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Wireless Networking

Best Pre-Paid Data Plan For a Visit To Germany? 153

Posted by timothy from the funken-arund dept.
code prole writes "With two upcoming trips to Germany, and no readily available Internet (Wi-Fi or otherwise) in the location where we'll be staying, I'm looking for a no-contract USB stick and pre-paid data plan. Vodafone has a huge selection of USB sticks but has proven to be unresponsive to questions about data plans. And the US-based T-Mobile Help Center was clueless about getting the device in Europe and using it there. Hopefully the Slashdot community has some suggestions. Any duds to avoid?"
Cellphones

BlackBerry Bold Tops Radiation Ranking 189

Posted by timothy from the woo-top-of-the-list-awesome dept.
geek4 writes with this excerpt from eWeek Europe: "Data from the Environmental Working Group places the BlackBerry Bold 9700 as the mobile device with the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation among popular smartphones. Research In Motion's BlackBerry Bold 9700 scores the highest among popular smartphones for exposing users to the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation, according to the latest 2010 Environmental Working Group ranking. Following the Bold 9700 are the Motorola Droid, the LG Chocolate and Google's HTC Nexus One. The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules."
Science

Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot 398

Posted by timothy from the more-guns-less-crime dept.
cremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."
Microsoft

Visual Studio 2010 Forces Tab Indenting 390

Posted by kdawson from the one-man's-readable dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For years, Microsoft has allowed Visual Studio users to define arbitrary tab widths, often to the dismay of those viewing the resultant code in other editors. With VS 2010, it appears that they have taken the next step of forcing tab width to be the same as the indent size in code. Two-space tabs anyone?"
Mozilla

Mozilla Rolls Out Firefox 3.6 RC, Nears Final 145

Posted by Soulskill from the onwards-and-upwards dept.
CWmike writes "Mozilla has shipped a release candidate build of Firefox 3.6 that, barring problems, will become the final, finished version of the upgrade. Firefox 3.6 RC1, which followed a run of betas that started in early November, features nearly 100 bug fixes from the fifth beta that Mozilla issued Dec. 17. The fixes resolved numerous crash bugs, including one that brought down the browser when it was steered to Yahoo's front page. Another fix removed a small amount of code owned by Microsoft from Firefox. The code was pointed out by a Mozilla contributor, and after digging, another developer found the original Microsoft license agreement. 'Amusingly enough, it's actually really permissive. Really the only part that's problematic is the agreement to "include the copyright notice ... on your product label and as a part of the sign-on message for your software product,"' wrote Kyle Huey on Mozilla's Bugzilla. Even so, others working on the bug said the code needed to be replaced with Mozilla's own."
PlayStation (Games)

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

Posted by Soulskill from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.
bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."

Submission + - on demand video + cms + interactive for museum 1

Submitted by remolacha
remolacha writes: I've been given the task of tech chief for a biggish art museum (1300 m2, or about 13,000 sq ft) in Spain. The museum's designers want 20 "terminals" that will offer on-demand video and interactive content. the terminals' content will change with the exhibits. many will have touchscreens, more interesting forms of input are planned as well (floor sensors, big buttons).

It's all on one floor, and the floors are raised, so I can run cabling and set up floor ethernet jacks. max cable run is 60m / 190ft. The museum may expand to 4x it's projected size once open by comandeering other floors in the building.

To give an idea of where the designers heads are, they were talking about a massive dvd changer in a closet somewhere.

I am thinking an intranet running a webserver with a CMS and flash media server, terminals running firefox in kiosk mode. I'd love to do everything on linux. does anyone have experience with a setup like this, better ideas, or advice?
PC Games (Games)

A Look At the AI of Empire: Total War and F.E.A.R. 2 58

Posted by Soulskill from the entertainingly-foolish dept.
mr_sifter writes "The newly released Empire: Total War and F.E.A.R. 2 have both been praised for their excellent AI. In this feature, Bit-Tech talks to the developers behind these games about how they handled the challenges of creating Empire's armies of thousands of AI soldiers and F.E.A.R. 2's aggressive teams of military operatives. The discussion also talks about how game AI is 'smoke and mirrors' compared to research AI, and looks at the difficulty of improving the quality of game AI." We talked about F.E.A.R. 2's engine and AI back in December as well.

Comment mc parts, ALCO in SF east bay, printing presses (Score 1) 267

by remolacha (#25479821) Attached to: Where to Find Axles, Gears For Kinetic Sculpture?

I've made several kinetic sculptures using a mixture of bicycle and motorcycle parts. The best heavy duty gearing I found was in printing presses. Nice pillow blocks, shafts, gears of all flavors.

If you're near SF there's a place in the East Bay (Hayward?) called Alco that has a huge pile of machinery that they're not supposed to let you climb around in, but if you're nice...Bring tools.

Washing machines and dryers have nice belt drives. Washing machine motors are usually dual speed (slow/fast). The slow speed is helpful for sculpture, often. Lots of pumps too if you want to move liquids around.

Shaft-drive motorcycle parts are nice, though these can be expensive even when junked.

Good Luck!

Josh Merrow
http://jmerrowstudio.com

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