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

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Same old really... (Score 1) 673

Nothing special planned, just a nice bbq over at a friend's place with the family. I don' think any of us is going to ascend unexpectedly, but if someone does, we'll most likely wish him / her godspeed and raise our malts in their absence ;-)

Love the "dry ice shoes / helium dolls" idea though... I lol'ed ;-)

Uwe

Comment Re:Why not wait? (Score 1) 481

I'm also a recent convert to chrom(e|ium) and have been using it almost exclusively for six months or so, but I find its print functionality severely lacking on Linux (stable builds). I still have to revert to Firefox regularly in order to print a page or two, say in landscape format.

Comment An Inspiration (Score 3, Insightful) 131

I think those pictures he came up with first inspired an entire generation of would-be computer scientists, maths geeks, physicists and Scientific American readers. How such a simple iteration could render those fascinating patterns even on a 2d grid, remains to this day one of the big mysteries. R.I.P. Benoit, I hope you'll finally be able to make sense of the fractal nature of things from up / down there!

Comment Wasted byproducts? (Score 1) 172

I thought most of those byproducts weren't wasted, but used to feed cattle? No more happy days for the cows, it seems, and Scottish milk is bound to deteriorate from now on (no more whisky flavour).

It's hard to believe that the nation that invented haggis to be able to use *all* parts of a slaughtered animal should simply toss away the byproducts of whisky-making.

Comment Re:How? (Score 1) 317

"Just about every sports or race cars out there ( including Formula 1) have negative camber. You are saying that is a design default? Righhhhhht."

I think negative camber is used in racing to even out the aerodynamic and body roll effects at high speed, esp. during cornering. The more or less vertical downforce acts on the car, in effect evening out the negative camber at rest, *maximizing* the tyre contact patch to optimize mechanical traction during cornering, so it's quite the opposite goal that's being achieved here.

Of course, normal road cars don't have any aero downforce worth speaking of, to the tyres will remain at negative camber even at high speed.

Comment Rest in Peace, good man (Score 1) 96

I recall many "puzzling" moments at the local pool reading the latest issue of "Scientific American" where he wrote a column regularly. And no, reading this title never attracted any chicks to join me on the blanket, but this is /. after all... ;-)

Godspeed Martin, your wit & humor will be missed.

Comment Re:RMS (Score 2, Informative) 737

Agreed, and looking at his programming achievements (emacs, gcc, gnu tools, ...) I can forgive him a little weirdness after all those all-nighters in front of a lethal amber CRT terminal. Linus ain't half bad either, but he had a lot more help from the community with Linux as the support infrastructure (the net) was already more or less in place (at least at the universities) when Linux became big.

Stallman however was pretty much a one-man show programming wise, and I recall a paragraph in the GPL about him sending out tapes for $100 a pop with the gnu source on them... good times.

Slashdot Top Deals

What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.

Working...