StevisF - Slashdot User

Doctor Marries Doctor's Daughter, TARDIS Explodes 326

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday January 05, 2011 @02:24PM from the try-saying-that-five-times-fast dept.

techmuse writes "In a veritable Who's Who of Doctor Who, 10th Doctor David Tennant is marrying Georgia Moffett, the daughter of 5th Doctor Peter Davison, who played the Doctor's daughter in an episode of Doctor Who. Except that the Doctor's daughter was a clone of the Doctor, which meant that she really was Who. So a newer Doctor is marrying an older Doctor's daughter, who is a clone of the newer doctor, but only has half the DNA of the older Doctor."

Comment Too Many Sources (Score 1) 315

by StevisF on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @01:24PM (#34755534) Attached to: I would pay ___ monthly for a good online newspaper/magazine

I don't go to any particular news site, I go to aggregators like slashdot and google news. I read news from 10s of different sources a day and then perhaps 10s of different sources the next day. I don't think the subscription model works well for this usage pattern and I think my usage pattern is probably fairly common.

Download Firefox, Feed a Red Panda 90

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @11:27AM from the have-a-sandwich dept.

KenW writes "Mozilla has launched a new marketing campaign to promote Firefox: adopting red pandas and putting them on live webcams. The company wants to underline the fact that the red panda is the mascot for its open source browser via a new section on its site called Firefox Live. It's clear that Mozilla is trying to think of new ways to promote its browser ahead of the launch of Firefox 4. The company has been struggling recently as Firefox steadily loses share to Google Chrome."

Comment Don't Load Images (Score 4, Insightful) 108

by StevisF on Friday December 03, 2010 @03:42PM (#34435818) Attached to: Web Bugs the New Norm For Businesses?

Every e-mail client I've used in recent times doesn't load images by default. I generally assume that I am being tracked if I choose to load the images.

'Smart' Vending Machines Triple Sales 234

Posted by Soulskill on Monday November 15, 2010 @04:24PM from the by-tom-cruise's-eyeballs dept.

bossanovalithium writes "A vending machine in Japan which recommends drinks to customers based on facial recognition data has tripled sales. JR East Water Business has previously installed two vending machines in JR Shinagawa station and it is believed that the recognition technology is responsible for a vast increase in sales in comparison to traditional machines. The vending machines recommend beverages after physical attributes of customers are picked up by sensors which allow the machines determine age, sex and other attributes, before offering a number of suggestions."

Comment Re:Do nothing (Score 1) 709

by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday September 29, 2010 @01:44PM (#33736920) Attached to: Could Anti-Texting Laws Make Roads More Dangerous?

While I agree the gene pool could use a bit more chlorine...what happens when one of these undesirables happens to jump the curb and take out a Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, etc? It's not just the individual hurting themselves which is what drives the lawmakers to action. Personally I'm all for on-the-spot executions for any infraction, just watch out for the white fences. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708739/

Today's Children Are Officially Potty Mouths 449

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday September 22, 2010 @10:32AM from the kids-say-the-#@^*est-things dept.

tetrahedrassface writes "When the Sociolinguistics Symposium met earlier this month swearing scholar Timothy Jay revealed that an increase in child swearing is directly related to an increase in adult swearing. It seems that vulgarity is increasing as pop culture continues to popularize vulgarities. The blame lies with media, public figures, politicians, but mostly ourselves. From the article: 'Children as young as two are now dropping f-bombs, with researchers reporting that more kids are using profanity — and at earlier ages — than has been recorded in at least three decades.'"

Submission + - Startups a Safer Bet Than Behemoths (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by

ScuttleMonkey

on Saturday August 14, 2010 @10:16AM

ScuttleMonkey writes: "TechCrunch's Vivek Wadhwa has a great article that takes a look at difference between startups and "established" tech companies and what they each mean to the economy and innovation in general. Wadhwa examines statistics surrounding job creation and innovation and while big companies may acquire startups and prove out the business model, the risk and true innovations seems to be living at the startup level almost exclusively. 'Now let’s talk about innovation. Apple is the poster child for tech innovation; it releases one groundbreaking product after another. But let’s get beyond Apple. I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple—with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. Google certainly doesn’t fit the bill—after its original search engine and ad platform, it hasn’t invented anything earth shattering. Yes, Google did develop a nice email system and some mapping software, but these were incremental innovations. For that matter, what earth-shattering products have IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, or Cisco produced in recent times? These companies constantly acquire startups and take advantage of their own size and distribution channels to scale up the innovations they have purchased.'"

Vatican Chooses Open FITS Image Format 223

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 28, 2010 @03:17PM from the wouldn't-a-lossy-format-make-more-sense? dept.

