Comment Re:Resolution (Score 1) 137
Yes, this is very much standard practice in the industry. That's why big tech companies file so many patents -- ammunition in case they need it.
Unfortunately it doesn't work against patent trolls because they have no product to sell.
Unfortunately it doesn't work against patent trolls because they have no product to sell.
Comment Re:Unconvincing statistics (Score 1) 317
I'm too lazy to do the math so I ran a simulation instead.
With groups of size 8000, if the vaccine is ineffective, and if the probability of a subject becoming infected is (51+74)/2/8000=0.0078125, then the probability of getting >=23 FEWER infections in the vaccine group is around 2%. I suspect this is low enough for a drug trial to be generally considered a success, but yes it could certainly happen by chance. It's not a proof, it's a trial.
MTRand rng(1);
unsigned count = 0;
double prob = 0.0078125;
for(unsigned itr=0; itr<100000; itr++){
int c1 = 0;
int c2 = 0;
for(unsigned i=0; i<8000; i++){
if(rng.rand()<prob){
c1++;
}
if(rng.rand()<prob){
c2++;
}
}
if(c1-c2>=23){
count++;
}
}
printf("count: %u = %.6f\n", count, (double)count/100000);
With groups of size 8000, if the vaccine is ineffective, and if the probability of a subject becoming infected is (51+74)/2/8000=0.0078125, then the probability of getting >=23 FEWER infections in the vaccine group is around 2%. I suspect this is low enough for a drug trial to be generally considered a success, but yes it could certainly happen by chance. It's not a proof, it's a trial.
MTRand rng(1);
unsigned count = 0;
double prob = 0.0078125;
for(unsigned itr=0; itr<100000; itr++){
int c1 = 0;
int c2 = 0;
for(unsigned i=0; i<8000; i++){
if(rng.rand()<prob){
c1++;
}
if(rng.rand()<prob){
c2++;
}
}
if(c1-c2>=23){
count++;
}
}
printf("count: %u = %.6f\n", count, (double)count/100000);
Comment Re:A complementary approach (Score 1) 190
That was my first thought...but maybe they are looking for signs that the space between us and the pulsar has been distorted.
Submission + - SPAM: NASA probe blasts 461 gigabytes of moon data daily 1
coondoggie writes: "On its current space scouting mission, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is using a pumped up communications device to deliver 461 gigabytes of data and images per day, at a rate of up to 100 Mbps.
As the first high data rate K-band transmitter to fly on a NASA spacecraft, the 13-inch-long tube, called a Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier, is making it possible for NASA scientists to receive massive amounts of images and data about the moon's surface and environment.
The amplifier was built by L-3 Communications Electron Technologies in conjunction with NASA's Glenn Research Center. The device uses electrodes in a vacuum tube to amplify microwave signals to high power. It's ideal for sending large amounts of data over a long distance because it provides more power and more efficiency than its alternative, the transistor amplifier, NASA stated.
[spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Submission + - Web tools oversee Afghan election (bbc.co.uk)
ianare writes: Attempts to rig or interfere with Afghanistan's election could be caught by a system that allows anyone to record incidents via text message. The text messages are collected via an open source platform known as FrontlineSMS, which has been used to monitor elections in Nigeria. It has now been combined with a "crowd-sourced, crisis-mapping" tool known as Ushahidi, also open source, and which plots the reports on a freely-accessible map. Together they allow reports to be gathered from any part of the country with mobile phone coverage. Even though it costs the same amount of money to send an SMS as it costs to buy bread for your family, some people have said that they will be willing not to eat that evening in order to tell the international community what is going on in the country.
Comment Re:Pardon my ignorance (Score 1) 13
I meant the Wikipedia article that I linked to :)
Comment Re:Pardon my ignorance (Score 4, Informative) 13
It's a bucket-wheel excavator, used for strip-mining coal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-wheel_excavator
I think they're moving it from one mine to another, as described in the above article.
Comment Re:No mention of memmove... (Score 1) 486
I see the motivation (prevent buffer overflow exploit when programmer lazily uses a fixed-size buffer and doesn't check if the data is too big). But it will probably actually CAUSE bugs. More parameters = more confusion, more risk of mixing the parameters up and getting them wrong. The new parameter (destination size) does not add any functionality, yet if you get it wrong it will break your code. I guess the hope is that those bugs will be caught by QA, whereas buffer overflows might not (because overflow won't occur during normal use).
Documentation for memcpy_s is rather confusing (naming of parameters is weird) increasing risk that a novice programmer will mess things up.
Documentation for memcpy_s is rather confusing (naming of parameters is weird) increasing risk that a novice programmer will mess things up.
Comment It's always in the last place you look (Score 1) 118
So look there first.
