Results tagged “computers”

Bostonist's post about the hackers at Milton Academy stirred the passions of Milton students and others who felt that we weren't giving the students who got busted hacking (or the whole school in general) a fair shake. They were particularly upset that we claimed students were overprivileged. So, here's their unvarnished words in defense of the school: From lhalpern 10, a Milton Student: check your facts and give milton a break it is a...

When the students of the tony Milton Academy aren't busy getting their freak on, they are hacking into computers and stealing information. David Abel at the Globe reports: A Milton Academy student has been expelled and three others have been suspended for the rest of the school year after they hacked into the elite private school's computer system, changed grades, altered attendance records, and, in one case, gained access to an exam before it...

The next Four Stories reading will be on October 1, 2007. Kris Frieswick, Jake Halpern, Michael Lowenthal, and Hank Phillippi Ryan will be participating. The evening's topic is "Love and Money: Tales of Making It, Having It, and Losing It," and the readings will take place at The Enormous Room. For more details, visit the Four Stories site. To prepare, check out Bostonist's interview with Jake Halpern. Many of us spend our days in front...

Someone burgled the local headquarters of former Massachusetts governor and presidential aspirant Mitt Romney. The headquarters are in the North End on Commercial Street. Someone might want to check on the portrait Romney's hiding in the attic. Perhaps a clue was at the North End headquarters? Anyway, according to the Globe, the current assumption is that it's not Watergate Redux. A campaign spokesman said that the burglars were into the usual stuff - computers...

Watch your back MIT, the nerds across the river are gaining ground. The Rubik's "Magic" Cube achieved instant classic status when it was introduced in 1980. There's probably one, unsolved, somewhere in your house right now. There are, of course, some people who have mastered the secret patterns of twists and turns that will solve the puzzle quickly – computer scientists at Northeastern have managed to create a method to put all sides to single...

--The Suffolk County DA's office announced that LaDawn Hicks, the sister of murder defendant Jason Meeks, has been charged with witness intimidation. Boston NOW reports that Hicks and Meeks made a three-way phone call from jail "urging" a witness not to testify, and it blew right back at her. Meeks allegedly shot Alvaro Sanders in Roxbury in 2001. To keep her brother out of jail, Hicks also went to the witness' house (we're not naming...

We've seen the design. We've seen it play doom. We've heard that it's in the production process. And now we get some sugar. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, spun off from the MIT Media Lab, has an operating system for the XO machines they've dubbed "Sugar." It's safe to say that the look and operation is completely different than anything we've seen before. And you thought Vista was different than what you were using.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative that was born from the mind of Nicholas Negroponte when he was heading up the MIT Media Lab is nearing a significant milestone – shipment of the first machines to their intended recipients. Back in the end of November it was reported that the prototypes had come off the production line and had already been loaded up and played Doom. The AP reports today that the program is now looking at a predicted July delivery of some of the first laptops to the children who might use them.

The announcement came out around this time last year that MIT Media Lab Co-Founder and former Director Nicholas Negroponte and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization were nearing a working prototype of a $100 laptop to get to more children around the world. The OLPC would help break down the digital divide by providing the poor with access to the tools of the digital age. Our post on the matter may have set the...

We at Bostonist like our Apple computers. Ok, it does distress us a little to hear that our shiny iPod might have been produced in a sweatshop. But, if we turn the volume up really loud, we forget all about it. If you want to hear the latest Apple talk from four local enthusiasts, then MassMUG is the podcast for you.

WBOS' EarthFest played host to upwards of 100,000 people yesterday – with nearly 7,000 of them waiting in line not for music, but to turn in their losing scratch tickets. The Herald reports on a bad experience had by one man trying to redeem 60,000 losing instant win tickets, while the Globe reports a win for recycling on the day as The Lottery reclaimed 50 tons of paper. For every 25 losing tickets returned a $1 scratch ticket was issued.

Our drafting table broke a couple of years ago. We put the scale rule aside and retired the T-square to the closet. We know exactly where our set of mechanical pencils is – right next to a couple sheets of velum. Of course drafting by hand seems to have been so five years ago. With the proliferation of CAD programs and computers that can handle the task our dreams of being a fly by night architect (ok, we only did set design) have become more and more fanciful.

Bostonist is scrambling to make sure that all our servers and home computers are ready for y2k. The date will roll over in a matter of months and our computer will start thinking we live in 1900. The Big Dig will be complete: tunnels and bridges open, and a beautiful greenway will roll past the North End and Haymarket, the Green Line will extend into Somerville and Silver Line service will run smoothly connecting Dudley Square to the Airport. Oh, wait. It’s 2006. We forgot. FutureBoston has this snazzy video posted on their website to let us know what to expect after 2000. Most of the Big Dig projects have been completed and Armageddon didn’t hit when computers rolled past midnight on 1999. We’re not living in fantasy-land so it isn’t surprising that there is still some work to be done and contentious issues to solve. Take a look at what the “block” will show you.

