1187031
submission
laughing_badger writes:
Arr, it be painin' me eyes to not be seein' international Talk Like A Pirate day mentioned on the front page. So I be givin' ye editors a warnin' — best post it, or yer gizards will be for slittin!
1174725
submission
Mini-Geek writes:
GIMPS has announced M45 and M46, found September 6 and August 23 respectively. Both numbers are over 10,000,000 digits, having 11,185,272 and 12,978,189 respectively. The numbers are 243,112,609-1 and 237,156,667-1. M45 and M46 were discovered by Hans-Michael Elvenich and Edson Smith respectively. GIMPS will claim the EFF's $100K reward for the first prime number with over 10,000,000 digits. GIMPS will split the prize money by their prize rules, with $50,000 going to the discoverer of M46. The discoverer of M45 will not receive any prize money, since he discovered M45 after M46. M45 is 'the first Mersenne prime to be discovered out of order since Colquitt and Welsh discovered 2110,503-1 in 1988.' Read more about both new primes at http://www.mersenne.org/.
1164757
submission
Too-late-too-fight-boredom writes:
As I sit watching a 3G iPhone absorb the latest 237.8MB upgrade (that's before unpacking, btw) I realise that here too is really no way of telling just how far it has progressed, and it struck me that I haven't seen a *real* progress bar for quite some time other than, ironically, on the iPhone itself.
Let me define "real": a progress bar that gives me an idea of how far a computer program has progressed during a time consuming (> 30 seconds) task. What I do NOT consider a progress bar:
- one that starts again after it has completed its journey from left to right (a "feature" of most newer installers, probably aimed at users busy)
- an animation that tells me nothing at all — demonstrated by what PC based iTunes shows when it pushes the aforementioned update up the iPhone's rear end.
- one that tells me it needs another 31456 hours and some minutes and then finishes 10 mins later (Vista).
Now, I understand that it's sometimes hard to predict just how long things are going to take, but then maybe an overview bar and one per task would be more informative. It's not like that is a new idea, if I recall correctly that was something used by the Norton Commander. If not, well, look at the Linux Midnight Commander — same idea. Useful.
I've seen enough "keep 'em busy" animation to last me a lifetime, starting with the animated Windows hourglass which mainly appears to suggest that the system you paid for is presently off doing something else like smoking a joint or copying some potentially confidential information, so I really don't need any more of that, thanks.
Just bring back the progress bar, please. I would consider that, umm, well, progress..
1163295
submission
mrphoton writes:
The Telegraph is reporting that hackers have attacked the Large Hadron Collider.
1163221
submission
gksmith writes:
I've been using the Chrome browser for a week, with Microsoft's site as my home page. This morning I fired up Chrome and my hard disk started going crazy. If I navigated to other sites, the hard drive continued thrashing, but closing Chrome altogether instantly silenced the hard drive. If I go to www.microsoft.com using IE or Firefox, the hard drive remains idle. I've opened Chrome several times over the last few hours and hard drive thrashing is now predictable. Anyone else see this happening? Anyone know why it would?
1145319
submission
TechnicolourSquirrel writes:
In a kind of fan convention replay of Man Bites Dog, one camera-wielding photo comic creator encounters another at Fan Expo 2008 in Toronto, resulting in some amusingly self-reflexive photoblogging that may demonstrate the value of the network effect in the field of photonovels. The blogger also has this to say about convention culture: "Far more this year than last year, the gamers were segregated from the rest of the convention-goers. Nonlinear geeks are not like linear geeks. The clustering vibe is as different as between a clan of badgers and a herd of buffalo. It shouldn't really be necessary to separate them — that takes care of itself. I would have preferred it if the organisers had used their floor plan to force a little more mixing".
[Note for Eds: This is a corrected version of the story I submitted earlier, in which I believe I mistakenly wrote 'Man Bites Bog' where I intended to write 'Man Bites Dog'. This is the corrected copy — you may post it or use it as a guide to correct the original timestamped version, or just reject both as you wish. Apologise for doing it this way — it was the only way I knew to be sure the same people would see it.]
1095929
submission
mattnyc99 writes:
A couple years back, we got Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage to open up on Slashdot about so-called moon myths. Tonight, the MythBusters go all-out to finally put to rest all the conspiracy theorists who say NASA never landed on the lunar surface. From Popular Mechanics' in-depth look behind the scenes of the episode: "NASA has been incredibly open-source about the missions to the moon, about every scrap of information down to the material in the astronaut's socks," Savage says. "So you have a tremendous amount of material to choose from to make sure that your replication is entirely accurate. We had probably a greater breadth of information than we usually have to achieve the replication. But that also means that you've got to be a little bit more picky, and choose carefully so that you're not overwhelming yourself with details that aren't actually germane to the myth you're doing."
