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Networking

Ask Slashdot: Updating a Difficult Campground Wi-Fi Design? 237

Posted by timothy from the streaming-for-the-airstream dept.
MahlonS writes "I am a retired network hack wintering in my RV in a campground in southern GA. 3 years ago I reconfigured the Wi-Fi system to a marginal working ability; It's now ready for a serious upgrade, prompted by a new cable net connection replacing a weak DSL. 5 dual-radio HP Curve access points connect to a 6th via single or double radio hops (effectively a Wireless Distribution System) in heavily wooded space. Unidirectional antennas at the APs (the APs are in water resistant enclosures) are placed on poles above the RVs, about 15 feet above ground. Primary hops are about 300 feet to 3 of the APs, secondary hops about the same. Signal measurements indicate that there is adequate RF between the access points. In 2008, average user count averaged about 30 users; newer devices (smart phones, etc) will likely increase that number (winter population total is about 80 RVs). While the old design worked OK when lightly loaded, I suspect that the single DSL line generated so many packet resends that the APs were flooded. This is a quasi-State Park, so money is always an issue, but there is enough squawk from the user community that a modest budget might be approved. The main AP connects to an old Cisco router. Burying wire is frowned upon, due to shallow utilities, and campfire rings that float around the campsites — sometimes melting TV cables. Since I'm not up on current Wi-Fi tech, are there solutions out there that would make this system work much better?"
HP

HP Delays WebOS Decision 77

Posted by samzenpus from the on-second-thought dept.
itwbennett writes "Following Tuesday's report that HP is looking to sell WebOS, CEO Meg Whitman and HP employees gathered for a late-afternoon meeting. According to The Verge, Whitman told those gathered at the meeting 'It's really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,' adding that a decision would come in the next three to four weeks."
HP

HP Pondering Sale of WebOS 99

Posted by Soulskill from the historically-predictable dept.
Rambo Tribble writes "Reuters reports HP is seeking to sell WebOS, at the bidding of its financial advisers. Sounds like open sourcing it is off the table. From the article: 'HP is trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, viewed by many analysts and investors as an expensive foray into the smartphone market that has not paid off. Several technology companies have expressed an interest in buying the division, which is seen as attractive for its patents, the sources said. Amazon.com Inc, Research In Motion, IBM, Oracle Corp and Intel Corp are considered to be among the companies likely to be interested in the asset, industry sources said.'"
Earth

Meet the Saber-Toothed Squirrel 59

Posted by samzenpus from the we're-going-to-need-a-bigger-acorn dept.
sciencehabit writes "Researchers have discovered the fossil remains of a 94-million-year-old squirrel-like critter with a long, narrow snout and a pair of curved saber-fangs that it would have likely used to pierce its insect prey. The creature, pieced together from skull fragments unearthed in Argentina and dubbed Cronopio dentiacutus, was not ancestral to us or any living mammal. Instead, it belonged to an extinct group called dryolestoids, a cadre of fuzzy mammals that scurried about in the shadow of long-necked dinosaurs."
Businesses

HP Slate 2: Brilliant or Bust? 235

Posted by samzenpus from the do-you-want-it-this-time? dept.
First time accepted submitter redletterdave writes "After being introduced in September, HP's new CEO Meg Whitman announced Oct. 27 that the company 'needs to be in the tablet business.' However, by creating a lackluster product in the Slate 2 that runs on a soon-to-be-outdated operating system, HP will surely find itself back where it started, when furious Best Buy executives demanded HP to take back their thousands of unsold tablets piling up in storage."
Windows

No Windows 8 Plot To Lock Out Linux 548

Posted by samzenpus from the playing-nice dept.
First time accepted submitter Bucky24 writes "ZDNet's Ed Bott decided to contact major PC makers to find out the truth about Windows 8 SecureBoot. The responses are encouraging for those of us who run third party operating systems. Dell plans to have a BIOS switch to allow SecureBoot to be disabled, and HP assures us that they will allow consumers to make their own choice as to what operating system to run, though they have not given details as to how."
Science

The Physics of Jump Rope 29

Posted by samzenpus from the because-he-can dept.
sciencehabit writes "Last year, Jeffrey Aristoff and Howard Stone, mechanical engineers at Princeton University, were at the gym waiting for a pickup game of basketball. To warm up, Stone started jumping rope. As the rope whizzed over the head of his colleague, Aristoff wondered, 'Is it known how jump ropes bend in the wind?' A few literature searches later, he concluded that the answer was, 'not really.' Now, the two have solved the problem themselves."
HP