Scanning the interweb this morning, Bostonist saw that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will testify today before a Congressional committee investigating the legality of the President's "I'm-above-the-law" theory of constitutional interpretation. While commentators have suggested that the hearings themselves are a testament to the shaky ground the President is on (since it was Republican Arlen Specter who called for the inquiry), we can't help but see the whole thing as a testament to the skill...

This weekend Bostonist made a little trip over to Wikipedia. We wanted to find out what else had been named “Black Friday.” Turns out that once upon a time it did refer to a stock market crash, one in 1869, like its brothers Black Monday (of 1987 and also 1929), Black Tuesday, and Black Thursday of Great Depression fame. There are a whole host of other Fridays that Black Friday has referred to, but presently, for most US consumers the term refers to the day after Thanksgiving when the Christmas shopping season commences. The neologism this weekend was “Cyber Monday,” coined in the anticipation that people, upon returning to work, would drop their productivity levels and use their work computers and broadband connections to shop online. Bostonist had recently told you about a web-store gone to bricks and mortar, and today we call attention to Lekker. It began as a store, with a door, and has branched out and experienced much of its sucess on the web.

Intrepid researchers at MIT have released results of their study which threatens to shatter the serenity that is paranoid schizophrenia. Nothing says crazy like a tin foil hat. Admittedly, there are quite a few things that say crazy just as nimbly. The tin foil hat has become a sort of pop-culture icon representing someone who’s taken it a little too far in an attempt to thwart mind readers. Be it the Governments or Major League Baseball the Tin Foil Hat has stood for all things repellant when the brain-wave stealers came a knockin’.

Don't get us wrong - Bostonist loves killer robots, time-traveler conventions, and throwing pianos off buildings as much as the next guy. But sometimes, we'd like our resident cadre of nerds at MIT to come out with something so obviously and immediately useful that it requires no imagination on our part to see its real-world applications. Enter Nicholas Negroponte, head of MIT's media lab (who used to appear on TV with the awesomest title ever: "Futurist"), and a non-profit called One Laptop Per Child. They have developed a super-low-budget laptop that can be manufactured and distributed for around $100 (!). The idea is that the governments of developing countries will buy these computers and distribute them to kids for free, facilitating their access to porn educational materials. The machines will have some kind of high-tech, low-cost, super-pimptronic screen, USB ports, wi-fi connectivity, Linux operating systems, and, of course, they'll be incredibly cheap and will run off a plug, batteries, or a hand crank (!). Although we can imagine lots of cool stateside, consumer applications for this technology, it's nice that Negroponte et al. are focused on charitable endeavors (also, Radio Shack has some sort of super-chintzy internet computer in the works, if you absolutely must have something like this). So let Bostonist say, "Thanks, MIT, for making us proud. You may now return to building cyborgs and breaking stuff."

Since Bostonist can’t read German we’ve got no idea what they’re trying to get across to us, but we may be a target. Some have speculated that bloggers may be the targets of the latest spam attack. We’ve been reading some blogs that have actually even helped us understand what the spammers are talking about with their statements in German. The latest attack seems to be hitting GMail users worse than others. This is perhaps because GMails spam definitions haven't kept up and the Sober.Q messages are making it to the inbox. Google might not keep our mail safe but with Google's language tools we can find out what our spam is saying.

Boston's neighboring town of Brookline is currently trying to turn the whole place wireless. While it claims to have the world's first public dial-up Internet access, the town is hoping to make everything easier with setting up town-wide wireless for its residents. Now, instead of being bothered with parking meters, using cable modems in computers, or searching the Internet for town files, the system would link everything without all the wires. The town already relies on the Internet in many town government sections; police spend $50,000 a year to access federal and local databases from their cruisers (one of first departments to do), while residents pay parking tickets, bills, and taxes online too. Some schools and libraries are already wireless.

With another half a foot of snow falling yesterday and the temperature falling even more the last thing we’re thinking about is heat. Those warm summer days watching the swan boats float around, lemonade, ice cream, t-shirts and sandals are far from the mind. Science is great, the technologies we’ve seen in the last few years are amazing, timing, though, remains of the essence. One would think there could be a better time of year to tell people about the latest craze in global warming. ClimatePrediction.net was written up this month in the journal Nature. They’ve found, using almost 100,000 of personal computers worldwide, that the Earth is heating up at a rate twice what had previously been predicted. From their models they are now predicting a nearly 11 °Celsius (for us in the States that’s about 50 ° Fahrenheit). Today when temperatures in Boston are near 10 °F that’d kick us up to a pleasant 60 °F. A welcome change in the middle of a bitter cold snap. To put this in perspective: burnt toast in July. When we get those nasty days of grueling humidity and heat with thermometer readings at 90° F or more that would mean after global warming takes it’s toll according to this model we would be facing temperatures of 140 °F. Bostonist can’t imagine what that would mean for the world, but the ocean off the Cape might be warm enough to swim before August. There is really more bad than good that will come of this…take action and quit using AquaNet on your hair (it really doesn’t help your look anyway), oh, and get rid of your car.