Comment Successor agency (Score 5, Funny) 187
Shouldn't the successor to KGB be called LHC... oh!
Comment Re:Yeah, maybe (Score 1) 612
What if you are depending on a library written by someone not as fscking brilliant as yourself? If that library has a bug and throws an exception you will have to deal with it. You may even have to propagate the exception up to be handled by someone else. That may require some cleanup.
Besides, bugs are not the only conditions to trigger exceptions. Unusual but possible events can do it as well. Out of disk or memory conditions are such examples. Some idiot/rogue user may delete a needed file from the command line and so forth.
Comment In Argentina... (Score 1) 168
There's a project called InfoLeg Trying to do exactly this... I'm not sure if they've been able to keep up, but they have a lot of content browsable in a way that resembles revision control a lot.
As an example you have here our copyright law passed in 1933. The three links there can show you the original text, the most recent text applying all updates (i.e. "HEAD"
That's more or less what you were looking for? I know people who were close to the project in the past, I can get you a couple of names if you're really interested...
Decades-Old Soviet Reflector Spotted On the Moon 147
cremeglace writes "No one had seen a laser reflector that Soviet scientists had left on the moon almost 40 years ago, despite years of searching. Turns out searchers had been looking kilometers in the wrong direction. On 22 April, a team of physicists finally saw an incredibly faint flash from the reflector, which was ferried across the lunar surface by the Lunokhod 1 rover. The find comes thanks to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which last month imaged a large area where the rover was reported to have been left. Then the researchers, led by Tom Murphy of the University of California, San Diego, could search one football-field-size area at a time until they got a reflection."
Ubuntu LTS Experiences X.org Memory Leak 320
MonsterTrimble writes "Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 is experiencing a major memory leak due to patches for X.org. 'An X.Org Server update that was pushed into the Lucid repository last week has resulted in the system being slower and slower as it is left on, until it reaches a point where the system is no longer usable. ... In order to make the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS deadline, the developers are looking at just reverting three of the patches, which brings the GLX version back to 1.2. Ubuntu developers are now desperate for people willing to test out this updated X.Org Server package so they can determine by this Friday whether to ship it with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or doing an early SRU (Stable Release Update). Right now this X.Org Server that's being tested is living in the ubuntu-x-swat PPA.'"
Brain Training Games Don't Train Your Brain 151
Stoobalou writes with this excerpt from Thinq.co.uk: "A new study has shown that brain training games do little to exercise the grey matter. Millions of people who have been prodding away at their Nintendo DS portable consoles, smug in the knowledge that they are giving their brains a proper work-out, might have to rethink how they are going to stop the contents of their skulls turning into mush."
PhD Candidate Talks About the Physics of Space Battles 361
darthvader100 writes "Gizmodo has run an article with some predictions on what future space battles will be like. The author brings up several theories on propulsion (and orbits), weapons (explosives, kinetic and laser), and design. Sounds like the ideal shape for spaceships will be spherical, like the one in the Hitchhiker's Guide movie."
Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140
Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."
US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144
bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."
Comment In other news... (Score 0, Troll) 459
Microsoft has told skydivers that they don't recommend using parachutes, because a parachute adds to their weight.
This (as the advice stated by microsoft) is based on strictly true facts (greater attack area) but it is also strictly useless advice...
Artificial Brain '10 Years Away' 539
SpuriousLogic writes "A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed.
Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already built elements of a rat brain.
He told the TED global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses.
Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said.
'It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,' he said."
Comment Pyweek (Score 1) 324
A lot of developers I've known had made their first game during Pyweek contests. Pyweek is a free and open game creation contest, using python. It has a very friendly and open community, so even if it is a contest there is a lot of people around wanting to help newbies and provide advice.
But the best thing of participating in the contest is that the rules help you to FINISH a game. Starting work on a game is easy, but it's too tempting to fall into scope creep and start adding characters, places, game mechanisms, enemy behaviour ad infinitum, and you are always starting new stuff but never getting to have something finished.
Try it. Most of the people I known to go into the contest have had a lot of fun.
Comment Nice extrapolation (Score 1) 867
They imagined 2.5 megawatt turbines crisscrossing the terrestrial globe, excluding 'areas classified as forested, areas occupied by permanent snow or ice, areas covered by water, and areas identified as either developed or urban,'
I hope the power is enough to make all the food replicators work. Otherwise I don't know what we will eat when we cover every arable field (read: the places where we grow most food now, which are not forested, with ice, water, nor urban) with wind turbines.
Comment Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels... (Score 2, Interesting) 416
I'm going to review your physics.
If you installation produced 45 KWH of ENERGY during a 5 hour period (being conservative here), it's average output POWER was 9KW. Let's say 10KW to simplify the math.
Now, you will need 11000 times as many panels to reach 110MW. The total number of panels per mile you need is 48*11000/116=4551. That is one panel every 14 inches (if i got the units right, not used to imperial).
Feasible? I would say it still is, but not as much as your calculations suggested
Comment Re:How much?!?! (Score 4, Informative) 416
110 MW per train sounds like too much. The typical power output for a locomotive seems to be roughly 5000 HP (http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/2008/05/23/ges-4500-hp-locomotive/). Even if we double that number, since it a high speed train, 10 000 HP = 7 456 998 watts. It is only 7.5 MW. You could power more than 10 of these suckers with 110MW
