Comment Re:Abusiveness is just a hobby. (Score 1) 388
That's not quite true: they're very good at alienating their customers - and, apparently, their employees.
7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail 320
Whether they spoil in the heat, freeze in the winter, or get taken out by a human-friendly venue of vultures, a zombie outbreak is unlikely to succeed. Here's 7 reasons why we should stop worrying about the shambling dead and start concentrating on a real threat: sparkly vampires.
Obama Wants Allies To Go After WikiLeaks 1088
krou writes "Coming on the back of human rights groups criticizing WikiLeaks, American officials are saying that the Obama administration is pressuring allies such as Australia, Britain, and Germany to open criminal investigations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and to try limit his ability to travel. 'It's not just our troops that are put in jeopardy by this leaking. It's UK troops, it's German troops, it's Australian troops — all of the NATO troops and foreign forces working together in Afghanistan,' said one American diplomatic official, who added that other governments should 'review whether the actions of WikiLeaks could constitute crimes under their own national-security laws.'"
China To Close 2,000 Factories In Energy Crackdown 242
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has published a list of 2,087 steel mills, cement works and other energy-intensive factories required to close by September 30 after discussions with provincial and municipal officials to identify industrial operations with outdated, inefficient technology. The goal of the factory closings is 'to enhance the structure of production, heighten the standard of technical capability and international competitiveness and realize a transformation of industry from being big to being strong,' the ministry says. The current Chinese five-year plan calls for using 20 percent less energy this year for each unit of economic output than in 2005 but surging production by heavy industry since last winter has put in question China's ability to meet this target. In addition to the energy-efficiency objective in the current five-year plan, a plan announced by President Hu Jintao late last year called for China to reduce its carbon emissions per unit of economic output by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels."
Spinal-Fluid Test Confirmed To Predict Alzheimer's 138
omnibit writes "The New York Times reports that researchers have found a spinal-fluid test can be 100 percent accurate in identifying patients with significant memory loss who are on their way to developing Alzheimer's disease. The new study included more than 300 patients in their seventies, 114 with normal memories, 200 with memory problems, and 102 with Alzheimer's disease. Their spinal fluid was analyzed for amyloid beta, which forms plaques in the brain, and for tau, another protein that accumulates in dead and dying nerve cells in the brain. Nearly every person with Alzheimer's had the characteristic spinal fluid protein levels."
Comment Re:And yet- (Score 1) 828
The 4icu.org rankings are based on popularity, with one of the factors being Google's page rank. That's hardly a valid way to judge a university, unless you're judging their web sites.
Comment Based on Research by Steven Chu, et. al. (Score 3, Informative) 193
One thing interesting that isn't mentioned specifically: This work, using "optical tweezers", is based on research done by Nobel Laureate Steven Chu's group at Berkeley. Dr. Chu also happens to currently be the US Secretary of Energy.
No job too big, no job too small, Steve Chu does 'em all.
Rogue Brown Dwarf Lurks In Our Cosmic Neighborhood 188
astroengine writes "The UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii has discovered a lone, cool brown dwarf called UGPSJ0722-05. As far as sub-stellar objects go, this is a strange one. For starters, it's the coolest brown dwarf ever discovered (and astronomers using the UKIRT should know; they are making a habit of finding cool brown dwarfs). Secondly, it's close. In fact, it's the closest brown dwarf to Earth, at a distance of only 10 light years. And thirdly, it has an odd spectroscopic signature, leading astronomers to think that this might be the discovery of a whole new class of brown dwarf."
Comment Re:This is hilarious (Score 2, Interesting) 421
I would think that very early on in his career, he may have realized that he works in a realm where very few people can be taught what he's currently working on. He may feel it's a better use of his time to push out the boundaries of knowledge, and let other folks do the teaching.
I've met a number of physics Nobel Prize winners, and very few of the theoreticians were good teachers. Feynman was an outlier
New Open Source Intrusion Detector Suricata Released 44
richrumble writes "The OISF has released the beta version of the Suricata IDS/IPS engine: The Suricata Engine is an Open Source Next Generation Intrusion Detection and Prevention Engine. This engine is not intended to just replace or emulate the existing tools in the industry, but will bring new ideas and technologies to the field. This new Engine supports Multi-Threading, Automatic Protocol Detection (IP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, HTTP, TLS, FTP and SMB! ), Gzip Decompression, Fast IP Matching and coming soon hardware acceleration on CUDA and OpenCL GPU cards."
The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."
Comment MacBook Pro or HP Dv7t (Score 1) 672
I just bought my wife an HP dv7t 17" laptop. Quad core, 2.0GHz Intel, 6GB RAM, 320GB HD, and a gigabyte ATI video card. She loves it. But it costs $1350, weighs a ton, and I think this model is being discontinued (though I'm not sure of that).
On the other hand, I love my MacBook, and the unibody MacBook Pros. For me, after the processor speed, the max memory spec is the most important. Nowadays, don't settle for less than 8GB max. Both the HP and the MacBook Pros max out at 8GB RAM. I haven't seen anything other than the core i7's carrying more.
Comment Re:RAID is no mystery (Score 1) 564
I just re-read your question (RTFA). FAT32 is your first mistake. RAID instead of backup is your second. Your data is more at risk from a users' actions than from hardware failure (given a burn-in period). Figure out how much work you can afford to lose, then use that to create a schedule to backup to some other media, be it disk or tape, that you can take offline.
Comment RAID is no mystery (Score 1) 564
They've been doing RAID in hardware for quite some time now - the hardware may fail, but I don't think it'll mess up your data. Think of it this way: The hardware controller only has to do one thing, which is to serve RAID. The OS, on the other hand, has to do a bunch of things, any one of which could go bad and kill your RAID.
I've done both hardware and software RAID-1 in the past, with Windows, Solaris, OS X, and Linux. For Windows, go for the hardware RAID.
Comment Re:Exactly how many are there...? (Score 1) 212
I still remember John Kemeny's "BASIC" plate from when he was the president of Dartmouth College.
