stormwarestudios - Slashdot User

Man Wants to Donate His Heart Before He Dies 456

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 29, 2010 @11:36AM from the cart-before-the-horse dept.

Gary Phebus wants to donate his heart, lungs, and liver. The problem is he wants to donate them before he dies. Gary was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in 2008. Phebus says he'd like to be able to donate his organs before they deteriorate, and doesn't consider his request suicide because he's "dead anyway."

The Physics of a Rolling Rubber Band 226

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday July 29, 2010 @08:47AM from the thank-god-that-is-solved dept.

sciencehabit writes "Modern physics can get complicated. Sure, researchers know exactly what forces act on a ball rolling down an incline — an experiment that helped Galileo develop universal laws for movement and acceleration. But what happens when a deformable shape like a rubber band rolls around? A new study reveals that the faster it goes, the more squashed it gets (video included)."

ATM Hack Gives Cash On Demand 193

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 29, 2010 @07:57AM from the one-card-bandit dept.

angry tapir writes "Windows CE-based ATMs can easily be made to dole out cash, according to security researcher Barnaby Jack. Exploiting bugs in two different ATMs at Black Hat, the researcher from IOActive was able to get them to spit out money on demand and record sensitive data from the cards of people who used them. Jack believes a large number of ATMs have remote management tools that can be accessed over a telephone. After experimenting with two machines he purchased, Jack developed a way of bypassing the remote authentication system and installing a homemade rootkit, named Scrooge."

Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar 635

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 29, 2010 @05:25AM from the sunlight-is-free dept.

js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."

Pizza Lovers Suffer Data Breach From Hell 164

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 29, 2010 @01:12AM from the hell-of-a-breach dept.

netbuzz writes "Some 230,000 New Zealanders have been informed that their personal information has apparently fallen into the hands of hackers who compromised the network of a locally famous food chain, Hell Pizza. The company says it suspects 'a rogue employee,' but one security expert says Hell's ordering portal is 'about 50 steps of fail.' Several New Zealand celebrities are among the victims and at least one is taking the matter in stride, musing: 'My Twitter has been hacked, my Facebook has been hacked and I'm pretty sure half of New Zealand has my phone number already. I have nothing bad to say about Hell.'"

AT&T Won't Block Black Hat Eavesdropping Demo 126

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @10:37PM from the enough-rope-to-hang-yourself dept.

snydeq writes "AT&T says it won't interfere with a highly anticipated talk on intercepting cell phone calls at the Black Hat conference this week. Hacker Chris Paget last week said that he plans to demonstrate on Saturday how to set up what's essentially a fake cell tower that allows him listen in on nearby mobile calls. But Tuesday, he wrote on his blog that he had 'heard that AT&T may be considering suing me to stop my talk.' AT&T, however, has insisted it has no plans to interfere with the talk."

Fly Eyes Used For Solar Cells 73

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @09:09PM from the windows-to-the-power-pole dept.

disco_tracy writes "Researchers took corneas from blow flies, fixed them on a glass substrate, added a polymer to protect the shape and then coated nine-eye arrays in nickel within a vacuum chamber. The result was a master template that retained those useful nanoscale features and can be used to make solar cells."

Chevy Volt Not Green Enough For California 384

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @08:22PM from the no-rebate-for-you dept.

thecarchik writes "The first two plug-in cars from major manufacturers will go head-to-head on warranties and lease prices: $350 a month for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, $349 for the 2011 Nissan Leaf. Now the choice shifts to other measures, including electric and overall range, as well as the plug-in perks that states like California offer to early adopters to encourage them to opt for electric cars. This is where it gets interesting. While California loves the Nissan Leaf, current regulations deny Chevy Volt buyers two significant perks: a $5,000 rebate, and permission to drive solo in HOV Lanes."

UK Courts Rule Nintendo DS R4 Cards Illegal 254

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @05:40PM from the homebrew-is-not-for-you dept.

CheShACat writes "A UK high court ruled today that R4 cards for the Nintendo DS are illegal, finding two vendors guilty of selling 'game copiers.' The ruling by Justice Floyd is quoted as saying, 'The economic effect on Nintendo of the trade in these devices is substantial as each accused device can store and play copies of many Nintendo DS games [...] The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence.' No word in the article as to what law in particular they were found to have broken, nor of the penalty the vendors are facing, but this looks like bad news for all kinds of hardware mod, on any platform, that would enable homebrew users to bypass vendor locks." Nintendo won a related lawsuit in the Netherlands recently, in addition to the one in Australia earlier this year.

Tennessee Town Releases Red Light Camera Stats 567

Posted by timothy on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @04:58PM from the let's-rethink-the-rolling-stop-at-least dept.

SonicSpike links to what he calls "a transparent look at some statistics released by a small town's red-light camera program," writing "Specifically, in the last fiscal quarter, 7,213 incidents were recorded, 2,673 incidents were rejected by the reviewing officer, and 662 incidents were not processed due to technical issues or lack of information. All in all 3,878 citations were issued between April 1 — June 30 in a town of 17,000 residents. Interestingly enough there are two nearby cities claiming that individuals 'have no presumption of innocence' when accused by the red light cameras." Fines for no-harm-no-foul rolling stops bug me, and remind me of Gary Lauder's suggestion to merge stop signs and yield signs.

Comment Stolen phones? (Score 2, Insightful) 281

by stormwarestudios on Tuesday July 20, 2010 @08:45AM (#32962730) Attached to: Apple Lays Out Location Collection Policies

So what happens when stolen phone IDs are correlated with their GPS locations? Individually, they might not make much sense, but surely a concentration of stolen phones at a singular location could perhaps help solve issues identifying the thieves?

Comment Tempest Game Engine (Score 1) 201

by stormwarestudios on Wednesday July 14, 2010 @09:43AM (#32899356) Attached to: JavaScript/HTML 5 Gaming?

My game engine, Tempest Game Engine, is intended to be a feature-rich tile-based games engine, with pluggable modules that enable developers to add their own code segments as its development progresses. Right now it's got tile based rendering, integrates with the OSS Tiled editor, a decent tile management system, and a few other bells and whistles. I'd love feedback, feel free to check out http://tge.stormwarestudios.com/.

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