Stilton_Cheesewright - Slashdot User

Old Computers Resurrected As Instruments At Bletchley Park 109

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 07, 2009 @11:29PM from the brunsviga-adding-machine-in-da-house dept.

arcticstoat writes with a snippet from bit-tech.com; musician Matthew Applegate "plans on assembling a virtual orchestra of 20 retired relics of computing at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. The choice of venue will even allow Applegate to feature the infamous Colossus Mark 2 computer in the event, which was used for code-breaking in World War II and was recently reconstructed at Bletchley Park in 2007. ... A wide selection of computing fossils be used in Applegate's final musical presentation, which is called 'Obsolete?' This includes the Elliot 803 (a 1960s machine with 4KB of memory), the aforementioned Colossus Mark 2, a Bunsviga adding machine (pictured) and a punch card machine. As well as this, there are also some machines that will look nostalgically familiar to kids who grew up with the home computer generation, including a BBC Micro, an Atari 800XL, a Dragon 32 and an Amstrad CPC464." The article's list of the members of this "orchestra" makes an interesting checklist of computer hardware history.

Comment Re:depends on price of gas? (Score 1) 769

by Stilton_Cheesewright on Friday March 06, 2009 @01:50PM (#27093583) Attached to: GM Cornered Into Defending the Volt

The article states" "High fuel prices, low-cost batteries, or high carbon taxes combined with low carbon electricity generation would make small-capacity PHEVs cost-effective for a wide range of drivers."

Higher (carbon) taxes are certainly on the way in the US.

Higher fuel prices are probably on the way.

Cheer up, GM.

Comment Re:I LOVE stories like this (Score 1) 371

by Stilton_Cheesewright on Friday February 20, 2009 @04:52PM (#26934527) Attached to: Space Based Solar Power Within a Decade?

It is just so stinking ridiculous that you ask yourself, "how in God's green earth did they EVER get anyone to pay them money to build that thing?"

Uncle Sam?

The stimulus bill contains "an additional amount for `Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy', $16,800,000,000."

Bet they could get some of that.

Researchers Hack Biometric Faces 244

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @09:35PM from the face-off dept.

yahoi sends in news from a week or so back: "Vietnamese researchers have cracked the facial recognition technology used for authentication in Lenovo, Asus, and Toshiba laptops in lieu of the standard logon/password. The researchers were able to easily bypass the biometric authentication system built into the laptops by using photos of an authorized user, as well as by presenting multiple phony facial images in brute-force attacks. One of the researchers will demonstrate the hack at Black Hat DC this week. He says the laptop makers should remove the facial biometrics feature from their products because the vulnerability of this technology can't be fixed."

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