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Education

Ask Director Eben Upton About the Raspberry Pi Foundation 194

Posted by samzenpus from the raise-your-hand dept.
When Eben Upton isn't working as an ASIC architect for Broadcom, he is the Director of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The foundation is a UK registered charity which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level. Raspberry Pi plans to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. Their first product is about the size of a credit card, and is designed to plug into a TV or be combined with a touch screen for a low cost tablet. The expected price is $25 for a baseline Model A device, and $35 for a Model B device with integrated 2-port USB Hub, 10/100 Ethernet controller and 128MB of additional RAM. Eben has agreed to answer your questions about what it takes to make an ultra-low-cost computer, running an educational charity, or anything else. The usual Slashdot interview guidelines apply: ask as many questions as you want, but please keep them to one per comment.
Graphics

Carmack On 'Infinite Detail,' Integrated GPUs, and Future Gaming Tech 149

Posted by Soulskill from the building-a-better-virtual-rocket-launcher dept.
Vigile writes "John Carmack sat down for an interview during Quakecon 2011 to talk about the future of technology for gaming. He shared his thoughts on the GPU hardware race (hardware doesn't matter but drivers are really important), integrated graphics solutions on Sandy Bridge and Llano (with a future of shared address spaces they may outperform discrete GPUs) and of course some thoughts on 'infinite detail' engines (uninspired content viewed at the molecular level is still uninspired content). Carmack does mention a new-found interest in ray tracing, and how it will 'eventually win' the battle for rendering in the long run."
Science

Submission + - Sugar Does Not Melt - It Decomposes (uiuc.edu)

Submitted by ctrimm
ctrimm writes: Flying in the face of years of scientific belief, University of Illinois researchers have demonstrated that sugar doesn't melt, it decomposes. "We saw different results depending on how quickly we heated the sucrose. That led us to believe that molecules were beginning to break down as part of a kinetic process," [Shelly Schmidt] said.

Schmidt and her colleagues have coined the term "apparent melting" to distinguish "melting" caused by decomposition from thermodynamic melting. They have also shown that glucose and fructose are also apparent melting materials.

Comment Re:I don't understand.. (Score 1) 304

by ctrimm (#36839170) Attached to: Anonymous Hack One Gigabyte of Data From NATO
So they end up spending MORE money making sure each person who needs access has a dedicated line? What if those people change regularly, or are halfway across the world? That kind of networking is expensive, takes a long time to implement, and doesn't adapt to a changing environment very well. For things that aren't "national security will be totally compromised" important, I'd rather they hire competent system administrators and programmers than spend money trying to connect a bunch of people to a propriety network.

Comment Re:Right tool for the job... (Score 1) 136

by ctrimm (#36756966) Attached to: Samsung Chromebook Series 5 Review
I use a web app called ShiftEdit.

I'm a web developer (I mainly build web apps), so everything I work on is hosted on a remote server. Saving and opening can take a little longer online than on your computer, but it's honestly not too bad.

Other than images, the personal site I'm working on I have created completely in ShiftEdit.

Comment Re:Interesting fact (Score 2) 284

by ctrimm (#36748262) Attached to: Zuckerberg Quits Google+ Over Privacy Concerns

At least with Facebook I have control over what my information is made public.

The only things on G+ that are made public without a choice is your name, gender, and a picture of your choosing. If you're worried about that information being more than what you'd like to share with the general public, you've got bigger issues and probably shouldn't be on a social networking site in the first place. To chalk those peices of info up to "zomg, they're giving away our private info to anyone!" is just fear-mongering. Please stop and stay on your lawn.

and Facebook doesn't allow Google to index that private information

Legitimate concern, I suppose.

When you sign up to Google+, see these very information:
- Google can use your information to prodive targeted marketing across Google sites and every affiliated site (ie. millions of sites where AdWords is installed)
- Show photo geo location information in newly uploaded albums and photos.
- Show this profile publicly (enabled by default)

1) So what? The information isn't leaving google. It's just making sure I don't have to look an ad targeted at demographics that have nothing to do with me. If I'm going to see adds, I prefer them to be about things I like.
2) This is an option that can be disabled.
3) If you're too lazy to configure your profile, don't have one. The only info that you can't make private (and control EXACTLY who sees it (hard to do in FB)) is your name and Gender.

In other words, if you don't want to be social, don't have a social networking account. If you don't want your information used for tailoring ads to you, then plan on paying for your service.

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