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Comment Re:There will be no GNOME 4. (Score 1) 378

Minor disagree here, firefox is dying for the memory leaks and occasional crashes and so on caused by developers changing focus to something that doesn't really matter; the design is just a generic copy of chrome that is used by explorer 9+ too. I think that it become too big, and the developers started to think like the big corporations and broke it because of that. After all, what made firefox get so many adepts is probably the way it made the things different from microsoft and explorer. Maybe gnome suffered from the same disease.

Comment Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score 1) 377

If you're trying to spread the news about Free Software, the only effective way to do it is to SHOW them. Most of the people whom I've converted to Linux did so after watching me use KDE (formerly) and Gnome (more recently).

I second this, the few people that show me some interest about linux had done this for little things of interest after watching my desktop. For example, a coworker tried linux after he saw some of my xfce screensavers (cow bouncing, pacman played by the computer, etc). Came for the screensaver, stayed for the free stuff.

Science

Submission + - Using lasers to see sound (io9.com)

wisebabo writes: Wow, what an awesome technique; because pressure waves (slightly) change the density of air and the speed of light (slightly) changes in mediums of varying density ("c" is only constant in a vacuum), you can theoretically map sound waves using light.

Well these guys have done it, using a laser, reflector and presumably other gadgets (interferometer?, camera, computer) to image at 100,000 fps(!) the sounds coming out of a speaker being tuned to higher frequencies. They use it to check the directionality of speaker designs but I'm wondering; would some of those new super-accurate "frequency combs" astronomers are now using greatly improve the accuracy/sensitivity of this so that it wouldn't have to be used in an enclosed setting? It would be cool to be able to point a (low power) possibly non-visible light laser into the sky (at a cloud perhaps) and see the pressure waves from the wind, storms, tornadoes, airplanes, wind turbines, traffic, rock concerts and what not. Maybe not today but how about ten years?

Science (and technology) the gift that keeps on giving. (No thanks to the ultra-conservative types like the Taliban who want to return us to the dark ages as far as I can tell: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2513830&cid=37981690)

Government

Submission + - White house officially states: "We don't know ET" (whitehouse.gov) 1

ZeroExistenZ writes: The white house officially answered the question "Do we know ET?" following a petition. Phil Larson kindly points out what we already, dissapointedly, suspected.

The petition was motivated out of a white house committment, "We the people", to answer any petition within 30 days counting 5,000 signatures

Security

Submission + - Massive DNS Cache Poisoning Hits Brazil (net-security.org) 1

Orome1 writes: A massive DNS cache poisoning attack attempting to infect users trying to access popular websites is currently under way in Brazil, according to Kaspersky Lab expert Fabio Assolini. Brazil has some big ISPs. Official statistics suggest the country has 73 million computers connected to the Internet, and the major ISPs average 3 or 4 million customers each. If a cybercriminal can change the DNS cache in just one server, the number of potential victims is huge. And that is exactly what has been happening during last week. Users trying to reach Google, YouTube, Facebook and other popular global and local sites were being faced with pop-up windows telling them to install "Google Defence" and similar thematic software or Java applet in order to be able to access the wanted site.
Facebook

Submission + - Anonymous Hackers Begin Facebook Attacks (techzwn.com) 1

jjp9999 writes: The hacker collective Anonymous Operations has begun its cyberattacks against Facebook, as part of their OpFacebook. The cyberattack campaign aims to take Facebook offline and mass delete user accounts. So far, it seems Facebook is still online, and given that Anonymous announced their attack months back, Facebook likely put the necessary systems in place to deal with the typical DDoS and SQL injections that are common from the hacker collective. Individual user accounts could still be at risk though, so today may be a good day to update your passwords.

