Superman Comic Saves Family Home From Foreclosure 217

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 04, 2010 @11:53AM from the more-powerful-than-an-angry-banker dept.

A couple's home was saved from foreclosure after they found a copy of Action Comics #1 in a box in the basement. From the article: "In a statement released through ComicConnect, the owner of the prized comic book said the family was still 'a little shell shocked' after the unexpected find. 'I was so nervous when I realized what it was worth,' the owner said. 'I know I am very fortunate but I will be greatly relieved when this book finds a new home.'"

Officials Use Google Earth To Find Unlicensed Pools 650

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday August 03, 2010 @01:23PM from the eye-in-the-sky dept.

Officials in Riverhead, New York are using Google Earth to root out the owners of unlicensed pools. So far they've found 250 illegal pools and collected $75,000 in fines and fees. Of course not everyone thinks that a city should be spending time looking at aerial pictures of backyards. from the article: "Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC, said Google Earth was promoted as an aid to curious travelers but has become a tool for cash-hungry local governments. 'The technology is going so far ahead of what people think is possible, and there is too little discussion about community norms,' she said."

Wendy's Robber Calls Back to Complain

Posted by samzenpus on Monday August 02, 2010 @12:51PM from the the-robber-is-always-right dept.

Nothing is more frustrating than taking the time to rob a restaurant and escape only to discover the whole job paid under $1K. It's no surprise then that the man who held up an Atlanta Wendy's called back to complain about the measly $586 he got from the heist. The robber remains at large but did call back a second time warning that the register better have more in it when he returns.

Indian Police Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers 130

Posted by samzenpus on Monday August 02, 2010 @11:05AM from the check-your-status dept.

New Delhi police have a new weapon in the battle against bad drivers, Facebook. Two months ago the police created a Facebook page that allowed people to inform on others breaking traffic laws, and upload pictures of the violations. The page has more than 17,000 fans, and 3,000 pictures currently. From the article: "The online rap sheet was impressive. There are photos of people on motorcycles without helmets, cars stopped in crosswalks, drivers on cellphones, drivers in the middle of illegal turns and improperly parked vehicles. Using the pictures, the Delhi Traffic Police have issued 665 tickets, using the license plate numbers shown in the photos to track vehicle owners, said the city’s joint commissioner of traffic, Satyendra Garg."

The Science of Caddyshack 55

Posted by samzenpus on Friday July 30, 2010 @01:28PM from the it's-in-the-hole dept.

astroengine writes "Thirty years after the release of the cult classic comedy Caddyshack, Discovery News has geeked out and gone on the hunt for any trace amount of science they can find in the movie (video). From gopher territoriality to seismic deformation, from pool poop bacteria to the color of lightning, it turns out there's quite a lot of science to talk about..."

Comment Re:Work Experience (Score 1) 834

by evildopey on Monday May 11, 2009 @08:48AM (#27905025) Attached to: Go For a Masters, Or Not?

A lot of universities and college actually offer field specific degrees with a teaching add-on. I picked out a fine Poli Sci degree with teaching add-on, and towards the end of the course work the Praxis I was administered, which sets up for Praxis II post-graduation and full teaching qualification up to high school. (My plan's to use it to teach while I work on a master's program, and then move up to college academia and instruct bachelor programs while moving towards a PhD.) Although from experience moving up the IS rank and file to management, there's a lot put into experience when you've got it to offer on top of a degree as opposed to "Oooh, I've got a bigger degree and less experience". Specially in a receeded market.

Comment Re:It should be illegal (Score 1) 564

by evildopey on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @03:44PM (#26891843) Attached to: Repairing / Establishing Online Reputation?

You can actually farm the work out through temp agencies and such sometimes too, since they generally have the ability to get background checks done for temps that have to be bonded or certified as "safe" before they're deployed to a company. It's what my company does because it's cheaper to get a bill from them for the background check, than it is to pay someone else to do it ourselves.

I don't think anyone was inferring this as an illegal background check method though parent. Girls google guys they've met and they're thinkin about datin to see what comes up. Sometimes it's a metric of if you're someone or not, since the more you've published and done, would show up on teh Google device. Just don't tell them your name is donkey porn.

Comment Re:Short answer (Score 1) 564

by evildopey on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @03:37PM (#26891695) Attached to: Repairing / Establishing Online Reputation?

C) most employers tend to have a background check done on you along with the pre-screen nonsense too.

Although, that said, if they're creepy enough to be e-stalking you, they'd click through the link to only find out it wasn't you. No issue there.

Comment Charter still sucks, even with new paint. (Score 1) 299

by evildopey on Friday January 30, 2009 @01:02PM (#26667993) Attached to: Charter Launches 60 Mbps Service

Completely unsure how Charter is in the rest of the country, but in this part of VA, Charter's a joke. Their pole wiring is maybe up to par with Cox or Comcast like, 15 years ago. They've let the network fall to poo so badly and failed to update the network, that Cox, who bought up a few small change cable systems in the area, won't even touch it because it's going to be in excess of 10 mil just to bring it up to par with the rest of the region's network. Even if Paul Allen shoots magical flying monkeys out of his bunghole, I'll never use Charter for anything other than the punchline to a joke.

