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Alaska Department of Revenue vaporizes $38 billion account
The Last Frontier is no stranger to computer failure on a noteworthy scale, but the latest mishap far exceeds the severity of yet another e-voting failure. A quick-fingered technician at the Alaska Department of Revenue reformatted a hard drive while handling "routine maintenance work" that contained an account worth $38 billion -- yeah, with a B. To make matters exponentially worse, he / she also deleted the backup drive for reasons unbeknownst to mere men, and we can probably assume that at least a few individuals in the department suffered a near-heart attack when they found the backup tapes completely unreadable. The only remaining proof of the oil-funded account was in 300 boxes of paperwork, which had to be digitized yet again by staff members working incredibly long hours completing work that had just been done a few months earlier. Incredibly, no one was reportedly punished for the incident, and while the recovery efforts were actually finished in just six painstaking weeks, the damage inflicted by a few careless keystrokes totaled $220,700 in excess labor costs. Ouch.[Via Fark]
DAVID software turns your webcam into a 3D laser scanner
Those snazzy laser-based scanners that just have to make at least one appearance in every science-fiction film worth its salt are now available for your home, and it'll cost you quite a bit less than what Hollywood presumably shelled out for theirs. Thanks to folks who see value in "free," a few clever programmers have crafted the DAVID Laserscanner software, which turns your webcam into an ultra-sensative laser recorder and then reconstructs the object on-screen based on the breaks in the beam. Reportedly, all your need is a PC, a halfway decent webcam, a perfect 90-degree angle in the corner of your wall, some foreign object(s), and a street-corner laser pointer to go along with the software. DAVID computes the beam length as you "brush over the object with the laser" in order to render the object on your display, and while it can't quite do 360-degree renditions just yet, the developers hope to add that functionality soon enough. So, if you're the proud owner of all the above prerequisites, be sure to hit the read link and get your laser scanning on.[Via hack a day]
