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Hardware Hacking

DIY USB Servo-Guided Water Gun 66

Posted by timothy from the seasonally-inappropriate dept.
An anonymous reader writes "What better way is there to learn something than by making your own DIY gadget? Here's a new video showing how to use a common hobby servo, in conjunction with a small water pump, to create a USB controlled water gun! You can use your keyboard to aim and fire at an unsuspecting passerby. Both fun and educational, this project looks like a great DIY weekend project for any IT guy, wanting to make sure people think twice before asking a stupid question!"
Communications

Extended Gmail Outage Frustrates Admins 430

Posted by timothy from the pulling-out-doesn't-sound-manly dept.
CWmike writes "A prolonged, ongoing Gmail outage has some Google Apps administrators pulling their hair out as their end users, including high-ranking executives, complain loudly while they wait for service to be restored. At about 5 p.m. US Eastern on Wednesday, Google announced that the company was aware of the problem preventing Gmail users from logging into their accounts and that it expected to fix it by 9 p.m. on Thursday. Google offered no explanation of the problem or why it would take it so long to solve the problem, a '502' error when trying to access Gmail. Google said the bug is affecting 'a small number of users,' but that is little comfort for Google Apps administrators. Admin Bill W. posted a desperate message on the forum Thursday morning, saying his company's CEO is steaming about being locked out of his e-mail account since around 4 p.m. on Wednesday. It's not the first Gmail outage. So, will this one prompt calls for a service-level agreement for paying customers? And a more immediate question: Why no Gears for offline Gmail access at very least, Google?"
Censorship

Lessig's "In Defense of Piracy" 218

Posted by Soulskill from the landlubbers-just-don't-understand dept.
chromakey writes "The Wall Street Journal is running an essay from Lawrence Lessig about the fair use of copyrighted material on the Internet. He makes the case that companies who go to extreme lengths to squash minor videos, such as Universal, are stifling creativity in the modern era. Lessig makes specific reference to a YouTube video that was hit by a DMCA takedown notice, in which a 13-month-old child is dancing to a nearly inaudible soundtrack of Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy.' Lawrence Lessig is a board member for the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
User Journal

Submission + - Japan's melody roads play music as you drive (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
Krishna Dagli
Krishna Dagli writes: "What would be the sound like inside the vehicle? Does one also feel small speed bumps?

The concept works by using grooves, which are cut at very specific intervals in the road surface. Just as travelling over small speed bumps or road markings can emit a rumbling tone throughout a vehicle, the melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes."
Privacy

Submission + - A small victory for the EFF: EFF, Telcos and NSA (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Krishna Dagli
Krishna Dagli writes: "Well this is a good news for the EFF, but will the case move on to discovery? Will telcos cooperate for their own benefit?

From the article link:
"In a victory for the EFF, Judge Vaughn Walker ruled today that AT&T, Verizon, Cingular (now part of AT&T), Sprint, and BellSouth (also part of AT&T now) must all maintain any data or papers related to the NSA spying case that Walker is overseeing in California. The EFF had requested the ruling out of concern that documents would be destroyed as part of routine data deletion practices before the case could even progress to discovery.""
Caldera

Journal Journal: Stop advertise SCO

Journal by alvil
As you all know, positive advertising is good, but negative is just better. I can't understand why there are still articles related to SCO mafia even the content is negative. They are idiotic racketeers and any mention about them, only helps to make their thing done. As I look in the textarea in the journal entry post form, IBM is in the spellchecker dictionary and SCO is underlined as an unknown word. Forget them please. Paul Graham wrote nice article
Power

Is Daylight Saving Shift Really Worth It? 652

Posted by Hemos from the questioning-the-wisdom dept.
Krishna Dagli writes "Two Ph.D. students at the University of California at Berkeley say that Daylight Saving Shift will not do any good or create any energy savings. We are already spending money for software upgrades in the name of saving energy and after reading following article I wonder has congress really studied the impact of DST shift? " I also read some back story on the concept; OTOH, I found TiVo's suggestions that I manually change everything on my Series 1 device to be somewhat...insulting.
Microsoft

Submission + - Evidence that MS violated 2002 judgement surfaces

Submitted by whoever57
whoever57 writes: In the Comes Vs. Microsoft case, the plaintiffs believe they have found evidence that Microsoft has failed to fully disclose APIs to competitors. If true, this would mean that Microsoft has violated the 2002 judgement. Once again, Groklaw has the scoop. This information has become avaialble since the plaintiffs have obtained an order allowing them to disclose Microsoft's alleged mis-behavior to the DOJ ("appropriate enforcement and compliance authorities").

Engine On a Chip May Beat the Battery 321

Posted by kdawson from the is-that-a-quarter-in-your-pocket? dept.
Krishna Dagli writes, "MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. The resulting device could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight, powering laptops, cell phones, radios, and other electronic devices." From the article: "All the parts work. We're now trying to get them all to work on the same day on the same lab bench." The goal is to do that by the end of the year.

OSCON - the Wrap-Up 49

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the fun-snippets-from-people-you-want-to-hear-from dept.
lisah writes "NewsForge's Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier has been reporting from OSCON all week and wrote a great wrap up of the event. He even had the foresight to take along a video camera while rubbing elbows with some of what Brockmeier calls the 'leading minds in open source.' Caught on tape: Kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman, Python creator Guido van Rossum, Jeff Waugh of Canonical, Greg Lund-Chaix of OSL, and OSCAMP 2006 organizer Brandon Sanders."

House Passes Ban on Social Site Access 681

Posted by Zonk from the freedom-of-choice dept.
Krishna Dagli writes to mention a C|Net story covering a House of Representatives vote on restricting access to social sites on public terminals. The bill, which passed the House in a 410-15 vote, would bar users from accessing sites like Amazon, MySpace, or Slashdot from terminals in libraries and schools. Adults would be able to 'ask permission' to access such sites. From the article: "'Social networking sites, best known by the popular examples of MySpace, Friendster and Facebook, have literally exploded in popularity in just a few short years,' said Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican and one of DOPA's original sponsors. Now, he added, those Web sites 'have become a haven for online sexual predators who have made these corners of the Web their own virtual hunting ground.'"
User Journal

Journal Journal: State Machine

Journal by Krishna Dagli
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/22/232205&tid=191&tid=185&tid=4

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