Comment Re:Let me say (Score 4, Informative) 362
Genuinely a brilliant lifetimes work, here's a nice write up by the LA Times on Ed Stone the Voyager lead scientist.
Comment Help me statistician your my only hope ... (Score 1) 292
Playing in veteran mode when I loose, and then stubbornly refuse to change my choice, I'll constantly loose as the computer then 'correctly predicts I would play scissors' or whatever losing choice I've made repeatedly. Surely at some point it should think I won't be that dumb any more and I'll change my choice so shouldn't it change it's choice at some point too? Why does it always stick with it's winning choice? How many of the previous 200,000 rounds would have over twenty consecutive choices of scissors for it to always choose rock. Having "convinced" the computer I'll play scissors every time I can then win when I eventually choose paper. I can't get more than three consecutive ties though.
For some reason I'm reminded of Derren Brown recording for hours on end until he got twenty consecutive heads in a coin toss in one take.
Comment Re:Mathematics as an art (Score 1) 680
When I am working on a problem, I don't think about beauty, but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful then I know it is wrong - R. Buckminster Fuller
Comment Re:To turn the question around... (Score 1) 162
I always seem to make negative progress on a Wednesday so I ask myself if I didn't come to work at all surely that would be a positive productivity gain. Tried that rational with my boss and he suggested trying Saturday instead so for now I'll just stick to going backwards on my projects on Wednesdays.
Comment Re:Don't get into the science pool if you can't fl (Score 5, Insightful) 285
Well said sir! As an example, Frame-dragging was proposed as a theory in 1918 based on Einstein's theory of General Relativity but wasn't able to be tested until 1996 with a couple of special satellites and even then not accurately enough to be provable until 2006. Since we had barely left the ground let alone orbit the earth at that point I'm sure it must have seemed un-testable at the time.
Comment Re:It's true! (Score 1) 150
The man you refer to is Rob Hall who at the time had climbed Everest more times than any other non-Sherpa. He was leading a group of paying climbers that he wouldn't abandon to save his own life. I recommend reading the Jon Krakenauer book Into Thin Air which covers the biggest tradgey on Everest that occured whilst the IMAX team were filming. Ed Shears and David Breshers part of the IMAX team were part of the rescue effort. From the outside the world of high altitude climbing does appear to be about thrill seeking but like most things we don't truely understand there is so much more to it.
Submission + - Mount Everest summit gets 3G (digitaltrends.com)
stuckinarut writes: Climbers can now ditch satellite phones and enjoy high speed 3G data coverage on the way up to the summit of Mount Everest or Sagarmth as it is more appropriately known locally.
Ncell, a Nepalese mobile communications company, has announced a 3G service is available on the world’s highest mountain and surrounding areas. Ncell says that the new data network is capable of speeds up to 3.6MB per second and potential to increase that to 7.2MB per second if there’s enough demand.
The service was made possible through the installation of eight 3G base stations, four of which are solar powered, along the way up to Everest’s base camp. It’s not clear if climbers can expect coverage all the way to the summit, which lies just above 29,000 feet. The highest of the 3G stations is at around 17,000 feet.
It’s not only climbers who are set to benefit from the 3G expansion. Ncell plans on bringing wider 3G coverage to the surrounding areas of Nepal in the near future.
Ncell, a Nepalese mobile communications company, has announced a 3G service is available on the world’s highest mountain and surrounding areas. Ncell says that the new data network is capable of speeds up to 3.6MB per second and potential to increase that to 7.2MB per second if there’s enough demand.
The service was made possible through the installation of eight 3G base stations, four of which are solar powered, along the way up to Everest’s base camp. It’s not clear if climbers can expect coverage all the way to the summit, which lies just above 29,000 feet. The highest of the 3G stations is at around 17,000 feet.
It’s not only climbers who are set to benefit from the 3G expansion. Ncell plans on bringing wider 3G coverage to the surrounding areas of Nepal in the near future.
