Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Crime

UK Politician Arrested Over Twitter 'Stoning Joke' 422

Posted by samzenpus from the watch-how-you-tweet dept.
History's Coming To writes "The BBC is reporting that a Tory city councillor has been arrested over a 'joke' he posted to Twitter suggesting that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a UK based writer, be stoned to death. The full tweet read, 'Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan't tell Amnesty if you don't. It would be a blessing, really.' Following complaints he was arrested under the Communications Act 2003 and bailed. He has since apologized. This comes on the same day that a conviction for a Twitter 'joke' about blowing up an airport was upheld."
Power

Going Faster Than the Wind In a Wind-Powered Cart 315

Posted by Soulskill from the any-way-the-wind-blows dept.
Shawnconna writes "Can a wind cart travel faster than the wind? A group of makers say, 'Yes!' Make: Online has published a story about the Blackbird wind cart that just set a record. This is a follow-up to an earlier story in which Charles Platt built a cart based on a viral video where a guy claimed he'd built a wind-powered vehicle that could travel downwind faster than the windspeed. Charles built one and said it didn't work. Heated debates broke out in forums, on BB, and elsewhere on the Net. In the ensuing time, a number of people have built carts and claimed success, most principally, Rick Cavallaro. He got funding from Google and JOBY to build and test a human-piloted cart. They claim success, with multiple sensor systems on board, impartial judges and experts in attendance."
Censorship

South Park's Episode 201 — the Expurgated Version 1224

Posted by timothy from the but-officer-the-threat-was-oblique dept.
Yesterday we mentioned the controversy facing Matt Stone and Trey Parker after last week's South Park (episode 200) depicted Muhammad, founder of Islam, concealed in a bear suit. Today, penguinman1337 writes "Apparently, all is not well over at Comedy Central. The heavily censored version of episode 201 that aired last night has a lot of people angry, including the show's creators." From their note: "In the 14 years we've been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn't stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn't some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps."

Comment Re:Just to throw this out there (Score 1) 322

by NitsujTPU (#31803436) Attached to: All the Best Games May Be NP-Hard

You know, I just shouldn't have chimed in. I'm beginning to regret that I did.

Thank you for speaking down to me. Now, lets get to business.

I get it. I actually understand computational complexity very well. Had you read the follow-up post, which was posted well before your post, you would see that I added the caveat "if P!=NP", long before you had a chance to talk down to me.

Comment Re:Just to throw this out there (Score 1, Interesting) 322

by NitsujTPU (#31791050) Attached to: All the Best Games May Be NP-Hard

I should caveat all of this. The "no polynomial-time algorithm" bit is only true if P!=NP. If P=NP, then there is a deterministic polynomial-time algorithm for NP-Complete problems. NP-Hard, however, just means that it's at least as hard as NP, so, it's possible that there's no algorithm for that harder problem. You have to be really really precise when talking about this stuff.

Comment Just to throw this out there (Score 5, Informative) 322

by NitsujTPU (#31790934) Attached to: All the Best Games May Be NP-Hard

Since I had to suffer through at least one professor who didn't understand basic complexity theory last night, and I know that Slashdot generally screws it up to.

NP-Hard means that there's no (deterministic) polynomial-time algorithm to solve the games. Additionally, you always have to generalize these games in order to make that claim. Since computational complexity is defined in terms of the length of the input, and certainly all of these games are being played on an input of fixed length.

However, there are effective approaches to solving NP-Hard problems. There are solvers for known NP-Hard problems. If you Google "sat solver" you'll find at least 5 that you can just download. SAT solvers are used in VLSI validation and other practical things. These solvers use heuristics to improve search performance, generally proposing answers and checking them (for NP-Complete problems).

Also, there are tons of games known to be NP or PSPACE complete. The reductions for those games are kind of a standard problem, since the AI community writes a bunch of these solvers.
Transportation

White House Issues New Gas Mileage Standards 555

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-not-easy-being-green dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that the Obama administration has signed off on the nation's first rules on greenhouse gas emissions and set new fuel standards to meet a fleet-wide average of 35.5 mpg that will raise current standards by nearly 10 mpg by the 2016 model year. Although the new requirements would add an estimated $434 per vehicle in the 2012 model year and $926 per vehicle by 2016, drivers could save as much as $3,000 over the life of a vehicle through better gas mileage, according to a government statement. 'We will be helping American motorists save money at the pump, while putting less pollution in the air,' says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Dave McCurdy, leader of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing 11 automakers, says the industry supports a single national standard for future vehicles. 'Today, the federal government has laid out a course of action through 2016, and now we need to work on 2017 and beyond.' As the auto industry seeks to emerge from ashes, many manufacturers already are trying for the right mix of approaches, experts say. Some will try to sell more hybrids. Others are introducing not-so-gas-guzzling SUVs. They may also push slightly downsized and small cars, such as the Ford Fiesta."
Math

Math Skills For Programmers — Necessary Or Not? 609

Posted by samzenpus from the who-needs-theory-when-you-have-practice dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Currently, the nature of most programming work is such that you don't really need math skills to get by or even to do well; after all, linear algebra is no help when building database-driven websites. However, Skorks contends that if you want to do truly interesting work in the software development field, math skills are essential, and furthermore will become increasingly important as we are forced to work with ever larger data sets (making math-intensive algorithm analysis skills a priority)."
Government

House Passes Massive Medical Insurance Bill, 219-212 2424

Posted by timothy from the house-of-representin'-in-effect dept.
The votes are in: yesterday evening, after a last-minute compromise over abortion payments, the US House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill effecting major changes in American medical finance. From the BBC's coverage: "The president is expected to sign the House-passed Senate bill as early as Tuesday, after which it will be officially enacted into law. However, it will contain some very unpopular measures that Democratic senators have agreed to amend. The Senate will be able to make the required changes in a separate bill using a procedure known as reconciliation, which allows budget provisions to be approved with 51 votes - rather than the 60 needed to overcome blocking tactics." No Republican voted in favor of the bill; 34 Democrats voted against. As law, the system set forth would extend insurance coverage to an estimated 32 million Americans, impose new taxes on high-income earners as well as provide some tax breaks and subsidies for others, and considerably toughen the regulatory regime under which insurance companies operate. The anticipated insurance regime phases in (starting with children, and expanding to adults in 2014) a requirement that insurance providers accept those with preexisting conditions, and creates a system of fines, expected to be administered by the IRS, for those who fail or refuse to obtain health insurance.

Slashdot Top Deals

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

Close