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Comment Bad Journalism. (Score 1) 536

My faith in the WSJ has just fallen significntly.

"The maximum external dose recorded is 199 mSv (0.19 Sv), and the maximum internal dose that has been calculated is 590 mSv (0.59 Sv). The maximum total dose recorded to one worker was 670 mSv."

That's 19, 59, and 67 REM/HOUR. Not to mention these are actual readings from people who had geiger counters on.

http://www.hps.org/documents/ANSFukushimaReport.pdf
Straight from a recent and official Fukushima report.

Comment Losing redundancy. (Score 1) 102

Its not even that you can't get 3G service sometimes... It can be that 3G service is overloaded.

One example is at outdoor concerts... Where suddenly tens of thousands of people show up. The 3G tower in place just can't handle it. No calls, no texts, no data... But full bars.

Switch to 2G because everyone is on 3G, and everything works. Sure data's not fast, but you can send texts and make calls.

Comment The test isn't scientific, and means nothing. (Score 1) 195

1. Temperatures across the same model CPU can vary wildly even with the same cooler/paste.
2. It's not unusual to see different cores on CPU's having up to a 10C difference in temperature even.
3. Software hardware monitors are notoriously inaccurate.
4. Combine 1-3 and the thermal reading done in software from this article means exactly nothing at all.
5. 50C idle is flat out *horrible* for a desktop or server.
6. No information is given on the thermal paste used for the comparison. Maybe they used cheese in a can?

Submission + - How the inventors of Dragon speech recogniton technology lost everything. (nytimes.com) 5

cjsm writes: James and Janet Baker were the inventors of Dragon Systems speech recogintion software, and after years of work, they created a multimillion dollar company. At the height of the tech boom, with investment offers rolling in, they turned to Goldman Sachs for financial advice. For a five million dollar fee, Goldman hooked them up with Lernout & Hauspie, the Belgium speech recognition company. After consultations with Goldman Sachs, the Bakers traded their company for $580 million in Lernout & Hauspie stock. But it turned out Lernout & Hauspie was involved in cooking their books and went bankrupt. Dragon was sold in a bankruptcy auction to Scansoft, and the Bakers lost everything. Goldman and Sachs itself had decided against investing in Lernout & Hauspie two years previous to this because they were lying about their Asian sales. The Bakers are suing for one billions dollars.
Censorship

Submission + - Anonymous lists sites blocked in the UAE (pastehtml.com) 3

another random user writes: A group of Anonymous-affiliated hackers claims to have gained access to the servers in charge of filtering Internet traffic in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

According to the hackers, they have identified a number of domain categories that are currently being blocked.

These include websites that host adult content, VPN providers and any other site that could help users bypass censorship mechanisms, social media networks and dating sites, and ones that promote other religious views than Islam.

The most “shocking” discovery, as described by the hackers, is the fact that many websites that offer Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services are also on the list.

“A large part of UAE’s population is made of migrant workers and the telecom industry made a lot of profit by overcharging them for international phone calls. But with the raise of VOIP and internet communication they were afraid that this would take away their profits and thus went ahead to block VOIP,” they explained.

Science

Submission + - Small Molecule May Play Big Role in Alzheimer's Disease (utexas.edu)

aarondubrow writes: "Researchers from UC Santa Barbara used the Ranger supercomputer to simulate small forms of amyloid peptides that are believed to be a primary cause of toxicity in Alzheimer's disease. They found that hairpin-shaped forms of the peptide initiated the aggregation of oligomers that ultimately led to the formation of a fibril. The simulations are leading to new diagnostic and treatment options they may stop the disease."
Robotics

Submission + - Real-life Avatar: The first mind-controlled robot surrogate (extremetech.com)

MrSeb writes: "An Israeli student has become the first person to meld his mind and movements with a robot surrogate, or avatar. Situated inside an fMRI scanner in Israel, Tirosh Shapira has controlled a humanoid robot some 2000 kilometers (1250 miles) away, at the Béziers Technology Institute in France, using just his mind. The system must be trained so that a particular “thought” (fMRI blood flow pattern) equates to a certain command. In this case, when Shapira thinks about moving forward or backward, the robot moves forward or backward; when Shapira thinks about moving one of his hands, the robot surrogate turns in that direction. To complete the loop, the robot has a camera on its head, with the image being displayed in front of Shapira. Speaking to New Scientist, it sounds like Shapira really became one with the robot: “It was mind-blowing. I really felt like I was there, moving around,” he says. “At one point the connection failed. One of the researchers picked the robot up to see what the problem was and I was like, ‘Oi, put me down!’”"
Microsoft

