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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Simple solution.... (Score 1) 521

by g00ey (#38149548) Attached to: Microsoft Shareholders Unhappy After Annual Meeting
It is discussed in Kahneman's prospect theory. Shefrin Statman (1985) and Odean (1998) found that investors have a strong preference to hold on to stocks that are selling below purchase price, so that they will avoid becoming "losers", and to sell stocks that are selling above the purchase price, so that they will come out as "winners". The taxation is also an influencing factor here. In prospect theory these people are called selling winners and keeping losers.
Science

Submission + - Giving physical reality to virtual particles (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by Max Threshold
Max Threshold writes: In a vacuum, virtual particles constantly blink in and out of existence. Scientists at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in coaxing those particles to become real/a, with the aid of a virtual microwave mirror vibrating at a quarter the speed of light. So far they've only produced photons, but other particles might be possible with higher energy transfers. Star Trek replicators, anyone?
The Internet

Submission + - France to tax the internet to pay for music (activepolitic.com)

Submitted by bs0d3
bs0d3 writes: A new tax in France is aimed at ISPs. The new government tax on isps is to help pay for the CNM (Centre National de la Musique). Already in France there is a tax on tv, to pay for public access channels. It's similar to the tax in the United kingdom which pays for the BBC. This isp tax will be the musical equivalent to that. President Sarkozy comments, "Globalization is now, and the giants of the internet earn lot of money on the French market. Good for them, but they do not pay a penny in tax to France." This all began after the music industry accused French ISPs of making billions of dollars on their backs. Now the music industry must also get their hands in their pockets.

Submission + - Superluminal Neutrinos Compatible With Information (blogspot.com)

Submitted by mhelander
mhelander writes: Dear Slashdot, the recent repeated measurements of Faster-Than-Light neutrinos seem incompatible with the model of Einstein. My question to the Slashdot community is if such measurements should also be considered incompatible with information theory? My own analysis, available in draft form at http://relevancetheory.blogspot.com/2011/11/general-theory-of-relevance.html seems surprisingly to indicate that information theory does not exclude such a possibility. I would greatly appreciate discussion with the Slashdot community on this topic to examine the consistency of my conclusion that information theory does not exclude the possibility of superluminal neutrinos and by extension that superluminal motion is not necessarily in complete conflict with the model of Einstein.
EU

Submission + - EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration (telegraph.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian reports: "EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact."

In order to test EU laws requiring approval for claims that a product can reduce the risk of disease, two German professors, Dr. Andreas Hahn and Dr. Moritz Hagenmeyer applied for the right to state that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration” and prevent decreases in physical performance. The review took three years and required a meeting of 21 professors, who concluded: "reduced water content in the body was a symptom of dehydration and not something that drinking water could subsequently control", according to the article. Any claims on water packaging in the EU that drinking water reduces the risk of dehydration could now result in serious legal troubles.

While this decision is receiving widespread scorn, Professor Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society actually defends it, saying that drinking water is unnecessary, that dehydration is actually caused by some unspecified "clinical condition" rather than a lack of fluids, and that the proposed claim would unreasonably imply some special capability of water to prevent dehydration.
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Copyright isn't working, says Europe's digital chi (zdnet.co.uk)

Submitted by superglaze
superglaze writes: Against the backdrop of governments and courts around the world ordering ISPs to block file-sharing sites, European commissioner Neelie Kroes has said people have started to see copyright as "a tool to punish and withhold, not a tool to recognise and reward". "Citizens increasingly hear the word copyright and hate what is behind it," the EU's digital chief said, adding that the copyright system also wasn't rewarding the vast majority of artists.
Science

Submission + - Higgs hunt enters final stage (nature.com)

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "For forty years, the Higgs boson has remained a theoretical construct, but by Christmas, scientists may have a pretty good idea of whether it's real or not. Nature News reports that a new analysis has further narrowed the Higgs range, and data gathered this autumn at the LHC should be enough to show a faint signal from a Higgs, if it's there. (Already one signal has disappeared earlier in the year.) Physicists hope to finish their analysis of the autumn data by the year's end, but even if they come up empty-handed it won't be the end of the story. The Higgs is commonly referred to as the particle that endows others with mass, but its real appeal is the ability to unify the weak nuclear force with electromagnetism. If there is no Higgs, some other mechanism for creating a unified "electroweak" force should be found inside the LHC."
Microsoft

Submission + - Man Survives Steve Ballmer's Flying Chair To Build (wired.com)

Submitted by
phonewebcam
phonewebcam writes: "Mark Lucovsky was the other man in the room when Steve Ballmer threw his chair and called Eric Schmidt a “fucking pussy.”

