Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Ding! (Score 1) 176

by ebolaZaireRules (#28728681) Attached to: Novel Algae Fuel-Farming Method Gets Big Backing

Ethanol is NOT terrible for your car... From many perspectives, its better. All you need is a non-plastic based fuel system and there are no problems. Something to do with design. Running Ethanol on a car not designed for it, not the best.

It *is* only the fuel system that is the problem. Other than that, there is no 'extra wear and tear' on the engine. The tests that are cited as evidence are rather flawed. By the same logic, we should NOT use unleaded petrol due to issues with excessive valve seat wear.

And if you actually *enjoy* driving (I guess I'm in the minority here), ethanol has superior performance characteristics to petrol. Those who chose to disagre have rarely considered the whole picture.

I wish that ethanol - or even e85 - was readily available as a fuel. Sadly, its not.

Comment Defaultss (Score 1) 339

by ebolaZaireRules (#28450239) Attached to: On the Humble Default

Default settings seem to be something that few people get right...

They should more or less be failsafe, and there should always be a 'reset defaults' option (for when you **** if up)

if stuff doesn't 'just work', it needs better defaults (or a better autoconfig)

a 'default password' should be criminal. Nothing should work till its changed... though that does tend to remove 'password' from your list of passwords.
Transportation

Watch TV On Your Satnav 225

Posted by kdawson from the stupid-goes-right-to-the-bone dept.
Barence writes "Satnav firm Mio is launching a device with an integrated TV tuner. The Mio Spirit range includes a digital television tuner that is intended to be used 'during breaks in the journey or at their final destination.' However, safety campaigners fear there's little to stop the television being used at the wheel. When the system is first turned on a warning message is displayed, telling the user not to watch television while driving. If this is ignored, a secondary warning message kicks in if the GPS chip detects the vehicle is moving at more than 5mph. But that's it!"
Cellphones

Defining an Interactive Physical MMO For the iPhone 124

Posted by Soulskill from the enhanced-reality dept.
already-living-in-a-virtual-world writes "On his blog, mispeled writes about a new type of game he'd like to see for the iPhone. It's interesting stuff: '... the integration of a true gaming platform with the capabilities of a phone is unique, at least for the quality of the gaming experience offered. For all intents and purposes, the iPhone is a new system. And new systems demand that new gameplay mechanics be explored. For a long time I've been a fan of the MMORPG genre, and the iPhone offers several MMO-type games, especially those in the facebook, social-networking style. However, what I've yet to see is a game that takes advantage of the iPhone's location services, the GPS-like capability of the phone. Tons of applications use it, but no games, as far as I've seen. Why not? Motion sensing is all the rage on the consoles — the Wii popularized it, but now Microsoft and Sony are jumping on the bandwagon. But the iPhone, because it's portable, offers something more. And I want those offerings taken advantage of. I want to play an MMO that knows where I am and links my physical location to a virtual location. I want to create a game that gives the planet Earth a virtual overlay, interactable via a mobile (read: the iPhone) interface.'"

Comment Re:But it could be! (Score 1) 171

by ebolaZaireRules (#28222585) Attached to: Java's New G1 Collector Not For-Pay After All

Fine...
The jMonkeyEngine uses ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) as its rigid body physics implementation.
Whenever a new level is loaded, the old one allows all its threads to run off, and is left to rot till the garbage collector gets round to it.

The problem with this is that the memory from the physics engine is never freed, because finalize is never actually called by default.

I thought about going through it properley, but who wants to spend all day going through someone elses code with a debugger to home to spend all evening going through someone elses code with a debugger... and all for a proof of concept game.
Spam

Obama Beats McCain In Spam Landslide 154

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-isn't-that-unfortunate dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times runs an article about the spammers' choice of presidential candidate. From the article: 'According to Secure Computing Corp., spammers were nearly seven times more likely to slap Obama's name in the subject line than McCain's during September. The bulk of Obama's lead in the spam wars came from a massive blitz early in the month.' Secure Computing released additonal numbers for the past weeks, and McCain was able to close the gap in the latest spammers' poll."

Comment Re:Another Molyneux game (Score 1) 74

by ebolaZaireRules (#25022969) Attached to: <em>Fable II</em> Previews, Molyneux Opinions

From the description, it looks like syndicate 1... But I _know_ it had sound (and I can never get it working). Perhaps I should try the iso...

Syndicate was awesome, and even without sound, I enjoy it... I really should save my games though.

and after you play syndicate, try chaos overlords... I liked it so much, I'm 1/2 way through writing a clone (truth be told, I'm 1/2 way through quite a few projects).
Medicine

Lack of Sunlight Could Lead To Early Death 304

Posted by kdawson from the among-other-unpleasant-consequences dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Members of this community may want to venture out of the basement more often, because Dr. Harald Dobnig and his team have found that vitamin D deficiency leads to increased mortality. These results still hold when they take into account such factors as exercise and heart disease. Low vitamin D status has 'other significant negative effects in terms of incidence of cancer, stroke, sudden cardiac death and death of heart failure,' Dr. Dobnig said. The evidence of ill effects from low vitamin D 'is just becoming overwhelming at this point.' Vitamin D3 is usually produced by exposure to the UV-B in sunlight, but in high latitudes, especially in the fall and winter, insufficient UV-B gets through the atmosphere to produce enough vitamin D3, even with hours of exposure. The researchers are recommending that people at risk for deficiency take 800 IU of vitamin D3 daily. Just don't go overboard — as a fat-soluble vitamin, D3 is more capable of causing adverse effects at unnaturally high dosages. The human body tops out at producing about 10,000 IU per day." According to the Wikipedia entry linked above, the D2 (ergocalciferol) version -- available as a vegan product -- works approximately as well to supply humans with their needed vitamin D.
Businesses

A Hippocratic Oath For Scientists 366

Posted by kdawson from the remember-when-swearing-an-oath-mattered-neither-do-i dept.
grrlscientist writes "In response to what appears to be a growing problem of scientific misconduct, a group of people at the Institute of Medical Science at University of Toronto in Canada wrote a scientist's version of the Hippocratic oath. This oath (which is cited in the story) was recited by all graduate students in the biological sciences at the beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year." This blogger argues that merely reciting an oath is not going to help much when "...the corruption in 'science' is systemic. It is due to corporate science being run according to a business model instead of in accordance to an educational paradigm. It is due to unrestrained corporate greed combined with a tremendous disparity in power and income..."

Slashdot Top Deals

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

Close