CmdrTaco - Slashdot User

Submission + - Games To Blame For London Riots (pcadvisor.co.uk)

Submitted by

jkcity

on Thursday August 11, 2011 @08:43AM

jkcity writes: "The blame game has started against games for causing the riots in UK with police thinking its because kids want to live out what they are doing in games. they seem to think we should still be playing pacman type games."

Submission + - NASA taps7 commercial firms for suborbital flights (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Wednesday August 10, 2011 @11:10AM

coondoggie writes: "NASA this week picked seven commercial space companies to fly a manner of experiments on their suborbital aircraft. According to NASA the companies will split $10 million and get a two-year contract that will let NASA set up a pool of reusable suborbital systems that could help it test applications in everything from astrobiology to measuring the impact of a solar storm."

Submission + - Google Shelves Hidden Location Bar (conceivablytech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09, 2011 @11:15AM

An anonymous reader writes: The removal of the web address from the browser window may have been a bit too much, even for Google. The company said that it has canceled the project and the flag “Compact Navigation” as well as the menu tab menu option were removed on July 26. While Google disabled the hidden switch to enable compact navigation as well, the code of the feature itself remains in Chrome.

Submission + - Perseid Meteor Shower to be Hampered by Full Moon (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09, 2011 @10:59AM

An anonymous reader writes: The annual Perseid meteor shower, which is caused by debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle and observed for about 2000 years, will be hampered this year by the full moon, which happens when Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon. The full moon falls on August 13 and is also called 'Grain Moon' or 'Green Corn Moon'. At the full moon, the moon rises about the same time the sun sets and it sets at about the same time the sun rises. This will create difficulty in viewing the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on the night of Friday and into the early morning of Aug. 13.

Submission + - Tech Survivors: Still Thriving After 25 Years (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Tuesday August 09, 2011 @09:18AM

snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Galen Gruman highlights 18 technologies that remain core to the computing experience for IT, engineers, and developers 25 to 50 years since their inception. From Cobol, to the IBM mainframe, to C, to x86, these high-tech senior citizens not only keep kicking but provide the foundations for many vital systems that keep IT humming."

Submission + - Apple sued over OS X's use of quick-booting (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 08, 2011 @07:04PM

An anonymous reader writes: With a patent originally owned by LG in tow, a Florida based company called Operating Systems Solutions LLC recently filed suit against Apple claiming that OS X's use of quick booting infringes the aforementioned patent.

Submission + - Bletchley Park Finds a Saviour in Google (itproportal.com)

Submitted by hypnosec on Monday August 08, 2011 @12:08PM

hypnosec writes: Internet search behemoth Google Inc. has kick started the fundraising programme to save the derelict Block C at Bletchley Park, the place where the Royal Army deployed their main decryption establishment during the second world war. In a bid to generate more awareness, Google has been using its Street View to capture the pictures of the park and Block C in particular.

Submission + - Building A Better 'Anonymous?' (darkreading.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 08, 2011 @10:23AM

An anonymous reader writes: A hacktivism panel at the DefCon hacker convention conspicuously missing its star member Aaron Barr, who dropped out under legal pressure from his former company HBGary Federal, debated how Anonymous could channel its efforts for the greater good. Members of Anon attending the discussion chimed in, too.

Submission + - Are Google's Best Days Behind It? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Monday August 08, 2011 @09:48AM

snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister questions whether slowing product development, legal woes, and rising bureaucracy will signal trying times ahead for Google. 'With Google's rapid growth have come new challenges. It faces intense competition in all of its major markets, even as it enters new ones. Its newer initiatives have often struggled to reach profitability. It must answer multiple ongoing legal challenges, to say nothing of antitrust probes in the United States and Europe. Privacy advocates accuse it of running roughshod over individual rights. As a result, it's becoming more cautious and risk-averse. But worst of all, as it grows ever larger and more cumbersome, it may be losing its appeal to the highly educated, impassioned workers that power its internal knowledge economy.'"

Submission + - Just the Facts: S&P's $2 Trillion Mistake (treasury.gov)

Submitted by suraj.sun on Monday August 08, 2011 @07:40AM

suraj.sun writes: In a document provided to Treasury on Friday afternoon, Standard and Poor's (S&P) presented a judgment about the credit rating of the U.S. that was based on a $2 trillion mistake. After Treasury pointed out this error — a basic math error of significant consequence — S&P still chose to proceed with their flawed judgment by simply changing their principal rationale for their credit rating decision from an economic one to a political one.

S&P incorrectly added that same $2.1 trillion in deficit reduction to an entirely different oebaseline where discretionary funding levels grow with nominal GDP over the next 10 years. Relative to this alternative baseline, the Budget Control Act will save more than $4 trillion over ten years — or over $2 trillion more than S&P calculated.

S&P acknowledged this error ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903366504576491421339802788.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories ) — in private conversations with Treasury on Friday afternoon and then publicly early Saturday morning. In the interim, they chose to issue a downgrade of the US credit rating.

U.S. Dept of the Treasury: http://www.treasury.gov/connect/blog/Pages/Just-the-Facts-SPs-2-Trillion-Mistake.aspx

Submission + - Make It Happen: Boba Fett Carbonite Crunch Ice Cre (geeksofdoom.com)

Submitted by

CmdrTaco

on Wednesday August 03, 2011 @12:22PM

CmdrTaco writes: "Check out this clever faux product someone created that will make every Star Wars fan scream WANT! It's Ben & Jerry’s Boba Fett Carbonite Crunch Ice Cream, a vanilla ice cream with salted caramel swirl and chocolate Han Solo miniatures frozen in carbonite — you can see the frozen chocolate Hans in the background! Would this not be the fastest-selling ice cream in history? I can see the supermarket display now: a big cardboard Slave I replica that lights up and says,Eat up! You're no good to me dead. Oh, imagine the possibilities!"

Submission + - PadPivotpractical iPad stand ever â" Apple Ne (gigaom.com)

Submitted by

CmdrTaco

on Wednesday August 03, 2011 @10:57AM

CmdrTaco writes: "Steve Jobs first showed off the iPad on stage using a chair and crossing one leg across the other to provide a decent platform from which to use it. Surely we can do better. So says the PadPivot, a new stand with all the right moves."

Submission + - Spiderman's Politically Correct Replacement (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by

jbarr

on Wednesday August 03, 2011 @10:44AM

jbarr writes: "The Daily Mail in the UK reports that in the latest Marvel Comic series "Ultimate Fallout", Miles Morales replaces Peter Parker of Spideman fame has been killed off, and will soon be replaced by a half-black, half-Latino teen. And the creators haven't ruled out that he might be gay. Toby McGuire's gonna be pissed."

Submission + - Browser IQ Study was a Hoax (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03, 2011 @08:23AM

An anonymous reader writes: A couple days ago Slashdot ran a story where the IQ of internet users was measured and then correlated with the browser used by each user. To everyone's great surprise, IE users came out as being the bottom of the barrel.

In the comments many Slashdot readers raised concerns with the validity of the study, and the BBC now reports it was a hoax all together! apTiquant, the company releasing the study, was founded a month ago and can no longer be reached.

Submission + - Google+ Registers 25 Million Visitors (itproportal.com)

Submitted by hypnosec on Wednesday August 03, 2011 @05:34AM

hypnosec writes: Google Inc.’s new social networking platform Google+ is one of the first to boast of more than 25 million users in less than one month of the launch.

Market research firm comScore in its latest report has revealed that Google+, which was launched to masses in late June, has managed more than 25 million visitors in a month and is recording around a million unique visits every day.

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