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! --
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
No, Disney won't object. But the family of Percival_Lowell may:
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
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.
Check out this thread -- Corscaria has a command-line program that uses libusb, so it's compatible with mac, linux, and windows.
I developed the unlocking code & did it on the mac. The Mac's user-land usb code is much easier to use than Window's (mainly because I don't need to create & install a specialized driver).
earlier slashdot sub
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
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)
This command line interface compiles and works like a dream under linux. Downloads the videos fast and this camera is amazingly light and has much utility.
CVS still had a bunch of these cameras today and picked up a few more for the kids. This is the best hack I've seen yet.