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· ThinkGeek (Clothe Yourself in Slashdot) Older Stuff Thursday January 8 EGM Magazine Shutting Down (66) How Long Should Companies Make E-Bills Available? (277) Wii Game Devs Testing Waters With Less-Casual Games (94) Hippies Say WiFi Network Is Harming Their Chakras (373) Wednesday January 7 Unemployment Claims Crash State Web Sites (224) Mobile Phones To Fill Poor Nations' Healthcare Gap? (51) The Power of the R Programming Language (356) The Illuminati Project Pushes For Dark Skies In 2009 (305) OLPC Downsizes Half of Its Staff, Cuts Sugar (353) Why Does the US Have a Civil Space Program? (296) OpenID Fan Club Is Shrinking (320) New Energy Efficiency Rules For TVs Sold In California (604) Spookfish Uses Mirrors For Eyes (81) All of Vietnam's Government Computers To Use Linux, By Fiat (371) Google Router Rumors (259) Older ArticlesYesterday's News Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system 09/01/09/025203 story The Technology Behind the Magic Yellow Line Posted by timothy on Friday January 09, @02:33AM 
CurtMonash writes "Fandome offers a fascinating video explaining how the first-down line on football broadcasts actually works. Evidently, theres a lot of processing both to calculate the exact location being photographed on the field — including optical sensors and two steps of encoding — and to draw a line in exactly the right place onscreen. For those who don't want to watch the whole video, highlights are here." media media story Read More... 8 comments Games: Scripts and Scaling In Online Games 8 of 11 comments 09/01/08/2242211 story Idle: 6-Year-Old Says Grand Theft Auto Taught Him To Drive Posted by timothy on Thursday January 08, @11:24PM from the buck-beats-scapegoat dept. 
nandemoari writes "A six-year-old who recently stole his parents' car and drove it into a utility pole has passed the buck onto a familiar scapegoat: the video game, Grand Theft Auto.Rockstar Games' controversial Grand Theft Auto video game has been criticized by parent groups and crusaders (or in the eyes of gamers, nincompoops) like former lawyer Jack Thompson for years (Thompson once tried to link the Virginia Tech slayings to late-night Counterstrike sessions. He's since been disbarred). However, not as of yet has anyone under the age of, oh, ten, blamed the game for a car theft." games media edutainment badparenting idleispants idle media story Read More... 124 comments idle.slashdot.org 09/01/08/2342259 story Entertainment: Attempt To "Digitalize" Beatles Goes Sour Posted by timothy on Thursday January 08, @08:19PM from the when-you're-64-and-probably-not-even-then dept. 
An anonymous reader points to this article at exclaim.ca, which begins "Just when Beatles fans thought the band were finally going digital, the Norwegian national broadcaster has been forced to call off the deal. Broadcasting company NRK has had to remove a series of 212 podcasts, each of which featured a different Beatles song and would have effectively allowed fans to legally download the entire Fab Four catalogue for free." music entertainment digitalize inaccurate beatles entertainment music story Read More... 234 comments entertainment.slashdot.org 09/01/08/2229206 story News: The Inexact Science of Carbon Neutrality Posted by timothy on Thursday January 08, @06:44PM from the these-are-not-weight-watcher-exchanges dept. 
snydeq writes "Sustainable IT's Ted Samson raises questions regarding the purchasing of carbon offsets, a practice growing in popularity among tech companies such as Dell, Yahoo, and Google in an attempt to achieve 'carbon neutrality.' Essentially financial instruments, carbon offsets enable companies to invest money in sustainable endeavors in an attempt to counteract the carbon footprint they incur conducting their business. But as a recent article in the Wall Street Journal shows, measuring the value of these carbon offsets is tricky business, as some recipients of offsets say the results of their sustainable efforts would be achieved regardless of any one company's investment. 'The question of whether carbon offsets hold value just scratches the surface of the overall carbon-neutrality question,' Samson writes. 'For the time being, there isn't even a consistent approach to measuring an organization's carbon footprint in the first place. And if you don't know how much CO2 you're responsible for, how do you know how much offsetting is necessary to become neutral?'" technology power earth newreligiousmovements news news earth story Read More... 178 comments news.slashdot.org 09/01/08/2027252 story Hardware: Panasonic Working On 2-Terabyte SD Cards Posted by timothy on Thursday January 08, @05:56PM from the never-delete-another-snapshot dept. 
