Interesting Uses For a USB LED Screen? 403

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday December 24, 2008 @01:57PM from the your-messge-here dept.

Hogwash McFly writes "My boss gave me one of those USB-powered red LED scrolling displays as a Christmas gift, and while cycling the usual 'I read your emails' and 'ID10T Error' messages will be entertaining for a day or two, I was wondering if it could be put to more constructive uses. The configuration file is plaintext and supports different scroll speeds, flashing, bitmaps, and WAV sounds. The font is defined as 5x5 pixels per character, also stored in plaintext as 5 hex values, one for each vertical line of pixels. A dynamically generated message could prove useful in my day-to-day work on the helpdesk, but are there any interesting uses beyond network notifications and news feeds?"

Journal SPAM: 2.26

Journal by mercedo on Monday February 26, 2007 @11:19AM

In 1936, on the 26th of February was still very cold, cold enough to have had a snowfall in Tokyo. This very day 2.26 incident occurred. This was an insurgency plotted by one sect within military. At that time military was devided by two main sects, one was moderate and the other ultranationalistic. 2.26 incident was led by the latter, ultranationalistic one.

This day happens to fall on the birthday of my love. 71 years later today it was a hot day in another meaning.

Feed Microsoft to Buy Medical Search Engine (nytimes.com)

From feed by nytfeed on Monday February 26, 2007 @11:12AM

Microsoft says its purchase of Medstory is part of an effort to build a suite of tools and services related to health care.

XPS Notebook Torn-Apart and Overclocked 24

Posted by Hemos on Monday February 26, 2007 @11:04AM from the ripping-it-apart dept.

Pelly writes "For those who are interested in seeing the inner-workings of Dell's latest XPS M1710 flagship notebook, Hot Hardware has taken the time to rip the system apart and photograph the hardware for your viewing pleasure. In addition, there's some amusing overclocking attempts which utilize the sub-zero temperatures of New Hampshire's winter weather to provide an interesting spin on the review."

Submission + - EMI: ditching DRM to cost you

Submitted by 33rpm on Monday February 26, 2007 @10:54AM

33rpm writes: EMI has told online music stores that selling its catalog without DRM is going to cost them a lot of money. 'EMI is the only major record label to seriously consider abandoning the disaster that is DRM, but earlier reports that focused on the company's reformist attitude apparently missed the mark: EMI is willing to lose the DRM, but they demand a considerable advance payment to make it happen. EMI has backed out of talks for now because no one will pay what they're asking.'

Submission + - How to Keep America Competitive

Submitted by pkbarbiedoll on Monday February 26, 2007 @10:35AM

pkbarbiedoll writes: In a Washington Times column from this weekend, Bill Gates writes,

This issue has reached a crisis point. Computer science employment is growing by nearly 100,000 jobs annually. But at the same time studies show that there is a dramatic decline in the number of students graduating with computer science degrees. The United States provides 65,000 temporary H-1B visas each year to make up this shortfall — not nearly enough to fill open technical positions. Permanent residency regulations compound this problem. Temporary employees wait five years or longer for a green card. During that time they can't change jobs, which limits their opportunities to contribute to their employer's success and overall economic growth.

Interesting read, but this argument is not new and is based on a distortion of truth. If US companies simply offered fair pay, good benefits, and a general sense of job security to US citizens there would be no reason to insource labor from other countries. Mr. Gates implies that US workers are not willing to work IT anymore. He fails to mention why. Most college students do not wish to throw away 4 years of their lives (and thousands of dollars) on a career in an industry rife with outsourcing. Mr. Gates acknowledges that most US companies are not interested in offering competitive wages, so the only solution in his eyes is to import coders willing to work for a lot less (or, outsource). This has nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with creating downward pressure on IT costs.

An Ad Upstart Forces Google to Open Up a Little 58

Posted by Hemos on Monday February 26, 2007 @10:15AM from the from-the-smallest-mustard-seeds dept.

The Firehose brought us a link from the NYTimes about Quigo. As the Times feed says: "Yahoo and Google are facing a challenge from a tiny adversary named Quigo Technologies over contextual text ads online." And while obviously not in the same financial league, it is good to see more competition in this space.

Campaign Sites Full of Vulnerabilities 36

Posted by Hemos on Monday February 26, 2007 @09:50AM from the not-surprising dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Bloggers have been buzzing about the new wave of "Web 2.0" campaign sites, but it seems that a lot of presidential candidates haven't bothered to protect themselves from cross-site scripting attacks. A blogger has found a collection of XSS vulnerabilities including the websites of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, John Cox, Newt Gingrich, Tom Tancredo, the Democratic National Committee, and even a surprise from Whitehouse.gov. Some of the holes are low-risk, but others would allow a user's accounts on the affected website to be compromised. A victim would simply have to click on a maliciously crafted link that appears to lead to the candidate's site."

Bacteria To Protect Against Quakes 81

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 26, 2007 @09:30AM from the shake-them-cilia dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "If you live near the sea, chances are high that your home is built over sandy soil. And if an earthquake strikes, deep and sandy soils can turn to liquid with disastrous consequences for the buildings built above them. Now, US researchers have found a way to use bacteria to steady buildings against earthquakes by turning these sandy soils into rocks. 'Starting from a sand pile, you turn it back into sandstone,' the chief researcher explained. It is already possible to inject chemicals into the ground to reinforce it, but this technique can have toxic effects on soil and water. In contrast, the use of common bacteria to 'cement' sands has no harmful effects on the environment. So far this method is limited to labs and the researchers are working on scaling their technique. Here are more references and a picture showing how unstable ground can aggravate the consequences of an earthquake."

Sun Releases ODF plugin for Microsoft Office 50

Posted by Hemos on Monday February 26, 2007 @09:04AM from the making-it-easier dept.

Verunks writes "Microsoft Word users now can easily import and export to the OpenDocument Format. The StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology Preview, a plug-in for Microsoft Word 2003 that allows users of Microsoft Word 2003 to read, edit and save to the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is now available"

Comment Re:$22/month for dialup!!?? (Score 2, Insightful) 179

by denofslack on Friday May 27, 2005 @06:41PM (#12660284) Attached to: Earthlink Sponsors Cheap Linux PCs

The deal part about this is that you're paying $200 over the course of a year, with no financing or interest charges.

So you pay $70 for the desktop (plus shipping) and $21 per month for the dial-up service.

I can imagine a lot of people wanting a cheap server or another pc in the home hopping on this, even if they already have broadband.

Hell, if I needed another machine, I'd do it in a heatbeat. And I'd never log into the Earthlink account, and would cancel after a year.