Submission + - 1 MW E-Cat Cold Fusion Test Completed (pesn.com) 4

sanosuke001 writes: "Andrea Rossi's E-Cat 1MW Cold Fusion test completed in Italy with 30+ attendees including Professors from the University of Bologna, the Associated Press, NyTeknik, Focus.it, and additional physicists. The test failed to reach the 1 MW load goal, however, reached 479 kWh in looped mode. Some skepticism is still warranted as the prospective customer, although satisfied with the test, remains anonymous. According to an article at Wired (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success), there has been some speculation that the covert customer could be DARPA. Also, the generator used to initialize the E-Cat device was apparently connected for the entirety of the test but assured that its output was turned off. I, for one, have a little hope in this being real but take it with a very large grain of salt."

Comment repercussion (Score 1) 4

Am i loosing something? A guy named Rossi walks into a bar, says it had made a generator using cold fusion (reported by wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion as junk science), swear it worked in a test that only his friends can go in, get front page in slashdot, an article in wired, some attention in cnn, and everyone that comments anything in these sites in the comments area says always positive nice things about the guy. I never saw this happen in the net, i was expecting at least a little of trolling or skeptics flamebaiting or something like that, but no. No one at all. Everyone says constructive positive things. Even in the articles and posts about the death of Dennis Ritchie i saw some guys trolling. Here in slashdot was different, but here and only here. Im scared. is the interwebs acting strange or is just me?

Submission + - Andrea Rossi Claims E-Cat Test a Success (wired.co.uk) 4

NoisySplatter writes: The test of Andrea Rossi's 1MW cold fusion power plant mentioned previously here has been declared a success by its inventor. During the test the E-Cat unit is reported to have produced an average of 470 kW over 5 hours. Skeptics however should have no trouble finding ammunition with which to attack the test, since the power plant remained suspiciously connected to a running generator the entire time.
Hardware

Submission + - Who Stole 40 ton Bridge? Metal Theft on the Rise

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Time Magazine reports that police in North Beaver Township, Pa are searching for a missing steel bridge weighing 40-tons with an estimated value of $100,000. The most likely scenario is that the thieves used a blowtorch to cut apart the bridge and haul it away. "I thought that with the rain it got washed away," says New Castle Development spokesman Gary Bruce. The theft highlights the growing crime of metal theft caused by rapid industrialization in Asia that has inflated the international demand for scrap metals. Aluminum guardrails. Brass fittings. Bronze plaques. Aluminum siding. Sprinkler fittings. Catalytic converters on church vans. Bronze urns. Storm drain grates. Street signs. Copper downspouts. The US is the No. 1 exporter of scrap metal, and because of increasing demand, its annual exportation to developing nations tripled from 6 million to 18 million tons between 2002 and 2007. "Because of the massive amount of construction that's happening, there's a need for building supplies. Meanwhile the U.S. has been industrialized for quite some time, which allows our trash to become their gold, so to speak," says Brandon Kooi, a professor of criminal justice at Aurora University in Chicago. Scott Berinato believes frequent media reports of metal thefts also have contributed to the rise. "Thieves have caught on: There's metal everywhere and much of it is, understandably, unguarded," writes Berinato. "You don't notice how much metal there is for the taking until it starts getting taken.""

Comment Re:Sadly its not real (Score 1) 828

I don't know about the plastic things that are meant to be a reactor, but looks he doesn't used a generator on purpose, he just measured the water temperature before and after it passed the reactor and calculated the thermal generation. At least is what i thought after reading the report in http://db.tt/wu4OLbgk in the second page. But looks like no one at the test was able to measure the water temperature with their own equipment. For someone trying to prove a pathological science, that is very strange indeed.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook, Apple To Take On Google With HTML5

An anonymous reader writes: Project Spartan, the rumored HTML5 platform aimed at the hundreds of millions of Facebook mobile users, is being developed by Facebook and a group of 80 or so third-party app developers, who are affectionately known as Spartans. Some of those developers believe Facebook’s intentions are to break up the control Apple and Google have over the mobile app space, though Facebook of course denies this.

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