Comment Popups (Score 3, Funny) 147
Great - so when my wireless internet enabled skin display gets infected with spam, I'll have adverts for viagra appearing on my chest. Brilliant
Comment Double emission? (Score 3, Interesting) 129
So when the virtual particle pair is created at the event horizon, one is trapped stationary beyond the horizon, and the other escapes (becoming real).
In this experiment obviously the event horizon doesn't persist indefinitely, so when the horizon collapses, do the 'trapped' photons escape? and hence is there a time delayed double emission of the hawking radiation? Would this provide a testable signature?
Any physicists know?
In this experiment obviously the event horizon doesn't persist indefinitely, so when the horizon collapses, do the 'trapped' photons escape? and hence is there a time delayed double emission of the hawking radiation? Would this provide a testable signature?
Any physicists know?
Comment Re:Not necessarily a rip-off (Score 1) 551
Hope you don't mind me requoting some of my earlier comments :
I've had plenty of hardware failures, it's just that I've never found a restore disc to be that useful. The only real benefit of a restore CD (for restoring, rather than OEM economic purposes) is the drivers, and I find they get out of date pretty fast. When I restore (or repair) a Win install, I'll use a Win disk and download the new drivers directly.
Windows computers I look after either have remote deployment or I already have appropriate physical media (I've got drawers stuffed full of the shiny holographic XPsp2 CDs.)
As for Linux machines, the distros are available everywhere - even if I didn't have a live flashdrive.
I'm not saying unbundling the CD is right for everyone, but it is for me.
Comment Re:Not necessarily a rip-off (Score 1) 551
Having a restore disc is really not "optional". It's just as important as having a backup of your files
I can see your point, but I disagree. I've had plenty of hardware failures, it's just that I've never found a restore disc to be that useful. The only real benefit of a restore CD (for restoring, rather than OEM economic purposes) is the drivers, and I find they get out of date pretty fast. When I restore (or repair) a Win install, I'll use a Win disk and download the new drivers directly.
That said, as I've said in reply to a comment above, many of my machines are remote deployment, or Linux (I use Linux personally).
I'm not saying unbundling the CD is right for everyone, but it is for me.
Comment Re:Not necessarily a rip-off (Score 1) 551
Nope.
Windows computers I look after either have remote deployment or I already have appropriate physical media (I've got drawers stuffed full of the shiny holographic XPsp2 CDs.) (Although I admit that route loses the install time OEM tailored drivers)
As for Linux machines, the distros are available everywhere - even if I didn't have a live flashdrive.
Windows computers I look after either have remote deployment or I already have appropriate physical media (I've got drawers stuffed full of the shiny holographic XPsp2 CDs.) (Although I admit that route loses the install time OEM tailored drivers)
As for Linux machines, the distros are available everywhere - even if I didn't have a live flashdrive.
Comment Not necessarily a rip-off (Score 2, Interesting) 551
Personally, I have never used a recovery CD. When I buy a PC - I do not need or want the recovery CD (It just fills up cabinet space). If this cost is unbundled (and I'm not saying it is) - I'd prefer to pay a little less and not receive the physical media.
Comment Stanford torus (Score 4, Informative) 294
Am I the only one who noticed that the colony pictured in the article is more likely a Standford Torus, or am I just being picky?
Comment Re:MD5 (Score 1) 380
(The US Cyber Command mission statement.)
....as stated by everyone else here, replies to the original article, wikipedia etc....
Yet another reminder to me to use Google first, then do things like reverse MD5 lookups.....
Yet another reminder to me to use Google first, then do things like reverse MD5 lookups.....
Comment MD5 (Score 4, Funny) 380
It's (obviously) MD5 length. The results of a quick reverese MD5 lookup are as follows :
USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries.
However, as we all know, MD5 isn't 1-1. It could well just be a conincidence, or something completely different.
USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries.
However, as we all know, MD5 isn't 1-1. It could well just be a conincidence, or something completely different.
Comment Productivity (Score 5, Informative) 286
Google handled approx 88 billion searches in Dec-2009.
(88b/31)*2=5.67billion searches in two days.
If (conservativly) one tenth of those are work related, that's 567m.
If one in ten work related users plays this once for 60 seconds, that's 3.4 billion seconds.
3.4 billion seconds is approximatly 108 person-years worth of productivity.
(Which at US federal minimum wage is about 1.6 million dollars).
That's a low figure as those who need google to work probably don't earn minimum wage.
Now that's power!
I personally played for more than 60s....
Comment Re:What languages? (Score 1) 1359
As an Englishman who lives in France from time to time, I can attest to this. In fact it is sometimes hard to get people not to speak English. My early attempts at French were immediately met with English making practice a bit difficult.
Incidentally, you should probably go with 'vous' instead of 'tu'. The 'tu' form is for people you know pretty well (family, good friends, etc...).
Senate Votes To Empower Parents As Censors 418
unlametheweak recommends an Ars Technica report that the US Senate has unanimously passed a bill requiring the FCC to explore what "advanced blocking technologies" are available to parents to help filter out "indecent or objectionable programming." "...the law does focus on empowering parents to take control of new media technologies to deal with undesired content, rather than handing the job over to the government. It asks the FCC to focus the inquiry on blocking systems for a 'wide variety of distribution platforms,' including wireless and Internet, and an array of devices, including DVD players, set top boxes, and wireless applications."
Comment Re:Wake up (Score 5, Insightful) 660
Continuing your analogy and at the risk of starting an argument; It's more like he's asking for advice on increasing the performance of his car because he wants to get A to B in under 2 hours. If someone were to point out that the train only takes 1 hour, it would be a point worthy of consideration.
Monkey's Thoughts Make Robot Walk 146
geekbits writes "For all those who have at one time or another been too lazy to get up off the couch and go to the fridge and get a beer, heat up some pizza, or change the channel when the remote is missing, we may be one step closer to being able to keep our tushes parked just a little while longer. There may also be some slightly more noble implications here. According to an article in The New York Times, in an experiment at Duke University, a 12-pound, 32-inch monkey made a 200-pound, 5-foot humanoid robot walk on a treadmill using only her brain activity. She was in North Carolina, and the robot was in Japan."
