dimachka - Slashdot User

Submission + - Florida Announces World's First Solar-Powered City (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by

Mike

on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @03:00PM

Mike writes: "The sunny state of Florida just announced that they will begin construction this year on the world's first solar-powered city. A collaboration between Florida Power & Light and development firm Kitson & Partners, the 17,000 acre city will generate all of its electrical needs via a 75 megawatt, $300 million solar-powered generator. The city will also use smart grid technology to manage its power and allow all inhabitants of the community to monitor their energy consumption."

Comment why do we want this? (Score 1) 154

by dimachka on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @02:50PM (#27589163) Attached to: Human Ear Could Be Next Biometric System

what happened to good old fashioned fingerprints? Or are we going for enough security that I shouldn't be able to cut off their hand to access the system? But then, doesn't this just encourage me to cut off my adversary's head?

Comment Re:Why online? (Score 1) 287

by dimachka on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @02:45PM (#27589085) Attached to: Online Storage For Lawyers?

Sort of agree with this. I'm assuming that at some point this lawyer will want to tell his clients that they shouldn't worry about him losing their files since they are backed up. Most clients won't know anything about the internet and will probably assume that if their information is stored online it is available to all the horrible hacker kids terrorizing the internet these days. I have a feeling these people would feel much more secure if the lawyer just showed them a few external hard drives and told them their data is backed up onto each of these drives, which are securely stored away from prying eyes.

Worst Working Conditions You Had To Write Code In? 1127

Posted by samzenpus on Monday April 13, 2009 @01:35PM from the 150-of-us-in-a-shoebox-in-the-middle-of-the-road dept.

sausaw writes "I recently had to write code in a hot dusty room for 20 days with temperatures near 107F (~41C); having nothing to sit on; a 64 Kbps inconsistent internet connection; warm water for drinking and a lot of distractions and interruptions. I am sure many people have been in similar situations and would like to know your experiences."

Tesla CEO Says Gov't Loan Is 99% Sure and Deserved 652

Posted by samzenpus on Monday April 13, 2009 @12:06PM from the get-your-piece-of-the-pie dept.

N!NJA writes "Two major themes of our time — the desire to achieve energy independence and the furor over public bailouts — have collided in the drama surrounding swanky electric carmaker Tesla. Late last year, a New York Times column whipped Silicon Valley innovators and bailout-weary taxpayers into a frenzy. Valley professor and writer Randall Stross wrote that Tesla was hoping for government money to produce its cars, which only the very wealthy could afford. It wasn't exactly true, since the loan was intended to produce the $50,000 Model S sedan, not the $109,000 Roadster. Still, Stross called it a risky, waste of taxpayer money that would only benefit the wealthy and bailout VCs who'd sunk money into the money-losing company. Never mind, Tesla has developed two cars on less than $200 million — compared to the $1 billion General Motors spent developing the now-deceased EV1."

NASA To Announce Module Name On Colbert Show 201

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 13, 2009 @11:14AM from the what's-in-a-name dept.

olddotter noted that NASA's Facebook page says "NASA's newest module for the International Space Station will get a new name on April 14. The agency plans to make the announcement with the help of Expedition 14 and 15 astronaut Sunita 'Suni' Williams on Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report.' The program will air at 11:30 p.m. EDT."

Eavesdropping On Google Voice and Skype 62

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday April 12, 2009 @12:43PM from the can-i-hear-you-now dept.

Simmons writes with news of research that demonstrated vulnerabilities in Skype and Google Voice that would have allowed attackers to eavesdrop on calls or place unauthorized calls of their own. "The attacks on Google Voice and Skype use different techniques, but essentially they both work because neither service requires a password to access its voicemail system. For the Skype attack to work, the victim would have to be tricked into visiting a malicious Web site within 30 minutes of being logged into Skype. In the Google Voice attack (PDF), the hacker would first need to know the victim's phone number, but Secure Science has devised a way to figure this out using Google Voice's Short Message Service (SMS). Google patched the bugs that enabled Secure Science's attack last week and has now added a password requirement to its voicemail system, the company said in a statement. ... The Skype flaws have not yet been patched, according to James." Reader EricTheGreen contributes related news that eBay may sell Skype back to its original founders.

In Defense of the Anonymous Commenter 198

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday April 12, 2009 @09:44AM from the seems-familiar dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Doug Feaver has an interesting story in the Washington Post 'in defense of the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments that washingtonpost.com allows to be published at the end of articles and blogs.' Feaver says that during his seven-year tenure as editor and executive editor of washingtonpost.com he kept un-moderated comments off the site, but now, four years after retiring, he says he has come to think that online comments are a terrific addition to the conversation, and that journalists need to take them seriously. 'The subjects that have generated the most vitriol during my tenure in this role are race and immigration,' writes Feaver. 'But I am heartened by the fact that such comments do not go unchallenged by readers. In fact, comment strings are often self-correcting and provide informative exchanges.' Feaver says that comments are also a pretty good political survey. 'The first day it became clear that a federal bailout of Wall Street was a real prospect, the comments on the main story were almost 100 percent negative. It was a great predictor of how folks feel, well out in front of the polls. We journalists need to pay attention to what our readers say, even if we don't like it. There are things to learn.'"

"Tweenbots" Test NYC Pedestrian-Robot Relations 197

Posted by kdawson on Saturday April 11, 2009 @06:19PM from the heart-of-gold-beneath-that-hard-bitten-exterior dept.

MBCook recommends Kacie Kinzer's tweenbots page, which documents some of her experiments with small, anthropomorphized robots that need help. Kinzer is writing a thesis (at the Center for the Recently Possible) centered around investigating whether people in New York City will help a cute little robot to get where it's going. "Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal."

Better Living Through Nukes? 432

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday April 11, 2009 @12:19PM from the brb-registering-my-hemispherical-pool-business dept.

perkonis writes "So, you've got 23,000 nukes laying about and no one to use them on. What to do with them? Well, you blow up stuff for fun and profit. Some of the ideas range from good on paper (such as mining oil shale) to just downright bad (such as making a new Panama Canal). Making a big ditch by blowing up nukes — what could possibly go wrong?"

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