Comment Re:No good games (Score 5, Insightful) 310
They must account for the games released during that time.
Precisely. And what was released on June 12, 2008? Metal Gear Solid 4.
Comment Re:Addition to the lesson... (Score 1) 780
This is the most hilarious thing I've read in a long time. You, sir, are awesome.
Comment You can already do this (Score 1) 360
Right-click on a search box and choose "add a keyword for this search." I use wp for Wikipedia searches and az for amazon ones. Very convenient, but I'm not sure how this new command line function will be any different.
More Websites Offending Thai Monarchy Blocked 220
An anonymous reader writes "Thailand is ramping up their media wide censorship of anything that remotely offends Thai royalty. In the last three weeks, another 2,300 websites have been blocked. Another ~4,000 are soon expected.
And not just websites, but books as well as the Economist have been blocked. And anyone caught publishing such material, including foreigners, will get 3 to 15 years in a Thai prison. You don't want to be in a Thai prison!"
Submission + - Help for a new, non-specialist science teacher
SlashJoel writes: My sister recently received her degree in education, and just last week accepted a job teaching French at a local high school. However, in addition to French, she is also teaching two classes of grade 9 science, a subject she never liked in school and that she isn't thrilled about teaching. She has confessed that she doesn't remember most of the things she will be teaching and that she's worried about not being able to engage the students as her grasp on the subject matter is tenuous at best.
And so I come to ask Slashdot: what can be done to help her? Are there any good resources out there that you're aware of? I'm trying to find things to get her excited about Science so she can pass that excitement on to her students, but she also obviously needs to beef up her knowledge of a subject she's not terribly fond of. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated.
And so I come to ask Slashdot: what can be done to help her? Are there any good resources out there that you're aware of? I'm trying to find things to get her excited about Science so she can pass that excitement on to her students, but she also obviously needs to beef up her knowledge of a subject she's not terribly fond of. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated.
2/3 of Americans Without Broadband Don't Want It 538
Ant writes in with news that won't be welcomed by the incoming US administration as it tries to expand the availability of broadband Internet service. A recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates, as noted by Ars Technica, that two-thirds of Americans without broadband don't want it. "...when we look at the overall reasons why Americans don't have broadband, availability isn't the biggest barrier. Neither is price. Those two, combined, only account for one-third of Americans without broadband. Two-thirds simply don't want it. The bigger issue is a lack of perceived value."
Boat Moves Without an Engine Or Sails 234
coondoggie writes "Researchers say technology they have developed would let boats or small aquatic robots glide through the water without the need for an engine, sails or paddles.
A University of Pittsburgh research team has designed a propulsion system that uses the natural surface tension that is present on the water's surface and an electric pulse to move the boat or robot, researchers said. The Pitt system has no moving parts and the low-energy electrode that emits the pulse could be powered by batteries, radio waves, or solar power, researchers said in a statement."
RIAA To Stop Prosecuting Individual File Sharers 619
debatem1 writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, the RIAA has decided to abandon its current tactic of suing individuals for sharing copyrighted music. Ongoing lawsuits will be pursued to completion, but no new ones will be filed. The RIAA is going to try working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users. This very surprising development apparently comes as a result of public distaste for the campaign." An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."
Which OS Performs Best With SSDs? 255
Lucas123 writes "Linux, Vista and Mac OS perform differently with solid state disks. While all of them work well with SSDs, as they write data more efficiently or run fewer applications in the background than XP, surprisingly Windows 2000 appears to be the winner when it comes to performance. However, no OS has yet been optimized to work with SSDs. This lost opportunity is one Microsoft plans to address with Windows 7; Apple, too, is likely to upgrade its platform soon for better SSD performance."
Khronos Releases OpenCL Spec 115
kpesler writes "Today, the Khronos Group released the OpenCL API specification (which we discussed earlier this year). It provides an open API for executing general-purpose code kernels on GPUs — so-called GPGPU functionality. Initially bolstered by Apple, the API garnered the support of major players including NVIDIA, AMD/ATI, and Intel. Motivated by inclusion in OS X Snow Leopard, the spec was completed in record time — about half a year from the formation of the group to the ratified spec."
