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Books

Submission + - Japanese develop world's fastest book scanner (ieee.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: IEEE Spectrum reports that Tokyo University researchers have developed a superfast book scanner that uses lasers and a high-speed camera to achieve a capture rate of 200 pages per minute. You just quickly flip the book pages in front of the system and it digitizes the pages, building a 3D model of each and reconstructing it as a normal flat page. The prototype is large and bulky, but if this thing could be made smaller, one day we could scan a book or magazine in seconds using a smartphone.
Programming

Submission + - VHDL or Verilog? 3

Submitted by FlyByPC
FlyByPC writes: We're in the first stages of designing a course in programmable devices at the university where I work. The course will most likely be centered around various small projects implemented on an FPGA dev board, using a Xilinx Spartan3-series FPGA. I have a bit of experience working with technologies from 7400-series chips (designing using schematics) to 8-bit microcontrollers to C/C++. FPGAs, though, are new to me (although they look very interesting.)

My question is, if you were an undergraduate student studying programmable devices (specifically, FPGAs), would you prefer the course be centered on VHDL, Verilog, a little of both, or something else entirely? (...or is this an eternal, undecidable holy-war question along the lines of ATI/nVidia, AMD/Intel, Coke/Pepsi, etc...?)

At this point, I've only seen a little of both languages, so I have no real preference. Any input, especially if you're using one or both in the field, would be very helpful. Thanks, and may all of your K-maps be glitch-free.
The Internet

Submission + - The Homeless Stay Wired

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "San Franciscan Charles Pitts has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs a Yahoo forum, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. Nothing unusual, right? Except Pitts has been homeless for two years and manages this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge. Thanks to cheap computers, free Internet access and sheer determination, the WSJ reports that being homeless isn't stopping some from staying wired. 'You don't need a TV. You don't need a radio. You don't even need a newspaper,' says Pitts. 'But you need the Internet.'"
Idle

Submission + - Smile! Urine candid camera!

Submitted by Anon E. Muss
Anon E. Muss writes: Just because you can put a camera somewhere, doesn't mean you should. Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security Theater doesn't grasp this concept. They've installed video cameras in urinals at Houston's Hobby Airport. At least they weren't sneaky about it — they posted a notice saying "Automatic infrared flush sensors also provide video monitoring for security purposes." (Insert bad joke about bashful bladder syndrome here)
Networking

Submission + - Handmade vs Commercially Produced Ethernet Cables 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We have a T1 line coming into our satellite office and we rely fairly heavily on it to transfer large amounts of data over a VPN to the head office across the country. Recently, we decided to upgrade to a 20 Mbit line. Being the lone IT guy here, it fell on me to run cable from the ISP's box to our server room so I went out and bought a spool of Cat6. I mentioned the purchase and the plan to run the cable myself to my boss in head office and in an emailed response he stated that it's next to impossible to create quality cable (ie: cable that will pass a Time Domain Reflectometer test) by hand without expensive dies, special Ethernet jacks and special cable. He even went so far as to say that handmade cable couldn't compare to even the cheapest Belkin cables.

After years in the field, I've never once ran into a problem with handmade patch cables. A lot of the media professionals I've worked with over the years have been down this same road with expensive, supposedly better cables for high end A/V installs they have all said the same thing, "The expensive cables consistently performed as well as their homemade or budget-brand counterparts, but rarely have they performed better."

My question is this: What Would Slashdotters Do? Do you create your own cable or do you bite the bullet and buy it from some place?

Comment I propose a new tag (Score 1) 358

by confuted (#23049546) Attached to: Internet Sites Biased Towards Supporting Suicide
tag: dumbstudy

If you search for sites about how to commit suicide, you'll find them. How is that surprising? The researchers search terms are so heavily biased that their conclusions are worthless. Where are the searches for "should I commit suicide?", "is suicide a good idea?" and "stop me from committing suicide"?

Also importantly, where's the study that determines the outlook of the world's population in general toward suicide? The internet isn't unfairly biased toward one stance or the other if the percentages accurately reflect views held worldwide.
Power

New Wave Power Research Rising Off Oregon Coast 158

Posted by Zonk from the less-smoky-than-coal-less-radiationy-than-nuclear dept.
necro81 writes "A prototype buoy has been launched off the Oregon coast to try generating electrical power from the ever-present waves. The OSU device works like a giant shake-up flashlight. It is one of several competing designs to take advantage of a potential clean energy goldmine. It will be years before substantial power is contributed to the grid, but several companies have received permits to develop test platforms. The New York Times has an article that surveys the current outlook for wave energy, which it compares to wind energy's prospects back in the 1980s. Concerns about impacts to wildlife and fishing remain to be answered."
Security

Submission + - Bar Codes Keep Surgical Objects Outside Patients

Submitted by
Reservoir Hill
Reservoir Hill writes: "Every year, in the United States about 1,500 people have surgical objects accidentally left inside them after surgery, according to medical studies. "When there is significant bleeding and a sponge is placed in a patient, it can sometimes look indistinguishable from the tissue around it," said Dr. Steven DeJong. To prevent this potentially deadly problem, Loyola University Medical Center is utilizing a new technology that is helping its surgical teams keep track of all sponges used during a surgical procedure. Each sponge has a unique bar code affixed to it that is scanned by a high-tech device to obtain a count. Before a procedure begins, the identification number of the patient and the badge of the surgical team member maintaining the count are scanned into the counter. When a sponge is removed from a patient, it is scanned back into the system. A surgical procedure cannot end until all sponges are accounted for. "This device will help us eliminate the human factor in our standard counting procedure," said Jo Quetsch, RN. "We are definitely able to keep track of all sponges.""
Mars

Caves on Mars? 99

Posted by CowboyNeal from the little-green-cavemen dept.
RockDoctor writes "The BBC is reporting that the photo-surveying of Mars has revealed seven suspected cave entrances in the Arsia Mons volcanic area. This has been hinted at before — long sinuous channels in the same region have been interpreted as collapsed 'lava tube' caves — but the scale of the suggested entrances (sheer drops of 80 to 130m from the surrounding surface) makes my troglodytic hands twitch for my abseiling gear."

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