Comment Re:Floor Wax and Dessert Topping! (Score 1) 6
Why do you need to know all of the calories in a container? Is it really that tough to multiply in your head say 19 servings by 60 calories?
Comment Re:Oh come on. (Score 1) 794
FORTRAN is really easy to pick up later anyway as it's "old fashioned" and line numbered based. I'd think the biggest problem teaching the class now would be getting students to take it seriously because it's a much older way of thinking about programs from our modern OOP languages.
Fortran is line numbered based? What does that mean? You don't even have to use line numbers in f77, much less f90 or later. Yikes.
Comment Re:Insufficient at any speed. (Score 1) 262
What's wrong with the current Track Changes? It works weel enough for me and my interactions with Word users.
Comment Re:mplayer -dumpaudio (Score 1) 9
Yeah, it seems like mplayer should work directly, but I couldn't get it to
dump straight to mp3. I had to dump the audio to avi and then convert that to mp3. Also, you need to be careful with the dvd titles/track numbers. The first one isn't always the one that you want. Sometimes previews, or other features are first on the DVD.
Comment dvd2mp3 (Score 1) 9
I had the same problem, so I wrote a very basic Perl script that does this and put it up on Sourceforge - dvd2mp3. It relies on mplayer, lame, and some Perl libs to do most of the work. It has a very basic text interface. It runs on Linux and probably anything else that will run those programs.
I use is mostly for converting musics DVDs (videos, concerts, etc.) to mp3s, so I usually care about track names. If you are not worried about tracks names, it might be overkill. Ah well, another idea of an option to add to this.
Take a look, it may do what you want, or give you some ideas for doing it yourself.
Colbert Wins Space Station Name Contest 471
As we speculated a couple of weeks back, it has come to pass. Reader mknewman writes to tell us that comedian Stephen Colbert has won the vote to have his name immortalized (or at least until it crashes) as the moniker on NASA's newest addition to the International Space Station. We can but wonder what NASA will do now. "NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, 'The Colbert Report' to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday."
Comment Re:Some ideas... (Score 2, Interesting) 249
Ultrasonic tape measure / speed of sound experiment. Ultrasonic transducers are easy to come by; students should send some pulses out one, and then sense the return pulse, giving either a numeric indicator or a voltage level that corresponds to the delay time. A little electronics heavy, but if they have had a background in electronics it should be pretty fun. Proof of concept: ultrasonic tape measures at Home Depot for $15. (Trick: you have to build some kind of ultrasonic horn to channel the pulse and collect the return pulse -- otherwise it diffuses too much)
You don't need ultrasonic or transducer. Two cheap microphones and the correct connector to get them on separate channels and a computer is plenty. Make a loud sound and record it with each microphone. Find the distance from microphones to the sound source. The find the time shift of your signal between the right and left channel. Divide the two and you have the speed of sound. There are a lot of variations you can make, but the basics are easy to do.
Optimizing Linux Use On a USB Flash Drive? 137
Buckbeak writes "I like to carry my Linux systems around with me, on USB flash drives. Typically, SanDisk Cruzers or Kingston HyperX. I encrypt the root partition and boot off the USB stick. Sometimes, the performance leaves something to be desired. I want to be able to do an 'apt-get upgrade' or 'yum update' while surfing but the experience is sometimes painful. What can I do to maximize the performance of Linux while running off of a slow medium? I've turned on 'noatime' in the mount options and I don't use a swap partition. Is there any way to minimize drive I/O or batch it up more? Is there any easy way to run in memory and write everything out when I shut down? I've tried both EXT2 and EXT3 and it doesn't seem to make much difference. Any other suggestions?"
Verizon Employees Fired For Snooping Obama's Record 344
longhairedgnome writes "The curiosity in President-elect Barack Obama's phone records came with a high price tag for Verizon Wireless employees. According to CNN, the workers who snooped on Obama's phone records have been fired.
'This was some employees' idle curiosity,' a company source told CNN and added 'we now consider this matter closed.'
Justice served? What about legal possibilities?" Can we expect anyone who followed a warrantless wiretap from the Bush administration to also be fired then? I mean, they violated our privacy as well.
South Carolina Wants To Jam Cell Phone Signals 601
Corey Brook writes "The South Carolina state prison system wants the FCC to grant them and local officers permission to block cell phone signals. News has been out about the growing problem of them perps smuggling cell phones into prisons for a while now. Inmates use cell phones as commerce, to implement fraud, smuggle drugs and weapons, and to order hits. Of course, some may use it to just talk to a loved one any time they can." Hopefully movie theaters and restaurants do it next.
Has HavenCo's Data Haven Shut Down? 287
secmartin writes "HavenCo, the self-proclaimed data haven located on the micronation Sealand, appears to be offline. Their website is down, and there have been no announcements from either HavenCo or Sealand. HavenCo has been covered here before; it was mostly known for offering hosting of content that might be illegal in other countries. Does anyone have news about what happened to them?"
Solar Wind Rips Up Martian Atmosphere 101
IHateEverybody writes "Scientists have found evidence that the solar wind is ripping off chunks of the Martian atmosphere, which could possibly explain why Mars has such a thin atmosphere today. The chunks are being ripped up along 'magnetic umbrellas,' which are bubbles of magnetic fields which rise from the ground and extend above the Martian atmosphere. This is surprising because scientists previously thought that these magnetic umbrellas protected the Martian atmosphere. Now it looks like exactly the opposite might be true."
Submission + - Polling Stations Resort to Paper Ballots
Astrogen writes: "CNN Reports that there are problems with voting machines and some polling stations have gone back to paper ballots.
From the Article "voters rolled their eyes as election workers fumbled with new touchscreen machines that they couldn't get to start properly until about 10 minutes after polls opened.
"We got five machines — one of them's got to work," said Willette Scullank, a troubleshooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.""
From the Article "voters rolled their eyes as election workers fumbled with new touchscreen machines that they couldn't get to start properly until about 10 minutes after polls opened.
"We got five machines — one of them's got to work," said Willette Scullank, a troubleshooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.""