An anonymous reader writes "SD cards with a theoretical maximum capacity of 2TB are in development by Panasonic and the SD Association, it has been announced. The technology is called 'Secure Digital Extended Capacity', or 'SDXC', and Panasonic has announced it will soon show off a 64GB SDXC card. Using the new technology, read/write speeds are set to hit 300MBps. SanDisk and Sony are using the same standard to develop Extended Capacity cards in Sony's Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Micro range. SDXC utilises Microsoft's new exFAT file system — AKA 'FAT 64' — which first appeared in Windows Vista SP1, and has a theoretical file size limit of 16 exbibytes."Reader xlotlu adds a note about the "proprietary exFAT file system, which is available for licensing under NDA. There are currently no specific patents on exFAT, but its legal status is uncertain since it's based on FAT. The FAT patents have been previously upheld in court." technology storage hardware ridiculous misleadingheadline hardware storage story Read More... 177 comments hardware.slashdot.org 09/01/08/1422245 story Science: More Brains Needed Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 08, @05:10PM from the we're-not-unreasonable-I-mean-no-one's-gonna-eat-your-eyes dept. 
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that more people need to donate their brains to medical research if cures for diseases like dementia are to be found and are urging healthy people as well as those with brain disorders to become donors. 'For autism, we only have maybe 15 or 20 brains that have been donated that we can do our research on. That is drastically awful,' said Dr Payam Rezaie of the Neuropathology Research Laboratory at the Open University. 'We would need at least 100 cases to get meaningful data. A lot of research is being hindered by this restriction.' Part of the problem, according to Professor Margaret Esiri at the University of Oxford, may be that people are reluctant to donate their brains because they see the organ as the basis of their identity. 'It used to be other parts of the body that we thought were important,' says Esin. 'But now people realize that their brain is the crucial thing that gives them their mind and their self.' Dr Kieran Breen, of the Parkinson's Disease Society, said over 90% of the brains in their bank at Imperial College London were from patients, with the remaining 10% of 'healthy' brains donated by friends or relatives of patients. 'Some people are under the impression that if they sign up for a donor card that will include donating their brain for research. But it won't,' says Breen. 'Donor cards are about donating organs for transplant, not for medical science.'" science braaains drhfuhruhurr abbynormal zombietime science science story Read More... 165 comments science.slashdot.org 09/01/08/2052212 story News: Obama Recommends Delay In Digital TV Switch Posted by timothy on Thursday January 08, @05:08PM from the but-the-coupons-have-been-printed-already dept. 
gregg writes "Six weeks before the nation's television stations are scheduled to convert to digital transmission, the Obama administration is asking Congress to consider a delay. In the most significant sign to date of concern about the impending digital TV transition, the Obama transition team co-chair John Podesta said the government funds to support the change are 'woefully inadequate' and said that the digital switch date, Feb. 17, should be 'reconsidered and extended.'" politics usa tv !surprising news news tv story Read More... 416 comments news.slashdot.org 09/01/08/2038216 story IT: Lexus To Start Spamming Car Buyers In Their Cars Posted by timothy on Thursday January 08, @04:14PM from the even-as-they-sleep dept. 
techmuse writes "Lexus has announced plans to send targeted messages to buyers of its cars based on the buyer's zip code and vehicle type. Unlike regular spam, these messages will be delivered directly to the buyer's vehicle, and will play to the vehicle's occupants as audio. Lexus has promised to make the messages relevant to the car buyers." Imagine the fun that some targeted malware could do — not that such a thing could happen to a Lexus. spam transportation butnotinourdreams goodluckwiththat donotwant it spam story Read More... 240 comments it.slashdot.org 09/01/08/2011249 story Technology: Ballmer Sets Loose Windows 7 Public Beta At CES Posted by timothy on Thursday January 08, @03:30PM from the conventional-wisdom-ranks-it-high dept. 