Submission + - Ubuntu Can't Trust FSF: Thus Dropped Grub 2 For Secure Boot (muktware.com)

sfcrazy writes: Free Software Foundation, FSF, recently published a white paper criticizing Ubuntu's move to drop Grub 2 in order to support Microsoft's UEFI Secure Boot. FSF also recommend that Ubuntu should reconsider their decision. Ubuntu's charismatic chief, Mark Shuttleworth, has finally responded stating the reason why they won't change their stand on dropping Grub 2 from Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth said "The SFLC advice to us was that the FSF could require key disclosure if some OEM screwed up. As nice as it is that someone at the FSF says they would not, we have to plan for a world where leaders change and institutional priorities change. The FSF wrote a licence that would give them the rights to take specific actions, and it's hard for them to argue they never would!

So, does that FSF can't be trusted?"

Comment Water cooled overclocks have been heating homes. (Score 1) 112

This is very simple water cooling. The principle is identical to what is found in high end overclocked systems.

Your coolant only needs to be cooler than the core itself to remove heat. It's been known for a long time that dumping the heat of an overclocked system into a room through a water loop will heat said room.

Even in the dead of winter when it's 0C outside, my *one* overclocked computer can keep my 300SQ ft room heated to above 70 degrees with no additional heat sources.

News? I guess. Definitely a stale idea though.

Comment Apple killed RIM, DirecTV next. (Score 1) 264

Just another example of a company resting on its laurels, while someone else moves ahead.
Wouldn't be surprised if DirecTV is gone in a couple years due to a mass exodus of customers to wired technologies. The only market DirecTV will still be able to appeal to is that where there is no cable/fiber optic available.

Comment You are not addressing your actual issue. (Score 1) 341

If the *actual* problem is surges due to your house being struck with lightning, a full house surge suppression unit will do NOTHING for you. The way surge suppressors work, is when the current/voltage spikes very high on the input, it grounds the line to dump the excess.

To better visualize:
Line in -> Breaker -> House -> Outlet -> Device

In a situation with a suppressor at the breaker, you would have this:
Line in -> Suppressor -> Breaker -> House -> Outlet

Such a setup would NOT protect you from a lightning strike, which is:
Lightning -> House -> Outlet -> Device

The only way to protect your devices from death due to lightning strike is to put a supressor between the outlet and the device:
Lightning -> House -> Outlet -> Suppressor -> Device

I find a good low cost option is to stick a Line Conditioner on each outlet that's sized for the devices that will plug into it. So my computer has an 1800W Line Conditioner, while my receiver and TV only have a 600W Line Conditioner. It'll only run a few hundred bucks to protect all the appliances you are interested in saving from lightning.

As mentioned by everyone else, if it's not life ending, insure it and just replace.

Comment Honeywell has a repeat history of this. (Score 2) 137

Honeywell is notorious for running competitors out of business, or buying up competitors and then simply discontinuing all their products. Specifically to control the market.

A good example of this is the window fan market, which Honeywell has almost a complete monopoly.

Several years ago there was a company called Lakewood Engineering that made, by far, the most effective and silent 'economic' household window fan. Honeywell bought them, and discontinued the model irregardless of the fact that their entire fan line was significantly inferior.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How do you go about testing a storage medium?

g7a writes: I've been given the task of testing new hardware for the use in our servers. For things like memory I can run it through things such as memtest for a few day's to ascertain if there are any issues with the new memory. However i've hit a bit of a brick wall when it comes to testing hard disks there seems to be no definitive method for doing so. Aside from the obvious S.M.A.R.T tests ( i.e. long offline ) are there any systems out there for testing hard disks to a similar level to that of memtest or any tried and tested methods for testing storage media ?

Submission + - Self-sculpting sand algorithms can allow spontaneous formation of tools (mit.edu)

parallel_prankster writes: Researchers in MIT are developing tiny robots that can assemble themselves into products and then disassemble when no longer needed. "A heap of smart sand would be analogous to the rough block of stone that a sculptor begins with. The individual grains would pass messages back and forth and selectively attach to each other to form a three-dimensional object; the grains not necessary to build that object would simply fall away. When the object had served its purpose, it would be returned to the heap. Its constituent grains would detach from each other, becoming free to participate in the formation of a new shape." To attach to each other, to communicate and to share power, the cubes use 'electropermanent magnets,' materials whose magnetism can be switched on and off with jolts of electricity. Another discussion for this paper can be read here

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