HumanityFail - Slashdot User

Comment Re:They should learn (Score 2) 239

by Arabani on Saturday December 03, 2011 @12:08AM (#38247292) Attached to: Genome Researchers Have Too Much Data

At BGI they have 180 machines... each run from a machine is approximately 3 TB of raw data. A single run takes one week. That is 77 TB per day of data being produced. And that is only BGI.. there are at least 180 machines outside of BGI scattered across the world. So imagine 140TB per day.

CERN is nothing compared to Genomic data.

When LHC is running at full luminosity, it produces roughly a megabyte per event per detector (for CMS and ATLAS at least). Of course, the events are happening at ~40MHz, so 288 TB of raw data per hour. That's why they have to trigger, and hence throw out 99% of the data.

Genomic data is nothing compared to elementary particles.

Comment Re:Bill Clinton did not say that first (Score 3) 722

by NeoSkink on Monday July 18, 2011 @05:04PM (#36803980) Attached to: Bill Clinton Says 'Paint Your Roofs White'

And Chu got it from Rosefeld, who was saying it back when Chu ran LBL. From the linked WSJ piece: “There’s a friend of mine, a colleague of mine, Art Rosenfeld, who’s pushing very hard for a geo-engineering we all believe will be completely benign, and that’s when you have a flat-top roof building, make it white. “Now, you smile, but he’s done a calculation, and if you take all the buildings and make their roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour, and you do this uniformly . . . it’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars on the road for 11 years.”

Ask Slashdot: Easiest Linux Distro For a Newbie 622

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 06, 2011 @07:40PM from the low-difficulty dept.

anymooseposter writes "My mom is taking a computer class at the local Community College. she asks: 'I need to download a Linux OS and try it out for class. The assignment is to use an OS different from what you normally use. Well, since I use Windows and OS X, the assignment suggests Linux. But, my question is, what is the easiest version based on Linux for me to put on CD and try? I saw several on the web. Any thoughts off the top of your head?' What Linux Disto would be easiest to set up without having to resort to dual booting and/or driver issues?"

Wikipedia Wants More Contributions From Academics 385

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @05:34PM from the professor-pitch-in dept.

holy_calamity writes "University professors don't feel their role as intellectuals working for the public good extends to contributing to the world's largest encyclopedia, the Guardian reports. Wikimedia foundation is currently surveying academics as part of a search for ways to encourage them to pitch in alongside anonymous civilians and raise quality. The main problem seems to be the academic ego: papers, talks and grant proposals build reputation but Wikipedia edits do not."

Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go? 778

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @05:20PM from the why-can't-we-all-get-along dept.

inkscapee writes "Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero, the shining knight that would drive Linux onto every desktop and kick bad old Windows to the curb. But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux. What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"

New PS3 Firmware Contains Backdoor 491

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @09:46AM from the i'm-your-backdoor-ram dept.

Vectormatic noted the rumor floating around that the most recent PS3 patch has a backdoor, and "Sony can now remotely execute code on the PS3 as soon as you connect. This can do whatever Sony wants it to do, such as verifying system files or searching for homebrew. Sony can change the code and add new detection methods without any firmware updates."

Example.com Has Changed 109

Posted by timothy on Sunday January 30, 2011 @02:25PM from the foo-baz-is-now-frum-burz dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The familiar example.com domain, reserved for private testing, has been updated. Visiting the domain in a web browser no longer displays any content; instead, visitors are redirected to an explanatory page on IANA's website at iana.org/domains/example/. Other example domains such as example.net are also affected. Is this a bad change? Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?"

All-Analog DIY Segway Project 141

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 11, 2010 @07:54PM from the take-out-some-cliff-insurance-buddy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "One of the zany hacker-makers here at MIT just finished this DIY Segway project (video). Difference from the others: it's all analog. The controller is built without a microprocessor or even digital logic. It does use a gyroscope like the real Segway. The functionality looks fairly basic, but the fact that the controller works at all is amazing. The guy has a ton of other projects on his site too. Definitely worth a read for people who enjoy building things."

MIT Unveils Portable, Solar-Powered Water Desalination System 117

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday October 19, 2010 @01:07AM from the water-the-chances dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Field and Space Robotic Laboratory has designed a new solar-powered water desalination system to provide drinking water to disaster zones and disadvantaged parts of the planet. Desalination systems often require a lot of energy and a large infrastructure to support them, but MIT's compact system is able to cope due to its ingenious design. The system's photovoltaic panel is able to generate power for the pump, which in turn pushes undrinkable seawater through a permeable membrane. MIT's prototype can reportedly produce 80 gallons of drinking water per day, depending on weather conditions."

