Comment Re:a better cut available? anybody remix this thin (Score 5, Interesting) 175
Yes! Look for The Hobbit: The Tolkein Edit. Cuts all the crap out, trims the three to a single movie, and makes it a much better film.
Comment Reading source for months... (Score 1) 116
"You have to think about the type of people who would be able to do this and have the expertise and time to read Tor source code from scratch for hours, for weeks, for months, and find and elucidate these super-subtle bugs or other things that they probably don't get to see in most commercial software."
Come on... NSA undoubtedly has highly developed automated tools for identifying flaws source code, or at least rating the probability of a flaw existing within any section of code so that analysts can focus their time on the areas most likely to produce results.
Comment How's this different? (Score 1) 104
I remember Quake on the VFX1. Novel, but not practical for everyday gaming. How's this any different?
Submission + - DIY 4G Antenna Design for the Holidays?
eldavojohn writes: This holiday season I will return to the land of my childhood. It is flat and desolate with the nearest major city being a three hour car drive away. Although being able to hear the blood pulse through your ears and enjoying the full milky way is nice, I have finally convinced my parents to get "the internet." It's basically a Verizon Jetpack that receives 4G connected to a router. My mom says it works great but she has complained of it cutting in and out. I know where the tower is, this land is so flat and so devoid of light pollution that the tower and all windmills are supernovas on the horizon at night. Usually I use my rooted Galaxy Nexus to read Slashdot, reply to work e-mails, etc. I would like to build an antenna for her 4G device so they can finally enjoy information the way I have. I have access to tons of scrap copper, wood, steel, etc and could probably hit a scrap yard if something else were needed. As a kid, I would build various quad antennas in an attempt to get better radio and TV reception (is the new digital television antenna design any different?) but I have no experience with building 4G antennas. I assume the sizes and lengths would be much different? After shopping around any 4G antenna costs way too much money. So, Slashdot, do you have any resources, suggestions, books, ideas or otherwise about building something to connect to a Jetpack antenna port? I've got a Masters of Science but it's in Computer Science so if you do explain complicated circuits it helps to explain it like I'm five. I've used baluns before in antenna design but after pulling up unidirectional and reflector antenna designs, I realize I might be in a little over my head. Is there an industry standard book on building antennas for any spectrum?
Submission + - NASA: Curiosity has found plastic on Mars (nasaupdatecenter.us) 2
dsinc writes: Last week Curiosity was able to use its SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) device to confirm the discovery. A robotic arm with a complex system of Spectral Analysis devices was able to vaporize and identify gasses from the sample, concluding that it is in fact plastic. How plastic formed or ended up on the Martian surface is quite an exciting mystery that sparks many questions. The type of plastic sampled as we know so far can only be formed using petrochemicals, meaning not only that there could possibly be a source of oil on the Red Planet, but that somehow it got turned into plastic. Even more interesting is that oil or petrochemicals used to create this type of plastic are only known to come from ancient fossilized organic materials, such as zooplankton and algae, which geochemical processes convert into oil pointing to the earthshaking evidence that there was once life on mars.
"Right now we have multiple working hypotheses, and each hypothesis makes certain predictions about things like what the spherules are made of and how they are distributed," said Curiosity's principal investigator, Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "Our job as we explore Matijevic Hill in the months ahead will be to make the observations that will let us test all the hypotheses carefully, and find the one that best fits the observations."
"Right now we have multiple working hypotheses, and each hypothesis makes certain predictions about things like what the spherules are made of and how they are distributed," said Curiosity's principal investigator, Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "Our job as we explore Matijevic Hill in the months ahead will be to make the observations that will let us test all the hypotheses carefully, and find the one that best fits the observations."
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Geekiest way to cook a turkey? (altonbrown.com)
almostadnsguy writes: There seem to be a lot of ways to cook a turkey the geekiest ones are probably out of the realm of possibility for normal geeks. However, Within the limits of normal society (or outside if you wish) what is the geekiest way to do it. The link included is to the web site of my favorite geek celebre-chef (Alton Brown).
Comment Re:0.005$ is not enough (Score 1) 38
They do so much with so little?
My neighbor has been hired into Goddard as a contractor twice now to get two different programs back on track because they were over budget and behind schedule.
There is A LOT of dead wood at NASA. For example, he took instruments to the JHU Applied Physics Lab for shake and vibe testing because APL could do the testing in a day, while the NASA union guys would take a week for the same job.
Comment That's nutty! (Score 3, Funny) 127
Thank you, I'll be here all week!
Comment The money machine lives on (Score 1) 816
What's your bet that the next movie will suck even more than the last three?
Comment Who is being intolerant? (Score 5, Insightful) 1160
Why is the party making a statement (or video) always the one being accused of intolerance, while the recipient who can't tolerate what is being said not accused of the very same thing? I don't get it...
Comment Re:Well if they want ... (Score 1) 178
Well stated!
Comment Hacking (Score 1) 276
The fascination of the Apple II in 5th grade math lab, getting a PC when they first came out, and the arcane 8" thick code dump print outs my VM programmer father brought home drove me to learn to code. I dont think what drove us exists any more.
An area of fascination that does exist is computer and network security (ie. penetrating and defending syatems). What kid wouldnt be interested in that?
It's the angle I plan to use to get my son interested in coding when he gets a little older.
Comment Sales engineer (Score 1) 416
for a software company with products aimed at software developers. Your experience provides great credibility in that role. From there move into product management.
That's the route I took. Much more interesting than the daily development grind IMHO.
Comment Best two years of my career (Score 3, Interesting) 309
I lved in India with my family setting up some engineering teams. Best two years of my career... but also the most challenging, simply because you have no idea how hard it is to adjust to living in a foreign culture until you have to do it.
Of course, if you have a crappy boss, it'll completely suck - like anywhere else..
Submission + - Lawsuit: Windows Phone 7 Spies On Users (itworld.com)
jfruhlinger writes: "Microsoft wants to emulate the success of the iPhone, but they probably didn't want to follow in Apple's footsteps this way: a class action lawsuit claims that Windows Phone 7 is collecting location data on users, even when they request that it stop. But a look at the internals shows that Microsoft might not be acting as Big Brother-ish as it appears."
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