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Classic Games (Games)

Researchers Reprogram Voting Machine To Run Pac-man 132

Posted by samzenpus from the vote-cherry-this-year dept.
Philom writes "Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated that electronic voting machines can be reprogrammed to steal votes, so when researchers Alex Halderman and Ari Feldman got their hands on a machine called the Sequoia AVC Edge, they decided to do something different: they reprogrammed it to run Pac-Man. As states move away from insecure electronic voting, there's a risk that discarded machines will clog our landfills. Fortunately, these results show that voting machines can be recycled to provide countless hours of entertainment."
Apple

The Genius In Apple's Vertical Platform 432

Posted by CmdrTaco from the a-tad-optimistic dept.
Precision found a nice little piece of speculation on the real reason behind Apple's recent efforts to restrict app development to XCode. While the standard given reason is to kill competition from Flash and other stacks, this story speculates that the real reason has to do with the unusually large die size of the A4 processor inside the iPads. Worth a quick read.
Portables (Apple)

New MacBook Pros Launched 411

Posted by CmdrTaco from the gimme-gimme-gimme dept.
Art Vanderlay writes "Apple's new MacBook lineup has launched with a refresh to the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air models. As expected, the MacBook and MacBook Air both feature Core 2 Duo processors, as does the 13. The 15 and 17 models come with a choice of i5 or i7. Memory is 4GB across the board, with an optional upgrade. Additionally, the new line may include three different types of screen options: Glossy, High Resolution Glossy, and High Resolution Glossy with Anti-Glare. A second person familiar with the matter adds that at least some models will support 512GB of Solid State Drive (Flash) storage."
Image

Man Swallows USB Flash Drive Evidence 199

Posted by samzenpus from the chew-it-up dept.
SlideRuleGuy writes "In a bold and bizarre attempt to destroy evidence seized during a federal raid, a New York City man grabbed a flash drive and swallowed the data storage device while in the custody of Secret Service agents. Records show Florin Necula ingested the Kingston flash drive shortly after his January 21 arrest outside a bank in Queens. A Kingston executive said it was unclear if stomach acid could damage one of their drives. 'As you might imagine, we have no actual experience with someone swallowing a USB.' I imagine that would be rather painful. But did he follow his mother's advice and chew thoroughly, first? Apparently not, as the drive was surgically recovered."
The Almighty Buck

Journal Journal: Remember the fake gold bars story? 1

Journal by zogger

This appears to be the first official confirmation of the fake Tungsten filled bars being found, at a gold smelter in Germany, since that story broke late last year about the Chinese getting burned by some bars they got and getting pretty upset over it. There was all sorts of denial at the time. Allegedly this big gold smelter received the bar from some bank. This is all we have so far on this. The sound track is in German with subtitle
Crime

Scalpers Earned $25M Gaming Online Ticket Sellers 574

Posted by kdawson from the flash-crowd-at-the-ticket-queue dept.
SeattleGameboy writes "An indictment has been issued for online ticket brokers known as 'Wiseguy Tickets and Seats of San Francisco.' From 2002 to 2009, they used bots, server farms, and CAPTCHA hacking to buy vast number of premium tickets (Springsteen, Miley Cyrus, NFL, MLB playoffs, etc.) and made $25 million in profits. 'They wrote a script that impersonated users trying to access Facebook, and downloaded hundreds of thousands of possible CAPTCHA challenges from reCAPTCHA. They identified the file ID of each CAPTCHA challenge and created a database of CAPTCHA "answers" to correspond to each ID. The bot would then identify the file ID of a challenge at Ticketmaster and feed back the corresponding answer. The bot also mimicked human behavior by occasionally making mistakes in typing the answer, the authorities said.' I guess you can break any system like CAPTCHA if you want it badly enough."

Comment Crash Plan (Score 1) 1

by Scaleslea (#31199212) Attached to: Ask Slashdot - Cheap Online Backup?

