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Comment Look, its Stallman: (Score 1) 165

by Hartree (#49322537) Attached to: RMS Talks Net Neutrality, Patents, and More

Unless you've been under a rock since 1983, you already know largely what position he's going to take when you go to his talk.

Complaining about it is like going out of your way to attend a Baptist Tent Meeting and then complaining that they were evangelizing.

I disagree with him on a number of areas (Surprise! Must be the first time someone has disagreed with RMS.), but he's worth listening to. Often there's a kernel of clue in what the more extreme types say.

Submission + - Could modernized analog computers bring petaflops to the desktop? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: Researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are looking to discover — through a program called Analog and Continuous-variable Co-processors for Efficient Scientific Simulation (ACCESS) — what advances analog computers might have over today’s supercomputers for a large variety of specialized applications such as fluid dynamics or plasma physics.

Submission + - The first stars in the Universe were invisible

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: You'd think it would be enough to form some stars, and "let there be light" would be a reality. But these stars don't become visible for literally hundreds of millions of years until after they form. It's not that they don't emit light — they do — but rather that the Universe is opaque to that light for up to half a billion years after those stars form. While modern telescopes like Hubble are inherently limited by this fact, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will observe in wavelengths that these dusty particles ought to be transparent to, might be able to finally probe the true light from the very first stars.

Submission + - The GNU Manifesto Turns Thirty (newyorker.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It was March, 1985 when Richard M. Stallman published the GNU Manifesto in Dr. Dobb’s Journal of Software Tools. Thirty years on, The New Yorker has an article commemorating its creation and looking at how it has shaped software in the meantime. "Though proprietary and open-source software publishers might appear at the moment to have the upper hand, Stallman’s influence with developers (among whom he is known simply by his initials, 'rms') remains immense. When I asked around about him, many people spoke of him as one might of a beloved but eccentric and prickly uncle. They would roll their eyes a bit, then hasten to add, as more than one did, 'But he’s right about most things.' I told Stallman that I’d spoken with several developers who venerate his work, and who had even said that without it the course of their lives might have been altered. But they don’t seem to do what you say, I observed; they all have iPhones. 'I don’t understand that either,' he said. 'If they don’t realize that they need to defend their freedom, soon they won’t have any.'"

Comment Re:Take a look at the graph in TFA (Score 1) 127

by Hartree (#49275471) Attached to: Analysis: People Who Use Firefox Or Chrome Make Better Employees

That might work until the word gets around that your call center only hires those that use FF or other non-default browser.

And, yes, the word does get around if it's major employer and it's a consistent policy. There was an AOL support call center in Albuquerque while I was there in the 90s, and word about the right things to say when interviewing there was pretty quickly available.

Comment Ok, let me get this straight: (Score 2, Insightful) 135

by Hartree (#49254635) Attached to: Wikipedia Entries On NYPD Violence Get Some Edits From Headquarters

You set up an open access, anyone can edit, system like Wikipedia, and you're surprised when people edit it when they might have a vested interest?

This is the very reason why Wikipedia is a poor source on some political or controversial issues. Usually it's better for some of the technical issues, but not always.

It's a powerful tool, but trying to make it something that it's not, a guaranteed to be unbiased source, is a bit unrealistic.

Submission + - Humans may harbor more than 100 genes from other organisms (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: You’re not completely human, at least when it comes to the genetic material inside your cells. You—and everyone else—may harbor as many as 145 genes that have jumped from bacteria, other single-celled organisms, and viruses and made themselves at home in the human genome. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which provides some of the broadest evidence yet that, throughout evolutionary history, genes from other branches of life have become part of animal cells.

Submission + - Newly discovered sea creature was once the largest animal on Earth (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Almost half a billion years ago, the largest animal on Earth was a 2-meter-long, helmet-headed sea creature that fed on some of the ocean’s tiniest prey. The newly described species is one of the largest arthropods yet discovered, a class of animals that includes spiders and crabs. The well-preserved remains of the multisegmented creature are providing clues about how subsequent arthropods’ legs may have evolved from the dozens of stubby flaps used to propel this beast through the water.

Submission + - Senolytics: A New Class of Drugs With the Potential to Slow the Aging Process (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: It's a cruel irony that when we're young we want to be older, but when we're older we want to be younger. While few would advocate research into ways to make kids grow up faster, there are plenty of efforts underway looking to forestall the rigors of age. The latest cause for hope in this area comes in the form of a new class of drugs called senolytics, which have been shown to dramatically slow the aging process in animal models.

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