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ESR Advocates Proprietary Software 422

Posted by CowboyNeal from the well-not-all-the-time dept.
mvdwege writes "Apparently, Eric Raymond has decided that proprietary software is now a good thing, according to The Register. I must say it is rather revealing how easily he is willing to compromise on this particular freedom. Is his earlier vocal proclamation of the importance of freedom (still visible on his homepage) mere posturing? And if so, how about his vocal support of other freedoms?"

Turing Equation Explains how Leopard Spots Develop 109

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the spotty-research dept.
BilZ0r writes "A slight modification of an equation developed by Alan Turing in 1952 has been used to show how the patterns of big cats change from kitten to adult markings. Sy-Sang Liaw of National Chung-Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, and colleagues set out to replicate these patterns using Turing's equations. But they found they had to do more than just tweak the parameters of the reaction-diffusion equation. Instead they had to assume two stages of spot growth with different rules: the first to get the baby cats their spots, and the second to create the final configurations. It took them a year to find a final solution."

Astronomers Awaiting 1a Supernova 204

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the really-excited-space-geeks dept.
Aryabhata writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that astronomers have sighted a star on the brink of a "1a" supernova. This opportunity presents the first chance astronomers have ever had to view a supernova of this magnitude up close. From the article: "They are so rare that the last one known in our galaxy was seen in 1572 by the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who first coined the term nova, for "new star", not realizing he was in fact witnessing the violent end of an unknown star. It has long been believed that type 1a supernovae are the death throes of a white dwarf star. But all modern ones have been so distant that it has not been possible to see what had been there beforehand."

Comment Re:I'd rather maintain Ruby than J2EE (Score 1) 295

by danharan (#15724583) Attached to: Too Much Focus on the Beginning of Software Lifecycle?
The creator of Rails has expressed regret for that video, because it gives people the impression that CRUD generation is the most important feature of RoR. 99% of the J2EE work I've seen doesn't require high-performance, low latency distributed messaging engines. That's the edge case that Rails doesn't and can't handle right now. If JRuby ever progresses, it will get that. (I wonder if we could bolt a messenger framework to a Rails app, open sockets maybe?) Speaking of edge cases, Hibernate still kicks ActiveRecord's ass. For those of us who live in that 99% of projects that don't require those edge cases (or can drop down to SQL when AR doesn't hold up), there's a lot of productivity and elegance to the Rails community's projects. Have you seen Migrations? Things like that are a delight to code with. In the same vein, check out the config for URL mapping if you've ever been frustrated by web.xml. Tag libs and filters, features I appreciated when going from PHP to Java in 2001 are more straightforward in Rails. In the Java world I was already convinced that Hibernate/Spring was the way to go, and wanted to avoid EJB's as much as I could. I've worked with them, and they're f&*()g messy, barely testable, slow abominations. In Rails, I've got all the features I wanted to deal with in J2EE... so far, no regrets. But speaking of edge cases and awesomeness... have you played at all with Ruby (not Rails)? There's been a few times I've done thing in Ruby I simply couldn't have in Java, thinking "Fuck, I always wondered why it was so complicated".

Open Source About the People 91

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the shiny-happy-people dept.
An anonymous reader writes "InfoWorld has a nice look at what defines an open source venture. It seems that the main area of interest, and difficulty, rests with the personnel surrounding the project. From the article: 'But the muddier waters are around the personalities and commitment of the engineers who created the code. How long do they intend to stay? What is their level of commitment? These are fuzzy types of questions - but we know from history that when the core team of engineers that best understands the code up and walks out ... it tends to send a company into a death spiral.'"

Ozone Layer Improving Faster Than Expected 325

Posted by Zonk from the go-ozone-go-ozone dept.
SpaceAdmiral writes "Since the implementation of the Montreal Protocol, which limited ozone-destroying gasses like CFCs, the Earth's ozone layer has been recovering. However, new studies show that the ozone in the lower stratosphere is actually recovering faster than the Montreal Protocol alone can explain." From the article: "It's a complicated question. CFCs are not the only things that can influence the ozone layer; sunspots, volcanoes and weather also play a role. Ultraviolet rays from sunspots boost the ozone layer, while sulfurous gases emitted by some volcanoes can weaken it. Cold air in the stratosphere can either weaken or boost the ozone layer, depending on altitude and latitude. These processes and others are laid out in a review just published in the May 4th issue of Nature: 'The search for signs of recovery of the ozone layer' by Elizabeth Westhead and Signe Andersen."

Well I'll Be A Monkey's Uncle 648

Posted by Zonk from the blame-killproc-for-the-title dept.
killproc writes "A new report suggests that interbreeding between humans and chimpanzees happened a lot more recently than was previously thought. The report, published in the most recent issue of the journal Nature, estimates that final break between the human and chimpanzee species did not come until 6.3 million years ago at the earliest, and probably less than 5.4 million years ago."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Why I might be your friend 2

Journal by danharan

If I'm you're fan, I probably don't know you, but I read a post of yours that seemed good enough that I wanted to see your next posts.

Someone posted the idea in their sig, I thought it was a good idea although I can't remember who it was.

After 2 weeks of using this strategy, I have started noticing some patterns. My "friends" continue to post interesting comments- it wasn't just a fluke. Their friends generally post interesting comments too, thought that's more hit-and-miss.
Spam

Journal Journal: Some good posts!

Journal by danharan

I found the following post of interest: Attacking the Spammer Business Model

Finally, that meme is getting out.

Since since I find there's a huge number of trolls around here, and few insightful AND original people, I decided I would add the author of that thread to my list of friends (I can't figure out how to just list myself as a fan... friend might be a bit presumptuous).
Censorship

Journal Journal: Rant, Rant, Rant.

Journal by scaramush
Here's a rant I sent out recently about using powerpoint to archive business process information. In case you can't tell, I hate it. I hate it so much, It wasn't enough that I ranted at my co-workers, I felt the urge, nay the NEED to rant to /. about it. I know the icon is for "censorship", but it was as close as I could find to "STFU-about-something-already!".

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