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Comment Re:My (short) experience with git so far (Score 1) 346

I mixed up "endian" with "end-of-line", and we were working in a mixed Windows/Linux environment. The automatic change to native end-of-line that git does sometimes marked files as dirty, which required an extra commit before I could change back to my feature branch. It's quite possible that that process would've smoothed out over time.

Comment My (short) experience with git so far (Score 5, Interesting) 346

I used to use cvs, subversion and perforce. After switching to git, it feels a lot more powerful, at the cost of more things that can go wrong.
My workflow with subversion was:
- regular update: update, check/fix conflicts, continue work
- commit: update, pick files I want to commit with TortoiseSVN, verify the changes in the diff view, write log message, commit, continue work
On GIT:
- regular update: stash my changes, change to master branch, pull, check for errors or dirty files (mostly endian problems), switch to work branch, rebase from master, check for errors or dirty files, unstash my changes, check for errors or dirty files, continue work
- commit: update, stage the files I want to commit, commit them, verify the changes, push
At several stages some obscure thing could go wrong that I needed to look up in the manual or on the internet, or needed to ask someone who used it for longer. That doesn't mean I think GIT is bad, I just feel it takes more time to be fully productive with compared to older systems. And I miss a few minor things from svn, like keyword expansion or properties.

Comment Re:What's the point of winning ... (Score 1) 507

I see where you're coming from, looking at the popularity of cheat cartridges/discs or "trainers" for cracked games there are many people who just want to run through the game without any danger for themselves.
The question is, is it a sign of quality to target those people exclusively? All games are entertainment, but not like a movie they are a game. And part of a game is that you win or loose. Where is the reward for finally completing a risky section, if you haven't failed half a dozen times beforehand? What is worth fixing are unnecessary delays like long loading times to play what should be already in memory or a cutscene you can't skip. But removing the risk means removing the reward as well.

Robotics

A Robot To Destroy Breast Cancer Cells 81

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the University of Maryland are developing a robot able to detect and destroy breast cancer cells in a single session. After a tumor is located on an MRI, the robot will perform a biopsy of the breast while the patient is inside the scanner. 'If the biopsy displays cancerous cells, the robot will then insert a probe into the breast until it reaches the tumor. The probe will then burn the cancer cells until they are destroyed.' This looks great, but the researchers have only built a prototype. After they refine this robot, they'll need to go through clinical trials and obtain FDA approval. So this is not a robot that will appear on the medical market before several years."
Power

Radiation Absorbing Mineral Found In the Arctic 351

An anonymous reader writes "A mineral has recently been found that exhibits the astounding property of being able to remove radiation from water-based solutions. 'After coming into contact with the mineral, radioactive water becomes completely safe. Had this mineral been available to physicists after the Chernobyl or Three Mile Island disasters, the consequences might have been very different, as both accidents resulted in contamination from radioactive water.' Also, the article notes that although only grams of the material have been found, tons of it are needed; they are confident they could artificially reproduce it."
Censorship

In Russia, 50% of News Must Be Happy 551

Several readers sent us to the New York Times for disturbing news on Russia's vanishing press freedoms. The story tells of how one of the few remaining relatively independent radio outlets in Russia recently acquired new managers, reportedly loyal to Vladimir Putin. Quoting: "At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia's largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be 'positive.' In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin."
Television

Submission + - Co-Inventor of the TV Remote Dies

poorting writes: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBIT_REMOTE _CONTROL?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Co-Inventor of the TV Remote Dies

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Hit the mute button for a moment of silence: The co-inventor of the TV remote, Robert Adler, has died. Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made the couch potato possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday.

In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime.

In a May 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Adler recalled being among two dozen engineers at Zenith given the mission to find a new way for television viewers to change channels without getting out of their chairs or tripping over a cable.

But he downplayed his role when asked if he felt his invention helped raise a new generation of couch potatoes.

"People ask me all the time — 'Don't you feel guilty for it?' And I say that's ridiculous," he said. "It seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where you normally sit and watch television."

Various sources have credited either Polley, another Zenith engineer, or Adler as the inventor of the device. Polley created the "Flashmatic," a wireless remote introduced in 1955 that operated on photo cells. Adler introduced ultrasonics, or high-frequency sound, to make the device more efficient in 1956.

Zenith credits them as co-inventors, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded both Adler and Polley an Emmy in 1997 for the landmark invention.

"He was part of a project that changed the world," Polley said from his home in Lombard, Ill.

Adler joined Zenith's research division in 1941 after earning a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna. He retired as research vice president in 1979, and served as a technical consultant until 1999, when Zenith merged with LG Electronics Inc.

During World War II, Adler specialized in military communications equipment. He later helped develop sensitive amplifiers for ultra high frequency signals used by radio astronomers and by the U.S. Air Force for long-range missile detection.

Adler also was considered a pioneer in SAW technology, or surface acoustic waves, in color television sets and touch screens. The technology has also been used in cellular telephones.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published his most recent patent application, for advances in touch screen technology, on Feb. 1.

His wife, Ingrid, said Adler wouldn't have chosen the remote control as his favorite invention. In fact, he didn't even watch much television.

"He was more of a reader," she said. "He was a man who would dream in the night and wake up and say, 'I just solved a problem.' He was always thinking science."

Adler wished he had been recognized for more of his broad-ranging applications that were useful in the war and in space and were building blocks of other technology, she said, "but then the remote control changed the life of every man."

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Programming

Submission + - Advanced Perl XML tips using XSLT, SAX, and SQL

An anonymous reader writes: This article shows you more powerful tools for parsing XML using Perl: DOM-style tree parsers and the SAX event-based parsers. You will learn about XML::SAX::Base and how you can use it to build sources, handlers, and sinks of SAX events. See how to feed transformed parse trees into SAX pipelines, further transform them, and write them as text or to SQL databases. Finally you will learn how to reverse this, using database content to drive SAX pipelines.

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