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Family Circus Cthulhu Edition 4

Posted by samzenpus from the dead-but-dreaming dept.
Next week, follow Billy's dotted-line path into madness.
Unix

Persistent Terminals For a Dedicated Computing Box? 288

Posted by Soulskill from the persistence-pays-off dept.
Theovon writes "I just built a high-end quad-core Linux PC dedicated to number-crunching. Its job is to sit in the corner with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor and do nothing but compute (genetic algorithms, neural nets, and other research). My issue is that I would like to have something like persistent terminal sessions. I've considered using Xvnc in a completely headless configuration (some useful documentation here, here, here, and here). However, for most of my uses, this is overkill. Total waste of memory and compute time. However, if I decided to run FPGA synthesis software under WINE, this will become necessary. Unfortunately, I can't quite figure out how to get persistent X11 session where I'm automatically logged in (or can stay logged in), while maintaining enough security that I don't mind opening the VNC port on my firewall (with a changed port number, of course). I'm also going to check out Xpra, but I've only just heard about it and have no idea how to use it. For the short term, the main need is just terminals. I'd like to be able to connect and see how something is going. One option is to just run things with nohup and then login and 'tail -f' to watch the log file. I've also heard of screen, but I'm unfamiliar with it. Have other Slashdot users encountered this situation? What did you use? What's hard, what's easy, and what works well?"
Social Networks

"Wisdom of Crowds" Works For Individuals Too 158

Posted by kdawson from the I-am-large-I-contain-multitudes dept.
ideonexus writes "Take a crowd of people and have them guess how many jelly beans are in a jar, and the average of their answers will be remarkably accurate. Now researchers have found the same goes for asking one person to guess about the same thing several times. Accuracy improved when the individual was given longer periods of time between guesses." The anonymous author of the Economist piece, not quoting the researchers, says the finding bolsters the "generate and test" model of creative thinking.

Endeavour Crew to Assemble Giant Robot, in Space 147

Posted by Zonk from the anyone-else-see-this-coming-back-to-bite-us dept.
Frizzled writes "Part of the space shuttle crew's scheduled mission for this week is to assemble a massive robot which will 'rise like Frankenstein' from the shuttle's cargo bay. The robot, named Dextre, has 11-foot arms, a shoulder span of nearly 8 feet, a height of 12 feet, and was built by the Canadian Space Agency. 'Dextre can pivot at the waist, and has seven joints per arm. Its hands, or grippers, have built-in socket wrenches, cameras and lights. Only one arm is designed to move at a time to keep the robot stable and avoid a two-arm collision. The robot has no face or legs, and with its long arms certainly doesn't look human.'"
Media

Porn Industry May Not Decide Format War 185

Posted by Zonk from the assumptions-about-media dept.
nixkuroi writes "MSNBC Reports that the porn industry may be overstating their numbers and, as a result, may not be the decider of the next winning movie format. Even more interesting: Vivid Entertainment says that despite Sony's refusal to license Blu-ray to the adult industry, they've found a way to replicate the technology and will release Debbie Does Dallas on both formats. Film writer Jimmy Digiorgio states, in an email with MSNBC: 'In the past, porn embraced new technologies that were just gaining a foothold. DVDs are not new, and I don't think consumers perceive Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as new technologies. Instead, they see them as an evolution of an existing technology.... With Blu-ray [versus] HD-DVD, porn will go where the masses go.'"
Businesses

Why Don't More CIOs Become CEO? 279

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-they-know-better dept.
jcatcw writes "Thornton May is mystified by the very small number of Fortune 500 companies that led by former CIOs. "Knowing what we know about CIOs — that is, that most are smart, hardworking, supremely aware of how the business works and increasingly savvy regarding the workings of external customers' minds — the failure of more CIOs to become CEO has to be one of the biggest mysteries of our age.""
Software

Using AI to Monitor Kids Online 230

Posted by Zonk from the ok-yeah-sigh-think-of-the-children dept.
eldavojohn writes "An Australian startup believes that the best way to protect your children online is through an artificially intelligent software program. The inventors of this idea are banking on children's attachment to pets. The creature's 'cuteness' and helpfulness will ingratiate the software with the child, so that he or she will respect it and listen to it, or even find it as a likable companion. Agent-based internet applications are nothing new but for concerned parents, this might be an admirable solution to what is perceived by many to be a growing problem. From one of the inventors: 'Of course, we're also planning to release a version of the Moji IM for teenagers and adults, but we're focusing on children at the moment.'"
PlayStation (Games)

Demo PS3 Units freeze on Purpose 363

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stay-off-my-kiosks-kid dept.
AbsoluteZero writes "A Sony rep has claimed to Destructoid that demo PS3 units in kiosks across the country were built to freeze up on purpose. From the article: "We do that so that people won't play it all day long," he explained. "Specifically during Motorstorm, we made it freeze up a lot.""

Opera Running on the OLPC 193

Posted by Zonk from the music-in-the-strangest-of-places dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Opera developers have ported their browser to the $100 laptop. Håkon Wium Lie writes: 'Seeing Opera run on the OLPC for first time was a revelation — no browser has ever been more beautiful. The resolution of the screen is stunning (200dpi) and Opera makes the most of the embedded DejaVu fonts.' Claudio Santambrogio writes: 'Opera runs beautifully on it. The machine is not really the fastest, but Opera's performance is excellent — the browsing experience is beautifully smooth: all sites load fine and quickly, and even complex DHTML pages with heavy animations do not suffer.'"
Science

White Dolphin Functionally Extict 868

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the gone-the-way-of-the-dodo dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in nearly fifty years another mammal, specifically an aquatic mammal, has gone extinct. In this case, it was the white dolphin, also known as the Baiji, which used to live in the Yangtze River in China. The dolphin had been known to exist for the last 20 million years."
It's funny. Laugh.

Silly String Goes to War Against IEDs 460

Posted by samzenpus from the silly-to-serious dept.
Luban Doyle writes "In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it's the simplest ideas that can save lives. Which is why a New Jersey mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq. American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq."
Google

Submission + - Google's Silent Monopoly (Unfair With AdWords)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Isaac Garcia from Central Desktop Blog writes, "How much does Google pay *itself* to claim the top ad position for searches relevant to its own products?"

"Google holds the top advertisement (Adword) slot for the following key words: intranet, spreadsheet, documents, calendar, word processor, email, video, instant messenger, blog, photo sharing, online groups, map, start page, restaurant, dining, and books...if you are trying to advertise a product that is competitive to Google, then you'll never be able to receive the Top Ad Position, no matter how much money you bid and spend."

"How different is it than MSFT placing its products (Internet Explorer) in a premium marketing position (embedded in the OS)?" spreadsheet

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