Neth - Slashdot User

Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @01:32PM from the a-jetwing-and-a-prayer dept.

Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

Gamerscore Hacking and Its Underground Economy 85

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @03:43AM from the achievement-unlocked-account-locked dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There's a writeup on SpywareGuide that explores the world of Xbox Gamerscore hacking, and how high Gamerscores are proving to be a big target for hackers and phishers. It also talks about how a recent release of a Gamerscore-altering program onto forums for hacking & cheating is proving to be lucrative business for both eBay sellers and those who want to artificially inflate a Gamerscore before selling that account, or trading it for credit card details."

Submission + - Global Collaborative Music Experiment

Submitted by

hephaist0s

on Tuesday January 23, 2007 @04:25PM

hephaist0s writes: "Last year, 165 bands completed the RPM Challenge: to record an original album (10 songs or 35 minutes) during the 28 days of February as a creative exercise. The idea is get musicians to set aside the barriers that stop them from working on their music and simply devote a month to getting it done, by hook or by crook.
This year, more than 300 bands from around the world — including two groups from McMurdo station in Antarctica — have already signed up at www.rpmchallenge.com, and this time the organizers of the challenge have built into the site the ability for bands to share samples with each other. If a band chooses to upload a sample into the Sample Engine, then any other participating group can use it however they like, whether they're in Alaska, Croatia or Japan. The possibilities for global collaboration are vast!"

Blu-ray Protection Bypassed 407

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 23, 2007 @04:13PM from the et-tu-Sony dept.

ReluctantRefactorer writes with an article in the Register reporting that Blu-ray copy-protection technology has been sidestepped by muslix64, the same hacker who bypassed the DRM technology of rival HD DVD discs last month. From the article: "muslix64's work has effectively sparked off a [cat]-and-mouse game between hackers and the entertainment industry, where consumers are likely to face compatibility problems while footing the bill for the entertainment industry's insistence on pushing ultimately flawed DRM technology on an unwilling public." WesleyTech also covers the crack and links the doom9 forum page where BackupBluRayv021 was announced.

Submission + - Will lamp problems be the death blow for DLP?

Submitted by

Techno-Canuck

on Tuesday January 23, 2007 @03:21PM

Techno-Canuck writes: "Now that the DLP TVs have been in customers' hands for the last few years, there are problem histories that are being to unfold.

Toshiba DLP TV User Manuals state "The average useful service life for the lamp is approximately 8,000 hours in LOW POWER or 6,000 hours in HI BRIGHT MODE.".

However there were problems with certain 2005 Toshiba models that saw the lamp life be only 100's of hours or less. Toshiba replaced the lamps in these models at no cost and extended the lamp warranty to 2 years. Whether or not Toshiba has resolved the problem remains to be seen, as only time will give the real indication. There also seems to be lamp issues with some 2004 models as well, but Toshiba does not seem to be stepping forward to resolve the issues in this case. The customer ire is starting to rise as indicated by this review. Will there be similar problems for the 2006 models once enough time has elapsed?

Maybe the real lamp life is an average of 1500 hours as indicated by this.

Most people probably would use the information provided by Toshiba to make a decision about what the lamp maintenance costs would be for DLP ownership. However if the real lamp life time is 1500 hours, then that's a 400% increase in costs over what Toshiba is presenting to customers. The cost of a lamp is $200 or more, and for a family household that averages 6 to 8 hours of TV viewing per day, this translates to a new lamp every 187 to 250 days. Strangely enough the Toshiba warranty on a replacement lamp not covered by the original TV warranty is 180 days.

Maybe the death blow has already been struck. It appears that Future Shop, probably the largest electronics retailer in Canada, no longer carries DLP TVs in its product line."

Journal Journal: Travelling Tech + World Of Warcraft = BAN

Journal by nobuddy on Tuesday January 23, 2007 @03:19PM

My buddy for many years received bad news today. His World of Warcraft account, with multiple level 60 characters, is banned. Why? They cite logs that show logins from multiple IP's all over the place in the last few months. The kicker: they ban it just before the expansion, but release the ban on opening day. He buys, installs, and activates BC. He logs in for a few hours, and then gets kicked out. Email arrives: they have re-reviewed and decided the ban is valid, after he spent his $40 on the

Bomb Explodes At PayPal Headquarters 551

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday November 01, 2006 @01:31PM from the disgruntled-customers dept.

Pooua writes to tell us that an explosive device left outside of PayPal headquarters exploded last night. The explosion was powerful enough to knock out one of their plate glass windows but thankfully that was the only casualty of the blast. Perhaps they should have offered employee protection instead?

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