Yes, the story is true. At least according to Lucovsky. Microsoft calls it a “gross exaggeration,” but Lucovsky says that when he walked into Ballmer’s office and told the Microsoft CEO he was leaving the company for Google, Ballmer picked up his chair and chucked it across the room. “Why does that surprise anyone?” Lucovsky tells Wired.com, seven years later. “If you play golf with Steve and he loses a five-cent bet, he’s pissy for the next week. Should it surprise you that when I tell Steve I’m quitting and going to work for Google, he would get animated?”"

Submission + - Polish protestor uses drone copter to monitor demo (rawstory.com)

Submitted by fantomas
fantomas writes: In recent demonstrations in Warsaw, Poland, a demonstrator has used a drone helicopter spycam, manufactured by Robokopter, to monitor police actions and how they behave towards protestors. Videos show the copter taking off and flying over police lines. A case of man-bites-dog? Is this a first? or do slashdot readers know of similar technology being used by protestors in the USA 'Occupy' movements or elsewhere?
Space

Submission + - Some Galaxies Live Fast, Die Young

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Discovery reports that using the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, three teams have identified vast "halos" of gas surrounding a selection of 40 galaxies and found that some galaxies rapidly dump stellar gas into intergalactic space, resulting in them paying the ultimate price: a premature death. In most galaxies the heavier elements detected in galactic halos can only be formed inside stars and the waste products of supernovae — powerful explosions that result from massive star death. However, rather than venting and losing these waste gases to intergalactic space, the halos can extend as much as 450,000 light-years beyond the visible portions of their galactic disks and are replenished and provide an invaluable "feedback loop" where the gas falls back in to the galaxy, helping to support not only star birth, but also planets, complex organic molecules and, ultimately, life. For example the Milky Way's halo contains enough ionized hydrogen to create 100 million stars and enough gas "feeds" our galaxy to create one star per year. However, this scenario isn't universal. There must be a balance between star birth and halo replenishment. In the case of young galaxies that undergo rapid star creation called "star burst" galaxies, the violent star production phase results in a rapid expulsion of enriched stellar gas. "We found the James Dean or Amy Winehouse of that population," says Jason Tumlinson of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "the galaxies that lived fast and died young,""
Supercomputing

Submission + - The Top 10 Supercomputers, Illustrated (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by 1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: The twice-a-year list of the Top 500 supercomputers documents the most powerful systems on the planet. Many of these supercomputers are striking not just for their processing power, but for their design and appearance as well. Here’s a visual guide to the top finishers in the latest Top 500 list, which was released this week at the SC11 conference.

Comment Re:Fitted in New Zealand since August (Score 1) 235

by g00ey (#38057912) Attached to: Oxford City Council Mandates CCTV Cameras In Taxies by 2015
While it is good for safety I can also see how it can get abused. Perhaps Steve Ballmer is having a bad day and something funny just happens in a cab, a few days later, this incident goes up on TV. Microsoft loses one of its biggest customers, 1000 U.S. employees have to leave and Ballmer gets fired. Perhaps corporate secrets leak out because someone happened to have a cell phone conversation in a cab. Barrack Obama is revealed to have an affair. This list can go on...

So, while I can understand it is good for safety, there are some serious privacy issues that need to be addressed.

Comment Re:HDMI? (Score 3, Insightful) 208

by g00ey (#38037368) Attached to: Motorola Reinvents the RAZR
> It is a fairly respectable desktop machine even today

I hope you do realize that you cannot compare it to a desktop computer just by looking at the specs. A desktop computer with the same performance as this phone would be pretty awful.

As for the hard drives, the first multi-gigabyte hard drives came somewhere before the mid nineties but it took a few years before they reached the consumer market. I bought my first multi-gig hard drive 1997 and that particular model had been around for at least a year when I bought it. It wasn't cheap but it was fully existent.

Slashdot Top Deals

We have a equal opportunity Calculus class -- it's fully integrated.

Close