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Comment Re:1.21 Jigawatts (Score 2, Interesting) 436

by Jerry Coffin (#26520037) Attached to: The Science and Physics of Back To the Future
That one really does admit to a simple answer from real, current (pun intended) knowledge: you need larger wires to carry more current, but NOT to carry more voltage. If the 1.21 gigawatts is 1 amp at 1.21 gigavolts (for example) the wire wouldn't have any reason to be any larger than one carrying 1 amp at 110 volts, or 1 amp at 0.1 volts.

Of course, even though the wire itself can be the same size, it'll normally look a lot thicker, because 1.21 gigavolts requires pretty serious insulation.

Comment Re:Threadless (Score 1) 176

by Jerry Coffin (#25293233) Attached to: Good Books On Programming With Threads?

This is based on a proven model that consists of lightweight processes that share no memory (therefore no deadlocks) and send/receive asynchronous immutable messages.

You can certainly have deadlocks without sharing memory. Just for example, if two processes need to open two files apiece, you can deadlock without sharing a single byte of memory -- in fact, the two processes can easily be on entirely separate machines and still deadlock.
Businesses

Submission + - In DRM world, customers have no rights (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
iweditor
iweditor writes: "Currently in the U.S., the only laws pertaining to Digital Rights Management (DRM) prohibit attempts to tamper with it. No constraints or responsibilities are placed on copyright holders for making sure their DRM doesn't unfairly deprive legitimate customers of their rights. Warning: this product contains DRM. InfoWorld contributor Ed Foster takes up the cause: Instead of vendors and the politicians who serve them telling us not to touch the DRM, we need to send them a warning of our own — those companies that use DRM do so at their peril."
Software

Submission + - Dutch government adopts open code and standards (google.com)

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes: "The Dutch government has set a target date of April 2008 for its agencies to start using open standards-based software, the Netherlands Economic Affairs Ministry said Thursday, according to a 14 December 2007 Associated Press article by Toby Sterling. Government organizations will still be able to use proprietary software and formats but will have to justify it under the new policy, ministry spokesman Edwin van Scherrenburg said. Microsoft Netherlands spokesman Hans Bos claims that Microsoft's Office productivity suite will still be used widely in the Dutch government until April, and that Microsoft Office will comply with the new Dutch rules once Microsoft's so-called "Open Office XML" standard is approved as an international ISO standard in February, as Microsoft sees it. The Dutch policy directs government organizations at the national level to be ready to use the Open Document Format to save documents by April, and at the state and local level by 2009, according to the AP's Sterling."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Players Train Dancers in Novel PC Game (ucf.edu) 1

Submitted by
Ken Stanley
Ken Stanley writes: "This unusual little game created by researchers at the University of Central Florida, called Dance Evolution (not to be confused with the much more renowned Dance Dance Evolution), shows that players can be empowered to do more than simply watch the prescripted behaviors of game programmers. Dance Evolution players get to train up their own dancers' moves to any MIDI song through a kind of interactive breeding process. What's surprising is how easy it is to let the player drive the evolution of content, which bodes well for more ambitious such efforts in the industry in the future."
Programming

Submission + - Are you proud of your code? 6

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have a problem and I am hoping /. group therapy is the cure, so get on with the +5 comments, post haste! I am downright embarrassed by the quality of my work; specifically, my code. It is buggy, slow, fragile, and a nightmare to maintain. Documentation, requirements, automated tests? Does not exist. Do you feel the same way? If so, then what is holding you back from realizing your full potential? More importantly, what if anything are you planning to do about it? This picture, which many of you have already seen, captures several project failure modes. It would be humorous if it weren't so depressingly true. I enjoy programming and have from a young age (cut my teeth on BASIC on an Apple IIe). I have worked for companies large and small in a variety of languages and platforms. Sadly the one constant in my career is that I am assigned to projects that drift, seemingly aimlessly, from inception to a point where the client runs out of funding and the project is abandoned. Like many young and idealistic university graduates I hoped to spend my life programming passionately, but ten years later I look in the mirror and see a whore. I'm just doing it for the money. Have any developers here successfully lobbied their company to stop or cut back on 'cowboy coding' and adopt best practices? I'm not talking about the methodology-of-the-week, I'm referring to good old fashioned advice like keeping SQL out of the UI layer. For the big prize: has anyone convinced their superiors that the customer isn't always right and saying no once in awhile is the best course of action? Thanks in advance for your helpful advice.
Networking

Submission + - Western Digital "Restricted" Hard Drive - (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
TechForensics
TechForensics writes: "Massive error. The drive does nothing to restrict the file types it shares. The drive is SOLD WITH A SUBSCRIPTION to an online service that indexes and facilitates your files for sharing. (MioNET.) It is the ONLINE SERVICE that will not display .avi files etc. to others on the net.