CWmike writes "The rumors turned out to be true. Microsoft will release a public beta this week of its next desktop operating system, Windows 7, hoping it willaddress the problems that have made Windows Vista perhaps the least popular OS in its history. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will launch the beta during his speech at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Preston Gralla reviewed Windows 7 beta 1, noting 'Fast and stable, Beta 1 of Windows 7 unveils some intriguing user-interface improvements, including the much-anticipated new task bar.' MSDN and Technet subscribers should be able to get the public data tonight. The general public will have to wait until Friday." windows nochairsthrown !freesoftware !vista finally tech windows story Read More... 521 comments tech.slashdot.org 09/01/08/1926204 story Mobile: Asus Reveals the Eee Keyboard Posted by timothy on Thursday January 08, @02:40PM from the want-it-already dept. 
El Lobo writes "Asus' success with its Eee line of netbooks might have come as a surprise, but the company is now determined to expand the Eee brand into every possible niche and form factor. Case in point: the insanely cool Eee Keyboard, which will surely bring a smile on the faces of those who remember the glory days of the home computer. Described as a fully functional PC with inset Qwerty key arrangement, the keyboard has a 5in touch screen that displays a suite of bespoke media controls or a Windows desktop." portables hardware c64 eee asus mobile portables story Read More... 253 comments mobile.slashdot.org Technology: gOS Gadget Aims Ubuntu At Cloud Computing 18 of 31 comments 09/01/08/1848208 story Technology: Sunday Evening, the New Web Rush Hour Posted by timothy on Thursday January 08, @01:57PM from the not-a-creature-was-stirring-except-that-darn-mouse dept. 
Barence writes "For anyone who assumes weekday evenings are the worst time to enter the online scrum, it may be a surprise to learn that the peak internet rush hour, when average web speeds slow to a crawl, is in fact Sunday between 5pm and 6pm. This surprise fact came out of Ofcom's recent research that also told us the blindingly obvious news that actual broadband speeds are less than half of those advertised by the ISPs." internet uk netflix captainobvious pr0n tech internet story Read More... 76 comments tech.slashdot.org 09/01/08/1531220 story Technology: Twitter Hack Details Revealed Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 08, @12:10PM from the my-password-is-p4ssw0rd dept. 
Jack Spine writes "Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has confirmed both to ZDNet UK and Wired's Threat Level blog that a dictionary attack was used to hack Twitter. After the hacker distributed details on the Digital Gangster forum, celebrities such as Britney Spears and Barack Obama had their accounts defaced.Wired spoke to the alleged hacker, while ZDNet UK got in contact with someone who had been on the Digital Gangster forum at the time." security it twitter ytcracker happiness tech security story Read More... 194 comments tech.slashdot.org 09/01/08/1529237 story Linux: The 2008 Linux and Free Software Timeline Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 08, @11:28AM from the year-in-review dept. 
diegocgteleline.es writes "Here is LWN's eleventh annual timeline of significant events in the Linux and free software world for the year. As always, 2008 proved to be an interesting year, with great progress in useful software that made our systems better. Of course, there were some of the usual conflicts — patent woes, project politics, and arguments over freedom — but overall, the pace of free software progress stayed on its upwardly increasing trend. 2008 was a year that saw the end of SCO — or not — the rise of Linux-based 'netbooks,' multiple excellent distribution releases, more phones and embedded devices based on Linux, as well as major releases of software we will be using for years (X.org, Python, KDE, ...)." linux yearoflinuxonthedesktop time linux linux story Read More... 110 comments linux.slashdot.org 09/01/08/1447241 story Technology: NVIDIA Offers 3D Glasses For the Masses Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 08, @10:46AM from the holding-out-for-the-fourth-dimension dept. 