Comment Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score 1) 420
You seem to be taking this idea seriously, so I'm going to seriously discourage you from implementing it. It's noble to have faith that if each citizen is given a blank slate and the power to shape a governing structure for themselves, something wholly democratic and wonderful will come out of it. But it's also hopelessly wrong. Someone on Slashdot has a sig that I really like that says "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner." I wouldn't trust the average citizen with filing my taxes, let along determining my country's monetary policy.
Now, you sound like a smart person. And you seem to be fed up with the current electoral/legislative/governmental processes. I can understand that. But please don't put your energies into fashioning a way for every citizen to come together and instantly form some new system of government that could be anything from direct democracy to elected dictator and somehow have the flexibility to become the very opposite on a whim. This will never happen. And if it did happen, it wouldn't work out like you hope. You don't have a plan for a new government system. You have a plan for allowing other people to figure out a new government system. Pardon my harshness, but that's intellectually lazy. Instead trying to figure out how to create an infrastructure that would allow everyone to create a new governing structure, I encourage you to come up with your own idea for a new electoral/legislative/governing structure. Think you know the perfect system that can satisfy Libertarians and Socialists, Centralists and Decentralists, Rich and Poor, Rural and Urban? Please, for the love of god, tell us! But if you think that getting all those people together in a virtual room is going to spontaneously generate the perfect system of government, you're fucking crazy.
Massively Parallel X-Ray Holography 41
Roland Piquepaille writes "An international group of scientists has produced some of the sharpest x-ray holograms of microscopic objects ever made. According to one of them, they improved the efficiency of holography by a factor of 2,500. In order to achieve these spectacular results, they put a uniformly redundant array next to the object to image. And they found that this parallel approach multiplied 'the efficiency of X-ray Fourier transform holography by more than three orders of magnitude, approaching that of a perfect lens.' Besides these impressive achievements, it's worth noting that this technology has been inspired by the pinhole camera, a technique used by ancient Greeks. 'By knowing the precise layout of a pinhole array, including the different sizes of the different pinholes, a computer can recover a bright, high-resolution image numerically.'"
Making Strides Toward Low-Cost LED Lighting 398
Roland Piquepaille writes "You all know that incandescent bulbs are pretty inefficient, converting only 10% of electricity into light — and 90% into heat. Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, could soon replace incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs in our homes. They are more efficient and environmentally friendly. But LED lights are currently too expensive because they are using a sapphire-based technology. Now, Purdue University researchers have found a way to build low-cost and bright LEDs for home lighting. According to the researchers, the LED lights now on the market cost about $100 while LED lights based on their new technology could be commercially available within a couple of years for a cost of about $5. It would also help to cut our electricity bill by about 10%."
Meet the Laptop You Will (Won't?) Use In 2015 231
robert2cane writes "The Compenion concept notebook, designed by Felix Schmidberger, eschews the familiar clamshell design in favor of two superbright organic LED panels that slide into place next to each other, making the notebook just three-quarters of an inch thick." Really this page is just some renderings of some concept computers that are pretty far out of practical production reach. Some interesting ideas, but mostly a whole lot of 'Yeah, right.'
Net Neutrality Bill Introduced In Canadian Parliament 132
FeatherBoa points out that the New Democratic Party in Canada has introduced legislation to limit the amount of control Canadian ISPs can exert over their subscribers. The bill would amend the Telecommunications Act to "prohibit network operators from engaging in network management practices that favour, degrade or prioritize any content, application or service transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination, subject to certain exceptions." Support for net neutrality in Canada has been building for quite a while now. Quoting CBC News:
"'This bill is about fairness to consumers,' said Charlie Angus, the NDP's digital spokesman. It also looks to prohibit 'network operators from preventing a user from attaching any device to their network and requires network operators to make information about the user's access to the internet available to the user.' The proposed bill makes exception for ISPs to manage traffic in reasonable cases, Angus said, such as providing stable speeds for applications such as gaming or video conferencing."
