megajini - Slashdot User

Boy Killed By Exploding Office Chair 35

Posted by samzenpus on Friday February 20, 2009 @03:49PM from the sit-very-slowly dept.

The Land of Smeg writes "A fourteen-year-old boy was killed after the chair he was sitting on exploded, propelling sharp chairs parts into his rectum, resulting in extensive bleeding, to which he succumbed before medical attention could stem the flow. The chair in question was a standard gas cylinder type, where the height is regulated by an adjustable cylinder containing highly pressurized gas, and it was this which exploded, sending high velocity chair parts into the posterior of the unfortunate youth."

Video Shows Easy Hacking of E-Voting Machines 254

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 09, 2008 @10:47AM from the stick-to-gambling-machines-kid dept.

Mike writes "The Security Group at the University of California in Santa Barbara has released the video that shows the attacks carried out against the Sequoia voting system. The video shows an attack where a virus-like software spreads across the voting system. The coolest part of the video is the one that shows how the 'brainwashed' voting terminals can use different techniques to change the votes even when a paper audit trail is used. Pretty scary stuff. The video is absolute proof that these types of attacks are indeed feasible and not just a conspiracy theory. Also, the part that shows how the 'tamperproof' seals can be completely bypassed in seconds is very funny (and quite disturbing at the same time)."

Google Will Anonymize IP Logs Faster 97

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 09, 2008 @09:56AM from the time-to-make-a-baby dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on some changes to the data retention policy at Google in response to pressure from European authorities, but also included in the article is information about why Google claims they need to retain non-anonymised data for so long. Improving services, sure, but preventing fraud? Aiding 'valid legal orders'?" Reader s0ckratees points to some commentary on the change at Google's official blog. The upshot: IP addresses in Google's logs will be anonymized after nine months, rather than 18 as previously.

"Water Bears" First Animals to Survive Trip Into Space Naked 235

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 09, 2008 @09:02AM from the if-we-could-only-rehydrate-lobsters dept.

Adam Korbitz writes "New Scientist and Science Daily are reporting the results of an intriguing experiment in which scientists launched tardigrades or 'water bears' — tiny invertebrates about one millimeter long — into space onboard the European Space Agency's FOTON-M3 spacecraft. After 10 days in the vacuum of space, the satellite returned to Earth and the tardigrades were recovered. The tardigrades survived the vacuum just fine, but exposure to the Sun's ultraviolet radiation proved deadly for most of the water bears. However, some did survive. The tardigrades are the first animals to have survived such an experiment, a feat previously achieved only by lichens and bacteria."

Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit 259

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday September 09, 2008 @08:12AM from the making-a-difference dept.

Gottesser writes "Bev Harris over at Black Box Voting has done everyone a favor and released her 2008 Election Protection toolkit as an ebook. It's like Cliff notes of Bev's 8+ years of experience on the front lines of the modern voting rights movement. The ebook presents succinct information to get individuals actively involved in the full-contact sport that is democracy. The target audience is those who believe that the political process requires more than just showing up to vote once every four years those who know that something's up with those voting machines. You may remember Bev Harris from her Emmy-nominated HBO documentary 'Hacking Democracy.' I've been working on election integrity issues in Ohio for some time now and have met Bev several times. Her work is nothing less than groundbreaking. Please check it out."

High Cost of Converting UK To High-Speed Broadband 268

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday September 09, 2008 @05:23AM from the at-least-the're-doing-the-math dept.

Smivs notes a BBC report on a government study toting up the high cost of converting the UK to high speed broadband, which could exceed £28.8 B ($52.5 B). The options examined range from fiber to the neighborhood, providing 30-100 Mbps connections for a total cost of £5.1 B ($9.3 B), up to individual fiber to the home offering 1 Gbps to each household at a cost of £28.8 B. England's rural areas could pose tough choices. In the lowest-cost, fiber-to-the-neighborhood scenario, "The [group] estimates that getting fiber to the cabinets near the first 58% of households could cost about £1.9 B. The next 26% would cost about £1.4 B and the final 16% would cost £1.8 B."

Hacking Esquire's E-ink Cover 205

Posted by kdawson on Monday September 08, 2008 @07:50PM from the be-one-of-the-hundred-thousand dept.

ptorrone writes "I picked up the Esquire E-inked cover today and took a bunch of high res photos, for the makers out there. It has a programming header, 5-pin ISP, a Microchip PIC 12f629 which is flash programmable, 8 pin, 6 lithium coin cell CR2016s, 3 volts each. Two E-ink screens with flex connections — looks like it was made to be reprogrammed and different screens. The top screen has 11 segments, the bottom has 3. It was designed 2008-06-04. The PCB was made by Forewin, half thickness, 2 layer board (FR4). I think someone out there will likely reflash the PIC and make the segments go on / off at different times and perhaps put other displays on it, there's a little bit of hacking to be had but not that much really."

Windows XP on Intel Mac Confirmed 627

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 16, 2006 @09:57AM from the what-do-you-want-to-do-tonight-pinky dept.

niemassacre writes "According to winxponmac.com, the contest has been won - nearly $14k to narf2006 for submitting a working solution to dual-booting Windows XP and Mac OS X on an Intel-Powered mac. A thread on osx86project.org has confirmations from several testers that the procedure works on the 17" iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. Many sets of pictures and videos (such as this installation video) are floating around (and mentioned in the thread). The solution itself should be posted soon." Poit! Congratulations to narf.

Comment Re:RoR? (Score 2, Insightful) 47

by megajini on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:28AM (#13101549) Attached to: Ruby on Rails and J2EE: Room for Both?

Hell, of course the IDE has to do the stuff that Ruby does by being dynamic. Example: For ActiveRecord you would need

Database-Integration to generate mapping XML-files
A code generator to generate dumb classes (.java sourcecode) from bindings
Finally generate some helper classes, config and you're done

This all results from the nature of Java. But, if you do the "generator"-way this results in much snappier applications. Currently (including Hibernate) everything circles around IOC and code injection (CGLIB), thus it's hard to clearly beat RoR. To match it (on the same field) you could enhance Groovy a bit and you would practically get the same... (because Groovy is dynamic)

I would enjoy some more code-generation (with ant, that's not really a problem). This would be more the C-way (kind'a retro), but hell fast and very cool in a decent IDE (think of Class-Browsers, JavaDoc support...).

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