Self-Assembling Photovoltaic Tech From MIT 128

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 07, 2010 @05:17AM from the bright-ideas dept.

telomerewhythere writes "Michael Strano and his team at MIT have made a self-assembling and indefinitely repairable photovoltaic cell based on the principle found in chloroplasts inside plant cells. 'The system Strano's team produced is made up of seven different compounds, including the carbon nanotubes, the phospholipids, and the proteins that make up the reaction centers, which under the right conditions spontaneously assemble themselves into a light-harvesting structure that produces an electric current. Strano says he believes this sets a record for the complexity of a self-assembling system. When a surfactant is added to the mix, the seven components all come apart and form a soupy solution. Then, when the researchers removed the surfactant, the compounds spontaneously assembled once again into a perfectly formed, rejuvenated photocell.'"

NAMCO Takes Down Student Pac-man Project 218

Posted by Soulskill on Monday August 02, 2010 @06:30PM from the chasing-ghosts dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The core of how people first learn to do stuff — programming, music, writing, etc. — is to imitate others. It's one of the best ways to learn. Apparently a bunch of students using MIT's educational Scratch programming language understand this. But not everyone else does. NAMCO Bandai sent a takedown notice to MIT because some kids had recreated Pac-man with Scratch. The NAMCO letter is pretty condescending as well, noting that it understands the educational purpose of Scratch, but 'part of their education should include concern for the intellectual property of others.'"

The Mouse Vanishes 292

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @01:12PM from the yesterday-upon-the-stair dept.

countertrolling sends in a clip from Wired that begins "...researchers at MIT have found a method to let users click and scroll exactly the same way they would with a computer mouse, without the device actually being there. Cup your palm, move it around on a table and a cursor on the screen hovers. Tap on the table like you would click a real mouse, and the computer responds. It's one step beyond cordless. It's an invisible mouse. The project, called 'Mouseless,' uses an infrared laser beam and camera to track the movements of the palm and fingers and translate them into computer commands... A working prototype of the Mouseless system costs approximately $20 to build, says Pranav Mistry, who is leading the project."

Neutrino Data Could Spell Trouble For Relativity 279

Posted by kdawson on Sunday June 27, 2010 @09:33PM from the stay-put-will-you dept.

Science News has an exploration of the deeper implications of neutrino oscillation, one experimental confirmation of which we discussed last month. "The new findings could even signal a tiny breakdown of Einstein's theory of special relativity. ... MINOS [for Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search] found that during a 735-kilometer journey from Fermilab to the Soudan Underground Laboratory in Minnesota, about 37 percent of muon antineutrinos disappeared — presumably morphing into one of the other neutrino types — compared with just 19 percent of muon neutrinos. ... That difference in transformation rates suggests a difference in mass between antineutrinos and neutrinos. ... With the amount of data collected so far, there's just a 5% probability that the two types of particles weigh the same."

MIT Says Natural Gas Best To Lower Carbon Emissions 284

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday June 27, 2010 @10:47AM from the pelican-friendly-solution dept.

eldavojohn writes "This week MIT released a comprehensive, hundred-page report entitled 'The Future of Natural Gas' that outlined the many scenarios the United States faces when aiming to reduce carbon emissions. From the New York Times recap: 'The scenario goes like this, according to MIT: Nuclear power, renewable energy, and carbon capture and sequestration are relatively expensive next to gas. Conventional coal is no longer a major source of power generation in the United States. "Natural gas is the substantial winner in the electric sector: The substitution effect, mainly gas generation for coal generation, outweighs the demand reduction effect."' Will this urging help to produce a policy shift from renewable energy (like wind) to natural gas for the United States?"

Visa Launches PayPal Alternative 141

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday June 24, 2010 @07:57AM from the lesser-of-two-evils dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Visa has entered the micropayment processing space with payclick, a pre-paid hosted service that will compete with the likes of PayPal. Payclick is aimed at teenagers purchasing online content like music and games where the value of the transaction is likely to be less than $20. Like PayPal, payclick is an online money repository that people can pay into with a bank account or credit card (Visa or MasterCard) and then use the funds to purchase products online. The service was developed and launched in Australia with a view for global markets. PayPal integration is not there yet, but parents can monitor the amount of funds their under-18 children have to spend online. For e-commerce sites, an SDK is available for payclick integration."

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