Startup Hopes To Crowd-Source the Developing World 49

Posted by kdawson on Friday January 30, 2009 @12:54PM from the solving-captchas-in-cameroon dept.

GalaticGrub writes "Technology Review has an article about a startup that wants to build a business out of crowd-sourcing the developing world. The company, called txteagle, seems to be interested mainly in using local knowledge to translate information into less common languages. The Finnish cell-phone company Nokia is a partner in the project, and CEO Nathan Eagle says that it provides a good example of a Western company that could benefit from txteagle workers. Eagle explains that Nokia is interested in 'software localization,' or translating its software for specific regions of a country. 'In Kenya, there are over 60 unique, fundamentally different languages,' he says. 'You're lucky to get a phone with a Swahili interface, but even that might be somebody's third language. Nokia would love to have phones for everyone's mother tongues, but it has no idea how to translate words like "address book" into all of these languages.'"

If Windows 7 Fails, Citrix (Not Linux) Wins 638

Posted by kdawson on Friday January 30, 2009 @12:08PM from the expedient dept.

Julie188 writes "Microsoft blogger Mitchell Ashley, who has been using Windows 7 full-time, predicts that Windows 7 will fail to lure XP users away from their beloved, aging operating system — after all, Windows 7 is little more than what Vista should have been, when it shipped two years ago. But eventually old PCs must be replaced and then we'll see corporations, desperate to get out of the expense of managing Windows machines, get wise. Instead of buying new Windows 7 PCs, they could deliver virtualized XP desktops to a worker's own PC and/or mobile device. Ashley believes that Citrix's Project Independence has the right idea."

Fusion-Fission System Burns Hot Radioactive Waste 432

Posted by kdawson on Friday January 30, 2009 @11:23AM from the super-x-divertor dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A hybrid fission-fusion process has been developed that can be used in some traditional fission reactors to process radioactive waste and reduce the amount of waste produced by 99%. This process uses magnetic bottle techniques developed from fusion research. This seems like the first viable solution to the radioactive waste problem of traditional nuclear reactors. This could be a big breakthrough in the search for environmentally friendly energy sources. Lots of work remains to take the concept to an engineering prototype and then to a production reactor."

"Subhuman Project" Human Powered Submarine 103

Posted by kdawson on Friday January 30, 2009 @10:38AM from the something-fishy-this-way-comes dept.

"Inventor Ted Ciamillo and marine biologist Frank Fish (yes, that's his real name) are at work on a human-powered sub designed to cross the Atlantic. What's interesting is the highly efficient propulsion system which uses a 'tail' modeled after CAT scans of a dolphin's. From the article: 'Ciamillo and Fish say they knew they were onto something when the first prototype Lunocet, a piece of sculpted foam sandwiched between two pieces of carbon fiber, essentially swam by itself. When they released it at the bottom of a test pool, its buoyancy combined with its cambered shape generated a forward thrust that made it scoot across the tank.'"

Alaskans Prepare For Volcanic Eruption 293

Posted by kdawson on Friday January 30, 2009 @09:55AM from the anchorage-is-downwind dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Mount Redoubt, or Redoubt Volcano, is an active stratovolcano in the largely volcanic Aleutian Range of Alaska. The once quiet volcano has begun to roar once again. Its last eruption was in 1989 and geologists suggest that the next one is upon us. Alaskans who lived through the earlier eruption are stocking up on breathing masks and goggles. Starting on Friday, January 23 2009, the level of seismic activity increased markedly, and on Sunday AVO raised the Aviation Color Code to ORANGE and the Volcano Alert Level to WATCH. On the basis of all available monitoring data AVO regards that an eruption similar to or smaller than the one that occurred in 1989-90 is the most probable outcome. We expect such an eruption to occur within days to weeks." From the AP article: "Alaska's volcanoes are not like Hawaii's. 'Most of them don't put out the red river of lava,' said the observatory's John Power. Instead, they typically explode and shoot ash 30,000 to 50,000 feet high — more than nine miles — into the jet stream. 'It's a very abrasive kind of rock fragment,' Power said. The particulate has jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. 'They use this to polish all kinds of metals,' he said." The server for the Alaska Volcano Observatory appears to be overloaded and is unresponsive.

Power In Scotland From Tides and Whiskey 170

Posted by timothy on Friday January 30, 2009 @07:17AM from the plus-the-spinning-corpse-of-william-wallace dept.

tsamsoniw writes "Singapore-based Atlantis Resources Corporation, which brings to the table tidal-turbine technology, is partnering with Scotland-based datacenter developer Internet Villages International) to construct a tidal-powered 150MW 'Blue Datacenter,' InfoWorld reports. If all goes to plan, the facility will eventually be powered entirely by clean energy produced by tidal-current turbines in the Pentland Firth, the stretch of water between the far north Scottish mainland and Orkney. The firth's currents could generate 700 megawatts of electricity by 2020." And reader Mike writes "Here's something to raise a glass to: recently the Rothes consortium of whiskey and scotch distillers announced that they have partnered with Helius Energy to install a power plant fueled entirely by whiskey by-products. The completed plant will use biomass cogeneration to convert draff and pot ale from the distillery into 7.2 MW of electricity — enough to power 9,000 homes."