Curl E - Slashdot User

Submission + - Germs taken into space come back deadlier

Submitted by

westlake

on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @12:00AM

westlake writes: "It sounds like the plot for a scary B-movie: Germs go into space on a rocket and come back stronger and deadlier than ever. Except, it really happened. In a medical experiment, salmonella carried about the space ahuttle in the fall of 2006 proved far more lerhal to lab mice than their earth-bound source. 90% dead vs. 40% dead in twenty-six days, with half the mice dying at 1/3 the oral dose. 167 genes in the strain had changed. The likely casue: In microgravity the force of fluids passing over the cells is low, similiar to conditions in the gastrointestinal tract, and the cells adapted quickly to the new environment. Germs taken to space come back deadlier"

Submission + - Anti-social site pokes fun at Facebook (mcgilldaily.com)

Submitted by HUADPE on Monday September 24, 2007 @05:07PM

HUADPE writes: As reported by The McGill Daily there is yet another new way to over-connectedly rant against being over connected. The Anti-social site NOSO encourages you to "create NO connections by scheduling NO events with NO friends." When you sign up, you are assigned a random number in place of a name, and are invited to enter such details as "what you are not interested in, what schools you did not attend, what is not your favourite music, and what professions you do not practice."

Submission + - GCC Compiler will finally gets replace by BSD PCC. (undeadly.org)

Submitted by

Sunnz

on Sunday September 16, 2007 @01:54PM

Sunnz writes: "A leaner, lighter, faster, and most importantly, BSD Licensed Compiler PCC has been imported into OpenBSD's CVS and NetBSD's pkgsrc.

The compiler is based on the original Portable C Compiler by S. C. Johnson, written in the late 70's. Even though much of the compiler has been rewritten, some of the basics still remain.

It is currently not bug-free, but it compiles on x86 platform, and works being done on it to take on GCC's job."

Submission + - Poor Man's Spectrum Analyzer

Submitted by Bluedove on Saturday September 15, 2007 @06:33AM

Bluedove writes: Create a low bandwidth spectrum analyser with an old linux box, a sound card, and Baudline. (i.e. effectively free). Contains obligatory screenshots.

Submission + - AMD Barcelona Native Quad-core Architecture Launch (pcper.com)

Submitted by

Vigile

on Monday September 10, 2007 @01:29AM

Vigile writes: "Barcelona has been one of most anticipated and debated hardware advancements in the industry for years, but now the hardware is officially unveiled and the real testing can begin. First, PC Perspective has a summary of all the worldwide launch events that will be taking place throughout the day that includes lots of AMD-provided information. They theorize that AMD might actually be in some trouble with the first batch of Barcelona parts, comparing this launch to AMD's failed HD 2900 XT GPU launch. There is already a review of some Barcelona-based servers with a performance preview over at Anandtech as well."

Submission + - AMD Introduces the Quad-Core Opterons (amd.com)

Submitted by diesel on Monday September 10, 2007 @01:24AM

diesel writes: AMD has finally announced new Barcelona parts. In a statement, they said: "Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-based systems from global OEM and system-builder partners begin shipping this month and are expected to increase in number through the remainder of the year. AMD Phenom(TM) processor solutions, which will leverage many of the same benefits of this innovative, next-generation architecture, are expected to be available for the desktop market in December. Due in part to the industry's most stable x86 server platform, more than 50 socket compatible Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-ready system choices are on the market today from tier one OEMs, all of whom are publicly supporting today's introduction."

Submission + - Advanced PDF management?

Submitted by chrysrobyn on Sunday September 09, 2007 @11:03PM

chrysrobyn writes: I find myself in the situation where I must store hundreds or possibly thousands of pieces of paper for later review and classification. I can't spend the time now to properly organize them (that definition may even change later anyway), or even seperate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I would like to feed it all to a sheet feeding scanner (I see them in Fry's for a few hundred dollars; some even come with free laser scanners), dump to PDF, then be able to reorder pages, drag pages to new PDF files, trash individual pages, etc. Duplicating a page would be a bonus. PDF is appealing because of the storage of the original sheet plus the OCR is generally good enough for searching.

