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PHP

Submission + - Facebook rewrites PHP runtime (sdtimes.com)

VonGuard writes: Facebook has gotten fed up with the speed of PHP. The company has been working on a skunkworks project to rewrite the PHP runtime, and on Tuesday of this week, they will be announcing the availability of their new PHP runtime as an open source project. The rumor around this began last week when the Facebook team invited some of the core PHP contributors to their campus to discuss some new open source project. I've written up everything I know about this story on the SD Times Blog.
Science

Submission + - Wearable rubber films could power electronics (princeton.edu)

quaith writes: Princeton researchers have published a paper that describes power-generating rubber films that could harvest the energy of walking, running and breathing to power mobile electrical devices. The material is composed of nanoribbons of lead zirconate titanate (PZT), a ceramic material that is piezoelectric. These are then embedded into silicone rubber sheets. The resulting material is highly efficient at converting mechanical energy provided by flexing into electrical energy. The researchers suggest it could be used in shoes, or placed against the lungs. I'd certainly buy a t-shirt that could power my laptop.

Comment Re:Wait hold on mugger... (Score 1) 457

Now in a self admitted state of grogginess you are expected to be able to operate a firearm with decent accuracy and efficiency that you are able to disable a fully alert assailant before they are able to react.

Maybe somepeople wake up groggy, lazily aiming for the alarm clock when it rings, then stumbling to the kitchen, turning on the coffee machine whilst your eyes are still glazed over... going on your Daily routine.

Would you be accurate with a firearm?
Maybe not.

But imagine that you have an important business meeting at 7:00 and your job depends on it. You wake up and are shocked as you see it's 6:45 and you know it takes you 10 minutes to get to work. Your heart beats at 150 bps, your adrenaline rises, you get dressed faster than ever before. You're decisive, do only what's necessary, and you have a far higher state of awareness than the day before.

Would you be accurate with a firearm?
That depends, some people are never accurate.
Myself?
Absolutely.

What kind of fantasy world do you live in?

Why do you think that the state of mind/accuracy that you have(or think most people have), applies to everyone?

With a regular firearm, in your scenario you are already screwed. An assailant will have attacked and disabled you long before you are able to grasp the firearm, let alone use it.

Again, you are making assumptions that while they may be applicable to some, will not be applicable to everyone.

Lets ignore the fact that at your state of grogginess in near darkness you aren't capable of telling the difference between an assailant and your own wife.

The assailant would be the one on the floor.
My wife would be the one holding the gun.

Apple

Submission + - Tinkering, R.I.P.? 1

theodp writes: Having cut his programming teeth on an Apple ][e as a ten-year-old, Mark Pilgrim laments that Apple now seems to be doing everything in their power to stop his kids from finding the sense of wonder he did: 'Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of 'jailbreaks' stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers. There won’t ever be a MacsBug for the iPad. There won’t be a ResEdit, or a Copy ][+ sector editor, or an iPad Peeks & Pokes Chart. And that's a real loss. Maybe not to you, but to somebody who doesn’t even know it yet.' Time for Woz to have a sit-down with Jobs?

Submission + - ACTA Talks Conclude As Global DMCA On 2010 Agenda

An anonymous reader writes: The latest round of negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the secret copyright treaty promoting a Global DMCA, finished up yesterday in Mexico. While governments had little to say, there have been enough leaks to know what is there. With several months before the next round of talks in New Zealand, now is the time to learn more about what you can do.

Comment Re:Is there any use for this in the western world? (Score 1) 123

You started with a question and finished with the answer. Pressure sensitivity is handy for lots of things, some of which have not even been invented.

My question is whether this will find any widespread use here. The post focuses on writing in Asia. The article mentions pressure, but is it sensitive enough for a strand of hair(from a brush)?

I'm not in Asia and digital art is something that is cool, but a 'niche market' that I doubt this technology is aimed at. So will we see any devices deploying this tech here?

My saying that something would be cool to do is not an answer to my question of what we will see here.

Comment Is there any use for this in the western world? (Score 1) 123

What would we use it for, here?

Cursive writing programs are being eliminated from elementary school.
The quality of printing is also going downhill.
Everything here is being replaced by a keyboard (real and virtual).

Is this a technology that will see a major uptake only in a limited part of the world, amongst those who have trouble writing Pinyin(or similar)?

(But it would be great to have this sensitive enough to use a real brush to paint in digital ink.)

Comment Re:Stargate? (Score 1) 131

BTW This Stargate is the one that was used in both - the movie and the tv show.

In my universe I imagine Steve Jobs buying the stargate.
Him and the Stargate would be a perfect fit.

But I'm worried he might rename it the iGate.

(just imagine the new line of products, like macbooks that would never break)

Science

Submission + - Evolving robots learn to prey on each other (plosbiology.org)

quaith writes: Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller report in PLoS ONE how their robots were able to rapidly evolve complex behaviors such as collision-free movement, homing, predator versus prey strategies, cooperation, and even altruism. A hundred generations of selection controlled by a simple neural network were sufficient to allow robots to evolve these behaviors. Their robots initially exhibited completely uncoordinated behavior, but as they evolved, the robots were able to orientate, escape predators, and even cooperate. The authors point out that this confirms a proposal by Alan Turing who suggested in the 1950s that building machines capable of adaptation and learning would be too difficult for a human designer and could instead
be done using an evolutionary process. The robots aren't yet ready to compete in Robot Wars, but they're still pretty impressive.

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