Cody Taylor

dAzED1 writes “My little brother is heading for training at 29 Palms as a Navy Corpsman with FMF. He gets a [Sailor|Soldier|Marine]’s pay, so while he can’t afford gadgets, I can; since he’ll be in a LAR unit, I was thinking of getting him a small video camera, an IPod, and some sort of solar recharger. Whatever he takes he’ll have to be able to carry in his pack, which is already going to be heavy with his medic gear. Other than the weight issue, I am having problems finding a solar recharger that doesn’t get wildly differing reviews as to basic quality. He’ll have plenty of sun, few clouds, but it needs to be light, effective, and robust. With price not being much of a concern, what would you suggest for accomplishing this? Advice on a small robust video camera would be appreciated as well.”

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When asked about possible future features for Twitter, he reportedly said that one of the things being considered is an extension that lets people know what’s happening in their immediate vicinity. That would basically mean that Twitter could actively ping users about local events that are going on in their neighborhood, in real-time…

Mininova, one of the leading BitTorrent sites, has been suffering from a massive DDoS attack over the past few days. Originating from a botnet spanning three continents, the attacks vary in strength and are causing the site to be completely inaccessible at times. The Mininova team is working on a solution.

dAzED1 writes “My little brother is heading for training at 29 Palms as a Navy Corpsman with FMF. He gets a [Sailor|Soldier|Marine]’s pay, so while he can’t afford gadgets, I can; since he’ll be in a LAR unit, I was thinking of getting him a small video camera, an IPod, and some sort of solar recharger. Whatever he takes he’ll have to be able to carry in his pack, which is already going to be heavy with his medic gear. Other than the weight issue, I am having problems finding a solar recharger that doesn’t get wildly differing reviews as to basic quality. He’ll have plenty of sun, few clouds, but it needs to be light, effective, and robust. With price not being much of a concern, what would you suggest for accomplishing this? Advice on a small robust video camera would be appreciated as well.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RichardDeVries writes “Three weeks ago, I contacted Google about had a bug in Google Docs that shared documents without permission. The issue has been resolved and affected documents have had their collaborators removed. The documents’ owners have been notified: ‘To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually.’ See my journal entry for details on my contact with Google. Although I think Google handled the issue admirably, this raises questions (again) about cloud computing, as well as Google’s eternal beta-status for a lot of their services.”

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Craig writes “DCEmu has released an article detailing the current state of the homebrew scene on all game consoles, from the Sega Dreamcast to the Nintendo DS to the Nintendo Wii. It even covers unreleased consoles such as Pandora and GP2xWiz. The article explains what is needed to run emulators and games, and whether or not it’s worth bothering for each console.”

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nodialtone writes with a Reuters report that Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC), has tendered his resignation, citing clashes between the NCSC and the NSA with regard to who handles the nation’s online security efforts. In his resignation letter (PDF), he made the point that “The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security culture,” and said he wasn’t willing to “subjugate the NCSC underneath the NSA.” He also complained of budget roadblocks which kept the NCSC from receiving more than five weeks of funding in the past year. Wired has a related story from late February which discusses comments from Admiral Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence, who thinks cyber security should be the NSA’s job to begin with.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ever want a wine cellar but don’t have the space or money to build one? The Spiral Cellars design/build firm will dig a hole right in whatever room you want your cellar in and haul the dirt right out the front door.

A computer breach at the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has led to the theft of personal information on more than 45,000 employees and retirees, the agency confirmed this week.All told, the FAA said the hackers hijacked 48 files. Luckily the server was not connected to the Air Traffic Control Center…

Users still facing software issues while running the most current version of Mac OS X Leopard may take kindly to word that Mac OS X 10.5.7 is moving swiftly through its development cycle. Apple as early as this weekend is expected to equip its vast developer community with a new build of the maintenance and security release.