Comment Re:Privacy fears (Score 1) 527
Posting this as anonymous coward adds weight to which side of the argument?
Big Dipper "Star" Actually a Sextuplet System 88
Theosis sends word that an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor, one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, is actually two stars; and it is apparently gravitationally bound to the four-star Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky. The Mizar-Alcor system has been involved in many "firsts" in the history of astronomy: "Benedetto Castelli, Galileo's protege and collaborator, first observed with a telescope that Mizar was not a single star in 1617, and Galileo observed it a week after hearing about this from Castelli, and noted it in his notebooks... Those two stars, called Mizar A and Mizar B, together with Alcor, in 1857 became the first binary stars ever photographed through a telescope. In 1890, Mizar A was discovered to itself be a binary, being the first binary to be discovered using spectroscopy. In 1908, spectroscopy revealed that Mizar B was also a pair of stars, making the group the first-known quintuple star system."
Comment Re:JS needs threads (Score 1) 531
What goes on in the back-end is irrelevant. What matters is that your script is single threaded. All functions are atomic and busy waits will prevent any other JS from executing. If an event happens, the browser will wait until the current function is done executing before notifying the callback for the event. This actually makes programming for JS very easy and does not really hinder the event-driven nature of client-side browser scripting at all. At best, I think you can think of callbacks to the server as worker threads (work is being done by the server), though when your client-side code is called back, it will be sequential and it won't execute concurrently with any of your other code.
Comment Re:Why bother? (Score 3, Insightful) 531
The javascript hate probably isn't coming from people that have done web development.
It's probably coming from people that have done web browsing.
Comment Re:That cloud word again (Score 1) 305
Pick the best tool for the job. While I'm not a big Microsoft fan -- and I'm even less of an Exchange fan -- you don't pick a server platform because it's your pet O/S; you pick a server platform because it's what you need to get the job done. If you need to run an Exchange server, then build a Windows server (or more likely, several Windows servers) and run Exchange.
From the client side, I use a Linux desktop to connect to an Exchange server for e-mail at work, and it works just fine because it supports standard SMTP and IMAPS. I greatly preferred the Postfix server we used to use (because my organization owned it and therefore I had access to it, unlike the Exchange server that our new corporate overlords mandated), but in truth, I don't really have any major complaints from a user perspective.
From the client side, I use a Linux desktop to connect to an Exchange server for e-mail at work, and it works just fine because it supports standard SMTP and IMAPS. I greatly preferred the Postfix server we used to use (because my organization owned it and therefore I had access to it, unlike the Exchange server that our new corporate overlords mandated), but in truth, I don't really have any major complaints from a user perspective.
Comment I was just reading about "Appeal to Moderation" (Score 1) 311
Interesting, because I was just reading this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
Warning: Links at bottom of page are highly addictive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
Warning: Links at bottom of page are highly addictive.
Comment Re:Javascript is actually a great language (Score 1) 531
It just makes one up right there on the spot, and assigns it a null value.
Actually it assigns it a value of undefined.
Then there's the null -vs- undefined mess that constantly trips-up even experienced programmers.
Did that joke just go flying over my head?
Comment Hmm (Score 1) 351
Did anybody think to check the power cord?
Comment Re:And Yet He Won't Pay a Penny (Score 0, Flamebait) 100
If justice is unavailable, I'd settle for an "accident". Those happen all the time, and can be quite gruesome.
Comment Generous Philanthropists (Score 1) 338
Totally off the real topic but Bill Gates actually rates well in the percentage of net
worth donated. http://www.businessweek.com/pdfs/2004/0448_philan.pdf
The above link doesn't reflect my next unsubstatiated statement but Larry Elison has
historically done very poorly at giving significant percentages of his income.
Comment White paint or solar panels? (Score 4, Insightful) 712
Or we could put solar panels on roofs and convert the sunlight, that would ordinarily be
converted to heat, into electricity which I am sure we could find a use for.
Submission + - DNA before proven guilty in Colorado
Hankenstein writes: A bill before the Colorado legislature attempts to mandate a DNA sample when merely arrested on felony charges
No mention of purging "innocent" DNA and while not a huge step in the erosion of rights direction, a step nonetheless.
"Under current Colorado law, DNA is taken after a felony conviction. Senate Bill 241, by Morse, would require a DNA sample be taken after a
person is arrested on felony charges. "
No mention of purging "innocent" DNA and while not a huge step in the erosion of rights direction, a step nonetheless.
"Under current Colorado law, DNA is taken after a felony conviction. Senate Bill 241, by Morse, would require a DNA sample be taken after a
person is arrested on felony charges. "
Submission + - SPAM: FTC fines annoying online ad firm record $2.9M
coondoggie writes: "It probably won't do away with those annoying "YOU HAVE WON" banner ads but online advertiser ValueClick, today agreed to pay a record $2.9 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that its advertising claims and e-mails were deceptive and violated federal law. Aside from being deceptive and generally annoying, the FTC also charged that ValueClick and its subsidiaries, Hi-Speed Media and E-Babylon failed to secure consumers' sensitive financial information, despite their claims to do so. The FTC alleged the companies published online privacy policies claiming they encrypted customer information, but either failed to encrypt the information at all or used a non-standard and insecure form of encryption.
[spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Submission + - Federal Research Funds for 2008 are Disappointing
SoyChemist writes: Wired Science has asked their readers to complain about the biggest problems with federal research funding. Some of the comments are quite revealing: Lead scientists must rush to buy supplies before their grants expire, they sometimes get stuck when equipment breaks and they did not anticipate replacement parts in their budget, and there are only token incentives for alternative energy research. Worst of all, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could exceed $1.2 trillion, are particularly appalling when compared to the measly $6.43 billion requested by the National Science Foundation and $28.6 billion requested by the National Institutes of Health for supporting science in 2008.
Submission + - A DVD Player that Upscales to 1080p
ThinSkin writes: "Before you run off to buy either a Blu-ray or HD DVD player (one of which will become extinct in the years to follow), you might want to consider an upscaling DVD player that can achieve some pretty high image quality. ExtremeTech has a review of the OPPO DV-980H DVD Player that can upscale video to 1080p, as well as 480p, 720p, 1080i. The player handles video pretty well, but the review notes that noise reduction is limited in high-def scenes."
