Comment Re:Total Perspective Vortex (Score 1) 70
It sounds more like a prototype Total Perspective Vortex.
Comment Re:Been done already - Dutch Start-up "Nerdalize" (Score 2) 181
There's even an old Slashdot article
Comment Been done already - Dutch Start-up "Nerdalize" (Score 2) 181
Comment Live Pigs, too (Score 1) 219
Back in the early 80's, when I was working for a UK company called Laser-Scan, mostly doing digital cartography, we had a request about using a laser to brand bar-codes onto pigs as they went into the abbatoir. I can't remember anything coming of it, though.
Comment Otto Frisch had the answer (Score 3, Interesting) 146
Otto Frisch (one of the inventors of the nuclear bomb) wrote a spoof article: "On the Feasibility of Coal-Driven Power Stations" in 1955
The main health hazard is attached to the gaseous waste products. They contain not only carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide (both highly toxic) but also a number of carcinogenic compounds such as phenanthrene and others. To discharge these into the air is impossible. It would cause the tolerance level to be exceeded for several miles around the reactor.
It is therefore necessary to collect the gaseous waste in suitable containers, pending chemical detoxification. Alternatively, the waste might be mixed with hydrogen and filled into large balloons which are subsequently released.
Comment Drop List or censored government DNS server? (Score 1) 194
If this is just supplying a list of IPs, as Spamhaus, OpenBL and Dshield do, then it's nothing much to be concerned about. OTOH ...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spamhaus.org%2Fdrop%2F
http://www.openbl.org/
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dshield.org%2Fxml.ht...
Comment Can't lock down with random MAC addresses (Score -1) 112
Microsoft have introduced a "feature" that sends WiFi passwords to their servers and then shares them with the friends of people you have trusted,
I've locked down my WiFi by turning on MAC address based authentication in hostapd. Random MAC addresses with break this.
And no - I'm not going to bow to MS and add " _optout" to my SSID.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Comment Re:How does this differ from installing FB client? (Score 1) 203
What do we lose if we root/delete the stagefright libraries?
On my Nexus 7 tilapia / Cyanogenmod, 2015-07-26 snapshot I believe, I tried
su -
mount -o remount,rw
cd
mkdir sf.bak
mv libstagefright* sf.bak
Tried a couple of apps, seemed OK, so re-booted.
Hung on the boot spinner, didn't get as far as prompting to decrypt the user partition
Comment He could sing, too (Score 4, Interesting) 96
One of his lesser known singing roles:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...
Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected? 568
rtobyr writes "We use the Internet — E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs to communicate with colleagues, friends, and family. When I was in Iraq with the Marine Corps, we used e-mail (secured with encryption and stuff, but e-mail nonetheless) to communicate the commanding officer's order that a combat mission should be carried out. My third grade daughter produces her own YouTube videos, and can create public servers for her games with virtual private network technology. Yet here I am trusting a third grade girl to deliver memos to me about her educational requirements in an age in which I can't remember the last time I used paper. Teachers could have distribution lists of the parents. The kids' homework is printed. Therefore, it must have started as a computer file (I hope they're not still using mimeograph machines). Teachers could e-mail a summary of what's going on, and attach the homework files along with other notices about field trips or conferences that parents should be aware of. Teachers could have an easy way to post all these files to the Internet on blogs. With RSS, parents could subscribe to receive everything that teachers put online. If teachers want to add to the blog their own personal comments about how the school year is going, then all the parents would see that also, and perhaps have the opportunity to comment on the blog. It seems to me that with the right processes, the cost and additional workload would be insignificant. For example, instead of developing a syllabus in MS Word, use Wordpress. Have schools simply not paid attention to the past decade of technology, or is there a reason that these things aren't in place?"
It seems odd that primary schools in at least the U.S. don't use technology to communicate with students much. My younger sister went to a private school that made reasonable use of Blackboard, but that seems to be the exception.
US Embassy Categorizes Beijing Air Quality As 'Crazy Bad' 270
digitaldc writes "Pollution in Beijing was so bad Friday the US embassy, which has been independently monitoring air quality, ran out of conventional adjectives to describe it, at one point saying it was 'crazy bad.' The embassy later deleted the phrase, saying it was an 'incorrect' description and it would revise the language to use when the air quality index goes above 500, its highest point and a level considered hazardous for all people by US standards. The hazardous haze has forced schools to stop outdoor exercises, and health experts asked residents, especially those with respiratory problems, the elderly and children, to stay indoors."
TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old 1135
3-year-old Mandy Simon started crying when her teddy bear had to go through the X-ray machine at airport security in Chattanooga, Tenn. She was so upset that she refused to go calmly through the metal detector, setting it off twice. Agents then informed her parents that she "must be hand-searched." The subsequent TSA employee pat down of the screaming child was captured by her father, who happens to be a reporter, on his cell phone. The video have left some questioning why better procedures for children aren't in place. I, for one, feel much safer knowing the TSA is protecting us from impressionable minds warped by too much Dora the Explorer.
Debt Collectors Using Facebook To Embarrass Those Who Owe 266
Not even the tranquility of FarmVille can save you from the long arm of debt collectors. Melanie Beacham says that a collector from MarkOne Financial contacted her relatives about her past due car note via Facebook. She is filing suit alleging that the company is harassing her family. Tampa based consumer attorney Billy Howard of Morgan & Morgan says, "Now Facebook does a debt collectors work for them. Now it's not only family members, it's all of your associates. It's a very powerful tool for debt collectors to use."
Denver Rejects UFO Agency To Track Aliens 80
Republicans weren't the only ones to win big yesterday. Aliens in The Mile-High City can breathe easier thanks to voters rejecting a plan to officially track them. From the article: "The proposal defeated soundly Tuesday night would have established a commission to track extraterrestrials. It also would have allowed residents to post their observations on Denver's city Web page and report sightings." Let the anonymous probings begin!
Building a Telegraph Using Only Stone Age Materials 238
MMBK writes "It's the ultimate salvagepunk experiment, building a telegraph out of things found in the woods. From the article: 'During the summer of 2009, artist Jamie O’Shea of the organization Substitute Materials set out to test whether or not electronic communication could have been built at any time in history with the proper knowledge, and with only tools and materials found in the wilderness of New Jersey.'"
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They are called computers simply because computation is the only significant job that has so far been given to them.