HP Announces ARM-Based Server Line 125

Posted by Soulskill from the go-small-or-go-home dept.
sammcj writes with news that HP is developing servers based on 32-bit ARM processors from Calxeda. Their current model is only a test setup, but they plan to roll out a finalized design by the middle of next year. "HP's server design packs 288 Calxeda chips into a 4U rack-mount server, or 2,800 in a full rack, with a shared power, cooling, and management infrastructure. By eliminating much of the cabling and switching devices used in traditional servers and using the low-power ARM processors, HP says it can reduce both power and space requirements dramatically. The Redstone platform uses a 4U (7-inch) rack-mount server chassis. Inside, HP has put 72 small server boards, each with four Calxeda processors, 4GB of RAM and 4MB of L2 cache. Each processor, based on the ARM Cortex-A9 design, runs at 1.4GHz and has its own 80 gigabit cross-bar switch built into the chip"
Science

Why Fingernails On a Chalkboard Sound Painful 176

Posted by Soulskill from the enjoy-your-goosebumps dept.
sciencehabit writes "Some sounds are excruciating. Take fingernails squeaking on a chalkboard. The noise makes many people shudder, but researchers never knew exactly why. A new study finds that there are two factors at work: the knowledge of where the sound is coming from and the unfortunate design of our ear canals. 'The offending frequencies were in the range of 2000 to 4000 Hz. Removing those made the sounds much easier to listen to. Deleting the tonal parts of the sound entirely also made listeners perceive the sound as more pleasant, whereas removing other frequencies or the noisy, scraping parts of the sound made little difference.'"
HP

HP Officially Out of TouchPads 127

Posted by timothy from the now-you'll-have-to-touch-different dept.
First time accepted submitter AtomicAdam writes "I guess all that waiting and hoping was in vain. HP just sent out an email officially claiming to be out of TouchPads. 'Dear Valued Customer: Making sure customers have a positive experience when they purchase our products is a priority for us. In some cases, limited inventory makes it challenging to fulfill all customer orders. As you signed up for updates on the HP TouchPad, we wanted you to know that we are officially out of stock. Some retailers will have some stock available, but our online inventory is depleted.'"
HP

HP Keeping Their PC Business 124

Posted by samzenpus from the keeping-the-baby dept.
First time accepted submitter yourlord writes "Hewlett-Packard Co. has decided to keep its PC division. So says its newly appointed CEO Meg Whitman. Whitman, the former eBay chieftain, categorically rejected a plan offered up by her predecessor, former CEO Leo Apotheker, to either sell or spin-off this division. HP announced the decision after the close of financial markets today."
Government

Ron Paul Suggests Axing 5 U.S. Federal Departments (and Budgets) 2247

Posted by timothy from the sounds-pretty-good-to-me dept.
sciencehabit writes with this selection from Science: "Presidential hopeful Ron Paul's new proposal to slash federal spending would wipe out large chunks of the government's research portfolio. The congressman from Texas and Republican candidate has unveiled a budget plan to reduce the deficit that would eliminate five federal departments: Energy, Commerce, Interior, Education, and Housing and Urban Development. In one fell swoop, such a step would erase, among other programs, the Energy Department's $5-billion Office of Science, the $4.5-billion National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the $750-million National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the $1.1-billion U.S. Geological Survey."
Robotics

Winged Robots Hint At the Origins of Flight 59

Posted by Soulskill from the not-to-mention-the-origins-of-skynet dept.
sciencehabit writes "Here's what we know about the evolution of flight: By about 150 million years ago, the forests were filled with flying — or perhaps just gliding — dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx, possibly similar to the ancestor of modern birds. What we don't know is what primitive wings were used for before bird ancestors could fly. A new study (abstract) provides some fresh data for this debate, not from fossils but from a winged robot (video included)."
Android

Installing Android On an HP TouchPad 96

Posted by timothy from the gets-ever-more-tantalizing dept.
Barence writes "PC Pro has published a comprehensive guide to installing Android on a HP TouchPad using CyanogenMod's alpha Android release. The mod, which is based on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) instead of 3.0 (Honeycomb, the source code of which is yet to be released) 'performs similarly to the Tegra 2-based tablets we've seen from the likes of Asus and Samsung,' according to PC Pro. 'The only real problem we hit was some apps refusing to install from the Android Market because they didn't recognise the hardware,' although there are ways around it."
Sci-Fi