Digg In the Future 54
jamie writes "A new site called Digg In The Future - created by 17-year-old high-school student Raj Vir as a research project - says that its algorithm can predict with 63-percent accuracy what shared links are going to make it to the front page of the Digg website. (Does it allow for brigades?)"
Geek Squad Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter To God Squad 357
An anonymous reader writes "A Wisconsin priest has God on his car but Best Buy's lawyers on his back. Father Luke Strand at the Holy Family Parish in Fond Du Lac says he has received a cease-and-desist letter from the electronics retailer. From the article: 'At issue is Strand's black Volkswagen Beetle with door stickers bearing the name "God Squad" in a logo similar to that of Best Buy's Geek Squad, a group of electronics troubleshooters. Strand told the Fond du Lac Reporter that the car is a creative way to spur discussion and bring his faith to others. Best Buy Co. tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that it appreciates what Strand is trying to do, but it's bad precedent to let groups violate its trademarks.'"
Man Takes Up Internal Farming 136
RockDoctor writes "'A Massachusetts man who was rushed to hospital with a collapsed lung came home with an unusual diagnosis: a pea plant was growing in his lung.' Just that summary should tell you enough to work out most of the rest of the details, but it does raise a number of questions unaddressed by the article: How did the pea roots deal with the patient's immune system? What would have happened if the situation had continued un-treated? I bet the guy has a career awaiting him in PR for a pea-growing company."
Gamer Plays Doom For the First Time 362
sfraggle writes "Kotaku has an interesting review of Doom (the original!) by Stephen Totilo, a gamer and FPS player who, until a few days ago, had gone through the game's 17-year history without playing it. He describes some of his first impressions, the surprises that he encountered, and how the game compares to modern FPSes. Quoting: 'Virtual shotgun armed, I was finally going to play Doom for real. A second later, I understood the allure the video game weapon has had. In Doom the shotgun feels mighty, at least partially I believe because they make first-timers like me wait for it. The creators make us sweat until we have it in hand. But once we have the shotgun, its big shots and its slow, fetishized reload are the floored-accelerator-pedal stuff of macho fantasy. The shotgun is, in all senses, instant puberty, which is to say, delicately, that to obtain it is to have the assumed added potency that a boy believes a man possesses vis a vis a world on which he'd like to have some impact. The shotgun is the punch in the face the once-scrawny boy on the beach gives the bully when he returns a muscled linebacker.'"
Open Sarcasm Fighting Copyrighted Punctuation 155
pinkushun writes "SarcMark is a copyrighted punctuation mark, that claims 'It's time that sarcasm is treated equally!' Pretty damn cheeky while they're charging for their software, which only inserts their punctuation through a hotkey. Open Sarcasm is destroying SarcMark by advocating a new punctuation mark (not displaying here properly — alt+U0161) as the new open and free sarcasm symbol. Either way, this will be one interesting turnout. With bad unicode support across the web, displaying the characters properly might be an issue. PS Left out sarcastic end sentence as Slashdot doesn't display the U0161 character."
Comment Re:Shrug (Score 2, Informative) 349
I'm not sure you have followed the facts of the case. He admitted his crime, was charged in the UK with those crimes and had bail terms set with curfew and zero access to computers or the internet. I'm sure he would have eventually gone to court and served whatever punishment was set by UK courts. Unfortunately whilst on bail the US Government decided to use a fast track extradition treaty deisgned to be used for terrorists to get him in court in the US. In order to scare him into not contesting the extradition hey had threatened to throw the book at him and jail him for 50 years. He is not using Asperger's as an excuse to proclaim his innocence of these crimes since he freely admits what he did. The real debate is how serious is the offence he comitted, where to punish him and what level of punishment his offence deserves? The actions of the US government don't seem proportional to his actions.
Comment We are the game! (Score 2) 496
Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?
The aliens just didn't buy the multi-planetary expansion pack so the sim doesn't contain the communications to detect.
Comment Kidd Of Speed (Score 0) 413
Elena Filatova has been riding her motorbike through that area since 2003 and has some interesting things to say; http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html
