ttuegel - Slashdot User

Comment Re:wishful thinking (Score 1) 743

by ttuegel on Friday January 02, 2009 @02:57PM (#26303479) Attached to: Volvo Introduces a Collision-Proof Car

I live in a state with mandatory seatbelt laws. As a driver, if I get stopped and my passengers are unbuckled, I could lose my license. The questionable nature of such a law aside, anyone who would ask me to risk that kind of legal trouble because they don't feel like using a perfectly simple safety device can drive their own car.

Comment Practical Experience (Score 1) 1117

by ttuegel on Wednesday December 17, 2008 @09:38PM (#26154373) Attached to: What Restrictions Should Student Laptops Have?

My high school did this with students in 11th and 12th grades, except without the option to buy the machine at graduation. There were no restrictions in place, and I'm not aware of any problems that ever occurred because of it. However, that may become a different story when you put them in the hands of 6th graders. At the same time, the inability to install software or use iChat makes them mostly useless. In my experience, students often found useful software (besides games) to install and iChat became a very useful tool for collaborative work. As for web filtering, I recognize the legal requirement for it on school networks, but making it follow the machine everywhere will last until an enterprising student figures out how to get the filtering software off.

Ballmer Says Google's Growth Is 'Insane' 420

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 16, 2007 @09:39AM from the doubling-the-doubled-growth-rate dept.

eldavojohn writes "Steve Ballmer spoke to the Seattle PI this week, commenting that Google's pace of employee growth is 'insane,' and the company has few successful businesses outside of Internet search and advertising. He referred to Google's non-search efforts as 'cute.' Google's current number of employees is nearly doubling each year. 'I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.' Mr. Ballmer went on complain that, in general, competition for good programmers has become an issue. Even 'hedge funds' are looking for skilled coders, making the HR fight between the two companies that much more challenging."

The Full Story On Warhawk PS3 32

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 16, 2007 @09:29AM from the rising-like-a-phoenix dept.

TimC writes "1up has up a really fantastic interview with Dylan Jobe, the director of Warhawk for PS3. He addresses why they went multiplayer, and why people shouldn't be worried about it being downloadable. 'We had a few really fun missions. But a few missions don't make a competitive single player game. They don't. The bar is set, and it's set really, really high. And we can hit and exceed that bar in a multiplayer ... Just because iTunes is available now doesn't mean that music producers say oh, now we can do crummy music. Convenience is great, but quality always wins out.'"

The Score is IBM - 700,000 / SCO - 326 316

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 16, 2007 @08:57AM from the that's-some-impressive-evidence dept.

The Peanut Gallery writes "After years of litigation to discover what, exactly, SCO was suing about, IBM has finally discovered that SCO's 'mountain of code' is only 326 scattered lines. Worse, most of what is allegedly infringing are comments and simple header files (like errno.h). These probably aren't copyrightable for being unoriginal and dictated by externalities and aren't owned by SCO in any event. Above and beyond that, IBM has at least five separate licenses for these elements, including the GPL, even if SCO actually owned those lines of code. In contrast IBM is able to point out 700,000 lines of code, which they have properly registered copyrights for, which SCO is infringing upon if the Court rules that it repudiated the GPL."

Military System Offers Worldwide Cell Access 78

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 16, 2007 @08:19AM from the why-can't-i-get-a-signal-on-the-other-side-of-town dept.

coondoggie writes to mention a technology in use by the U.S. military in remote regions of the world, which allows high-quality cell reception to reach troops. A portable box, called the Tactical Base Station Router, can serve as a gateway for cellular communications and VoIP network calls. Developed by Alcatel-Lucent, it allows deployment of reliable services in disasters, search and rescue operations, and (as has seen use in recent years) military encounters. "The TacBSR is available for U.S. government customers only ... Customers include the U.S. Army Reserve Command, which is using the TacBSR as a portable cellular system for forward-deployed operations and disaster recovery. The system allows U.S. Army Reserve Commands to take GSM-capable cellular systems anywhere they need to go ... Smaller than a laptop, the TacBSR can be used in a stand-alone configuration to enable communications for a small team or as part of a multibox mesh that supports a large geographical area."

Video Games with Shooting May Improve Eyesight 47

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 16, 2007 @08:09AM from the then-why-do-we-all-need-contacts dept.

anthemaniac writes "Playing video games that involve firing guns (Gears of War, Halo, take your pick) can improve eyesight, according to a new study. From the article: 'People who started out as non-gamers and then received 30 hours of training on first-person action video games showed a substantial increase in their ability to see objects accurately in a cluttered space, compared to non-gamers given the same test.' The games push the brain to the limit, the thinking goes, and it adapts by developing better spatial resolution. The effect was not duplicated in more sedate games like Tetris."

