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Submission + - The Bright Moonlight That Inspired Mary Shelley to (themarysue.com)

Cito writes: "Mary Shelley having writers block claims she was inspired by the moonlight to write Frankenstein.
Some have disputed her story about how she struggled for days to come with the story, saying that this was just a romanticized tale to hook her audience, but astronomers are now saying that she was probably not making it up.”

Astronomers from Texas State University conducted tests at the villa where she stayed that night: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0928/Frankenstein-moon-Astronomers-vindicate-Mary-Shelley-s-account

Chrome

Submission + - Web Browser Grand Prix 7: Firefox 7, Chrome 14, Op (tomshardware.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: Firefox 7 was released a couple days ago, and now the latest Web browser perfromance numbers are in. This article is the same series that ran benchmarks on Mac OS X Lion last month. This time around the new Mozilla release is going against Chrome 14 and Opera 11.51 in 40+ different tests on Windows 7. Testing comes from every category of Web browsing perfromance I can think of: startup time, page load time, JS, CSS, DOM, HTML5, Flash, hardware acceleration, WebGL, Java, Silverlight, reliable page loads, memory usage/management, and standards confromance. The article also has a little feature on the Futuremark Peacekeeper browser benchmark. An open beta of the next revision has just been made public. This new version adds HTML5, video codecs, and WebGL tests to the benchmark. It's also designed to run on any browser/OS/device combination — e.g. Windows desktop, iPad, Droid 2, MacBook, Linux flavors, etc. Another great read, a must for Web browser fanatics!
Cloud

Submission + - Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying (theatlantic.com)

oker writes: From the article: "Researchers at Carnegie Mellon were able to not only match unidentified profile photos from a dating website (...) with positively identified Facebook photos, but also match pedestrians on a North American college campus with their online identities. (...) we predicted the interests and Social Security numbers of some of the participants (...) the goal of Experiment 3 was to show that it is possible to start from an anonymous face in the street, and end up with very sensitive information about that person, in a process of data 'accretion.' ". Do we really enter "Minority Report"-like world?
Robotics

Submission + - Boston Dynamics Unveils AlphaDog Quadruped Robot (ieee.org)

An anonymous reader writes: Boston Dynamics, the company that created the BigDog quadruped robot, has unveiled a new, bigger system called AlphaDog [http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/boston-dynamics-alphadog-prototype-on-video]. AlphaDog, a DARPA-sponsored project, can carry a payload of 400 pounds for up to 20 miles without having to refuel, and it's also much quieter than BigDog. The robot is designed to assist humans in carrying heavy equipment over rough terrain, and Boston Dynamics' schedule has the first walk-out of AlphaDog taking place sometime in 2012, when U.S. Marines will begin to put the robot to the test for real.
Firefox

Submission + - Firefox 8.0 Beta (mozilla.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The latest Mozilla Firefox Beta is now available for testing on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. This beta adds features and user interface elements that make browsing easier and tools that help developers build more secure and innovative Web experiences.
Hardware

Submission + - Evil Floppy Drives (silent.org.pl)

An anonymous reader writes: A Polish hardware hacker with (apparently) nothing better to do has figured out a way to hoot up 2 floppy drives to a controller and make them play the Imperial March theme using alternating frequencies.

Submission + - (Video) Ottawa resident says space oddity was fall (dmpcs.com)

removaly writes: "The satellite, which is believed to have fallen into the Pacific Ocean just after 1 a.m. Saturday morning, broke up as it re-entered earth’s atmosphere and there have been reports debris was spotted in such diverse locations as Alberta, Hawaii and Italy."
GNOME

Submission + - GTK+ 3.2 Released With HTML5 And Wayland Backends (webupd8.org)

An anonymous reader writes: GTK+ 3.2 has been released with two eagerly expected features: experimental support for Wayland and HTML5 "Broadway" backends. The HTML5 "Broadway" backend allows rendering GTK applications in HTML5-capable browsers. That means that you can run Gedit, GIMP and other applications in a web browser (both local and remotely).
Android

Submission + - Phone operator sues brothers for releasing app (gazette-ariegeoise.fr)

KingofSpades writes: French brothers Michael and Sébastien M., unable to watch television on their new cell phone — despite paying the corresponding "unlimited TV" phone plan — wrote an app to automate changes of user parameters, including user agent, in order of accessing the TV feed of their cell operator, SFR. They released a free app and a donate version (1.99 euros) of the app (likely named "G.Player TV"). They have been sued by operator SFR in the court of the sunny region of Ariège (France). Their lawyer stated that "that there is no evidence that non-subscribers have been able to use the app. Therefore there it did not provide a free access to a paying service".

