Comment Hot Water Heaters (Score 1) 181
Every home has one, they run year-round, and resistive heating is what they do already. Why not?
Comment Re:Similar sign-fixer in Los Angeles (Score 4, Interesting) 158
I have often wanted to change the traffic sign at the exit of the George Washington Bridge in NYC onto the Harlem River Drive from
Use Both Lanes
to
Use Either Lane
Use Both Lanes
to
Use Either Lane
Comment Simple solution for the unfaithful (Score 1) 600
You want to believe the Earth is 5000 years old? Great. Hand in your mobile phone and GPS device, relinquish all rights to CAT scans and other modern medical technology. We'll keep vaccinating you for public health and we'll provide sanitation so you don't spread cholera. Other than that, enjoy the technology of the goat herders who created your religious beliefs.
Comment Fight lysdexia! (Score 1) 151
...my favorite graffito
Comment Re: Safe Deposit Boxes (Score 1) 257
Your safety deposit box will be sealed by the bank when they learn of your death. Your family will not be able to access it until after the probate process completes, which can take months.
The only way to avoid this is to have your relatives empty your SDB *before* the bank learns of your demise. And be aware: they scan the local death notices every day.
Google Caffeine Drops MapReduce, Adds "Colossus" 65
An anonymous reader writes "With its new Caffeine search indexing system, Google has moved away from its MapReduce distributed number crunching platform in favor of a setup that mirrors database programming. The index is stored in Google's BigTable distributed database, and Caffeine allows for incremental changes to the database itself. The system also uses an update to the Google File System codenamed 'Colossus.'"
Outlook Plug-In Keeps Tone of Your Email In Check 119
Meshach writes "A new plug-in for Outlook will warn you if an email you are about to send is 'too emotional.' Basically the plug-in scans the email for emotions such as elation, humiliation, excitement and fear. A user can set how much emotion they want to allow in their messages and if exceeded the threshold a warning will pop up."
Is the Line-in Jack On the Verge of Extinction? 411
SlashD0tter writes "Many older sound cards were shipped with line-out, microphone-in, and a line-in jacks. For years I've used such a line-in jack on an old Windows 2000 dinosaur desktop that I bought in 2000 (600 Mhz PIII) to capture the stereo audio signal from an old Technics receiver. I've used this arrangement to recover the audio from a slew of old vinyl LPs and even a few cassettes using some simple audio manipulating software from a small shop in Australia. I've noticed only recently, unfortunately, that all of the four laptops I've bought since then have omitted a line-in jack, forcing me to continue keeping this old desktop on life support. I've looked around for USB sound cards that include a line-in jack, but I haven't been too impressed by the selection. Is the line-in jack doomed to extinction, possibly due to lobbying from vested interests, or are there better thinking-outside-the-box alternatives available?"
Planned Nuclear Reactors Will Destroy Atomic Waste 344
separsons writes "A group of French scientists are developing a nuclear reactor that burns up actinides — highly radioactive uranium isotopes. They estimate that 'the volume of high-level nuclear waste produced by all of France’s 58 reactors over the past 40 years could fit in one Olympic-size swimming pool.' And they're not the only ones trying to eliminate atomic waste: Researchers at the University of Texas in Austin are working on a fusion-fission reactor. The reactor destroys waste by firing streams of neutrons at it, reducing atomic waste by up to 99 percent!"
Tower Switch-Off Embarrasses Electrosensitives 292
Sockatume writes "Residents in Craigavon, South Africa complained of '[h]eadaches, nausea, tinnitus, dry burning itchy skins, gastric imbalances and totally disrupted sleep patterns' after an iBurst communications tower was put up in a local park. Symptoms subsided when the residents left the area, often to stay with family and thus evade their suffering. At a public meeting with the afflicted locals, the tower's owners pledged to switch off the mast immediately to assess whether it was responsible for their ailments. One problem: the mast had already been switched off for six weeks. Lawyers representing the locals say their case against iBurst will continue on other grounds."
Whatever Happened To Second Life? 209
Barence writes "It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. In this article, PC Pro's Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it's raking in more cash than ever before. It's a follow-up to a feature written three years ago, in which Collins spent a week living inside Second Life to see what the huge fuss at the time was all about. The difference three years can make is eye-opening."
Submission + - The tech aboard the International Space Station (cnet.co.uk)
CNETNate writes: With its own file server for uploaded Hollywood blockbusters, a 10Mbps Internet connection to Earth and a stock of IBM ThinkPad notebooks for sending emails, the amount of consumer technology aboard the $150 billion International Space Station is impressive. Yet it's the responsibility of just two guys to maintain the uptime of the Space Station's IT, and they have given an in-depth interview with CNET to explain what tech's aboard, how it works and whether Windows viruses are a threat to the astronauts. In a related feature, the Space Station's internal network (which operates over just bandwidth of just1Mbps) and its connected array of Lenovo notebooks is explained, along with the future tech we could see aboard the traveling colony as it traverses the future.
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