SF Authors Predict Computing's Future 258

Posted by Soulskill from the mentalnet-is-like-a-series-of-tubes dept.
Esther Schindler writes "'Over the past century a lot of science fiction has been published, showcasing a lot of wild ideas, and if you sit enough authors at enough typewriters or word processors, somebody is bound to get a few things right. Science fiction's greater influence, though, goes beyond whether or not the authors can make a good guess,' writes Kevin J. Anderson in Science Fiction's Take on the Future of Computers: Visionaries and Imaginaries. 'Rather than predicting the future, the SF genre is much better at inspiring the future. Visionaries read or see cool ideas in their favorite SF books or films, then decide how to make it a reality.' So Anderson assembled a set of visionaries, and asked them where they thought computing is headed: Mike Resnick, Robert J. Sawyer, Greg Bear, Michael A. Stackpole, Dr. Gregory Benford, and Christopher Paolini gaze into their crystal balls. 'Forget artificial intelligence. The future of computing is artificial consciousness, and it will be here within 20 years, and maybe much sooner than that,' says Sawyer. 'Our future wired world will have smart, wireless robots — gofers in hospitals, security guards with IR vision at night, lawn mowers, etc. We ourselves will be wired, with devices and embedded sensors taking in data and giving it out — a two way street,' contributes Benford."
Android

CyanogenMod Ports Android To HP TouchPad 86

Posted by timothy from the progress-still-in-progress dept.
yesakmac joins the teeming hordes of successful Slashdot submitters, with this excerpt from PC World that says the frenzied effort to port Android to HP's discontinued TouchPad has actually succeeded: "CyanogenMod also released a 'lower your expectations edition' release guide to let you know exactly what is working (or not) under the hood. Modders will be happy to know that basically all the TouchPad's guts are recognized. It supports dual-booting and fake SD cards in case you need to restore the TouchPad. What does not work, though, is the camera, which can only be used for video chat. Power efficiency is still an issue, too. As for the final build, CyanogenMod says they won't be giving a hard date, and that it will be ready when it is ready."
HP

HP Rethinking Wisdom of Spinning Off PC Division 239

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the you-don't-say dept.
bdking writes "After signing off on former CEO Leo Apotheker's proposal to spin off or sell HP's personal computer unit, the company's braintrust is reassessing the wisdom of dumping a division that contributes nearly 30% of revenue and holds together a valuable supply chain." HP appears concerned not so much for the revenue generated by PC hardware, but instead by access to various distribution and supply channels. It seems that just announcing a spin-off has affected their access to retail distributors.
Businesses

Why HP Should Sell Its PC Business To Save It 221

Posted by Soulskill from the anywhere-but-here dept.
packetrat writes "Hewlett Packard may not be in danger as a company, but its future in the PC business is in doubt, thanks to former CEO Leo Apotheker's maneuvers to turn HP into IBM. This article at Ars says Meg Whitman should go ahead and sell off the PC business — mostly because HP's management is so inept, it would likely do better without them. Agilent seems to be doing okay since it was spun off in 1999, but HP may have spun off its soul in the process."
HP

HP To Introduce Flash Memory Replacement In 2013 253

Posted by samzenpus from the move-it-on-over dept.
Spy Hunter writes "Memristors are the basis of a new memory technology being developed by HP and Hynix. At the International Electronics Forum, Stan Williams, senior fellow at HP Labs, said, 'We're planning to put a replacement chip on the market to go up against flash within a year and a half. We're running hundreds of wafers through the fab, and we're way ahead of where we thought we would be at this moment in time.' They're not stopping at a flash replacement either, with Williams saying, 'In 2014 possibly, or certainly by 2015, we will have a competitor for DRAM and then we'll replace SRAM.' With a non-volatile replacement for DRAM and SRAM, will we soon see the end of the reboot entirely?"
Android

HP Investigates Android TouchPads Delivered With Android 86

Posted by timothy from the prank-or-mistake dept.
angry tapir writes "HP is investigating how several TouchPads reportedly shipped to end users running Android, instead of webOS. Shortly after HP announced it would stop selling TouchPads and began offering the remaining tablets for US$99, reports surfaced from a few users who say they received TouchPads that run Android instead of HP's webOS software. At the same time, developers have been working on porting Android to the TouchPad, since it's uncertain how much support and development HP will dedicate to webOS in the future."

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