Back in March, Louise Chavez placed a 40-cent wager at a slot machine at the Fortune Valley Casino in Central City, Colorado. When the wheels stopped spinning, the machine told her she'd won the jackpot: People were coming up to me saying I won $42,000,000, or at least $42,000. Lights were flashing, it sounded like a fire truck, the screen said 'see attendant.' The casino claimed it was a glitch, returned the $23 she'd put into the machine, bought her breakfast, and comped her a free room for the night. Now, per this story in IEEE Spectrum, the Colorado Gaming Division has completed its investigation and determined that the reported payout was, indeed, the result of a bug caused by "two Showcase Showdown awards occurring quickly after each other while the Grand Game bonus feature was already in play." [Thanks, Glen!] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Computers | Digg this! 
This fascinating map is full of coded symbols: Leopold was elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1658, a title that had been in his Habsburg family for centuries. However, realising the increasing weakness of this institution (2), Leopold instead shifted his political energy to the consolidation of his Austrian, Hungarian and Bohemian dynastic territories. Vienna was to become the focal point for this newer empire, which would eventually become the Austro-Hungary Double Monarchy.
This map illustrates that ambition to consolidate, showing Bohemia as a Habsburg power flower.
That stem firmly connects the flowering Bohemian rose to the fertile soil of Vienna, the Habsburg's political centre. Does anyone else think we're missing out by going to really excellent but fairly soulless maps like GPS displays and Google Maps? [Via Strange Maps] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Culture jamming | Digg this! 
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory... Located in a cave more than a mile underground in Canada, SNO can be thought of as a type of telescope, though it bears little resemblance to the image most people associate with that word. It consists of an 18-meters-in-diameter stainless steel geodesic sphere inside of which is an acrylic vessel filled with 1000 tons of heavy water (deuterium oxide or D2O). 
Attached to the sphere are 9,522 ultra-sensitive light-sensors called photomultiplier tubes. When neutrinos passing through the heavy water interact with deuterium nuclei, flashes of light, called Cerenkov radiation, are emitted. The photomultiplier tubes detect these light flashes and convert them into electronic signals that scientists can analyze for the presence of all three types of neutrinos. Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Lab - Roy Kaltschmidt
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DumpsterWorld "social network" for dumpster diving... BtB. D.D.F.A.Q. Q: I don't understand why people want to take things from the trash. You must not be homeless, because you own computers. Why do you dumpster dive?
Most people don't understand how many useful resources are thrown in the garbage every day. Dumpster diving provides us with all kinds of free goods. Not only do we have homes and computers, some of us have homes full of stuff like COMPUTERS FROM DUMPSTERS. I bet you would take a free computer, if you had the chance. We don't dumpster dive because we're desperate, but because it's a smart choice. Some of our reasons include: - Saving and making more money
- Having more freedom by being less dependent on money
- Helping other people by sharing what we find
- Reducing waste to help the environment
- Because treasure hunting is fun.
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