Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Fine line between security and paranoia (Score 5, Insightful) 376

Offhand, i'd say any prominent high-class hotel that might be used by foreign businessmen on a trip.

I mean, you do have a point, bob the middle manager isn't that important. However there are quite a few business people who this really would be that important to. Corporate espionage is high, and you know china has been doing focused attacks over the network.

Sneakernet is always faster, so if they can train up a few pretty women, pay them a decent programmers wage to have them steal stuff that is the work of 10 engineers or even hundreds, that's a pretty sound economic payoff don't you think?

I think stuff like this has it's purpose, and those who really are at risk need to be educated about it. For the other 95% of us, i think it's useful info to be aware about, just like don't leave your purse out visible in your car. Sure it probably won't happen, but there are always people who would.

Comment Enders game: The game (Score 1, Insightful) 81

I am really saddened that it's taken people this long to realize this was a KICK ASS Idea.

Disclaimer: Everything said below this runs under the assumption the game is made correctly. There are LOTS of ways they could mess this up, interface, command structure, how to reward playstyles, how the teaming is done, etc etc .

But IF they get this right, it will be a fantastic game. Some people love strategy, others love killing shit. Some people like both, but more often some people like one and hate the other. Lots of people love having some voice in the sky doing the thinking for them so they can focus on killing shit, as long as that voice helps them kill shit better.

This is demonstrated on a LOT of big multiplayer games with voice enabled, you end up getting 1-5 guys out of dozens who are barking out useful info, the rest feeding off them without much complaint. I think there are better system sthan the everyone can talk to everyone method, but it hink it's a good start.

It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Con Kolivas returns! Brain F**K Scheduler is out. 2

myvirtualid writes: "Con Kolivas has done what he swore never to do: returned to the Linux kernel and written a new — and, according to him — waaay better scheduler for the desktop environment. In fact, BFS appears to outperform existing schedulers right up until one hits a 16 CPU machine, at which point he guesses performance would degrade somewhat. According to Kolivas, BFS

was designed to be forward looking only, make the most of lower spec machines, and not scale to massive hardware. ie [sic] it is a desktop orientated scheduler, with extremely low latencies for excellent interactivity by design rather than "calculated", with rigid fairness, nice priority distribution and extreme scalability within normal load levels.

"

Comment Ok I'll Bite... (Score 5, Insightful) 242

So what you're saying is that since the state provides a service, if you could use that service you should pay for it?

How is this different from, oh, say EVERY OTHER STATE SPONSORED SYSTEM IN EXISTENCE for broadcasting.

Yes, you may not use it, but most people don't use all the roads either.

I applaud them for making the technological leap to being able to provide it online and REALIZE that online is the same effective use.

Now, i do have two questions.

Is the cost to distribute online around the same as the TV cost? If so, sure go nuts with it.

Is the license per household like a lot of other state TV licenses. If it's not, i see an issue with it.

IF it's per household and it reflects the cost to run it, i say more power to them.

We should be applauding efforts like this to adapt technologically and that are put forth by people who apparently have a grip on the actual issue.

Not just getting mad because it's a tax. Taxes have purposes. I return to my earlier car analogy of driving on all roads.

Power

CFLs Causing Utility Woes 859

dacut writes "We've seen compact fluorescent lamps start to take over shelf space at the local hardware store. Replacing a 60 watt incandescent with a 13 watt CFL seems like a great savings, though many consumers are disappointed with the slow warm-up times, lower-than-advertised lifetimes, and hassles of disposing the mercury-containing bulbs. Now EDN reports they may use more energy than claimed due to their poor power factor. Mike Grather, of Lumenaire Testing Laboratory, 'checked the power factor for the CFLs and found they ranged from .45 to .50. Their "real" load was about twice that implied by their wattage.' The good news: you're only billed for the 13 watts of real power used. The bad news: the utilities have to generate the equivalent of 28 watts (that is, 28 VA of apparent power for you EEs out there) to light that bulb. Until they fix these issues, I'll hold on to my incandescents and carbon arc lamps, thanks."
The Internet

We're In Danger of Losing Our Memories 398

Hugh Pickens writes "The chief executive of the British Library, Lynne Brindley, says that our cultural heritage is at risk as the Internet evolves and technologies become obsolete, and that historians and citizens face a 'black hole' in the knowledge base of the 21st century unless urgent action is taken to preserve websites and other digital records. For example, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as US president last week, all traces of George W. Bush disappeared from the White House website. There were more than 150 websites relating to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney that vanished instantly at the end of the games and are now stored only by the National Library of Australia. 'If websites continue to disappear in the same way as those on President Bush and the Sydney Olympics... the memory of the nation disappears too,' says Brindley. The library plans to create a comprehensive archive of material from the 8M .uk domain websites, and also is organizing a collecting and archiving project for the London 2012 Olympics. 'The task of capturing our online intellectual heritage and preserving it for the long term falls, quite rightly, to the same libraries and archives that have over centuries systematically collected books, periodicals, newspapers, and recordings...'" Over the years we've discussed various aspects of this archiving problem.

Comment Re: can hold 52.220 kWh (Score 5, Informative) 603

How do you figure?

The patent specifically mentions kW*H in reference to the 52.220 number.

I assume you were just trying to be smart and correct the summary thinking it was a typo. However, a kW*H is a valid unit of measurement.

In fact you could use them interchangably but it would give the very wrong idea as they measure different things.

A watt is one joule of energy flow over a second. so a KW would be 1000 joules of energy flow over 1 second.
A KW*H is a flow of a kilowatt continuously over an hour, therefore it would be a flow of 1000 joules over 3600 seconds.

So to recap:
1 kw = 1000 joules/sec
1 kw*h = 1000 joules/sec * 3600 seconds

If you were just going to measure the total energy usage, you'd have to keep it just in joules, in which case 52.220 KWH would be 187,992,000.

So yeah, big difference caused by little changes in notation. Of course i haven't done electricity in ages so i probably oversimplified somewhere and fubar'd up.

Comment Re:Not mainstream? (Score 3, Insightful) 93

Ok no offense but you're full of it.

That's like saying newsweek, the new york times, or a manga isn't a form of literature.
Sure it's not traditional, but it is.

And you will find VERY VERY few people who would back you up saying that Zork wasn't a video game.

You are using the age old trick of "Oh it's on the internet, therefore it's something else". No, it's not. Just because multiple people can play it and it doesn't have graphics does NOT mean it's not a video game.

Also, if you're going to get that technical, at least use the right terminal. Don't capitalize MUDs and not capitalize MUXs, MOOs, and MUSHs. They all stand for something.

Comment Re:Um, global thermonuclear war? (Score 1) 394

Yeah, but remember the old addage?
Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear war.

Just because they don't get killed by the blast, doesn't mean the earth won't be completely covered in radiation. Hell, even if only a few bombs go off, with the yield we have today it still could be enough to irradiate the ocean. and then we're just boned.

Slashdot Top Deals

In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

Working...