Yanni85 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Municipal Wi-Fi: A Promise Unfulfilled? (informationweek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous on Tuesday November 06, 2007 @12:02PM

Anonymous writes: Jeff Merron writes about what's going on with municipal Wi-Fi, and how, for the most part, it didn't turn out the way city planners hoped — it was more complicated, less popular, and a lot more expensive than they thought it would be.

Submission + - Robot becomes one of the kids in classroom study

Submitted by on Tuesday November 06, 2007 @06:25AM

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers have found that toddlers treat a small robot as a peer rather than a toy. A team from the University of California, San Diego, placed Sony's QRIO in a classroom of kids aged 18 months to 2 years and watched them interact. Over time the children grew to treat the robot as one of them — playing games with the robot, hugging it, and covering it up with a blanket when its batteries ran down. AWww..

Submission + - MMORPG Used to Model Real World Disease

Submitted by Oxygen99 on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @09:47AM

Oxygen99 writes: The Times is reporting on a paper by researchers in the US who argue that the spread of corrupted blood in World of Warcraft might provide clues to the way a real world population would cope with the prospect of a global pandemic. In the study, to be published in The Lancet next month, Professor Lofgren of Rutgers University and Professor Fefferman of Tufts University, suggest that:

"If, God forbid, a disease broke out in London, you could see what would happen if people were told immediately of the risk. Would there be panic and chaos, or would it allow them to psychologically accept the danger and act accordingly? What would happen if we made people feel too reassured? These are all things that have a great impact on the number of people who would be affected. They are also things we just don't know, so [virtual games] could be of great value in helping us understand what their true emotional responses would be."

Linux Credit Card Re-Launches 178

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @05:17AM from the we're-in-the-money dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The all-new Linux Fund Visa Card launched on July 24th. The Linux Fund began in 1999, and lasted until Bank of America bought MBNA and canceled the program earlier this year. Before that time the fund had distributed $100,000 a year on average. US Bank has inked a new deal to resurrect the program with new features. Currently, the project is open to ideas for supporting well-loved and community-supported software that is underfunded. The current list of supported projects includes Debian, Wikipedia, FreeGeek, Freenode, and Blender."

Journal Journal: Another Day, Another Free Speech Arrest 2

Journal by cybermage on Monday August 20, 2007 @09:22AM

Police in Asheville, NC arrested a man for standing on a bridge overlooking the highway holding an "Impeach Bush" sign that could be read by vehicles passing by on the highway. He was charged with obstructing the sidewalk.

According to the Ashville Citizen Times, police are now looking to change the charge to something involving public safety saying:

The Linux Weather Forecast 98

Posted by kdawson on Thursday August 16, 2007 @10:54AM from the kernel-dev-roadmap dept.

kwabbles writes "The Linux Foundation launched the Linux Weather Forecast yesterday. It features 'current conditions' for kernel development, a 'short-term forecast,' and a 'long-term forecast.' Now developers and organizations that want to see when certain implementations/fixes are planned can find answers at this informative and handy site."

Journal Journal: Faster Than Light

Journal by ozmanjusri on Thursday August 16, 2007 @07:40AM

Two German scientists, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, claim to have broken the speed of light.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/scispeed116.xml

They sent beams of microwave photons through two prisms, then moved the prisms apart. When the prisms were separated, most photons reflected off the first prism into a detector, however, a few appeared to tunnel through the gap as if the prisms were still together.

Submission + - 'Overwhelmingly likely' that life began in space (scienceblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @11:32AM

An anonymous reader writes: Using data from recent comet-probing space missions, British scientists are reporting today that the odds of life starting on Earth rather than inside a comet are one trillion trillion (10 to the power of 24) to one against. Radiation in the comets could keep water in liquid form for millions of years, they say, which along with the clay and organic molecules found on-board would provide an ideal incubator.

Comment This is why I love engineering students (Score 1) 2

by Yanni85 on Friday August 10, 2007 @04:18PM (#20187833) Attached to: Man Hacks House AC Unit Onto Car

Props for creativity. I wonder how much that's going to cost him in gas mileage? More energy to run that on top of the rest of the car as well as reduced fuel efficiency from the weight and drag it'll produce.

Submission + - Schneier: Police data-mining done right (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by

enharmonix

on Friday August 10, 2007 @09:56AM

enharmonix writes: "Courtesy of Bruce Schneier, it's nice to hear something good about data mining for a change: predicting and stopping crime. For example, police in Redmond, VA, "started overlaying crime reports with other data, such as weather, traffic, sports events and paydays for large employers. The data was analyzed three times a day and something interesting emerged: Robberies spiked on paydays near cheque cashing storefronts in specific neighbourhoods. Other clusters also became apparent, and pretty soon police were deploying resources in advance and predicting where crime was most likely to occur.""

Pay-For-Visit Advertising 176

Posted by kdawson on Thursday August 09, 2007 @11:10AM from the maybe-the-fbi-will-have-to-pay-royalties dept.

theodp writes "US patent office documents released Thursday show that a startup named Pelago is seeking a patent covering Pay-For-Visit Advertising, which uses GPS, Bluetooth, or RFID on your mobile devices to track your travels to see if you wander into a place of business that appeared in an ad shown earlier on your cellphone, PDA, or laptop. To maximize ad revenue, phone calls are also tracked to see if you dial a number associated with an ad, and financial transactions are examined to see if you make a purchase from an advertiser. The application goes on to note that the system may be of interest to government agencies. Pelago just raised $7.4M from the likes of KPCB and Jeff Bezos."

A Year In Prison For a 20-Second Film Clip? 1169

Posted by kdawson on Thursday August 02, 2007 @12:01PM from the zero-tolerance dept.

PizzaFace writes "It's Jhannet's 19th birthday, so her boyfriend borrows a camcorder to memorialize the occasion, and they head to the mall. They goof around, recording each other in the food court, then decide to catch the Transformers matinee, which started a few minutes earlier. During a big action scene, Jhannet takes the camcorder and records a 20-second clip to show her little brother. A few minutes later, cops who were called by the manager come in with flashlights, arrest Jhannet, confiscate the camcorder, and, at the behest of Regal Cinemas, charge her with film piracy. 'I was terrified,' said Jhannet. 'I was crying. I've never been in trouble before.' If convicted, she could be sentenced to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine. The police say they lack discretion because Regal Cinemas chose to prosecute: 'They were the victim in this case, and they felt strongly enough about it.' The National Association of Theater Owners supports Regal's 'zero-tolerance' prosecution standard: 'We cannot educate theater managers to be judges and juries in what is acceptable. Theater managers cannot distinguish between good and bad stealing.'"

RIAA Backtracks After Embarrassing P2P Defendant 255

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @08:47AM from the lack-of-forethought-gets-them-every-time dept.

Harmony writes "When the RIAA sued Sgt. Nicholas Paternoster, it included a screenshot of a shared folder with over 4,600 files — some of which were pornographic images unrelated to the case. Last week, the RIAA got permission from a judge to, as a 'professional courtesy,' swap out the original exhibit for one with only the 350+ songs the defendant is accused of sharing on Kazaa. The RIAA's carelessness may come back to haunt it, however: 'After the suit was filed — and the exhibit made public — Sgt. Paternoster decided to fight back, filing a counterclaim accusing the RIAA of violating his privacy and seeking to "shame Counter-Plaintiff... into giving in to their unreasonable demands regarding their copyrighted materials."'"

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