Vigile writes "A new stereoscopic 3D gaming technology has hit the street today from NVIDIA, though demoed earlier in the year, that promises to bring high quality 3D gaming to the PC. The GeForce 3D Vision technology utilizes active shutter glasses and a 120 Hz display (either 120 Hz LCD or 3D-Ready DLP TVs) to bring an immersive 3D effect to PC games. Using the depth buffer information stored in DirectX, the NVIDIA software is able to construct a stereo 3D image out of existing game content while the 120 Hz requirement gives each eye 60 frames of motion per second negating the physical detriments that were known to occur with previous 3D offerings. The review at PC Perspective details how the technology works, the performance hit your games take while using it and the advantages and disadvantages to the user's gaming experience with 3D Vision." graphics games porn parallaxerror nvidia tech graphics story Read More... 240 comments tech.slashdot.org 09/01/08/148231 story Your Rights Online: Blu-ray Update Sent To User Via Credit Card Records Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 08, @10:07AM from the allright-that's-just-plain-scary dept. 
wmoyes writes "Back in September I ran into a Best Buy store to buy a Samsung BD-P2550 Blu-ray player. I didn't give the clerk my name, telephone number, or address, just my debit card. The player has sat happily in my living room without ever being networked or registered. Today I was shocked to find a package waiting for me at home from Best Buy — inside was a firmware update CD for the player. I used to think Windows Update was scary, but Samsung's update service tracked me to my house using the mag stripe from my bank card. Has this happened to any other Blu-ray owners?" Or is there a simpler explanation? privacy breachoftrust askslashdot datamisuse betterthanidentitytheft yro privacy story Read More... 483 comments yro.slashdot.org 09/01/08/1330216 story Technology: Google Over IPv6 Coming Soon Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 08, @09:29AM from the what-no-ipv5 dept. 
fuzzel writes "Today Google announced Google over IPv6 where ISPs can sign up their DNS nameservers so that their users will get access to an almost fully IPv6-enabled Google, including http://www.google.com, images and maps, etc., just like in IPv4. Without this only http://ipv6.google.com is available, but then you go to IPv4 for most services.So, start kicking your ISPs to support IPv6 too, and let them sign up.Check this list of ISPs that already do native IPv6 to your doorstep.The question that now remains is: when will Slashdot follow?" internet google abouttime !why ipv6 tech google story Read More... 236 comments tech.slashdot.org 09/01/08/1328255 story Technology: "Smash Your Hard Drive" To Fight Identity Theft Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 08, @08:47AM from the i-can-get-behind-that dept. 
An anonymous reader writes "At the International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 in New York, Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator and private consultant for Global Terror Alert, claimed that a new breed of terrorists are using online forums to recruit people who align themselves with the mission of Al Qaeda, creating global networks of would-be terrorists." social it !news faceboom duh tech social story Read More... 192 comments tech.slashdot.org < Yesterday's News > //#fad6\{position:absolute; top: 0; right: 0; z-index: 10000; border-left: 1em solid #fff; border-bottom: 1em solid #fff;\}#slashboxes \{ clear: none; margin-top: 320px;\} #indexhead \{padding-right: 110px;\}#art1,#art2, #slink1, #slink1 .comments,#slink2, #slink2 .comments \{margin-right: 110px \}#slink1 .comments, #slink2 .comments \{ _margin-right: 110px \!important; \}')} //]]> Search I hate dying. -- Dave Johnson All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2008 SourceForge, Inc. home awards contribute story older articles sourceforge, inc. advertise about terms of service privacy faq rss pageTracker._trackPageview(); 
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