Long story: My father in law passed away a few years ago, and he was the kind of guy who did everything on his own, at his own pace, and to nobody else's rules. Since his passing, my wife and I have wasted hundreds of hours (maybe more), trying to clean up and move on. Lawyers and a CPA have been involved, and without getting into the really long version, there is a whole lot we should really keep for our own purposes in the future (digital copies are okay, originals can be properly disposed of). Papers the professionals didn't require are vastly disorganized, occasionally sorted by year.
I don't do windows. Mac is preferred, but I personally have more experience with Linux. I've looked at DEVONthink, but it doesn't have the ability to trade pages between PDFs. I like Yep's tag feature, and can instantly come up with a dozen uses for that, but again, I can't organize an individual page somewhere. Adobe itself seems very intent on individual documents, not assisting with a database of them, or organizing between them.
Has the Slashdot audience seen anything like this?

Submission + - Northwest Passage Now Open

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09, 2007 @05:36PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian is reporting that the Northwest Passage is now navigable due to arctic sea ice melting much faster than previously. This will only continue to get worse next year as the additional open water absorbs more heat and delays the refreezing of the water this winter.

Submission + - most powerful radiotelescope to close b/c needs 4M

Submitted by Khaki_Dockers on Sunday September 09, 2007 @11:14AM

Khaki_Dockers writes: The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is operated by Cornell University, and it's funding comes from the US National Science Foundation's 200M astronomy budget. The SETI project is only one of it's many uses. It's budget started at 10.5M, they've reduced it to 8 million, and now the NSF says that they'll only provide 4M for it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/09/08/AR2007090801654_pf.html

Submission + - ubuntu-users.org - Social Network Project Announce (ubuntuforums.org)

Submitted by AlexanderHanff on Monday August 27, 2007 @09:28PM

AlexanderHanff writes: A new social networking project was announced today for the Ubuntu Community. It has generated a great deal of excitement both in the official Ubuntu forums and on Digg. The plan is to offer the community a service which will give them personal blog and emails within the ubuntu-users.org domain with all the rich features expected from a modern social networking site; including groups (Loco and custom), rss aggregation, voting system for the site's development and features as well as for the Ubuntu operating system and much more. It will be run by the Ubuntu Community users for the Ubuntu Community users on a totally non-profit basis and with an open design as well as mind. Hopefully the synergy it will create will give this huge community a real sense of belonging and a virtual badge they can wear with pride.

Submission + - Supercomputer conquers Rubik's Cube (newscientist.com)

Submitted by

PCM2

on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @03:32PM

PCM2 writes: "New Scientist reports that, like checkers before it, the Rubik's Cube has now been 'solved' via computer analysis. According to scientists at Boston's Northeastern University, any Rubik's Cube position can be returned to a fully-solved state in just 26 moves. Pretty amazing for an object that has a reported 43 quintillion combinations — but then again, not necessarily surprising if you've ever watched a Rubik's Cube competition."

Submission + - Chernobyl Mushrooms Feeding on Radiation

Submitted by cowtamer on Thursday August 02, 2007 @07:52PM

cowtamer writes: According to a National Geographic Article certain fungi can use ionizing radiation to perform "radiosynthesis" using the pigment melanin (the same one in our skin that protects us from UV radiation). It is speculated that this might be useful on long space voyages where energy from the Sun is not readily available.

Submission + - Linux Music DJing

Submitted by

Cocodude

on Saturday May 19, 2007 @08:44PM

Cocodude writes: "I'm moving to a new house in London and as the house IT expert, I want to be in control of computerised music at a housewarming party. I haven't been able to find any suitable automated DJing systems for Linux, where I can queue up some songs to be played with an automated detection of the end of each song and hopefully some rudimentary beatmatching. I don't want to have to run Windows to do this, so how can I, in this simplistic situation, prove that open source software for an open source operating system can do the job?"

Submission + - Linux memory by the slab

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19, 2007 @06:07PM

An anonymous reader writes: Good operating system performance depends in part on the operating system's ability to efficiently manage resources. The slab allocator used in Linux is based on an algorithm first introduced by Jeff Bonwick for the SunOS operating system. Jeff's allocator revolves around object caching, which has been used in embedded systems for quite some time, allocating memory as objects based on their size. This article explores the Linux slab allocator and memory allocation efficiency in both space and time.

Submission + - World's first quantum circuit

Submitted by

Anonymous

on Sunday May 06, 2007 @02:54PM

Anonymous writes: "NEC, JST and RIKEN have together announced the unveiling of the world's first quantum circuit. The unveiling comes as the third step, after first unveiling the first solid-state qubit and the world's first logic gate between two qubits. This is an important step toward actually using quantum computing for something useful. Previously scientists have only been able to control a single qubit, with good results, but NEC's new circuit makes it possible to use pairs of qubits for computing quantum algorithms and logical functions, and then scale these pairs into a whole quantum computer, sometime in the future."

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