Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:English? (Score 1) 488

I'm pretty sure they were trying (and failing) to say the following:

It will take a week at 200 km/h for your party of 30 to reach the 36,000-km-high terminal station. Also, the elevator will need a counterweight at a height of 96,000 km, a quarter of the way to the Moon

Comment Improved efficiency has not been proven yet (Score 3, Informative) 223

... or even attempted to be proven, for that matter. From the article:

The Fraunhofer Institute's press statement doesn't give any actual concrete figures on improved worker productivity

According to the "study", if you can call it that with only ten volunteers, they merely chose that type of lighting with the other choices being "that, but less so", and "normal office lighting". No conclusive evidence of improved productivity (yet) as far as I can see, but it is pretty nifty - I'd like one of these installed in my office. Now if I could just convince my superiors of docking up that €1,000 per square meter...

Comment Re:Errors are universal, humour is cultural (Score 2) 344

From TFA:

If a sense of humor is part of our basic, human thinking machinery, then why can’t we agree about what’s funny?

What’s universal about humor is the process, not the content. Everybody faces every situation with different beliefs, knowledge, and understandings about the world. And different understandings lead to different assumptions and therefore different false assumptions.

So there's not necessarily a conflict - you'd expect different cultures to have different assumptions about the world (for geographical and linguistic reasons, perhaps), and therefore have a different sense of humor.

Government

Submission + - South Africa Passes Secrecy Bill (telegraph.co.uk)

Hermanas writes: "South Africa's parliament has passed a Protection of Information Bill which could see whistle blowers and journalists who publish "classified" information jailed for up to 25 years. On the morning of the vote, a joint editorial in the country's largest newspapers heralded a South Africa's "day of reckoning for democracy." "The spreading culture of self-enrichment, either corrupt, or merely inappropriate, makes scrutiny fuelled by whistle blowers who have the public interest at heart more essential than ever since 1994," the front page editorial said. As MPs voted on the bill in Cape Town's parliament, protesters dressed all in black gathered at the gates of the historic building where they were addressed by editors and freedom of information activists."

Comment How to make superhumans (Score 1) 240

Step 1: Find a method to determine skill (in whatever desired area) from DNA.

Step 2: Find a method to artificially combine two DNA strands that doesn't take more than a day or so.

Step 3: Be able to grow a fully-functional human from the DNA generated in Step 2.

Step 4: Start with the DNA of a few hundred people (preferably top athletes), and apply a evolutionary algorithm to combine, test, combine test, etc.

Result: Within weeks, not centuries, you'll have the DNA for super-athletes, super-nerds or super-soldiers. We're almost there!

Slashdot Top Deals

"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android

Working...