not on the servers of the site itself. In my opinion we need a better model for serving ads — or else these services need to add more servers/bandwidth. Are there any studies on the delay that 3rd-party ad servers are introducing, or any new models that are being introduced to serve ads?"

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