Comment You must drink a lot of coffee... (Score 2, Funny) 837
As another EE (who does all their work at about 3GHz)
You must drink a lot of coffee to be that jittery. I can't even begin to understand how you'll get any work done at 3GHz...
Comment Re:I'm holding out for Ubuntu 10.10 (Score 1) 620
I'll hedge my bets on Lascivious Lizard or Lewd Langoustine. Not sure I look forward to Randy Rhino, though...
Comment Re:Agreed, TANSTAAFL (Score 1) 373
This absolutely makes sense. Just take the example of a match. Strike it, watch it suck the Dark out of the room, and when it's done you can clearly see all the Dark that has been absorbed into the match.
The 100 Degree Data Center 472
miller60 writes "Are you ready for the 100-degree data center? Rackable Systems has introduced a new enclosure that it says can run high-density racks safely in environments as hot as 104 degrees (40 degrees C), offering customers the option of saving energy in their data center. Most data centers operate in a range between 68 and 74 degrees. Raising the thermostat can lower the power bill, allowing data centers to use less power for cooling. But higher temperatures can be less forgiving in the event of a cooling failure, and not likely to be welcomed by employees working in the data center."
Comment Re:GNU R (Score 1) 776
When it comes to tables in LaTeX, I'd recommend just dumping the table to a txt file and use PGFPlotsTable (warning, PDF manual) to typeset the table directly. That makes it possible to manipulate the table without having to use R again. You can do stuff like automatically highlighting every second row or column, reorder/ignore columns, and do computations to create new data. It's part of the terrific package PGFPlots. To read more about the capabilities of PGF and TikZ, see here.
Comment Re:I wonder how it copes with twins? (Score 5, Funny) 214
Twins? Easy! The evil twin always has a goatee.
Comment Re:What kittens are illegal now? (Score 1) 695
Clearly, you must be new to the Internet. Welcome! With a nick and sig like yours, though, I can see why you jumped to conclusions about it being a sexual reference...
Comment Suing the telcos next? (Score 1, Insightful) 695
With Craigslist being a free service for anyone to post ads, isn't this somewhat like suing the telcos for allowing anybody to staple posters to their poles? (You in the back there, stop giggling!) I've seen those being used to peddle all kinds of stuff, from bicycles to kittens. Clearly they should be forced to moderate their telephone poles, right?
Comment Re:Whew, that's a relief. (Score 5, Informative) 1056
Interesting that you should say this, since the doctor who published the original study was actually paid to do the study by the parents who wanted to sue over the alleged MMR-autism link. From the BBC article:
Mr Wakefield received funding to see if there was any evidence to support possible legal action by a group of parents who claimed their children were damaged by the vaccine. Some children were involved in both studies.
If that wasn't bad enough, alongside with other charges (see here), there are signs of him fixing the data in the study. Not exactly what I'd call a pillar of ethical and unbiased behavior...
Comment Re:Don't they already have one? (Score 5, Funny) 374
No, it's called Lenix.
Comment Re:Split infinitives are perfectly legal (Score 1) 62
Otherwise... shut the fuck up.
Or, you could just ask them to fuckingly shut up.
Comment Re:Does it count... (Score 4, Funny) 310
You're neutering insects? You must have a decent microscope. Not to mention steady hands...
Comment Re:Isn't there extra radiation in space? (Score 1) 507
Well, you just said it, didn't you? Spider two can hide from sight. It didn't kill spider one; it's just using its new invisibility powers! The only one they're able to see in the box is the lame-o elastic spider. This doesn't bode well for humanity...
Comment Wait... (Score 1) 709
Oh, and the county clerks answer to the problem was: "Those who didn't get ballots can show up at your normal precinct and vote via provisional ballot." Not exactly easy from Afghanistan!
Your mother's basement is in Afghanistan? Harsh...
The Greatest Scientific Hoaxes? 496
Ponca City, We love you writes "The New Scientist has an amusing story about the seven greatest scientific hoaxes of all time. Of course, there have been serious cases of scientific fraud, such as the stem cell researchers recently found guilty of falsifying data, and the South Korean cloning fraud, but the hoaxes selected point more to human gullibility than malevolence and include the Piltdown Man (constructed from a medieval human cranium); a ten-foot "petrified man" dug up on a small farm in Cardiff; fossils 'found' in Wurzburg, Germany depicting comets, moons and suns, Alan Sokal's paper loaded with nonsensical jargon that was accepted by the journal Social Text; the claim of the Upas tree on the island of Java so poisonous that it killed everything within a 15-mile radius; and Johann Heinrich Cohausen's claim of an elixir produced by collecting the breath of young women in bottles that produced immortality. Our favorite: BBC's broadcast in 1957 about the spaghetti tree in Switzerland that showed a family harvesting pasta that hung from the branches of the tree. After watching the program, hundreds of people phoned in asking how they could grow their own tree but, alas, the program turned out to be an April Fools' Day joke." What massive scientific hoaxes/jokes have other people witnessed?