@10u8 writes "The Vatican Library plans to digtize 80,000 manuscripts and store them in the open data format FITS, originally developed for astronomy and maintained under the IAU. The result is expected to be 40 million pages and 45 petabytes. FITS was chosen because it 'has been used for more than 40 years for the conservation of data concerning spatial missions and, in the past decade, in astrophysics and nuclear medicine. It permits the conservation of images with neither technical nor financial problems in the future, since it is systematically updated by the international scientific community.'"

SCO Asks Judge To Give Them the Unix Copyright 286

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday April 28, 2010 @09:37AM from the we-promise-to-walk-it-every-day dept.

Raul654 writes "In March, the jury in the Novell/SCO case found that Novell owns the copyright to Unix. Now, SCO's lawyers have asked judge Ted Stewart to order Novell to turn over the Unix copyright to them. 'SCO contends the jury did not answer the specific issue before Stewart that involves a legal principle called "specific performance," under which a party can ask a court to order another party to fulfill an aspect of an agreement.'" Over at Groklaw, PJ is deep into a community project to annotate SCO's filing. It's for the benefit of future historians, but it makes amusing reading now.

Bluetooth 4.0 Devices To Make the Scene Later This Year 48

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 05, 2010 @07:12PM from the still-look-like-a-blue-tool dept.

Engadget is reporting that new Bluetooth 4.0 devices could be hitting the scene later this year, and it looks like Bluetooth low energy has been added to the spec. "But don't expect any dramatic changes in battery life for most of your gadgets: while the low energy spec introduces connectivity to a host of lower-power devices that have in the past relied on proprietary technology (such as watches, pedometers, and cats), your traditional Bluetooth devices, such as phones and laptops, will consume roughly the same amount of power. Indeed, the low energy spec is merely throwing smaller devices (with smaller amounts of data to transfer) in to the mix: if you want Trans-Siberian Orchestra to sound as glorious as ever on your wireless headphones, you'll need to push as much data (and hence draw as much power) with version 4 as you would with version 3."

Microsoft "Courier" Pictures 230

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 05, 2010 @06:31PM from the bandwagon-or-shark-jumping dept.

tekgoblin writes to let us know that Gizmodo has some early shots of the new prototype "Courier" booklet (foldable tablet) on the way from Microsoft. "Courier is a real device, and we've heard that it's in the 'late prototype' stage of development. It's not a tablet, it's a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They're connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre."

Submission + - Couple raises virtual child.. and starves real one (cnn.com)

Submitted by NeutronCowboy on Friday March 05, 2010 @05:13PM

NeutronCowboy writes: According to CNN.com, a South Korean couple was arrested for allowing their baby to starve to death while they were out at an internet cafe. One of their activities there: raising a virtual child in the online game "Prius Online." While a South Korean professor calls it a case of Internet Addiction, it's probably more a case of bad coping mechanisms: they were jobless and had apparently little to look forward to.

Dr. NakaMats Is the World's Most Prolific Inventor 194

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 05, 2010 @05:04PM from the patent-troll-slayer dept.

MMBK writes to share an interesting look at Dr. "NakaMats" Nakamatsu, mastermind behind a world-record 3,000 patents. The 81-year-old scientist has inventions like the "PyonPyon" spring shoes, the karaoke machine, and others. He's also at least partly to blame for things like the digital watch, the floppy disk, and CDs. "Dr. Nakamatsu harbors other ambitions too: in 2007, he took his penchant for political campaigning to a new level, becoming a candidate in the gubernatorial election in Tokyo, and the election for the Upper House. Although he failed to get a seat, Dr. NakaMats has other tricks up his sleeve. In 2005 he was awarded the Ig Nobel prize for Nutrition, for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting). By the time he dies at the age of 144 (a goal he maintains with an elaborate daily ritual that rejuvenates his body and triggers his creative process), he intends to patent 6,000 inventions."

New Heat-Reduced Magnetic Solder Could Revolutionize Chip Design 103

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 05, 2010 @04:19PM from the vaporware-until-i-see-chips dept.

A new heat-reduced soldering technique using magnets may lead to some revolutionary changes in the way chips are manufactured. Details are scant since the inventor seems to be playing it close to the vest for now in hopes of attracting chipmaker interest. "The result is a tin-silver alloy that contains a dispersion of iron particles tens of micrometers in diameter. When a magnetic field is applied to the solders, two things happen. First, the iron particles heat up, locally melting the solder. This localized heating, which works on the same principle as inductive stoves, remains completely contained, keeping the surrounding area cool. And second, the iron particles line up with the direction of the magnetic field, squeezing and pushing the liquid in that direction. This alignment is retained when the solder solidifies, and the well-ordered particles provide mechanical reinforcement that's greater than that afforded by a regular dispersion of particles."

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