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Cooking With Your USB Ports 188

Posted by samzenpus from the sorry-your-dinner-crashed dept.
tekgoblin writes "Wow, I would never have thought to try and cook food with the power that a standard USB port provides, but someone did. A standard port provides 5V of power, give or take a little. I am not even sure what it takes to heat a small hotplate, but I am sure it is more than 5V. It looks like the guy tied together around 30 USB cables powered by his PC to power this small hotplate. But believe it or not, it seems to have cooked the meat perfectly."
PlayStation (Games)

Best Buy Unapologetic About Charging For PS3 Firmware Updates 454

Posted by Soulskill from the a-fool-and-his-money dept.
donniebaseball23 writes "After discovering that electronics retailer Best Buy was charging ignorant customers $30 for the 'service' of installing updated firmware on PS3s, IndustryGamers got word from the company on its policy. Best Buy sees no problem with charging for this convenience, even though it's something Sony provides to PS3 owners completely free. 'While many gamers can handle firmware upgrades easily on their own, those customers who do want help can get it from Geek Squad, and we continue to evaluate this offering to ensure it meets their needs. The service goes beyond a firmware updates, and includes user account setup, parental control setup and other components,' a representative said."

Comment Web OS never gets in the way (Score 1) 236

by expressovi (#32040322) Attached to: Does HP + Palm = Facepalm?

I've said it time and time again--Apps are not a major decision factor for me when purchasing a smartphone ; they're great but I'm looking for something that at the core does email, messaging, contacts, calendars and calling really, really, well. This palm pre in my hand is truly a revolutionary device...The iphone cannot touch it. It doesn't matter that I'm coming from a 1st gen iphone, the OS and user interface are pretty much the same up through the 3gs...Finally I'm not fighting my phone.

Another post from me over at precentral:
My Last post was when I first purchased the Pre back in December of 09.
I'm not going to rehash what's already out there...just point out things that surprised me coming from the iPhone.

THE GOOD: WEB OS is the mobile platform of the future, here NOW. Notifications are handled unobtrusively and elegantly: Receive an email? Miss a Call? New track playing (music app, even Pandora!!!). Get a new mention on twitter (tweed does not req. that app be open to receive notifications). A slick news ticker style bar keeps these constant streams of information organized and always at my finger tips. This is much more efficient than the pop up/ badge notification system on my iphone.

USB drive mode. This means freedom from that headache of a program iTunes. +1 palm, +1

The Physical Keyboard is awesome. It's great to be able to A - keep all of my screen real estate while entering in text fields and B- have the ability to search for just about anything from contacts to google from any screen.

The Back Panel Mirror is a slick touch...and much appreciated for the times I need to do a quick once over.

The convenience of always having the system menu at the top. I can instantly toggle wifi, bluetooth, led flashlight (nifty patch, hehe), and airplane mode no matter what application is in use.. On my iPhone to toggle anything I had to close my app...open the pref. app, toggle, then close that pref. app and re-open the previous app. Needless to say a huge waste of time!

TOUCHSTONE: Love how easy it is to charge and the auto speaker/ auto answer features that are enabled when mounted to the base.

I think in the long haul, WEB OS will come out as a top performer with widespread adoption.
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Man Put On "No-Fly List" While In Air To NYC 300

Posted by samzenpus from the beware-the-list-refresh dept.
An unnamed man flying from Nigeria to New York City found out he was added to a no-fly list somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, when the plane stopped to refuel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Officials won't say what he did or why he was added to the list after he had already boarded a flight. He was not immediately charged with a crime and Customs and Border Protection will only say that he is a "potential person of interest." From the article: "The man, a citizen of Gambia, was not on the no-fly list when he boarded the aircraft in Dakar, Senegal, said a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly."
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George Washington Racks Up 220 Years of Late Fees At Library 146

Posted by samzenpus from the at-least-he-read dept.
Everyone knows that George Washington couldn't tell a lie. What you probably didn't know is that he couldn't return a library book on time. From the article: "New York City's oldest library says one of its ledgers shows that the president has racked up 220 years' worth of late fees on two books he borrowed, but never returned. One of the books was the 'Law of Nations,' which deals with international relations. The other was a volume of debates from Britain's House of Commons. Both books were due on Nov. 2, 1789."
The Military

Report Claims Iran Has Data To Build a Nuclear Bomb 630

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-tell-cheney dept.
reporter writes "According to a startling report just covered by the New York Times, 'senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable atom bomb.' In 2007, American intelligence erroneously concluded that Tehran in 2003 stopped further research into designing a nuclear bomb. This conclusion was contradicted by German, French, and Israeli intelligence. Recently, London also concluded that the American assessment is incorrect. So, here we are. The Iranians have the knowledge to build a nuclear bomb and have been working relentlessly to perfect its design. Tehran is apparently able to create the components (e.g. enriched uranium) that can be assembled into such a weapon. Meanwhile, Jerusalem is communicating with the Kremlin about a list of Russian scientists it believes are assisting Iran's efforts to develop the bomb."
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Churches Use Twitter To Reach a Wider Audience 169

Posted by samzenpus from the go-tell-it-on-the-internet dept.
In an attempt to reverse declining attendance figures, many American churches are starting to ask WWJD in 140 or fewer characters. Pastors at Westwinds Community Church in Michigan spent two weeks teaching their 900-member congregation how to use Twitter. 150 of them are now tweeting. Seattle's Mars Hill Church encourages its members to Twitter messages during services. The tweets appear on the church's official Twitter page. Kyle Firstenberg, the church's administrator, said,"It's a good way for them to tell their friends what church is about without their friends even coming in the building."
Desktops (Apple)

Apple Store Reopens With Many New Products 519

Posted by timothy from the such-a-world-of-bounty dept.
An anonymous reader writes "After being down for a couple of hours, the Apple store reopened this morning. All of the speculation has turned out to be a reality with Apple dishing out many new products and among them are; iMac 20", three iMac 24" models, two Mac Mini models, and two Mac Pro models — with one including an ATI Radeon HD 4570 graphics card. Also as rumored, there was the new Airport Extreme, and Time Capsule in 1TB. The Mac Pro is the granddaddy of them all. The lower-end Quad Core system includes a 2.66Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor, 3GB of memory, 640GB hard drive, 18x double-layer Superdrive, and a NVIDIA Geforce GT 120 with 512MB of memory priced at $2,499. Finally, we have the 8-core system which includes two 2.26Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, 6GB of memory, 640GB hard drive, the 18x double-layer Superdrive, and of course the NVIDIA Geforce GT 120 with 512MB of memory priced at $3,299."

Comment Re:Of course he had a choice (Score 1) 1115

by GoofyBoy (#24907183) Attached to: Sarah Palin's Stance On Technology Issues

>Of course McCain had a choice. One he was urged repeatedly by the media to take just after selection, many citing the previous example of George McGovern and Eagleton. Instead he stuck by here even through criticism from his own party, never mind the media.

I was talking about supporting the daughter after it became a big story, not the VP pick (which I think you are talking about). Both McCain and Palin had to stand by the daughter.

>You are not serious, right?

I really am. I barely knew anything about the election, except for the race between Obama and Clinton, but the stories about Palin were just too much to ignore. And no, they weren't positive stories. It just seemed to me to be, as other commentators had named it, a "hail mary" choice.

>You don't think tens of millions in contributons the days after the announcement, and as great a viewership of the Republican convention speeches as Obama got to be an amazing achievement?

I'm actually more impressed by the $10 million raised by Obama after Palin's first speech. She only raised $1 million after the speech.

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