pluke - Slashdot User

Submission + - Building a full-auto Gauss gun (hackaday.com)

Submitted by Okian Warrior on Wednesday August 07, 2013 @11:39AM

Okian Warrior writes: Adding to the 3-d printed gun/rifle controversy, Delta-V Engineering built a Full-auto Gauss gun (aka "machine gun"), capable of firing 15 steel bolts from its magazine in less than two seconds. At 3% the muzzle velocity of a .22 it's still in the prototype stage, bullets are made from turned-down nails and the gun uses no chemical propellants. The builder has posted the design notes online. Video of the gun in action is pretty interesting.

Submission + - Math Advance Suggest RSA Encryption Could Fall Within 5 years (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @04:37PM

holy_calamity writes: The two encryption systems used to secure the most important connections and digital files could become useless within years, reports MIT Technology Review, due to progress towards solving the discrete logarithm problem. Both RSA and Diffie-Hellman encryption rely on there being no efficient algorithm for that problem, but French math professor Antoine Joux has published two papers in the last six months that suggest one could soon be found. Security researchers that noticed Joux's work recommend companies large and small begin planning to move to elliptic curve cryptography, something the NSA has said is best practice for years. Unfortunately, key patents for implementing elliptic curve cryptography are controlled by BlackBerry.

Comment Old News? (Score 1) 465

by pluke on Friday October 01, 2010 @07:43PM (#33766606) Attached to: Hawking: No 'Theory of Everything'

Hawking's 2002 paper made a similar claim with reference to Godel's Theorem. This particular position was originally proposed by a Benedictine Professor Priest, Stanley Jaki, back in the 60s.

Google's Free Satnav Outperforms TomTom 242

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday July 22, 2010 @09:25AM from the sounds-pretty-badbad dept.

Barence writes "A real-world road test of several different satnav systems has found that the free Google Maps Navigation outperformed TomTom's premium GPS unit. PC Pro put the satnavs through four different real-world tests, covering country roads, inner-city traffic and motorway driving. The Google satnav finished the four tests more than half an hour ahead of the top of the range TomTom Go 950 Live. 'For those in rural areas or people who spend hours in their car every day, we believe the investment in a dedicated satnav device or software will still pay off,' PC Pro concludes. 'But for the recreational user, it's amazing what you can get for free.'"

Comment OpenEducationDisc (Score 1) 323

by pluke on Friday February 27, 2009 @02:50PM (#27015011) Attached to: Open Source In Public K-12 Schools?

A good starting point is the OpenEducationDisc and here in the UK the guys at http://opensourceschools.org.uk/ are thinking about exactly the same sort of thing. This topic and similar come up a lot on Slashdot, as yet I feel the OSS community lacks a coherent response.

Submission + - British Village Requests Removal from GPS Maps (nytimes.com) 6

Submitted by

longacre

on Tuesday December 04, 2007 @02:29AM

longacre writes: "The tiny village of Barrow Gurney, England has asked GPS map publisher Tele Atlas to remove them from the company's maps. The reason: truck drivers using GPS navigation devices are being directed to drive through the town despite the roads being too narrow for sidewalks, and causing numerous accidents. At the root of the problem lies the fact that the navigation maps used by trucks are the same as those used by passenger cars, which don't contain data on road width or no truck zones. Tele Atlas says they will release truck-appropriate databases at some point, but until then they advise local governments to make use of a technology dating back to the Romans: road signs."

Submission + - Russia plans own moon base (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by

Socguy

on Friday August 31, 2007 @11:14AM

Socguy writes: "After being rebuffed by NASA, Russia now plans to build it's own moon base by as early as 2027.

Russia plans to send a manned mission to the moon by 2025 and establish a permanent base shortly thereafter, the head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos said Friday.

"According to our estimates, we will be ready for a manned flight to the moon in 2025," Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov told state news agency RIA Novosti. A station that could be inhabited could be built there between 2027 and 2032, he said.

While Russia will be refurbishing existing spacecraft, the U.S. is taking a different approach after the space station is finished and plans to scrap the space shuttle program in favour of a new kind of spaceship to be called Orion.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/08/31/scie nce-russia-moon.html"

Submission + - Wii breaks records in the UK (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by

pluke

on Friday August 31, 2007 @05:54AM

pluke writes: "According to the Daily Telegraph, the Wii has sold 1,000,000 units during 38 weeks in the UK. This makes it the UK's fastest selling console ever, beating the Playstation 2 (50 weeks) and the XBOX 360 (60 weeks). Some industry analysts are also reporting that the Wii has overtaken the XBOX 360 to now become the worlds market leader across console and handheld fields. http://www.vgchartz.com/"

Submission + - Google opens Gmail to all

Submitted by

Russian Art Buyer

on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @04:26PM

Russian Art Buyer writes: "CNet is reporting that GMail is now open for all, no longer restricting to "invitees only." From the article: "Google on Wednesday said its Gmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account. Previously the service, which provides users with 2.8GB of e-mail storage space, has been by invitation only.""

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