Comment Not dumb... (Score 1) 223
Good tends towards the 'not devious'.
Comment WindowMaker (Score 1) 232
Lightweight, nice little applets...except a couple are kinda fracked now. Been running it since SuSE 5.something.
Comment Perhaps it is a zero-sum game? (Score 1) 611
Or, our standard of living could decline towards that of the third-world countries we're shipping our jobs to, until they meet - and then others will continue upwards and us down, due to momentum.
Comment Re:It's Fox (Score 1) 392
>>> I wonder when FOX will figure out that you can't put everything in a nice little box and have it accurately explain the population overall.
Sometime after they cancel "Firefly", unfortunately.
Comment Something I can really use... (Score 1) 868
BTUs.
Comment Almost never... (Score 1) 225
Once every few years ~= never.
Modeling a White Hole With Your Kitchen Sink 104
jamie passes along this excerpt from Wired:
"That ring of water in your kitchen sink is actually a model white hole. For the first time, scientists have shown experimentally that liquid flowing from a tap embodies the same physics as the time-reversed equivalent of black holes. When a stream of tap water hits the flat surface of the sink, it spreads out into a thin disc bounded by a raised lip, called the hydraulic jump. Physicists’ puzzlement with this jump dates back to Lord Rayleigh in 1914. More recently, physicists have suggested that, if the water waves inside the disc move faster than the waves outside, the jump could serve as an analogue event horizon. Water can approach the ring from outside, but it can’t get in."
Comment Re:Today (Score 1) 510
"Some day" is always a better day...
Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video 266
longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."
Comment Re:How about something new? (Score 1) 922
Well, as to Heinlein, they farked up "Starship Troopers", IMO. It only made me want to go back and recover from it by reading the book again.
More appropriately for US tastes would be "Marching Morons". Oh, except it's already been done, although I forget the name of the actual film. It was, however, quite moronic...but I guess it really was supposed to be!
Computer Games and Traditional CS Courses 173
drroman22 writes "Schools are working to put real-world relevance into computer science education by integrating video game development into traditional CS courses. Quoting: 'Many CS educators recognized and took advantage of younger generations' familiarity and interests for computer video games and integrate related contents into their introductory programming courses. Because these are the first courses students encounter, they build excitement and enthusiasm for our discipline. ... Much of this work reported resounding successes with drastically increased enrollments and student successes. Based on these results, it is well recognized that integrating computer gaming into CS1 and CS2 (CS1/2) courses, the first programming courses students encounter, is a promising strategy for recruiting and retaining potential students."
While a focus on games may help stir interest, it seems as though game development studios are as yet unimpressed by most game-related college courses. To those who have taken such courses or considered hiring those who have: what has your experience been?
Comment Re:I'm a shill (Score 1) 496
Ditto.
Comment Wait till hackers start riffing on DNA (Score 1) 857
The end of *natural* evolution, he means.
Submission + - SHA-1 cracking on a budget (hackaday.com)
cloude-pottier writes: One thing that is always amazing is what people manage to pull off on absolutely minimal resources. One enterprising individual went on eBay and found boards with more than half a dozen Virtex II Pro FPGAs, nurse them back to life and build a SHA-1 cracker with two of the boards. This is an excellent example of recycling, as these were originally a part of a Thompson Grass Valley HDTV broadcast system. As a part of the project, the creator wrote tools designed to graph the relationships between components using JTAG as to make reverse engineering the organization of the FPGAs on the board more apparent. More details can be seen on the actual project page. If an individual is able to pull this off for under 500 dollars, it almost makes one wonder what resources the government has available to them to do the same thing...
Submission + - Google Earth Flight Simulator (blogspot.com)
marcog123 writes: "Last week Google launched Google Sky as an addition to Google Earth. However, what they didn't tell us is that the sneaked in another key addition — a flight simulator. They appear to have held back on publicising this new feature, although it could be considered by some as more useful than Google Sky. It is currently limited to an F16 and SR22, but the selection of runways is impressive for an under-the-radar release. It's a great new addition that complements Google Earth well!"
