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Comment Live Free or Die Hard (Score 1) 1200

by ericn32 (#35462078) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Worst Computer Scene In TV or Movies?
Almost everything: - Fire/Life Safety systems at the FBI hacked to sound anthrax alarms... - Controlling tollways, traffic signage, cameras, and lighting simultaneously to try to kill Bruce Willis and Justin Long. - Computers that blow up on cue, in the homes of hackers that COULDN'T see a chunk of C4 in the drive bays. All done by half a dozen "hackers" in a 60 foot-long truck meandering through the streets of Washington without any police intervention Oh, and the "LoJack" still works when the FBI agents track down the hackers, even though all of the infrastructure was allegedly destroyed.

Comment Use Free Smartphone Tethering (Score 1) 438

by ericn32 (#29448821) Attached to: (Near) Constant Internet While RV'ing?
If you use a Windows phone running an unofficial (meaning not from a regular wireless carrier) ROM from the likes of xda-developers.com, you can tether your smartphone to your PC using USB or Bluetooth without paying extra for those ungodly $60 plans... And if you own any other kind of smartphone, you could use PDANet (works on any smartphone, but you'll have to jailbreak your iPhone if you use it.) The software's 20 bucks but I hear it's worth it. But if you plan on being outside of GSM/CDMA coverage areas, you'll need something like HughesNet. The only problem is that it works only if you're stopped.
Oracle

Submission + - Oracle to Increase Investment in SPARC and Solaris

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Slashdot has recently posted articles questioning what Oracle will do with Sun hardware if/when Oracle's acquisition of Sun closes. And it seems that speculation about the future of SPARC hardware has been common among Slashdot commenters for years. All that said, it seems news worthy that Oracle is going out of their way with some aggressive marketing directed at IBM and to clearly state their plans to put more money that Sun does now into SPARC and Solaris:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/10/oracle-to-sun-customers-and-ibm-were-in-it-to-win-it/
Programming

Submission + - Facebook releases open source Web server (cio.com.au)

Submitted by Dan Jones
Dan Jones writes: Ah the irony. The week Facebook is being asked to cough up source code to satisfy an alleged patent infringement, the company releases an open source Web server. The Web server framework that Facebook will offer as open source is called Tornado, was written in the Python language and is designed for quickly processing thousands of simultaneous connections. Tornado is a core piece of infrastructure that powers FriendFeed's real-time functionality, which Facebook maintains. While Tornado is similar to existing Web-frameworks in Python, it focuses on speed and handling large amounts of simultaneous traffic.
Transportation

Submission + - First Algae Car Attempts to Cross US on 25 Gallons (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by
Mike
Mike writes: "San Francisco recently saw the unveiling of the world's first algae fuel-powered vehicle, dubbed the Algaeus. The plug-in hybrid car, which is a Prius tricked out with a nickel metal hydride battery and a plug, runs on green crude from Sapphire Energy — no modifications to the gasoline engine necessary. The set-up is so effective, according to FUEL producer Rebecca Harrell, that the Algaeus can cross the US on approximately 25 gallons — a figure which is currently being tested on a coast-to-coast road trip."
Privacy

Submission + - Would you trust an insurance company's "drive- (teensafedriver.com)

Submitted by ramen99
ramen99 writes: Our new car insurance company offered us discounts for our teenage driver if we agree to install a "drive-cam" that records driving habits and wirelessly transmits video footage to a "neutral driving coach" for evaluation and comment. While this might be great to monitor a new teen driver, it will also monitor other adult drivers. The insurance company claims that they would NEVER use any information obtained to consider changes in insurance rates, but that really sounds unbelievable. Would you give up your privacy to save some dough? Installation is free, and the camera mounts just under the rear-view mirror, but something seems fishy about this...
Programming

Submission + - Alan Turing gets an apology from Prime Minister

Submitted by
99luftballon
99luftballon writes: "The British government has officially apologised for the treatment of Alan Turing in the post war era. An online petition got more than enough signatures to force an official statement and Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued a lengthy apology. "Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him." "So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better.""
Portables

Submission + - Which filesystem do you use on portable media? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Most people use MS filesystems on Disk-On-Keys, and portable hard drives, as these are readable from most machines. But this way you loose the files' permission information, which many times is very inconvenient(you must agree that having Ubuntu asking you whether to execute or display every text file or image you open from a DOK is annoying). Using "regular" Linux filesystems like ext keeps the permissions, but may require using the superuser when switching machines (as the UIDs are different). So does any of you slashdotters have a creative solution for this problem?
AMD

Submission + - AMD's DX11 Radeons can drive six 30" displays (techreport.com)

Submitted by J. Dzhugashvili
J. Dzhugashvili writes: Eat your heart out, Matrox. Whereas most current graphics cards can only drive a pair of displays, AMD has put some special sauce in its next-generation DirectX 11 GPUs to enable support for a whopping six monitors. There's no catch about supported resolutions, either. At an event yesterday, AMD demonstrated a single next-gen Radeon driving six 30" Dell monitors, each with a resolution of 2560x1600, hooked up via DisplayPort. Total resolution: 7680x3200 (or 24.6 megapixels). AMD's drivers present this setup as a single monitor to Windows, so in theory, games don't need to be updated to support it. AMD showed off Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, World of Warcraft, and DiRT 2 running at playable frame rates on the six displays.
Microsoft

Microsoft Launches Its Own Open Source Foundation 344

Posted by timothy from the said-the-spider-to-the-fly dept.
darthcamaro writes "Microsoft already had its own open source (OSI-approved) licenses, its own open source project hosting site and now it's adding its own non-profit open source foundation. That's right, the company that is still banging the patent drum against open source now has its own 501(c)(6) open source foundation. Officially called the CodePlex Foundation, it's a separate effort from the CodePlex site and is aimed at helping to get more commercial developers involved in open source. Considering how they continue to attack Linux and open source, will anyone take them seriously?"

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