Have you looked at Crash Plan? I've only looked at the home/consumer side of Crash Plan's offerings, but they also have business/server support. One advantage with Crash Plan that you don't have with other online backup strategies is that if you have multiple sites, you can back up Site A at Site B, and vice versa. On the consumer side, unless you're renting space from Crash Plan Central's servers, Crash Plan is free, but you have to pay for your own storage, or get someone to agree to let you use theirs. On the business side I'm pretty sure there are license costs for the software, but I think they are one-time costs. Again, if you have your own off-site location, you pay for your own storage, but the actual backup is free. No monthly fees, and it even has a 30 day free trial available.

Give it a look. http://www.crashplan.com/ It isn't any worse than Backblaze, Carbonite, or any of the other online backup services.

Doc
Privacy

PA School Spied On Students Via School-Issued Laptop Webcams 941

Posted by timothy from the wait-for-your-health-insurance-computer dept.
jargon82 writes "A Pennsylvania high school is using laptops they issued to students to spy on them in homes and outside of school. According to a class action filling the webcams and microphones in these laptops could be remotely activated by school officials, and have been used in this role. One student was accused of 'improper behavior in his home' and the school provided a photo taken via his laptop as proof."
Games

Lego Creating Multiplayer Online Game 99

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you'll-never-find-the-block-you-want dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Players of Lego's new MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) are tasked with a mission: help save imagination from the dark forces of evil. The bad force can be kept at bay only by users' 'imagination and creativity,' said Ryan Seabury, the creative director for the game and founder of Louisville, Colorado-based NetDevil, which is developing the game for Lego. Players cannot be killed, but they can be reduced to a pile of unassembled bricks. The idea is to play the game and collect bricks, which will allow users to build more interesting models. Lego Universe, will launch in the second half of this year and will be a subscription-based service (price not disclosed)."
Bug

The Worst Apple Products of All Time 469

Posted by timothy from the performa-was-truly-a-dog dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While Apple is frequently referred to as a leader in consumer electronic product design, the history of the company is filled with examples of poor design and questionable product strategies. This list of Apple's worst ever products includes some interesting trivia, including Apple's overpriced eWorld Internet service, their painfully bad attempt at a 'value' computer (the Performa), the much-loathed 'hockey puck' mouse, and the Apple Pippin gaming platform. The article also includes the infamous Apple III, which overheated so badly that it prompted one of the strangest repair techniques ever: 'Users were advised to pick the computer up a few inches off the ground and then drop it, hopefully jostling the chips back into position.'"
XBox (Games)

Xbox 360 Failure Rate Is 54.2% 607

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that-seems-a-bit-high dept.
Colonel Korn writes "The Seattle PI Blog is reporting that a soon to be published Game Informer survey finally shows the failure rate of XBOX 360s: 54%! The survey also shows the rates of failure for the PS3 (11%) and Wii (7%). Impressively, only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures."
Power

US Navy Tries To Turn Seawater Into Jet Fuel 402

Posted by samzenpus from the ocean-in-the-tank dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "New Scientist reports that, faced with global warming and potential oil shortages, the US Navy is experimenting with making jet fuel from seawater by processing seawater into unsaturated short-chain hydrocarbons that with further refining could be made into kerosene-based jet fuel. The process involves extracting carbon dioxide dissolved in the water and combining it with hydrogen — obtained by splitting water molecules using electricity — to make a hydrocarbon fuel, a variant of a chemical reaction called the Fischer-Tropsch process, which is used commercially to produce a gasoline-like hydrocarbon fuel from syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen often derived from coal. The Navy team have been experimenting to find out how to steer the CO2-producing process away from producing unwanted methane by finding a different catalyst than the usual one based on cobalt. 'The idea of using CO2 as a carbon source is appealing,' says Philip Jessop, a chemist at Queen's University adding that to make a jet fuel that is properly 'green,' the energy-intensive electrolysis that produces the hydrogen will need to use a carbon-neutral energy source; and the complex multi-step process will always consume significantly more energy than the fuel it produces could yield. 'It's a lot more complicated than it at first looks.'"
Robotics

Neural Networks-Equipped Robots Evolve the Ability To Deceive 116

Posted by timothy from the I-never-blinked-that dept.
pdragon04 writes "Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have found that robots equipped with artificial neural networks and programmed to find 'food' eventually learned to conceal their visual signals from other robots to keep the food for themselves. The results are detailed in a PNAS study published today."

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