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Comment Re:Maybe because normal humans can't code (Score 1) 608

by lgw (#47421883) Attached to: Normal Humans Effectively Excluded From Developing Software

He's claiming women are poor at spatial relationships as measured by some (pretty arbitrary) objective standard. You're claiming they're just find in fields where success is a matter of fashion. Was that really the argument you wanted to make?

I don't think basketball has much to do with spatial relationships myself - I'd think athletic ability and hand-eye coordination would be the dominant factors (well, and height can't hurt). But then, what do I know about it?

Comment Re:Oh great terminal, on-the-line! (Score 1) 608

by lgw (#47419135) Attached to: Normal Humans Effectively Excluded From Developing Software

It sure would be nice to have some standards there!

Because there were some firm standards for terminals, vendors could make clever ones, PCs had emulators, and you could make simplifying assumptions. And I guess if you stick to some basic HTML (which you would for non-AJAX anyhow), maybe we're already there with HTML5 (or XHTML, if you go that way).

Hmm, a modern server-side framework that sticks to the basic, non-AJAX world - does it exist? It would sure make all the geeks who use noscript religiously happy!
Earth

Blueprints For Taming the Climate Crisis 389

Posted by Soulskill from the pump-all-of-our-smog-into-the-sun dept.
mdsolar sends this story from the NY Times: Here's what your future will look like if we are to have a shot at preventing devastating climate change. Within about 15 years every new car sold in the United States will be electric. ... Up to 60 percent of power might come from nuclear sources. And coal's footprint will shrink drastically, perhaps even disappear from the power supply. This course, created by a team of energy experts, was unveiled on Tuesday in a report for the United Nations (PDF) that explores the technological paths available for the world's 15 main economies to both maintain reasonable rates of growth and cut their carbon emissions enough by 2050 to prevent climatic havoc. It offers a sobering conclusion: We might be able to pull it off. But it will take an overhaul of the way we use energy, and a huge investment in the development and deployment of new energy technologies. Significantly, it calls for an entirely different approach to international diplomacy on the issue of how to combat climate change.

Submission + - IN SIX MONTHS, MICROSOFT WILL PULL THE PLUG ON WINDOWS 7 SUPPORT (geekrepublic.org) 1

Submitted by criticalmass24
criticalmass24 writes: Microsoft is warning customers that the end is soon coming for Windows 7 in much the same way it came for Windows XP earlier this year. Microsoft will end free mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015.

That means no more security patches if hackers find holes, no more updated features or performance improvements.

Submission + - Open Source implementation of BioWare's Aurora Engine (xoreos.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The xoreos project that aims to create an open source game engine to play games made for BioWare's Aurora Engine (think Neverwinter Nights, Knight of the Old Republic, Dragon Age) is seeking OpenGL developers.

The project is currently being coded by Sven Hesse who also works on ScummVM and a few others, but their OpenGL knowledge is limited.

So, if you have good OpenGL knowledge and want to lend a hand you can contact Sven at drmccoy@xoreos.org or on Freenode IRC (DrMcCoy in #xoreos).

Submission + - Mathematicians Solve The Topological Mystery Behind The "Brazuca" Soccer Ball

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: In the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, teams used a new kind of ball called the Telstar made from 12 black pentagonal panels and 20 white hexagonal panels. This ball has icosahedral symmetry and its own molecular analogue in the form of C60, the famous soccer ball-shaped fullerene. In 2006, a new ball called the TeamGeist was introduced at the World Cup in Germany. This was made of 14 curved panels that together gave it tetrahedral symmetry. This also had a molecular analogue with tetrahedral symmetry among the fullerenes. Now teams at the current World Cup in Brazil are playing with yet another design: the Brazuca, a ball constructed from six panels each with a four-leaf clover shape that knit together like a jigsaw to form a sphere. This has octahedral symmetry. But here's question that has been puzzling chemists, topologists and..errr...soccer fans: is there a molecular analogue of the Brazuca? Or put another way, can fullerenes have octahedral symmetry? Now a pair of mathematicians have finally solved this problem. They've shown that fullerenes can indeed have octahedral symmetry just like the Brazuca, although in addition to hexagonal and pentagonal carbon rings, the ball-shaped molecules must also have rings of 4 and 8 carbon atoms. The next stage is to actually synthesis one of these fullerenes, perhaps something to keep chemists occupied until the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

Submission + - Gamestop's Brilliant Idea: Require Preorders To Unlock Custom Game Content (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: One of the great universal truths of modern gaming is that preorders suck. The term refers to the practice of ordering a title at some point before it actually ships in order to get access to a variety of minor outfit tweaks, a few starting weapons, or boosts to early game play. Today, some publishers take this practice to truly ridiculous levels; the recent game Watch Dogs has no fewer than nine pre-order options. GameStop, perhaps sensing that there's pressure building against the model, wants to turn the dial up to 11 — and create preorder-locked, GameStop-specific content. According to financial analyst Colin Sebastian, "[GameStop] indicates that software publishers are more enthusiastic about partnering with it. For example, by offering exclusive content on each major game release and longer term, future models may include GameStop offering exclusive gameplay." GameStop is enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment. The company has captured a greater share of the Xbox One and PS4 market than it held at this point in the console cycle last time around and it's clearly looking to increase the attractiveness of its own business. That's fine but this kind of arbitrary lopping off of content to boost sales at particular shops simply isn't going to sit well with most gamers.

Submission + - Solved: why the Moon's far side looks so different 2

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: 55 years ago, the Soviet probe Luna 3 imaged the side of the Moon that faces away from us for the first time. Surprisingly, there were only two very small maria (dark regions) and large amounts of mountainous terrain, in stark contrast to the side that faces us. This remained a mystery for a very long time, even after we developed the giant impact hypothesis to explain the origin of the Moon. But a new study finally appears to solve the mystery, crediting the heat generated on the near side from a hot, young Earth with creating the differences between the two hemispheres.

Submission + - Cosmic Mystery Solved by Supersized Supernova Dust (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: How cosmic dust is created has been a mystery for some time. Although the textbooks tell us that the dusty stuff that builds the planets — and, ultimately, the complex chemistry that forms life (we are, after all, made of ‘star stuff’) — comes from supernova explosions, astronomers have been puzzled as to how delicate grains of dust condense from stellar material and how they can possibly survive the violent shock waves of the cataclysmic booms. But now, with the help of a powerful ground-based telescope, astronomers have not only watched one of these supernova ‘dust factories’ in action, they’ve also discovered how the grains can withstand the violent supernova shock. “When the star explodes, the shockwave hits the dense gas cloud like a brick wall,” said lead author Christa Gall, of Aarhus University, Denmark. “It is all in gas form and incredibly hot, but when the eruption hits the ‘wall’ the gas gets compressed and cools down to about 2,000 degrees. At this temperature and density elements can nucleate and form solid particles. We measured dust grains as large as around one micron (a thousandth of a millimeter), which is large for cosmic dust grains. They are so large that they can survive their onward journey out into the galaxy.” The surprising size of the measured dust particles means they can better survive the supernova's shockwave. This research has been published in the journal Nature.

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