calibanDNS - Slashdot User

Submission + - Harvard Physicists Bring Light to a Complete Halt

Submitted by

tetrikphimvin

on Thursday February 08, 2007 @02:31AM

tetrikphimvin writes: "In a quantum mechanical sleight of hand, Harvard physicists have shown that they can not only bring a pulse of light, the fleetest of nature's particles, to a complete halt, but also resuscitate the light at a different location and let it continue on its way.
"It's been a wonderful problem to try to wrap your brain around," said Lene Vestergaard Hau, a professor of physics at Harvard and senior author of a paper describing the experiment that appears today in the journal Nature. "There are so many doors that open up." This is also noted in Harvard's Gazette here, which includes video links."

Submission + - Solar power eliminates utility bills in U.S. home

Submitted by

skyhawker

on Thursday January 18, 2007 @03:36PM

skyhawker writes: "Yahoo! News is running an interesting article about a New Jersey home that uses solar power to provide 100% of its energy needs, including fuel for the owner's hydrogen fuel cell powered automobile. The power system is provided by Renewable Energy International, which has one of the weirdest web sites I've ever seen — the links seem to work only in IE."

Submission + - Senator to FCC: no broadcast flag for you!

Submitted by Flag waver on Thursday January 11, 2007 @04:50PM

Flag waver writes: Senator John Sununu (R-NH) will introduce legislation that will prevent the FCC from creating technology mandates for the consumer electronics industry. As a result, the FCC would be hamstrung in its efforts to revive the broadcast flag. '"The FCC seems to be under the belief that it should occasionally impose technology mandates," Sununu said in a statement. "These misguided requirements distort the marketplace by forcing industry to adopt agency-blessed solutions rather than allow innovative and competitive approaches to develop."' Sen. Sununu previously tried without success to remove the broadcast flag provisions from the massive telecommunications bill that died before reaching the Senate floor during the last Congress.

Submission + - FCC Opens Market for Cable Boxes

Submitted by

fistfullast33l

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @03:33PM

fistfullast33l writes: "The FCC rendered a decision today against a Comcast appeal that centers on integrated security features in set-top cable boxes. The decision comes at the end of a long standing feud between the FCC and Cable Companies over the matter. The result is that starting July 1st, cable boxes distributed by Cable Companies must not be tied directly to a cable provider via internal security features. This rule is viewed as the first step in creating a market for set-top cable boxes. Comcast does have the right to appeal and has said they will do so. From the article: "Several major consumer electronics manufacturers have argued that if set-top boxes weren't directly linked to the provision of cable service, they could enter the set-top market. Consumers could get a cable card from their service provider that they could insert into a set-top box purchased at a consumer electronics store. The cards would ensure that consumers could only access channels that they paid for.""

Submission + - Cisco VP Explains Lawsuit Against Apple

Submitted by

Dekortage

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @11:30AM

Dekortage writes: "The day after Apple announced its iPhone, Cisco sued over the name. Mark Chandler, Cisco's SVP and General Counsel, has posted an explanation of the suit on his blog: "For the last few weeks, we have been in serious discussions with Apple over how the two companies could work together and share the iPhone trademark. ...I was surprised and disappointed when Apple decided to go ahead and announce their new product with our trademarked name without reaching an agreement. It was essentially the equivalent of 'we're too busy.'" What did Cisco want? "[We] wanted an open approach. We hoped our products could interoperate in the future.""

Submission + - iRobot Create: Fully programmable mobile robot

Submitted by paxmaniac on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @12:56AM

paxmaniac writes: iRobot has announced Create: a new fully programmable mobile robot based on the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.

People have been hacking the Roomba since the day it came out. Well, hacking just got a whole lot easier. A command module for the Create provides a programmable 8-bit Atmel micro controller, four DB-9 ports for your own sensors, and a number of sample programs that can be compiled and uploaded to the command module via USB.

Some more details along with some cool applications here.

This looks like the perfect robotics platform for hobbyists, schools and universities alike.

Submission + - What does your dead man's switch do?

Submitted by

LqdEngineer

on Monday January 08, 2007 @11:06PM

LqdEngineer writes: "How many of the Slashdot crowd use or have used a Dead Man's Switch designed to perform some action if you don't check in for a certain amount of time? Recently, I decided to put one together using MySQL and some Cron jobs, but I wanted to see what others have their Switches set up to do in the event you fail to check in. E-mails to loved ones? Send encryption keys to friends/family? Hate mail to your boss? Has anyone ever been on the receiving end of a Dead Man's e-mail? I can't even imagine how creepy that would feel."

Submission + - Open source Flickr-like app?

Submitted by Zanguinar on Friday January 05, 2007 @05:57PM

Zanguinar writes: I've been a Gallery user for years now. I have a ton of photos, organized by albums, mainly just for use by my family and close friends. However, some of my friends have begun using Flickr. I can't say I blame them. It's got a great design, and I love the tagging concept. However, I'm not eager to store my photos on somebody else's server, and don't want to pay for the privilege, especially since I already run my own web server. But I can't find any Flickr-like software to run on my home LAMP setup. All I want is to be able to tag my photos like Flickr and be able to display them by tag, tag intersection, date, etc. Why hasn't anybody published some OSS to do this yet?

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