nota_bene22 - Slashdot User

The Parking Meter Turns 75 Today 126

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 13, 2010 @01:49PM from the thanks-a@#hole dept.

nj_peeps writes "75 years ago Carl Magee filed a patent application for what would become one of the most hated inventions in history: the parking meter. From the article: 'Magee's brainwave was to install a device that had a coin acceptor and a dial to engage a timing mechanism. A visible pointer and flag indicated the expiration of the paid period, meaning you either had to move, put in more money, or face the wrath of the local constabulary. The design continued largely unchanged for more than 40 years.'"

Comment Oblig. Spaceballs reference (Score 2, Funny) 541

by nota_bene22 on Wednesday May 06, 2009 @09:12PM (#27854185) Attached to: Star Trek's Warp Drive Not Impossible

Colonel Sandurz: Prepare ship for light speed.
Dark Helmet: No, no, no, light speed is too slow.
Colonel Sandurz: Light speed, too slow?
Dark Helmet: Yes, we're gonna have to go right to ludicrous speed.
Colonel Sandurz: Ludicrous speed?! Sir, we've never gone that fast before. I don't know if this ship can take it!
Dark Helmet: What's the matter Colonel Sandurz? Chicken?

With Olympics Over, China Re-Censors Internet 242

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 17, 2008 @04:50PM from the escape-from-zì-yóu dept.

eldavojohn writes "We last left the story of Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China when the IOC had reached a deal with the Chinese government whereby some of the press restrictions were lifted. With the 2008 Olympics now but a memory, China has began censoring foreign news sources again. Maybe the West is making too big of a deal over this, as many Chinese citizens seem to like it that way."

Easy, Reliable Distributed Storage and Backup? 222

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 04, 2008 @05:14AM from the grandma-needs-those-pictures-of-her-cat dept.

RichiH writes "Most of you are the free IT staff of friends and family, just as I am. One of my largest headaches is backing up their data. What I am looking for allows for off-site storage on multiple server machines running Linux, has Linux & Windows clients that Just Work and require zero everyday effort (although a large-ish effort to set them up is just fine), allows for granular access control, is versioned and will, ideally, allow me to grab data automagically (think photo pool for your family where your mother, sister, etc., share each other's photos). This is something I've been trying to find for years, but I've never seen anything even closely resembling what I want. With the Wall Street Journal handing out its Technology Innovation Award to Cleversafe recently, I was once again reminded of this particular itch which needs scratching. Before I deploy it, I want to ask the Slashdot community for its opinion on that piece of software, and on potential alternatives. How do you solve this problem?"

Vinyl To Signal the End for CDs? 883

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 29, 2007 @05:27PM from the wtb-10-disc-changer-for-my-car dept.

PJ1216 writes to mention that vinyl seems poised to make a comeback in the music industry. Some are even predicting that this comeback coupled with the surge in digital music sales could possibly close the door on CDs. "Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs. Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound. Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary."

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