morto - Slashdot User

Submission + - Happy 50th Doctor Who! (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by beaverdownunder on Saturday November 23, 2013 @10:36AM

beaverdownunder writes: To commemorate 50 years of the Tardis, today the BBC is airing a 75 minute special finally revealing the secrets of the Time War.

What did you think off the special? And what's your fondest memory of Who? And what about that Capaldi guy?

Comment Assembly programmer. (Score 4, Interesting) 336

by morto on Wednesday June 19, 2013 @09:11AM (#44048721) Attached to: PDP-11 Still Working In Nuclear Plants - For 37 More Years

Just a small correction. The language is Assembly. Assembler is the tool. Best regards.

Submission + - The Strong Goldbach Conjecture Proved ? (arxiv.org)

Submitted by morto on Thursday June 06, 2013 @08:34PM

morto writes: "The Strong Goldbach conjecture dates back to 1742. It states that every even integer greater than four can be written as the sum of two prime numbers. Since then, no one has been able to prove the conjecture. ...Additionally, the conjecture has been verified to be true for all even integers up to 4.10^18. In this paper, we prove that the conjecture is true for all even integers greater than 362."

It seems then it is finally proved, right ?

Mars One Has 78,000 Applicants 355

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @12:48PM from the send-me-to-space dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Mars One reports that 78,000 people have volunteered for a one-way ticket to Mars. A quick calculation shows that this means people lined up coast-to-coast in a line with only 40cm per person! (As Robert Zubrin already predicted). If you want, you can still go and sign up (or sign up your worst enemy). Or you can just look at some videos of the would-be travelers."

Comment Is it too late to surrender to the south ? (Score 1) 318

by morto on Friday May 03, 2013 @09:28AM (#43619307) Attached to: Repeal of Louisiana Science Education Act Rejected

You know what, maybe winning the civil war was not such a good idea. Maybe you guys could reconsider and cut the south loose.

How To Safeguard Loose Nukes 167

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 20, 2013 @10:54PM from the in-the-wrong-hands dept.

Lasrick writes "The Bulletin has an interesting article about the likelihood of terrorists obtaining nuclear material. 'Since 1993, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has logged roughly 2,000 cases of illicit or unauthorized trafficking of nuclear and radioactive material. Thirty illicit radioactive trafficking incidents were reported in the former Soviet region alone from 2009 to 2011. As Obama said in December, "Make no mistake, if [terrorists] get [nuclear material], they will use it."'"

Japanese Probe Finds Miswiring of Boeing 787 Battery 201

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 20, 2013 @08:51PM from the who's-to-blame dept.

NeverVotedBush writes in with the latest installment of the Dreamliner: Boeing 787 saga. "A probe into the overheating of a lithium ion battery in an All Nippon Airways Boeing 787 that made an emergency landing found it was improperly wired, Japan's Transport Ministry said Wednesday. The Transport Safety Board said in a report that the battery for the aircraft's auxiliary power unit was incorrectly connected to the main battery that overheated, although a protective valve would have prevented power from the auxiliary unit from causing damage. Flickering of the plane's tail and wing lights after it landed and the fact the main battery was switched off led the investigators to conclude there was an abnormal current traveling from the auxiliary power unit due to miswiring."

Comment We do not know enough. (Score 1) 421

by morto on Tuesday February 19, 2013 @08:27PM (#42950831) Attached to: Does the Higgs Boson Reveal Our Universe's Doomsday?

In addition to the fact that precise numbers needed by the calculation are not available yet we do not know A LOT about the physical reality of the universe. A huge part of it we attribute to dark energy that is basically stuff we have no idea about. Not to mention the possibility of all of this be a simulation which would bring the possibility of changing the parameters of it.

Submission + - Why USPTO awards so many outrageously stupid patents ? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by

morto

on Monday February 11, 2013 @09:29AM

morto writes: "Why USPTO awards so many outrageously stupid patents?

I am always amazed by the ever-growing stupidity of software patents. Why is that so? Is it dumbness, corruption or something else?

