Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Programming

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What is the future of standing/walking workstations?

Submitted by secretrobotron
secretrobotron writes: As a developer who spends most of each day at the same desk in the same chair, I'm concerned about ergonomics and what I can do to keep my body from wasting away while I program. Some IT professionals have the relative luxury of being able to walk around on a headset, solving problems, installing equipment, etc.. My utopia (albeit a pretty low-bar) is a world in which technology exists to allow me to walk about as I program.

My question is, what's available? Are people working on mobile-programming in this way? Are there hybrid standing workstations which allow me to take advantage of pacing-enabled programming?
Science

Submission + - Possible Issues With The Proof That P != NP

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Slashdot reported an annoncement that Vinay Deolalikar, a Principal Research Scientist at HP Labs, claimed that he has a proof that P is not equal to NP. Dick Lipton, a Professor of Computer Science at Georgia Tech, analyzed the idea of the proof on his blog. In a recent post, he explain that there have been many serious comments raised about the proof. Here is a summary of the objections that need to be answered in any subsequent development.

Comment Re:Risk Management (Score 1) 825

by secretrobotron (#33158074) Attached to: Where To Start With DIY Home Security?
I think this is the best advice/reasoning here. Until I own a home where having some sort of security system or deterrent is of any use, or even possible to install, insurance is the best option. After searching quickly, insurance companies offer insurance for all your things if they cost about a minimum of $30,000 for about $40/mo. I pay more for my cell phone. The only other element of importance that's worth stealing is the data on my machines which is backed up off-site already, and will soon be locally encrypted when I re-install Arch.
Security

Submission + - DIY Home Security

Submitted by secretrobotron
secretrobotron writes: I'm a recent university graduate from a co-op system which has kept me on the move every other semester, so I've never really had a permanent place to live, and I've never had the opportunity (or the capital) to buy expensive things. Now that I'm working, those restrictions on my life are gone and I'm living in a apartment with things I don't want stolen. I would love to build a DIY home security system, but I don't even know where to start since Google searches reveal things like diysecurityforum.com, which help only to an extent for a curious newcomer. Has anybody out there successfully built a home security system on a budget? If so, where did you start?

Feed Engadget: Duo steals hundreds of iPhones, sells them all to one person (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Cellphones

Apple's no stranger to having its wares ganked (a lot), but this one really has us scratching our noggins some kind of fierce. Apparently a couple of meddlesome 20-somethings working at a Salem, New Hampshire Apple store managed to scoot away with somewhere between 330 and 700 iPhones. After somehow stuffing that many handsets into a panel van / pickup truck / privately owned C-130, they seemingly sweet talked a single high-roller into snatching up their entire stash for upwards of $138,000 -- which could be a bargain (or not) depending on the actual quantity included in the deal, internal capacity, etc. Minutiae aside, both individuals are currently residing under the strong arm of the law, but curiously, nothing is mentioned about the buyer who didn't find spending over a hundred large with a couple of average joes (who just happened to have an inordinately large amount of iPhones for sale) the least bit odd.

[Thanks, Scott]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments


The Courts

Submission + - Large Hadron Collider sparks 'Doomsday' lawsuit 6

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: In what can only be considered a bizarre court case, a former nuclear safety officer and others are suing the U.S. Department of Energy, Fermilab, the National Science Foundation and CERN to stop the use of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) until its safety is reassessed. The plaintiffs cite three possible 'doomsday' scenarios which might occur if the LHC becomes operational: the creation of microscopic black holes which would grow and swallow matter, the creation of strangelets which, if they touch other matter, would convert that matter into strangelets or the creation of magnetic monopoles which could start a chain reaction and convert atoms to other forms of matter.

CERN will hold a public open house meeting on April 6 with word having been spread to some researchers to be prepared to answer questions on microscopic black holes and strangelets if asked.
Space

Submission + - Latest Earth-crossing asteroid passes by tonight (space.com)

Submitted by
jc42
jc42 writes: "Astronomers have been looking at the first images of asteroid 2007 TU24, the 250-meter asteroid that will pass 540,000 km from the Earth at 8:33 UTC (3:30 EST) Tuesday morning. So get your telescopes out; it's a 10th-magnitude object. Or just hold your breath as the time approaches. Maybe astronomers will get good enough numbers for its 2000-year orbit to calculate how long until it hits our planet. It might be sobering to consider that it was just discovered last October, and we know about maybe half of the objects like this in Earth-crossing orbits."
Robotics

Examining the Ethical Implications of Robots in War 369

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the come-with-me-if-you-want-to-live dept.
Schneier points out an interesting (and long, 117-pages) paper on the ethical implications of robots in war [PDF]. "This report has provided the motivation, philosophy, formalisms, representational requirements, architectural design criteria, recommendations, and test scenarios to design and construct an autonomous robotic system architecture capable of the ethical use of lethal force. These first steps toward that goal are very preliminary and subject to major revision, but at the very least they can be viewed as the beginnings of an ethical robotic warfighter. The primary goal remains to enforce the International Laws of War in the battlefield in a manner that is believed achievable, by creating a class of robots that not only conform to International Law but outperform human soldiers in their ethical capacity."
Math

Submission + - $25,000 question: Is this Turing machine universal

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica and author of A New Kind of Science, is offering a 25k prize to anyone who can prove or disprove his conjecture that a particular 2-state, 3-color Turing machine is universal. If true, it would be the simplest universal TM, and possibly simplest universal computational system — even simpler than rule 110. The announcement comes on the 5-year anniversary of the publication of NKS, where among other things Wolfram introduced the current reigning TM champion.

Feed Photos: Digital tech for the disabled (com.com)

From feed by cnetfeed
South Korea picks 10 prototypes designed to ease computing for disabled people, including a one-handed keyboard, mouth-controlled mouse and an audio player that conducts sound through bones.

Slashdot Top Deals

Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!

Close