Manzanita - Slashdot User

Comment Something similar happened to me at Amazon (Score 1) 202

by Manzanita on Friday February 20, 2009 @04:22AM (#26926385) Attached to: Restauranteurs Say Yelp Uses Extortion To Ply Ad Sales

I have received a number of spam messages from some author I had never heard of before, sending me to her Amazon listing. After the third round of spamming I decided to make a note of it on the page for the book, creating a review titled "Please don't buy books from this spammer." I used my real name and account, gave an accurate description of what had happened and a fairly objective review of what I could glean about the book. I also observed that the other reviews appeared to be shills, so I gave a little review of their reviews as well. None of what I said was mean or vindictive, just matter of fact.

It has been a week since I wrote that review and I thought to check for it today. There is no trace of it. I was not notified in any way that it was unacceptable or that it had been removed. If you are curious, you can check out the books here , but please do not buy from this spammer! I think you will see immediately how poorly the book is written and what obvious shills the reviewers are. It is almost funny, if it weren't for the spamming.

Of course any comments you leave about that book, or feedback you send to Amazon about their pulling reviews is up to you.

-Dan

Comment Re:Apparent brightness I presume? (Score 1) 64

by Manzanita on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @12:08AM (#26898189) Attached to: Beamlines To Reveal Secrets of the Mummies

Okay, this is a bit off-topic, but the standard synchrotron brightness units are Photons per second per square millimeter per .1% band width, measured at the spot in the endstation. Speaking of source brightness you would use square milliradians instead of millimeters. The .1% band width is a funny unit which refers to deltaE/E, so the brightness here is really a function of energy. In the visible, for yellow light like the sun, .1%bw is about .0022eV at 2.2eV=570nm. For the Fe K-edge, where they may have been working, the energy is 7112eV, which gives .1%bw=7.112eV, so at 7112eV you are counting all photons with energies between 7112eV and 7119eV or so. Synchrotrons typically have a peak brightness somewhere up in the X-Ray energies, which makes sense because they are designed to be X-Ray sources. For that reason it doesn't make much sense to compare the brightness of a synchrotron with that of the sun. They are really such different sources. When I see a comparison like that I usually just dismiss it and read on. They would have said something more useful if they had compared to dental X-Ray brightness. I tend to cut science reporters a little slack though. It is hard to give people an idea of what is really going on in science when there are so many details that you have to know for real understanding. Of course, when the science reporter's words are further interpreted for the Slashdot abstract by someone like Hugh Pickens, you have to give them even less weight.

-Dan

Why LEDs Don't Beat CFLs Even Though They Should 685

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @07:57PM from the light-it-up dept.

TaeKwonDood writes "LEDs don't beat CFLs in the home yet, but it's not simply because PG&E is getting rich making people feel like they are helping the environment buying CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US using a lot more fossil fuels than they save. It's a problem of indication versus illumination. However, some new discoveries are going to change all that."

Comment Could this possibly sound more stupid? (Score 2, Interesting) 580

by Manzanita on Saturday December 27, 2008 @05:29PM (#26244217) Attached to: Microsoft Invents $1.15/Hour Homework Fee For Kids

An economic disincentive for our kids to do homework. That is not what we as a nation or any society on this planet need. Somehow I think we are missing part of the proposal. Of course I haven't looked into it beyond one of the links. I just don't see how anyone is going to find this arrangement appealing! There will be a massive outcry if they try to force this on people and it will die an even more pathetic death than Vista. Well, that is my first reaction and I don't think I care enough to look into any further... Heh.

An In-Depth Look At Game Piracy 504

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 20, 2008 @02:15PM from the share-and-share-alike dept.

TweakGuides is running a detailed examination of PC game piracy. The author begins with a look at the legal, moral, and monetary issues behind copyright infringement, and goes on to measure the scale of game piracy and how it affects developers and publishers. He also discusses some of the intended solutions to piracy. He provides examples of copy protection and DRM schemes that have perhaps done more harm than good, as well as less intrusive measures which are enjoying more success. The author criticizes the "culture of piracy" that has developed, saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century, and piracy has apparently somehow become a political struggle, a fight against greedy corporations and evil copy protection, and in some cases, I've even seen some people refer to the rise of piracy as a 'revolution.' What an absolute farce. ... Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route."

Change.gov Uses Google Moderator System 436

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 11, 2008 @01:28PM from the they-should-call-it-pigg dept.

GMonkeyLouie writes "The website for President-elect Obama's transition team, Change.gov, has unveiled a section called Open for Questions, which lets users submit questions and vote them up or down, in an effort to let the collaborative mind produce the questions that are the most important to the American populace (or at least the web-savvy portion). The page is powered by Google Moderator. It was unveiled yesterday, and CNet reports that when they went to post last night, '159,890 had voted on 1,986 questions from 3,255 people.'"

Intel On Track For 32 nm Manufacturing 139

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 11, 2008 @01:13AM from the wafer-thin dept.

yaksha writes "Intel said on Wednesday that it has completed the development phase of its next manufacturing process that will shrink chip circuits to 32 nanometers. The milestone means that Intel will be able to push faster, more efficient chips starting in the fourth quarter. In a statement, Intel said it will provide more technical details at the International Electron Devices Meeting next week in San Francisco. Bottom line: Shrinking to a 32 nanometer is one more step in its 'tick tock' strategy, which aims to create a new architecture with new manufacturing process every 12 months. Intel is obviously betting that its rapid-fire advancements will produce performance gains so jaw dropping that customers can't resist."

