Forgot your password?

Comment: Loved It (Score -1, Flamebait) 233

by A. B3ttik (#45393823) Attached to: <em>Thor: The Dark World</em> &mdash; What Did You Think?
Action was exciting and the final battle lasted a while and had a unique mechanic. Action was evenly spaced with typical "Marvel Superhero humor" and drama throughout. Though I saw the Loki 'twists' coming a mile away, my wife did not.

Also Kat Dennings provided two great reasons to go see it.

Solid 8/10

Comment: Re:Is there one? (Score 1) 375

by A. B3ttik (#41537783) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Cell Phone Carrier In the US?
Disagree 100%... unless you LIKE the taste of fried frozen meat husks. They used to be just like any other chain, with a slightly different flavor. Since they started the "Never Frozen" thing, their burgers are up there with "Casual Dining" burgers. Their burger quality has skyrocketed and is easily the BEST of any fast food chain.

Comment: So this is the moment of my Generation Maturing (Score 1) 94

by A. B3ttik (#40789677) Attached to: Web Giants Form US Internet Lobby Group
At 26, I'm the first generation to grow up with a home computer, a computer lab at school, to learn using video games, and to learn programming as I grew up. I've always been part of the hip, young, generation and Google, Facebook, eBay, Amazon are the companies of my generation. Most were started (and most are manned) by my peers and I can remember the first time I heard about all of them. Now they are forming a Lobby, and it's only a few short years until these companies are the entrenched establishment and some young kids feel disenfranchised to rebel against their corporate and government and internet Big Brothers.

When do I get to start saying "Get off my lawn?"

Comment: Re:More specifically (Score 2) 304

by A. B3ttik (#40736703) Attached to: Patent Troll Claims <em>Minecraft</em> Infringement
HK-47: Affirmative, master... The human informed me that a competitor corporation was preparing to market a product that would ruin him personally. He was most agitated. He activated my assassination protocol and instructed me to kill all those responsible for the competing product. I proceeded to carry out my order. HK-47: My former master was unaware of this, but the competitor was in fact an arm of Systech Corporation, my master's own employer. It did not take long for my master to realize his mistake. By then, I had already terminated 104 corporate officers. HK-47: Observation: While it may have been unintentional, my master's wording of his orders left little room for me. Systech was responsible for the product, after all. I do not know why my master was so upset, really. He was an officer of Systech and a potential target, but I cannot terminate my own master. I would assume that being the sole officer remaining, he would surely be promoted. Instead, however, the human chose to go insane with rage and attack me.

Comment: More like a "bed that straightens out a sheet" (Score 2) 159

by A. B3ttik (#40286157) Attached to: Company Creates a Self-Making Bed
While it's cool and I'm always excited about new advances in technology and robotics, this seems really limited. By the looks of it, you cannot move the pillows around during the night or have anything other than the sheet. All this really does is straighten out a single sheet onto the bed... not very useful or robust.

Still, I suppose every technology must have a first step, even the automated bed-making technology.


Posted by Soulskill
from the will-be-next-bond-villain dept.

Comment: Re:It should be illegal..... (Score 2, Informative) 291

by A. B3ttik (#38364220) Attached to: 24-Year-Old Asks Facebook For His Data, Gets 1,200 PDFs
I find this attitude so ignorant. How does a company instantly delete backups on redundant servers? How do they delete redundant hard copies kept in closets separated by meatspace? Furthermore, if you upload something to Facebook, and someone ELSE downloads it and saves it to a CD, and you delete it off facebook, should THEY be forced to magically know you deleted it, and delete their copy as well? Does Google have to delete their caches of your facebook page? Or maybe you are saying that Facebook, Google, etc should never make backups?

The truth is that once you upload something to a site like Facebook, it becomes publicly viewable and accessible and ANYONE can download it. The unfortunate truth is that you can never really UNDO that action, and no matter what arbitrary laws or draconian regulations you force companies to abide by, you can never truly take it back, even if you hit the delete key.

The paradigm shift needs to be in how people view sites like Facebook, Photobucket, etc: Don't upload anything you want to keep private. If you want to keep it private, upload it to a company that guarantees your privacy... NOT Facebook.

Comment: Why So Implausible? (Score 0) 302

by A. B3ttik (#38271794) Attached to: New Theory Challenges Need For Dark Matter
I don't understand why this theory is "implausible" and why the article is so dismissive of it. Dark Matter was created for the sole purpose of explaining the orbital momentum of stars. There is NO other evidence for it. So an entire new classification of matter that no one has ever (or can ever) seen, felt, or observed was created to satisfy this one anomaly. And yet, this is the industry standard, that 90% of all matter must be Dark Matter just because someone screwed up when calculating orbital momentum.

What's more implausible, that 90% of matter is something that we'll never observe except, conveniently, through the orbital momentum of stars, or that galaxies have a noticeable gravitational pull on objects in nearby galaxies over billions of years?

Making a Privacy Monitor From an Old LCD 185

Posted by samzenpus
from the wandering-eyes dept.
ryzvonusef writes "Instructables Member 'Dimovi' utilized a spare LCD monitor and converted it into a 'privacy' monitor. He took apart the monitor's plastic frame, cutting out the polarized film with a utility knife and removed the film adhesive from the glass panel before reassembling the monitor, which now shines a bright white regardless of what is actually being displayed on the screen. He then removed the lenses from a pair of theater 3D glasses, and replaced it with the polarized film he had just removed from the monitor. Now, he is the only one who can see what he is doing on his computer."

Recycled Medical Records Used As Scrap Paper At Elementary School 119

Posted by samzenpus
from the it's-a-purple-duck-with-shot-records dept.
Parents with students at Hale Elementary School in Minneapolis have found something interesting on the back of their children's pictures hanging on the fridge, detailed medical information. From the article: "Jennifer Kane was tidying her dining room when she found the drawing by her daughter, Keely, who goes to Hale Elementary School. On the back of the paper was the name, birth date and detailed medical information for a 24-year-old St. Paul woman named Paula White. 'The more I read it, the more alarmed I became about the amount of information I had about this person,' said Kane." The security lapse has been blamed on a paralegal donating the paper to the school.

EU Scientists Working On Laser To Rip a Hole In Spacetime 575

Posted by samzenpus

Intelligent Absorbent Removes Radioactive Material 107

Posted by samzenpus
from the in-with-the-bad-out-with-the-good dept.
Zothecula writes "Nuclear power plants are located close to sources of water, which is used as a coolant to handle the waste heat discharged by the plants. This means that water contaminated with radioactive material is often one of the problems to arise after a nuclear disaster. Researchers at Australia's Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have now developed what they say is a world-first intelligent absorbent that is capable of removing radioactive material from large amounts of contaminated water, resulting in clean water and concentrated waste that can be stored more efficiently."
