Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Randomness, Donations, Ramp
Slashback (below) brings another round of updates and clarification to recent and continuing stories here on Slashdot. This evening, there's more video of the recent space shuttle launch, a reminder about the other 10th planet, an encouraging update about open source medical software, another approach to structure-as-PC-enclosure, and more. Read on for the details.
Shuttle launches are easier to fake than moon landings.
Rex Ridenoure writes "Shuttle External Tank RocketCam video highlights from the STS-114 'Return to Flight' launch on July 26 have been posted on Ecliptic's website. Ecliptic supplied this RocketCam system to ET builder Lockheed Martin Michoud [Louisiana] Operations. A slow-motion clip of the now-famous ET foam shedding event has been inserted at the time it occurred -- about 1:40 after liftoff.
Still on the 'things in space' front: Sedna isn't nearly as sexy a name. Martian Anthropologist writes, of the recently announced discovery of a tenth planet in our solar system, "Actually, there's good reason to say that this is really the 11th planet, not the 10th. Another large body, now named Sedna, was discovered last year. It is slightly smaller than Pluto."
(Here's some earlier coverage of Sedna on Slashdot.)
Software for the Commonwealth. Aaron writes "As a followup to a recent story about the U.S. Government giving away its Electronic Medical Record Software, a small practice of physicians describes their experience transitioning from paper to electronic charts. Not everything goes well, from training staff to use Windows XP and tablet computers to viruses that crash their system to physicians complaining about being relegated to data-entry clerk status. In the end, however, they would never go back to paper.
From the article:'"Doctor, do you find you are spending more time interacting with the computer than with your patients?" For a while, the answer was clearly yes.'"
Aw, shucks, he might have done it anyhow. David writes "Thanks to my Ask Slashdot porting query, Ryan Gordon (aka icculus), the man who ported Unreal Tournament and many other popular games to Linux, is going to be working on the Linux version of Lugaru. It should be ready soon!"
You have to watch the quiet types, and never let them near your obscure hardware. jschauma writes "About a month ago, NetBSD made a Plea for 'Cold, Hard Cash', a Call for Donations. The results were very positive: an impressive $27K were donated since then, allowing the NetBSD Foundation to purchase five new machines; three of those machines will be added to the nightly build infrastructure and two of those machines will become anonymous cvs servers. See Christos Zoulas's email for detailed specifications of the hardware, and feel free to continue the donations!"
Definitely not for snowboarding helmet cam use. The CVS one time use camcorder has now been hacked so that videos can be downloaded over USB -- no need to desolder the flash memory.
How to spot a future writer-of-Federal-grants. Jason Schroeder writes "The recent story on the guy who put a Mac Mini in the wall reminded me of something I'd seen a while back: The Parabolic Heat Transference Case Mod for his Red Hat server. Pretty good idea with lots of scientific tidbits to make it interesting."
Hey, these fakes are a bunch of phoney frauds! strib writes "Remember SCIgen, the program that randomly-generated an accepted paper at WMSCI 2005? Well, thanks in part to the generous donations of Slashdotters, we made it down to the conference and gave a session full of fake talks. And it's all on video. Thanks to everyone who helped!"
Still on the 'things in space' front: Sedna isn't nearly as sexy a name. Martian Anthropologist writes, of the recently announced discovery of a tenth planet in our solar system, "Actually, there's good reason to say that this is really the 11th planet, not the 10th. Another large body, now named Sedna, was discovered last year. It is slightly smaller than Pluto."
(Here's some earlier coverage of Sedna on Slashdot.)
Software for the Commonwealth. Aaron writes "As a followup to a recent story about the U.S. Government giving away its Electronic Medical Record Software, a small practice of physicians describes their experience transitioning from paper to electronic charts. Not everything goes well, from training staff to use Windows XP and tablet computers to viruses that crash their system to physicians complaining about being relegated to data-entry clerk status. In the end, however, they would never go back to paper.
From the article:'"Doctor, do you find you are spending more time interacting with the computer than with your patients?" For a while, the answer was clearly yes.'"
Aw, shucks, he might have done it anyhow. David writes "Thanks to my Ask Slashdot porting query, Ryan Gordon (aka icculus), the man who ported Unreal Tournament and many other popular games to Linux, is going to be working on the Linux version of Lugaru. It should be ready soon!"
You have to watch the quiet types, and never let them near your obscure hardware. jschauma writes "About a month ago, NetBSD made a Plea for 'Cold, Hard Cash', a Call for Donations. The results were very positive: an impressive $27K were donated since then, allowing the NetBSD Foundation to purchase five new machines; three of those machines will be added to the nightly build infrastructure and two of those machines will become anonymous cvs servers. See Christos Zoulas's email for detailed specifications of the hardware, and feel free to continue the donations!"
Definitely not for snowboarding helmet cam use. The CVS one time use camcorder has now been hacked so that videos can be downloaded over USB -- no need to desolder the flash memory.
How to spot a future writer-of-Federal-grants. Jason Schroeder writes "The recent story on the guy who put a Mac Mini in the wall reminded me of something I'd seen a while back: The Parabolic Heat Transference Case Mod for his Red Hat server. Pretty good idea with lots of scientific tidbits to make it interesting."
Hey, these fakes are a bunch of phoney frauds! strib writes "Remember SCIgen, the program that randomly-generated an accepted paper at WMSCI 2005? Well, thanks in part to the generous donations of Slashdotters, we made it down to the conference and gave a session full of fake talks. And it's all on video. Thanks to everyone who helped!"
I should point out most commentary - as indicated on space.com and sciencemagazine.com - is that it is highly likely that Pluto will be downgraded to non-planet status, as well as the eleventh orbital body that is larger than Pluto.
