nek - Slashdot User

Comment Fixed Wireless (Score 1) 577

by nek on Saturday September 22, 2007 @07:51PM (#20715623) Attached to: What To Do When Broadband is Not An Option?

My parents live 12 miles up in the mountains facing Santa Barbara. Despite being 50 yards from the termination of a Verizon fiber optic line and being in a community of 50 densely-packed houses desperate for broadband, no company was willing to spend the tiny amount of money it would take to provide DSL for that area of the mountain. I convinced my dad that fixed wireless was an option and he found a company willing to shoot 1.5/1.5 broadband in a 13-mile line direct from a building near Santa Barbara Airport. He has pretty good latency (we do iChat AV video all the time, no problem) and no real slowdowns due to weather. He's paying $200 a month, but it's worth it (he had to buy the equipment, too, but $600 was worth it too). Look into fixed wireless.

Astronomers Find Huge Hole in Universe 628

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday August 24, 2007 @01:54AM from the no-it's-not-rosie-o'donnell dept.

realwx writes "Astronomers are surprised by a recent discovery of a space hole that is nearly a billion light years across. "Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said researcher Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota. Rudnick's colleague Liliya R. Williams also had not anticipated this finding. "What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the universe," said Williams, also of the University of Minnesota.""

Bush Commutes Libby's Sentence 1574

Posted by kdawson on Monday July 02, 2007 @06:49PM from the next-stop-paris dept.

An anonymous reader notes that President Bush has decided to commute Scooter Libby's sentence after numerous appeals failed. Libby was convicted in March of obstruction of justice in connection with the Valerie Plame affair. The President's action spares Libby from 30 months behind bars."

256GB Geometrically Encoded Paper Storage Device 462

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday November 26, 2006 @09:28AM from the passing-complicated-notes-in-class dept.

jrieth50 noted that a method of using geometric shapes combined with color to store up to 256GB of data on a sheet of paper or plastic. The article says "Files such as text, images, sounds and video clips are encoded in 'rainbow format' as colored circles, triangles, squares and so on, and printed as dense graphics on paper at a density of 2.7GB per square inch. The paper can then be read through a specially developed scanner and the contents decoded into their original digital format and viewed or played."

iPod Owners Not As Loyal To Brand As Mac Owners 299

Posted by Zonk on Friday November 03, 2006 @09:20AM from the chink-in-the-armor dept.

Virtual_Raider writes "A survey indicates that iPod owners may not be as loyal to their devices as Mac owners are to their computers, thus opening the possibility for Microsoft's Zune to enter the market. Surveyed people also indicated a high likelihood of buying the much maligned brown device. But that doesn't mean that the market is now at Microsoft's mercy." From the article: "ABI Research believes that a critical factor will be whether or not Microsoft can differentiate the Zune from competing products in some meaningful way. One differentiator, Zune's Wi-Fi peer-to-peer sharing, which Microsoft is playing up heavily, 'isn't all that compelling, at least not now,' notes Wilson. 'There's a lot more you could do with that capability.' But given the results of ABI Research's survey, Apple will need to make some big announcements in 2007 if it is to maintain its edge in the industry. Says Wilson, 'Apple needs a new high-end device that works really well and looks really cool, because other brands are catching up.'"

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