Comment Re:Speed (Score 1) 202
10-12 hours from comments in TFA
Comment Don't worry.... (Score 1) 202
... it's just passing gas.
Those are all amazing videos though.
Comment Re:It's too bad you're getting flamed so hard (Score 1) 442
Thank you, this is one of those posts that cement what I like about the 'ask slashdot' replies. You hit it right on the head with your comment about people not getting it, or so mired in doing it 100% correctly at the start. No startup would ever start if they had to be 100% correct. And a lot of the posts that seem to be deterring for various reasons seem to indicate by their content that they have never actually looked at some of the offerings and how they work.
Great post.
Comment Re:Hire me? (Score 1) 600
These are the responses I look forward to reading in the 'Ask Slashdot' threads. Not the banal accusations of 'OP just wants
Thank you.
Music By Natural Selection 164
maccallr writes "The DarwinTunes experiment needs you! Using an evolutionary algorithm and the ears of you the general public, we've been evolving a four bar loop that started out as pretty dismal primordial auditory soup and now after >27k ratings and 200 generations is sounding pretty good. Given that the only ingredients are sine waves, we're impressed. We got some coverage in the New Scientist CultureLab blog but now things have gone quiet and we'd really appreciate some Slashdotter idle time. We recently upped the maximum 'genome size' and we think that the music is already benefiting from the change."
FreeNAS Switching From FreeBSD To Debian Linux 206
dnaumov writes "FreeNAS, a popular, free NAS solution, is moving away from using FreeBSD as its underlying core OS and switching to Debian Linux. Version 0.8 of FreeNAS as well as all further releases are going to be based on Linux, while the FreeBSD-based 0.7 branch of FreeNAS is going into maintenance-only mode, according to main developer Volker Theile. A discussion about the switch, including comments from the developers, can be found on the FreeNAS SourceForge discussion forum. Some users applaud the change, which promises improved hardware compatibility, while others voice concerns regarding the future of their existing setups and lack of ZFS support in Linux."
Linux Kernel 2.6.32 Released 195
diegocg writes "Linus Torvalds has officially released the version 2.6.32 of the Linux kernel. New features include virtualization memory de-duplication, a rewrite of the writeback code faster and more scalable, many important Btrfs improvements and speedups, ATI R600/R700 3D and KMS support and other graphic improvements, a CFQ low latency mode, tracing improvements including a 'perf timechart' tool that tries to be a better bootchart, soft limits in the memory controller, support for the S+Core architecture, support for Intel Moorestown and its new firmware interface, run-time power management support, and many other improvements and new drivers. See the full changelog for more details."
Nintendo Upset Over Nokia Game Emulation Video 189
An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo is investigating potential copyright infringement by Nokia during some video demos of their N900 phone, which can be seen emulating Nintendo games. Nintendo spokesman Robert Saunders says: 'We take rigorous steps to protect our IP and our legal team will examine this to determine if any infringement has taken place.' In the video, Nokia says, 'Most publishers allow individual title usage, provided that the user is in possession of the original title.'"
Comment CoPilot (Score 1) 454
Different pricing models (Day Pass, per month), free on weekends.
Mandriva Linux 2010 Is Finally Out 267
ennael writes "We finally did it. Mandriva Linux 2010 is out and comes with many improvements and innovations. We still go on supporting in the same level of integration GNOME 2.28 and KDE 4.3.2. Support for netbooks is improved as users can now easily test Moblin 2.0 environment. 'Smart desktop' coming from European research is now fully integrated and is the first real working semantic desktop. Mandriva Control Center also brings improvements in tools: a new netprofile management tool, a GUI for Tomoyo security framework, and parental control. A big thanks to our community, who worked hard and made this release possible."
Stoned Wallabies Make Crop Circles 104
It's the tripnaut! writes "The BBC reports that Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around 'as high as a kite', a government official has said. 'The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,' says Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania. 'Then they crash,' she added."
New Discovery May End Transplant Rejection 201
mmmscience writes with this excerpt from the Examiner:
"Big news in the medical world: scientists in Australia have found a way to stop the body from attacking organ transplants, greatly decreasing the possibility of organ rejection. ... When a new tissue is introduced, one's immune system kicks into overdrive, sending out cells known as killer T cells to attack and destroy the unknown tissue. ... Professor Jonathan Sprent and Dr. Kylie Webster from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research focused on a different type of T cells — known as regulatory T cells (Treg) — in this study. Tregs are capable of quieting the immune system, stopping the killer T cells from seeking out and attacking foreign objects."
Comment Recursive googling (Score 1) 105
I'm sure they just do exactly what I do when I'm at work and have a problem: they google for an answer to the problem at hand.
Oh, wait.
The above sort of leads into explaining my fear of asking google "is google alive" and the ensuing apocalypse.
Submission + - Open Source alternative to Java/Flash/Silverlight
dgym writes: Having applications that can be deployed on the net and run either in a browser or from a standalone player is an old idea, but still not one that has been done really well.
Java is one solution, but for various reasons hasn't attained ubiquity. Now that it is being open sourced it might find itself on more platforms, but it still may be too big for some devices, and too slow to start up to not be annoying.
Flash is geared towards video and animation, but can also lend itself to RIAs and it is certainly a very popular plugin. However, like any closed standard, it is only available on the platforms Adobe decide to support.
Silverlight might be a better platform for RIAs from a technical perspective, but is otherwise in the same position as Flash (only with even fewer platforms).
So why are there so many poor choices for such a simple problem? After all the requirements for developing applications are rather low:
The need is there, where is the open standard?
Java is one solution, but for various reasons hasn't attained ubiquity. Now that it is being open sourced it might find itself on more platforms, but it still may be too big for some devices, and too slow to start up to not be annoying.
Flash is geared towards video and animation, but can also lend itself to RIAs and it is certainly a very popular plugin. However, like any closed standard, it is only available on the platforms Adobe decide to support.
Silverlight might be a better platform for RIAs from a technical perspective, but is otherwise in the same position as Flash (only with even fewer platforms).
So why are there so many poor choices for such a simple problem? After all the requirements for developing applications are rather low:
- A sand boxed virtual machine for running client side code.
- A means to display information, i.e. graphics drawing primitives.
- Event handling for user input.
- Networking back to the originating server.
The need is there, where is the open standard?
Submission + - Cancer Bombshell
An anonymous reader writes: Vitamin D casts cancer prevention in new light
For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries — and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry.
But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.
Article by Martin Mittelstaedt
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
April 28, 2007 at 1:20 AM EDT
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070428.wxvitamin28/BNStory/specialScienceandHea lth/home
ps. the sun pun is intended.
For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries — and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry.
But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.
Article by Martin Mittelstaedt
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
April 28, 2007 at 1:20 AM EDT
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGA
ps. the sun pun is intended.
