Comment Re:OMG (Score 1) 334
My rig runs so hot it might be considered as a local sun. So, I guess it's 1 for me.
Comment Nokia E90 + PuTTY (Score 1) 359
Nokia E90 + PuTTY for S60 works for me. It's got physical QWERTY keyboard and 800 x 352 screen resolution is enough for decent terminal sizes. I use 6x13 font for 133x27.
Myths About Code Comments 580
theodp writes "Jason Baker gives his take on the biggest misconceptions about code comments: 1) Comments are free ('When you update the code that the comment references, you usually have to update the comment as well'). 2) Comments make code more readable ('by far the most pervasive myth that I've encountered'). 3) You should comment every function, method, class, and module ('documenting something that needs no documentation is universally a bad idea'). 4) Code must always be 'self documenting' ('would you rather use a one-liner that requires a 3-line comment, or a 10-liner that requires no comments?')."
Submission + - Intel Shows 48-core x86 Processor (pcper.com)
Vigile writes: Intel unveiled a completely new processor design today the company is dubbing the "Single-chip Cloud Computer" (but was previously codenamed Bangalore). Justin Rattner, the company's CTO, discussed the new product at a press event in Santa Clara and revealed some interesting information about the goals and design of the new CPU. While terascale processing has been discussed for some time, this new CPU is the first to integrate full IA x86 cores rather than simple floating point units. The 48 cores are set 2 to a "tile" and each tile communicates with others via a 2D mesh networking capable of 256 GB/s rather than a large cache structure. There are more details on the design and its massive die size in this summary at PC Perspective.
Submission + - Girls Wired to Fear Spiders and Snakes
Foot-in-Mouth writes: "New Scientist reports that girls are more "primed" to fear spiders and snakes, compared to boys. Infant boys and girls were shown pairs of images, a fearful and a happy object (such as a spider and a flower), measuring the boys' and girls' dwell times on the images. And in another similar test, normally happy objects (such as a flower) were given a fearful face and fearful objects were given a happy face. The results of these two tests suggested to the researcher that girls are not wired to fear spiders, for example, but rather girls are wired to more quickly learn to fear dangerous animals.
The researcher, David Rakison at CMU, "attributes the difference to behavioural differences between men and women among our hunter-gatherer ancestors. An aversion to spiders may help women avoid dangerous animals, but in men evolution seems to have favoured more risk-taking behaviour for successful hunting."
This reminds one of men's obsession with video games. Will game designers use this information to tweak video games for gender, either to make the games more or less frightening?"
Submission + - Intel to Focus IDF on Shift to 32-nm 'Westmere' Ch
adeelarshad82 writes: "Intel has begun producing 32-nm "Westmere" chips. Intel plans to announce on Sunday night that is has begun manufacturing its 32-nm shrink of its Core microprocessor line, which the company refers to by the umbrella code name of "Westmere". Those chips will be spearheaded by the so-called "Dales" chips, "Clarkdale" for the desktop, and "Arrandale" for the notebook, which will contain an Intel CPU and graphics core together in the same package. Arrandale is expected to ship during the fourth quarter of 2009."
Submission + - Seamonkey 2.0 Beta 2 has been released (seamonkey-project.org)
binarybum writes: "SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 2 combines a state-of-the-art web browser based on the same core as Firefox 3.5.3 with a solid email and newsgroups client and a simple HTML editor, rounding the experience with web development tools and IRC chat. It now includes tabbed email. Seamonkey often takes up much less memory than running firefox and a separate mail client."
Submission + - Armadillo Aerospace Claim Level 2 NGLLC Prize (spacefellowship.com)
Dagondanum writes: "Armadillo Aerospace have officially won the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Level 2, on a rainy day at Caddo Mills, Texas. Reports came in from various locations during the day and spectators posted videos and images using social networking tools such as Twitter. The Space Fellowship earlier reporting that the team were getting ready to fly. Level 2 requires the rocket to fly for 180 seconds before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface constructed with craters and boulders. The minimum flight times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform a real descent from lunar orbit down to the surface of the Moon. First place is a prize of $1 million while second is $500,000."
Comment Re:Escort (Score 3, Funny) 293
"Some companies also hire in clothes police as extra protection"
Damn they take their fashion seriously!
Submission + - New Record in Pac Man (twingalaxies.com) 2
inKubus writes: "40-year-old David Race of Beaver Creek, OH has become the 6th gamer in history to gain a perfect score on the original Pac-Man video arcade game. Even more noteworthy is the fact that he's done it in faster time than any gamer in history, putting him at the top of a short list of gamers who have acheived perfection on the original arcade machine."
Submission + - NASA Plans a Mission to the Cloud
theodp writes: "Federal CIO Vivek Kundra will outline his vision for a new government cloud computing initiative at a press conference Tuesday at NASA's Ames Research Center. The event is a likely setting for Kundra to roll out the government's cloud computing storefront, which aims to cut government IT costs by making inexpensive and easy-to-deploy computing services available via the Internet. The event is around-the-block from the Googleplex, so perhaps the unnamed 'top Silicon Valley information technology leaders' attending will include Larry, Sergey, and Eric. Not only is Kundra an unabashed fan of their Google Apps cloud offering, the Google trio are big fans of NASA Ames, parking their personal jets at Moffett Field and making them available for missions like a meteor hunt that carried NASA Ames CIO Chris Kemp, who now spearheads the agency's Nebula cloud computing initiative (project site). Hey, it's a small Google Earth after all!"
Submission + - LG Electronics Alleged To Be Violating The GPL?
lazyeye writes: "According to this post on reddit, LG Electronics refuses to release the source code to their Linux-based TVs. Reddit user anarchytoday states, "I asked for the source code at their support site and they said it was unavailable. Emails also go unanswered at opensource@lge.com (tech support said to try that email address.) LG refuses to honor their GPL obligations.""
New iPod Touch Has an 802.11n Chip 135
eggboard writes "iFixIt has discovered a Broadcom 802.11a/b/g/n chip in the just-announced iPod touch (32 GB and 64 GB) models that uses single-stream 802.11n. Single-stream doesn't get the full power of N, but it boosts speed enough that — along with space-time block encoding, a feature coming soon to Wi-Fi access points with two or more radios — the iPod touch could be an effective networked media server, for streaming and transfer, possibly through the new iTunes Home Sharing feature."
First Botnet of Linux Web Servers Discovered 254
The Register writes up a Russian security researcher who has uncovered a Linux webserver botnet that is coordinating with a more conventional home-based botnet of Windows machines to distribute malware. "Each of the infected machines examined so far is a dedicated or virtual dedicated server running a legitimate website, Denis Sinegubko, an independent researcher based in Magnitogorsk, Russia, told The Register. But in addition to running an Apache webserver to dish up benign content, they've also been hacked to run a second webserver known as nginx, which serves malware [on port 8080]. 'What we see here is a long awaited botnet of zombie web servers! A group of interconnected infected web servers with [a] common control center involved in malware distribution,' Sinegubko wrote. 'To make things more complex, this botnet of web servers is connected with the botnet of infected home computer(s).'"
Submission + - Poll: My main development machine has: 1
Janek Kozicki writes: "My main development machine has:
1 core
2 cores
3 cores
4 cores
6 cores
8 cores
12 cores
16 cores
even more cores"
1 core
2 cores
3 cores
4 cores
6 cores
8 cores
12 cores
16 cores
even more cores"