Exec Confirms Google Phone 120

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday March 16, 2007 @07:42AM from the let-the-battle-begin dept.

cyberianpan writes "The head of Google in Spain and Portugal has confirmed that Google is working on a mobile phone. "Some of the time the engineers are dedicated to developing a mobile phone," This could be the 20% free time development but publicizing that would be stupid. Obviously this phone could link in with Google Earth/Maps... it is a marketers dream for targeted advertising."

What Is Fair Technical Support From a Manufacturer? 50

Posted by Cliff on Friday March 16, 2007 @07:30AM from the refunds-on-products-not-ready-for-prime-time dept.

VincenzoRomano asks: "One year ago, I decided to buy some 'enterprise grade' firewalls, in order to replace the old ones used by a former ISP. Before buying, I did a bit of a survey. I browsed the product 'data sheets' from the manufacturer web sites, and in some cases, asked for more details by email. I finally choose a top product, that had been on the market for a year and a half, from a very well known and reputable company. The product showed a number of issues as soon as it was unpacked and put to work, that you would not expect from something 'enterprise grade', like not being able to keep a VPN up and running for more than a few minutes, or doing bad IP routing on our LAN. I've spent the last year to make the equipment working, accordingly to both their data sheets and the features expected from an 'enterprise grade' product. Important issues are still open while the technical support is actually relying on my own stuff and setup, and on my personal availability in order to do troubleshooting, firmware beta testing and other experiments. I've finally decided that the product was far from being ready to market or even usable for beta testers, and have requested some kind of compensation for all the job I had to do. What's your opinion about such a behavior in a company? Is it fair?"

Vista Can Run Without Activation for a Year 357

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday March 16, 2007 @06:22AM from the procrastinists-in-luck dept.

An anonymous reader gave us a heads up on this article for people who like putting things off. It begins: "Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end-run around one of Microsoft's key anti-piracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said today. Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely."

Diodes Could Drive Swimming Micro-Robots 51

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday March 16, 2007 @03:09AM from the robot-parade dept.

finisterre writes "Diodes can be made to 'swim' through salt water by hitting them with an alternating electric field. The applied field induces a current that sets up a field between the diode's electrical contacts and creates a propulsive force. The abstract of the paper in Nature Materials is freely available. New Scientist has videos of the swimming diodes in action."

C# Book Recommendations? 116

Posted by Cliff on Friday March 16, 2007 @01:45AM from the which-one-is-the-best-to-learn-from dept.

Stevecrox asks: "I'm in my final year of university and have a working knowledge of C/C++, Visual Basic, VHDL and a variety of Assembler languages, however chatting to a friend on his placement year I've been told that C# is what employers are really looking for. What book would you recommend to someone looking to learn C# with my experience?"

Enormous Amount of Frozen Water Found on Mars 442

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday March 15, 2007 @11:50PM from the or-at-least-way-more-than-before dept.

schweini writes "Space.com is reporting that the Mars Express probe's MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding) experiment has detected and measured an enormous amount of water ice near Mars' south pole, which would be sufficient to submerge the whole planet's surface underneath approximately 10m of water on average."

DSL Gateways to Fight Piracy by Marking Video 337

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday March 15, 2007 @08:47PM from the movie-dna-testing dept.

Stony Stevenson wrote with an article about home gateway devices being set up to identify video pirates. The article reads: "Home gateway manufacturer Thomson SA plans to incorporate video watermarking technology into future set-top boxes and other video devices. The watermarks, unique to each device, will make it possible for investigators to identify the source of pirated videos. By letting consumers know the watermarks are there, even if they can't see them, Thomson hopes to discourage piracy without putting up obstacles to activities widely considered fair use, such as copying video for use on another device in the home or while traveling to work."

NASA Optimistic About Fuel Tank Repairs 104

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday March 15, 2007 @07:12PM from the good-to-go dept.

DarkNemesis618 writes "NASA is now optimistic Atlantis' fuel tank will be able to be repaired in Florida. Due to a freak hail storm February 26 that had golf-sized hail chunks raining down on the launchpad put several thousand dings in the foam covering the external fuel tank as well as damaging 28 tiles on Atlantis' wing. 20 of the 28 tiles have been repaired and workers have started sanding down the damaged area of the tank itself. After it was decided that Atlantis needed to return to the VAB, NASA was unsure as to whether or not the tank could be repaired. But after bringing it back and doing more extensive inspections, the tank appeared to be in good enough shape that repairs could be done on the spot and a replacement was not necessary. This will allow for Atlantis to be launched late April for its construction mission to the ISS as well as not interfering with the remaining 4 launches planned this year. If the tank needed to be replaced, Atlantis would not have launched until June at the earliest."

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