babycakes - Slashdot User

Website Sells Pubic Lice 319

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday May 11, 2010 @03:23PM from the gift-that-keeps-on-giving dept.

A British website called crabrevenge.com will help you prove that there is literally nothing you can't find online by selling you pubic lice. A disclaimer on the site says the creators "do not endorse giving people lice," and the lice are for "novelty purposes only." The company also boasts about a facility "where we do all of our parasite husbandry and carefully considered selective breeding." Three different packages are available: "Green package - One colony that can lay as many as 30 eggs for about $20. Blue package - Three colonies to share with your friends or freeze a batch or two for about $35. Red package - A vial of 'shampoo-resistant F-strain crabs' which can take up to two weeks to kill for about $52."

Beaver Dam Visible From Space 286

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 05, 2010 @06:41PM from the dam-big-job dept.

ygslash writes "The Hoover Dam no longer holds the title of the world's widest dam. Satellite photos of northern Alberta, Canada, show that several families of beavers have apparently joined forces to build a dam 850 meters wide, more than twice as wide as the Hoover Dam."

Comment Nothing like a biased article summary on /. (Score 2, Interesting) 277

by babycakes on Wednesday April 28, 2010 @11:51AM (#32015964) Attached to: Facebook Is Transcoding Video For iPad

So you don't like Facebook. We get it. But would it have been so hard to write an unbiased summary? Some of us use Facebook and we a) actually don't mind it so much, and b) wouldn't really call it a "waste of time". Even if it does break sometimes :-)

Office Work Ethic In the IT Industry? 709

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday January 06, 2010 @06:04AM from the asok-could-tell-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As a recent graduate entering industry for the first time at a large software and hardware company, I have been shocked at what seems to be a low standard of work ethic and professionalism at my place of employment, especially in this poor economy. For example, at my company, the large majority of developers seem to each individually waste — no exaggeration — hours of time on the clock every day talking about football, making personal phone calls, gossiping, taking long lunches, or browsing the Internet (including, yes, Slashdot!). Even some of our subcontractors waste time in this manner. Being the 'new guy,' I get stuck with much of the weekend and after-hours grunt work when we inevitably miss deadlines or produce poor code. I'm not in any position to go around telling others to use their time more efficiently. Management seems to tolerate it. I would like to ask Slashdot what methods others have used to deal with office environments such as this. Is my situation unique or is it common across the industry?"

Reflected Gravitational Waves 329

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @05:33AM from the could-prove-useful dept.

WSOGMM sends in an arXiv blog post about reflecting gravity waves. The speculation is that reflected gravity could go some ways toward explaining the odd readings being returned by Gravity Probe B. "In the couple of weeks since he introduced the idea that superconducting sheets can reflect gravity waves, Raymond Chiao from the University of California, Merced, has been busy with a couple of buddies working out how big this effect is... Chiao and co. ask how big the effect of a gravitational wave on a thin superconducting sheet is compared to the effect on an ordinary conducting sheet. The answer? 42 orders of magnitude bigger."

Review: Lord of the Rings: Conquest 68

Posted by Soulskill on Monday January 19, 2009 @01:52PM from the not-so-precioussss dept.

Pandemic Studios, having enjoyed some success with their release of Star Wars: Battlefront II, sought to bring their style of action game to the Lord of the Rings universe as well. Since both Star Wars and LotR are widely regarded as classics in their respective genres, and both have a rich, deep fan base, the task would appear to be similar in scope. Many were expecting Lord of the Rings: Conquest to be, if nothing else, a playground for Tolkien fans to revel in the environments so vividly brought to life by the movies. Unfortunately, between the short, simplistic campaign and the shallow, uninspired combat, LotR: Conquest merely relies on its name for success, failing to bring the innovation or cleverness that the franchise deserves. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.

Comment It has potential... (Score 1) 258

by babycakes on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @06:53AM (#26430523) Attached to: Microsoft Tag, Smartphone-Scannable Barcodes

I can see it having applications particularly in things like magazine adverts etc, where a QR/2D barcode wouldn't fit in aesthetically, but something with jazzy colours etc would do. It does open up the potential problem of bad registration during printing, where the colours may not necessarily line up; not a problem with a black-on-white barcode really. Having tried it, the read speed is quicker than on my Nokia N95 barcode reader, but I guess having said that, there is already an existing standard which works fine with "proper" barcode scanners and not mobile phone ones - why deviate from this, in order to accomplish the same, but with the removal from the barcode of the information required (and place it on a server somewhere else)?

Writing a Contract for GPL'd Code? 28

Posted by Cliff on Saturday February 03, 2007 @08:45AM from the dotted-t's-and-crossed-i's dept.

An anonymous reader wonders: "I am working as an independent developer for a client I have a long relationship with, and of whom I used to be an employee. I've made informal contracts in the past for development work, but this job is much more significant. Also, the client has gone to court over software development in the past; he was in the right to do so, but I need to cover myself. The product will be released under the (L)GPL and copyrighted by me, and the client will also be agreeing to open the license and give me the copyright on some code I previously developed. I plan to consult a lawyer, but I just want a little more direction before I start investing hours. Are there any resources I should know about, beyond what the FSF has to offer?"

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