Both have been convicted and must pay a 800 euros fine (suspended) and 192 euros to operator SFR.

Crime

Submission + - Occupy Wall Street Protest Turns Ugly

theodp writes: The Atlantic's James Fallows has an important video from the Occupy Wall Street protests he'd like to share, in which a New York City police officer gives a penned-up group of women a taste of pepper spray. Fallows explains further: 'He walks up; unprovoked he shoots Mace or pepper spray straight into the eyes of women held inside a police enclosure; he turns and walks away quickly (as they scream, wail, and fall to the ground clawing at their eyes) in a way familiar from hitmen in crime movies; and he discreetly reholsters his spray can.' The NYPD's chief spokesman said the police had used the pepper spray 'appropriately'. 'Pepper spray was used once,' he added, 'after individuals confronted officers and tried to prevent them from deploying a mesh barrier — something that was edited out or otherwise not captured in the video.' More pics from the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations here.
Windows

Submission + - Fastest SFTP or SCP for Windows?

An anonymous reader writes: When I used WinSCP, I assumed its slow SFTP or SCP speed was due to the encryption involved over SSH connections. But I was pleasantly wrong! Token2Shell (http://choung.net/Token2Shell) is an SSH client but has integrated SFTP/SCP hybrid file transfer function. You need an SSH server that supports both SFTP and SCP to make it work (not really a problem since OpenSSH already supports them). But its upload/download speed was excellent. Only other program I found that came close in terms of speed was Tunnelier (http://www.bitvise.com/tunnelier). Token2Shell is not a freeware but when you need to move around 1GB+ files over SSH, every second counts! Is Token2Shell the fastest option or am I missing something?
Censorship

Submission + - Wall St protests: Police harsh, media silent? (rt.com)

microphage writes: Oh, the irony, that we have to watch RussiaTimes in order to find out what's going on in the West. These protests have been going on for over two weeks with not a whisper, in our fee and unbiased media.

Occupy Wall Street protest turns chaotic and violent

"For the previous week, both the police and protesters were calm and ordered. People were wearing smiles, and positive discussions were being had in and out of the protest lines. All of that changed on Saturday ..

Comment Re:No, it means you don't understand irony. (Score 1) 547

> While it is true that homosexuality is wrong

No, it is right. This is the fundamental issue. You as a hetero man feel that you like women and not men, therefore anybody who feels other is strange and perverse. You know, for me as a homo, it's exactly the other way round, that's how I'm wired, that's how god created me, if you like to put it this way. Why would god create me this way if he did not like it? He would be a hateful god indeed.

The real truth however is that sexuality is not as clearly defined as you think. In the late 19th century, the words for homo and hetero were invented, and after that time the world was neatly split into two parts. Or three if you count bisexuals. Or four, if you count trans people. Or five, if you count hermaphrodites. Or six, if you count people who only get off on smelly feet. Or seven, eight, nine, ten... it's all just words and concepts in our heads.

Please, could we ultimately drop this boring, pointless and annoying categorizing of sexuality and just accept people as they are, diverse and with different preferences?

Comment Re:93% of Programmers Think You're Wrong (Score 1) 572

After some meditation, I'd like to apologize. You are not a troll, I think you are just expressing yourself imprecisely.

From the probabilities given above, it's obvious that the probability in total that for two tosses, at least one of the two coins is a head is 75%.

So, if we only look at the cases where at least one coin is a head, what is the probability that both coins are head? It's of course 33% ! (of the 75% of the total, which is 25% of the total). I guess this was what you were aiming at.

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