Comment Re:Anecdotal Joke Start Pattern (Score 4, Funny) 27
Most presenters are not great comedians and should avoid that pattern.
Comment Re:Why is it controversial? (Score 1) 183
No, the controversy is in how to maximize patient disgust for the technique. It's ok though, I think they found the ideal solution:
*Correction, 5:20 p.m.: Some physicians have been successfully treating patients for C. difficile with ground-up, filtered fecal material inserted into the stomach with a tube, not via an enema.
Comment PLOS one link broken (Score 1) 1
As the subject says. It should be http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0047018#
Submission + - Turtle Urinates from Its Mouth (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: Talk about having a potty mouth. When Chinese soft-shelled turtles to relieve themselves, they just open wide, according to a new study. Researchers thought it was a little odd that, when the turtles were on dry land, they would stick their heads in puddles and swish water around in their mouths. The scientists thought maybe something else was going on besides respiration, so they bought Chinese soft-shelled turtles at a market in Singapore and found ways to collect their urine, like attaching a flexible latex tube to each one's underside. They found that the animals were getting rid of the vast majority of their urea, a major component of urine, through their mouths instead of their hind ends. The team speculates that this might be because animals have to drink a lot of water to make urine, which can be unhealthy in the saltier waters where these turtles spend some of their time. If they're just rinsing the water around in their mouths, they avoid having to get rid of all that salt.
Submission + - Elephant Hair Acts as Pin Fins for Cooling (vice.com) 1
derekmead writes: A new paper from Conor Myhrvold, Howard Stone, and Elie Bou-Zeid of Princeton, published in PLoS One, shows that elephants’ sparse hair actually acts as pin-shaped cooling fins, which helps the giant animals dissipate heat more effectively. The hair works by creating more area for heat to be released, while also also pushing heat away from the animal’s body where wind flow is less impeded.
The team calculated the heat transfer coefficients for measured values of elephants’ smooth skin (around ears, for example) and rough skin (on the legs), both with and without hair. They found that, at high wind speeds, the convection effect of the wind overpowered any surface differences. But at low wind speeds, when convection effects are lower and elephants have more trouble shedding heat, the team found that hair acted as pin-shaped cooling fins, which increased convection cooling efficiency by as much as 24 percent. For elephants dealing with huge thermal loads, that’s an important difference.
The team calculated the heat transfer coefficients for measured values of elephants’ smooth skin (around ears, for example) and rough skin (on the legs), both with and without hair. They found that, at high wind speeds, the convection effect of the wind overpowered any surface differences. But at low wind speeds, when convection effects are lower and elephants have more trouble shedding heat, the team found that hair acted as pin-shaped cooling fins, which increased convection cooling efficiency by as much as 24 percent. For elephants dealing with huge thermal loads, that’s an important difference.
Submission + - Mysterious Algorithm Was 4% of Trading Activity Last Week (cnbc.com) 1
concealment writes: "A single mysterious computer program that placed orders — and then subsequently canceled them — made up 4 percent of all quote traffic in the U.S. stock market last week, according to the top tracker of high-frequency trading activity. The motive of the algorithm is still unclear.
The program placed orders in 25-millisecond bursts involving about 500 stocks, according to Nanex, a market data firm. The algorithm never executed a single trade, and it abruptly ended at about 10:30 a.m. ET Friday."
The program placed orders in 25-millisecond bursts involving about 500 stocks, according to Nanex, a market data firm. The algorithm never executed a single trade, and it abruptly ended at about 10:30 a.m. ET Friday."
Comment surprise!? (Score 2) 172
If you don't want information to get out, don't give it out.
Comment So what? (Score 5, Insightful) 252
"The indictment accuses Swartz of repeatedly spoofing the MAC address — an identifier that is usually static — of his computer after MIT blocked his computer based on that number.
Right, and...? Is a MAC address some sort of protected id? Everyone knows that MAC filtering is ineffective, and MAC altering is enabled by hardware.
Swartz didn't provide a real e-mail address when registering on the network.
Uh oh, I'm in trouble.
Swartz allegedly hid his face from surveillance cameras by holding his bike helmet up to his face and looking through the ventilation holes when going in to swap out an external drive used to store the documents.
Again, so what? Is it some requirement that we display ourselves clearly to all security cameras?
Swartz also allegedly named his guest account 'Gary Host,' with the nickname 'Ghost.'"
Well, that is scary. Prosecute away then.
Submission + - The Linux-Proof Processor that Nobody Wants (perens.com) 1
Bruce Perens writes: "Clover Trail, Intel's newly announced "Linux proof" processor, is already a dead end for other technical and business reasons."
Submission + - Check your phone bill: You're probably being overcharged for data (extremetech.com)
MrSeb writes: "A recent study conducted by UCLA professor Chunyi Peng shows that carriers generally count data usage correctly, but those customers who commonly use their device in areas with weak signal strength or to stream audio or video are often overcharged. Peng and three other researchers used data gleaned from an app installed on Android smartphones on two different carriers. The issue appears to be in how the system is set up to count data usage. Under the current scenario, data is charged as it is sent from the carrier’s network to the end user. What does not exist is a system to confirm whether the packets are received, and thus preventing charges for unreceived data. Peng demonstrated this in two extreme circumstances. In one case, 450 megabytes of data was charged to an account where not a single bit of it had been received. On the flipside, Peng’s group was able to construct an app which disguised data transfers as DNS requests, which are not counted by the carriers as data usage. Here they were able to transfer 200 megabytes of data without being charged. Overall, the average overcharge is about 5-7% for most users. While that does not seem like much, with unlimited plans gone and data caps in style that could pose potential problems for some heavy data users. Could you be going over your data allotment based on data you never received? It’s quite possible."
Comment Re:counter? (Score 1) 519
A counter is pretty benign. Most of the linked articles are a dense nest of tracking sites.
The marketing people have figured out that slashdot is a good source of eyeballs long ago. I suggest you block as you feel appropriate.
The marketing people have figured out that slashdot is a good source of eyeballs long ago. I suggest you block as you feel appropriate.
Comment Re:I, Caveman (Score 1, Insightful) 705
The real moral of that story is that reality tv is entertainment, not science.
Comment Re:Esperanto! (Score 1) 394
French? Please, we're talking about tomorrow, not yesterday.
Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lingua_francas
Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lingua_francas
Comment Esperanto! (Score 4, Funny) 394
The lingua-franca of tomorrow.
Comment Re:Not gonna fly (Score 5, Informative) 166
From TFA, being in the same swarm does not mean any given pair (let alone 5-tuple) of participants actually exchanged data. In fact:
Here, the activity alleged in the complaint not only did not take place simultaneously with each other, but took place at five discrete times involving a single defendant over an 88 day period extending almost three months. The moving defendant (Doe 4) allegedly accessed the swarm at issue on February 3, 2012 at 2:48 a.m. The closest preceding “hit”, that of Doe 5, allegedly occurred 50 days earlier, on December 16, 2011. The closest succeeding “hit”, that of Doe 2, allegedly occurred 15 days later, on February 18, 2012. Such temporal gaps compel a finding that the five Does did not act in concert with each other
That is not acting "in concert".