Please illuminate me because it is looking pretty crazy from outside (and take into account that I am Brazilian, meaning I should be at this point well desensitized by government agencies stupidity and corruption)."

Submission + - Soft-bodied robot leaps 30 times its height (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover on Monday February 11, 2013 @03:46AM

cylonlover writes: Most robots are built out of rigid materials, but a DARPA initiative to build soft-bodied robots that can squeeze into hard-to-reach places has led to the development of new types of the mechanical marvels. Harvard's Whitesides Research Group is working on a soft-bodied solution and has produced a squishy three-legged bot that can jump 30 times its height using the power of internal explosions. Embedded pneumatic networks in the robot – channels that course like veins throughout the robot's elastomer body – were fed a mixture of oxygen and methane which – when ignited with an electrical spark – results in an explosion that sends the robot flying into the air. By actuating all three legs simultaneously the team succeeded in getting the robot to leap more than 30 times its height.

Egyptian Court Wants To Block YouTube For a Month 188

Posted by timothy on Saturday February 09, 2013 @07:55PM from the new-regime-of-youthful-exuberance dept.

First time accepted submitter rogue-girl writes that a "Cairo Administrative Court announced earlier on Feb. 9 that a ruling has been issued to block YouTube within the country for 30 days. This decision comes after a lawsuit was filed back in September 2012 during the turmoil caused by the infamous trailer 'The Innocence of Muslims' spread through the popular video platform. The Court has also asked for all websites having published parts or the entire trailer to be banned for 30 days."

Comment Thank God pearls like these have been preserved ! (Score 1) 414

by morto on Monday October 15, 2012 @10:12AM (#41657291) Attached to: Einstein Letter Critical of Religion To Be Auctioned On EBay

Exodus 21
20: “If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. "
21: “If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property."

Thanks to this scrutiny I can learn from Exodus 21 that it is okay to beat the crap out of my slave as long as I do not kill him and Leviticus 12 teaches me that baby girls leave their mothers twice as dirty as baby boys do. In Leviticus 21 I see that no hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles can approach the altar.

Where would civilization be without these priceless advices!

Comment Re:Lack of tolerance to other religions (Score 1) 412

by morto on Tuesday September 25, 2012 @05:44PM (#41456293) Attached to: Man Arrested In Greece For "Blasphemous" Facebook Page

What you have described is Aristocracy, the government of the elite. The problem is who decides who is best ? Who decides how the tests should be ? The big thing about democracy is not the election of the best but the ability to avoid the perpetuation of the worst. But I know what your mean. Here in Brazil our Democracy is a mix of Kleptocracy (government by burglars - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptocracy) and Kakistocracy (government of the worst - http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kakistocracy). But at least we are free to criticize and change the gang every four years.

Comment FYI: It is ~80K years not 180K. (Score 2) 342

by morto on Friday September 21, 2012 @06:10PM (#41416119) Attached to: 180k-Year-Old Mutation Allowed Humans To Become Vegetarians, Move Out of Africa

"Studies suggest that anatomically modern humans arose in Africa approximately 150 thousand years ago (kya), expanded throughout Africa ~60–80 kya, and to most parts of Europe and Asia ~40 kya[1]–[6]. Numerous mitochondrial DNA studies support what Foster and Matsumera [5] describe as a ‘remarkable expansion’ from a small geographic region dating broadly to ~60–80 kya." see http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0044926

Salesforce CEO Benioff: Future Software Will Look Like Facebook 156

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 20, 2012 @12:10PM from the farmville-was-just-the-beginning dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is unapologetic about his love for Facebook. 'I think all software is going to look like Facebook,' he told media and analysts at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. 'Everyone is going to have to rewrite to have a feed-based platform.' If people can collaborate on tagging a photo, he added, they could easily do the same with a product or business problem. Even as Benioff touted his Facebook love, however, Salesforce is veering away from the Facebook model in one key way: whereas Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg felt his company focused too much on HTML5 for its mobile apps, choosing to focus instead on native-app development, Salesforce is embracing HTML5 for its Salesforce Touch app, which delivers Salesforce data such as Chatter feeds and contacts to a variety of mobile devices."

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