So, while I'm sure Disney may object, it looks like Pluto's just a pet and no longer a planet.
But, cheer up, since we can clone dogs now, maybe this is a good thing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The lack of high moderation... There have been so few 5s this week it is depressing.
this is really the 11th planet, not the 10th. Another large body, now named Sedna, was discovered last year. It is slightly smaller than Pluto.
Or, more sensibly, they could just declassify Pluto as a planet and reclassify it as just some Kuiper belt object (which is what it is) with an classification number and a cute, historical name.
That would leave us with 9 planets, big asteroids, some of which are named Pluto, Sedna or Bernard for historical or affectionate reasons, and all the others being called XYZ-some-number. That would make much more sense, and kill the slightly silly debate over how many numbers of planet there are in the solar system once and for all.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
A slow-downloading clip of the soon-to-be-famous halon fire extinguisher video has been inserted into the server room at the time it occurred -- about 1:40 after a link to a page with a 14-megabyte STS-114 video went live on Slashdot.
CVS one time use camcorder has now been hacked so that videos can be downloaded over USB
Last I checked, cvs co works well enough.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
..Wouldn't it be appropriate to keep pluto's status as a planet, but a planet of a few other planets?
-after all, pluto the dog is the pet dog of a mouse, sometimes a duck and occasionally another dog..
Starsucks
No, Disney won't object. But the family of Percival_Lowell may:
So since this new planet is bigger than Pluto, and most likely affects Pluto's orbit, I say we call it Mickey.
Also, what happens to the moons of Pluto - IIRC, Pluto has two satellites orbiting it...Chip and Dale, I think. If Pluto becomes a non-planet, do these just become asteroids?
theres no place like 127.0.0.1
I'm seriously tempted to go out and buy one of these right now, but for the fact that I am one of those in the minority who actually don't own or use windows at all. The code is windows only. But, since the program for the camera occupies flash memory, I would suspect that their is some facility for re-flashing the programming on the camera to avoid this hack... and I could concievably see employees at CVS's plugging in all the cameras to load them with updated software soon, thus eliminating the reusable utility of a camera purchased in the future.
I wonder how hard it would be for someone to port the code to a useable linux application?
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the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
- is that it is highly likely that Pluto will be downgraded to non-planet status
OK, but I sure wouldn't want to be the one to tell the king of the underworld about it.
Chief Astronomer: Hey! Pluto, come in, have a seat. Look, let me be the first to say you've done a splended job as a planet all these years. But, ahem, you know, things change, and we all, ah, have to be ready to change with the times. Frankly there have been a lot of new discoveries lately and, well, we feel you would be happier in the role of, uh, 'object'. You know, being a full planet is such responsibility, you can leave all that with Uranus and take some time off, take it easy and enjoy things.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
This is the third camera from the same company that I've reverse engineered and made reusable. So far, no lawsuit. While I wouldn't want a lawsuit, I think this would be an excellent test case for a few reasons:
- Numero uno, I am not breaking the DMCA. Hopefully people only sue when a law is violated, but, sadly, that's not always the case.
- I am accessing my own pictures, to which I have the copyright. The DMCA only protects rights-owners (me).
- I am reverse-engineering for interoperability, which is permitted. Some judges think this only applies to personal computers and not "other" computers (like printer controllers, like in the Lexmark case) -- but I'm interfacing to a plain old PC.
- Cameras have direct parallels to the "analog world". People have been developing kodak film with fuji chemicals for ages. It's a case that judges and juries can understand.
- The courts have found for the defendants even in much less clear-cut cases (like Lexmark).
Here's my webpage about the DMCA and these cameras.
One very good trick Pure Digital has that keeps people out of their cameras is changing the architecture. The three cameras have had 3 different processors (8051, 8-bit RISC, MIPS), 3 kinds of toolsets (one big program, mini-OS, and full-blown embedded OS), and 3 IP vendors. This means the work I don on one camera doesn't apply to the next one... and will eventually tire me out -- it's a lot of work to do, and it takes them less effort to modify an existing camera than it does me to unlock it.
(p.s. my Make submission contained essentially the same text as my earlier, rejected slashdot submission
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
How many asteroids have their own moons?
I say, keep Pluto as a planet, and just add new planets to the solar system as they pop up. It's good for the memory: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Sedna, Persephone (possible name for 2003 UB313).
And it reminds us that there's still so much to learn about our our solar system, let alone the universe beyond.
First the brontosaurus, now Pluto!
I am so sick of these modern revisionist scientists.
This is the last straw.
Vive la brontasaurus!
A blog about stuff.
This includes a link to the cable making instructions:= 536
http://camerahacks.10.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t
Sedna and Quaoar?
Although I've heard that Quaoar has been classified as a non-planet, I'm not sure about Sedna.
Besides, according to New Scientist, there could be many, many more planets out there.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
could be called a planet and not have anyone argue too much about it. It would mean that in order to know if Pluto is a planet, we'd have to go there and carry out seismology experiments - but that's good, as there's a better chance of NASA getting the funds to see if Pluto is a planet than for them to get funds to see why Pluto is even there at all.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
We'll just classify the rest as nothing more than gigantic rocks orbiting the sun. We will no doubt find dozens more rocks out there a that are a lot like Pluto.
You are a hero. You're hacking disposable cameras into reusable ones: both saving waste and making cheap cameras available. You're cutting through the DMCA "chilling" BS that is freezing developers even more than is the overboard law. And you've got a sense of proportion - and even a sense of humor. I almost wish some fool at CVS would sue you, so we'd get a precedent. But I'm not that foolish to think that you're a superhero, so I don't wish that :).
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make install -not war