The Science of the Lightsaber 197

Posted by samzenpus on Monday November 17, 2008 @12:08PM from the the-force dept.

Smartcowboy writes "Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina. Therefore you know that a lightsaber is an amazing and versatile device that is able to cut through nearly anything in a matter of milliseconds. Have you ever wondered how these remarkable weapons work? Where does the energy come from, and how are they able to contain that energy in a rod-like column of glowing power? In this article, you will have a chance to look inside a lightsaber and discover the source of its incredible characteristics." I was sure the blade was made from the focused hate and disappointment of the last three movies.

PC Makers Try To Pinch Seconds From Their Boot Times 399

Posted by timothy on Sunday October 26, 2008 @03:08AM from the an-operating-system-called-linux dept.

Some computers are never turned off, or at least rarely see any state less active than "standby," but others (for power savings or other reasons) need rebooting — daily, or even more often. The New York Times is running a short article which says that it's not just a few makers like Asus who are trying to take away some of the pain of waiting for computers, especially laptops, to boot up. While it's always been a minor annoyance to wait while a computer slowly grinds itself to readiness, "the agitation seems more intense than in the pre-Internet days," and manufacturers are actively trying to cut that wait down to a more bearable length. How bearable? A "very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds," according to a Microsoft blog cited, and an HP source names an 18-month goal of 20-30 seconds.

New State of Matter Could Extend Moore's Law 329

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @06:57PM from the I-miss-the-original-three dept.

rennerik writes "Scientists at McGill University in Montreal say they've discovered a new state of matter that could help extend Moore's Law and allow for the fabrication of more tightly packed transistors, or a new kind of transistor altogether. The researchers call the new state of matter 'a quasi-three-dimensional electron crystal.' It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."

Economic Crisis Will Eliminate Open Source 753

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @10:53AM from the why-so-gloomy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The economic crisis will ultimately eliminate open source projects and the 'Web 2.0 free economy,' says Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur. Along with the economic downturn and record job loss, he says, we will see the elimination of projects including Wikipedia, CNN's iReport, and much of the blogosphere. Instead of users offering their services 'for free,' he says, we're about to see a 'sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor' and a rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash. Companies that will survive, he says, include Hulu, iTunes, and Mahalo. 'The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren't going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some "back end" revenue,' says Keen."

Geoengineering To Cool the Earth Becoming Thinkable 419

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @08:07AM from the well-less-unthinkable dept.

johkir writes "As early as 1965, when Al Gore was a freshman in college, a panel of distinguished environmental scientists warned President Lyndon B. Johnson that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels might cause 'marked changes in climate' that 'could be deleterious.' Yet the scientists did not so much as mention the possibility of reducing emissions. Instead they considered one idea: 'spreading very small reflective particles' over about five million square miles of ocean, so as to bounce about 1 percent more sunlight back to space — 'a wacky geoengineering solution.' In the decades since, geoengineering ideas never died, but they did get pushed to the fringe — they were widely perceived by scientists and environmentalists alike as silly and even immoral attempts to avoid addressing the root of the problem of global warming. Three recent developments have brought them back into the mainstream." We've discussed some pretty strange ideas in the geoengineering line over the last few years.

Comment A Solution is Needed (Score 0, Flamebait) 110

by Manzanita on Saturday October 11, 2008 @03:41PM (#25341199) Attached to: CNET UK Credits Claim That Apple Will Release Networked TVs

And Apple is just the company to deliver it. The whole system for watching TV, whether it is movies or other regular TV, is broken. It is a pain in the ass. There is too much chaos. Apple has done a very good job, judging by market success, at creating an orderly, pleasing user experience for both music players and smart phones. You can count on it that they are working on something for video delivery, and video on the iPod is not the end of it. As far as it being announced soon, that too is plausible. They have certainly had enough time to work on it. Technology has advanced since the Apple TV, which didn't interest me but, I am certainly curious to see what they come up with next for that space.

-Dan

Geneticist Claims Human Evolution Is Over 857

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 09, 2008 @12:27AM from the flame-on dept.

GogglesPisano writes "UK geneticist Steve Jones gave a presentation entitled Human Evolution Is Over. He asserts that human beings have stopped evolving because modern social customs have lowered the age at which human males have offspring, which results in fewer of the mutations necessary to drive evolutionary change. Apparently the fate of our species now depends upon older guys hooking up with younger woman. I, for one, welcome this development."

Nagios 3 Enterprise Network Monitoring 147

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 08, 2008 @02:15PM from the read-all-about-it dept.

jgoguen writes "Nagios, originally known as Netsaint, has been a long-time favourite for network and device monitoring due to its flexibility, ease of use, and efficiency. Nagios provided, and still provides today, a low-cost, versatile alternative to commercial network monitoring applications. Nagios 3 takes a huge step forward compared to Nagios 2, providing improved flexibility, ease of use and extensibility, all while also making significant performance enhancements. Due to its extensibility and ease of use, no device or situation has yet been found that cannot be monitored using Nagios and a pre-made or custom script, plug-in or enhancement." Read on for the rest of jgoguen's review.

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