This is SUBSCRIPTION RELATED, has NOTHING to do with WD's hardware. Boy do we owe them an apology.

TechForensics"
Social Networks

Submission + - The Cultures of Texting In Europe and America

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "The cultures of text messaging are very different in Europe and North America and economics drive the differences says "internet sociologist" Danah Boyd. Americans and Canadians have historically paid to receive text messages creating a stilted social dynamic whereby a friend forces you to pay $.10 simply by deciding to send you something. But now "all-you-can-eat" plans are changing everything. Rather than having to mentally calculate the number of texts sent and received, a floodgate of opportunities is suddenly opened. The weights are lifted and freedom reigns. The result? Zero to a thousand text messages in under a month! All-you-can-eat plans are still relatively rare in Europe. When a European youth runs out of texts and can't afford to top up, they simply don't text. But they can still receive texts without cost so they aren't actually kept out of the loop. What you see in Europe is a muffled fluidity of communication, comfortable but not excessive. Back in America, older users are less inclined to be prolific texters, maybe because they are more accustomed to the onerous plans and never really developed a fluid texting practice while younger."
Security

Submission + - Using Google to crack MD5 passwords. (lightbluetouchpaper.org) 2

Submitted by
stern
stern writes: "A security researcher at Cambridge, trying to figure out the password used by somebody who had hacked his website, ran a dictionary through the encryption hash function. No dice. Then he pasted the hacker's encrypted password into Google, and Shazzam — the all-knowing Google delivered his answer. Conclusion? Use no password any other human being is ever likely to use for any purpose, I think."
Social Networks

Submission + - New Site Similar to Digg / Reddit for Pictures (pictpicture.com)

Submitted by
Frank L.
Frank L. writes: "A new social content site, Pictpicture.com, caters to a community left out by Digg.com and Reddit; photographers and photography enthusiasts. Their "about us" states:
"Pictpicture.com is a place to find and share pictures online. By clicking on the up and down arrows, you rank the pictures! This is your community; by uploading your content and voting on your favorites, you influence the latest trend in photography.""
Businesses

Submission + - Walmart and Gadget Lab selling $200 Ubuntu laptops (wired.com) 1

Submitted by lecithin
lecithin writes: "Touted as a "green" machine, it has a 1.5 Ghz VIA C7 CPU embedded in a Mini-ITX motherboard, 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. Normally, this would simply mark it as unacceptably low-end for use with modern software. By using the fast Enlightenment desktop manager (instead of heavier-duty alternatives like Gnome or KDE), the makers say it's more responsive than Vista is, even on more powerful computers."

This sounds like a good start to me.
The Media

Submission + - An application for Berkeley's Nanotube radio

Submitted by jmichaelg
jmichaelg writes: Hot on the heels of yesterday's article about Berkeley's nanotube radio receiver comes this Los Angeles Times article about John Kanzius, a former radio technician who was diagnosed with cancer. Kanzius, who has no medical background, applied his radio skills to his cancer with the intent of baking the cancer. Between chemotherapy treatments, he built a radio transmitter in his garage. To find the ideal radio receiver, he teamed up with Richard Smalley , the 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize winner, who was also being treated for cancer. Smalley gave him two vials of nanoparticles which, when heated by Kanzius' radio transmitter, destroyed 100% of cancerous cells in a petri dish. The task now is to design a delivery mechanism based on antibodies that'll transport the particles an in-vivo cancer. Kanzius is listed as a co-author on a peer-reviewed paper to be published in the December issue of Cancer.
Television

Submission + - TiVo External Storage and Series 3 updates (tivo.com)

Submitted by fukifino
fukifino writes: I just got the email and TiVo has finally offered the long awaited external storage option for Series 3 boxes. Additionally, they've also added a couple of the features that were missing when they made the transition to series 3; multi-room viewing, and TivoToGo. It looks like their offered storage solution is a custom Western Digital MyBook external drive. I'm wondering how difficult it will be to get it to work with standard MyBook or other external SATA drive.

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