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Comment Re:Why Unix?? (Score 1) 586

by gregbaker (#34448536) Attached to: WikiLeaks Starts Mass Mirroring Effort

I suspect they plan to push additional updates as they release more cables. That means a remote connection (secured with a secret: SSH key or similar) and something like rsync to update the files. There is no standard and reliable way to do that in Windows (as far as I know).

Comment Re:Fractint (Score 1) 131

by gregbaker (#33918248) Attached to: Benoit Mandelbrot Dies At 85

I just looked around the Ubuntu repositories for nostalgia's sake and found Fraqtive (http://fraqtive.mimec.org/). It looks pretty slick, uses multiple cores and SSE instructions to get you there faster, Win/Mac/Linux.

The last 3 minutes of exploring would have taken weeks on my Apple II.
Image

Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child Screenshot-sm 331

Posted by samzenpus from the snack-is-going-to-be-on-the-floor-today dept.
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."

Comment Local University? (Score 1) 314

by gregbaker (#27249075) Attached to: How To Get High-Schoolers Involved In Real Science?

There's a reasonable chance that there's somebody at your local university that would be interested in working with some interested high school students. Finding that person could be the tricky part: I'd suggest going to the relevant department's web site and see if you can find somebody who does outreach/recruiting/admissions.

Comment Some Firefox suggestions (Score 2, Informative) 450

by gregbaker (#25507641) Attached to: Browsing Frugally Without Wasting Bandwidth?

I have a couple of suggestions for Firefox...

Don't load images: Preferences -> Content and uncheck "Load images automatically".

Block other media you don't want: FlashBlock, AdBlock, QuickJava (for Java and JavaScript)

You could also try fiddling with the browser.cache.check_doc_frequency in your about:config. I haven't tried it, but setting it to 2 might yield good results.
Cellphones

How Not to Build a Cellphone 326

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-seriously dept.
Jamie found an NYT story about a new t-mobile Shadow phone which starts off by talking about how Apple is changing the phone game by wrestling power from the carriers, and then discussing what could be a reasonable piece of hardware. And then how it is wrecked by software. The phone has wait screens, a task manager, odd error messages etc. Makes for an amusing read.
Google

Dvorak Says gPhone is Doomed 454

Posted by Zonk from the that's-doom-ed dept.
drewmoney writes "Speaking with his usual frustrated crankiness John Dvorak rants his way through an article explaining why the gPhone will never work. 'First of all, it wants to put Google search on a phone. It wants to do this because it is obvious to the folks at Google that people need to do Web searches from their phone, so they can, uh, get directions to the restaurant? Of course, they can simply use the phone itself to call the restaurant and ask! I've actually used various phones with Web capability. They never work right. They take forever to navigate. It's hard to read the screens ... I also hope that people note the fact that the public has not been flocking to smartphones of any sort.' "
Toys

World's First Lego Autopilot 108

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-you-can dept.
zlite writes "What's the best way to create a UAV for less than $1,000? Use the new Hitechnic gyro sensor for Mindstorms NXT to create a Lego autopilot! This one can turn a R/C plane into a drone, keeping the aircraft level and returning it to the launch area. Add a Bluetooth GPS module and a microcam and you've got a fully autonomous surveillance platform."
Movies

The First HD DVD Movie Hits BitTorrent 537

Posted by kdawson from the nailing-jello-to-a-tree dept.
Ars Technica reports that the first HD DVD movie has made its way onto BitTorrent, showing that current DRM efforts to prevent illegal sharing of copyrighted content are still futile and fighting an uphill battle. From the article: "The pirates of the world have fired another salvo in their ongoing war with copy protection schemes with the first release of the first full-resolution rip of an HD DVD movie on BitTorrent. The movie, Serenity, was made available as a .EVO file and is playable on most DVD playback software packages such as PowerDVD. The file was encoded in MPEG-4 VC-1 and the resulting file size was a hefty 19.6 GB."
Businesses

What is Apple Without Steve Jobs? 281

Posted by Zonk from the different-colored-apple dept.
necro81 writes "David Pauly at Bloomberg has written a piece that asks 'Does Apple Inc. Have a Future Without Steve Jobs?' He writes in the context of Jobs' latest success in launching the iPhone, set against the backdrop of stock backdating troubles. In Pauly's worst-case-scenario, the SEC prosecutes Apple, and the board is forced to oust Jobs.Even without resorting to such scenarios, it's an interesting question to ask the fanboys and detractors out there: could Apple succeed and continue to innovative without Jobs at the helm?"
Media

Is DRM Intrinsically Distasteful? 631

Posted by Zonk from the tastes-like-chicken dept.
jelton writes "If digital media was available for sale at a reasonable price, but subject to a DRM scheme that allowed full legitimate usage (format shifting, time shifting, playback on different devices, etc.) and only blocked illicit usage (illegal copying), would you support the usage of such a DRM scheme? Especially if it meant a wealth of readily available compatible devices? In other words, if you object to DRM schemes, is your objection based on principled or practical concerns?"
Supercomputing

Year of the Mainframe? Not Quite, Say Linux Grids 222

Posted by CowboyNeal from the big-iron-not-so-big dept.
OSS_ilation writes "IBM touted 2006 as a resurgence year for the mainframe, but not so fast. At R.L. Polk and Co., one of the oldest automobile analytics firms in the U.S., an aging mainframe couldn't cut it, so the IT staff looked elsewhere. Their search led to a grid computing environment — more specifically, a grid computing environment running Linux on more than 120 Dell servers. The mainframe's still there, apparently, but after an internal comparison showed the Linux grid outperforming the mainframe by 70% with a 65% reduction in hardware costs, Polk seemed content banishing the big box to a dark, lonely corner for more medial tasks."
KDE

A Sneak Preview of KDE 4 350

Posted by CowboyNeal from the pretty-gooey dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In recent times, a lot of discussion has been generated about the state of KDE version 4.0 and as Linux users we are ever inquisitive about what the final user experience is going to be. This article throws light on some of the features that we can look forward to when KDE 4.0 is finally released some time this year. The article indicates that the most exciting fact about KDE 4.0 is going to be that it is developed using the Qt 4.0 library. This is significant because Qt 4.0 is released under a GPL license even for non-Unix platforms. So this clears the ideological path for KDE 4.0 to be ported to Windows and other non-Unix/X11 platforms."
Media (Apple)

Premiere Back on Mac 161

Posted by CowboyNeal from the back-in-the-saddle dept.
woof69 writes "After dropping OS X support for Premiere some time in 2003, Adobe is bringing it back in the new Adobe Production Studio. The new software includes After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Encore DVD, and Soundbooth, and will be available for Apple's Intel-based computers in mid-2007; an updated version of the Windows suite will ship at the same time. Does Final Cut have a fight on its hands?"

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