Comment Re:PR Giveaway (Score 1) 168
Why? It's a country looking to lead the world in censorship, to protect protect politicians and religious sensibilities.
Hang on, we're still talking about India here, right?
Comment Re:380V DC makes sense (Score 1) 462
Fully rectified 240V AC RMS is already very close to 380V DC
Uh, no. No it isn't. Not even vaguely, in fact. 240V effectively *is* the DC equivalent (ignoring rectification losses), the PMPO (ie. peak voltages your 50 or 60hz sine wave actually hits) will probably be around 380v though. If you want 380VDC, then you need the same or more AC.
Simulated Mars Mission 'Returns' After 520 Days 201
On June 3, 2010, a team of six volunteers began the Mars500 experiment: they were locked into a cluster of hermetically sealed habitat modules for the duration of a simulated mission to Mars lasting 520 days. "During the ‘flight,' the crew performed more than 100 experiments, all linked to the problems of long-duration missions in deep space. To add to their isolation, communications with mission control were artificially delayed to mimic the natural delays over the great distances on a real Mars flight." The simulated mission has now come to an end. The crew managed to stay healthy and sane, and they've emerged from isolation to be reunited with their families. The ESA's Mars500 page has further details on the experiment, and they've posted a video summarizing the 'trip.'
Comment So hang on... (Score 1) 125
Are we going back to transputers again, then?
Comment Re:Vaporware (Score 1) 120
Really? So you only use graphics cards with open source firmware, do you? No, thought not.
Look carefully - the firmware blob is closed, just as it is an most commercial graphics cards. The driver, on the other hand, is open.
Look carefully - the firmware blob is closed, just as it is an most commercial graphics cards. The driver, on the other hand, is open.
Iran Tried and Failed To Launch a Monkey Into Space 272
Medevilae writes with a recent report from PopSci's dedicated 'space monkey' news feed that "When Iran indefinitely suspended its plans to launch a monkey into space earlier this month, it was actually because they had already tried and failed. Iranian Deputy Science Minister Mohammad Mehdinejad-Nouri told state media that the Kavoshgar-5 rocket carrying a capsule with a live monkey launched during Shahrivar, which is the Iranian month spanning August 23 to September 22, but the launch was not publicized because it did not accomplish all of its mission objectives. Assuming one of the objectives was to safely carry the monkey to space and back, things don't sound good for the monkey."
Comment Overblown reporting, as usual. (Score 5, Informative) 337
Before anything else - this is my favourite local Indian Restaurant. Been eating there for a few years now and will continue to do so.
Secondly, 'several ambulances'? People 'writhing on the floor, fainting and vomiting'? Here's what actually happened:
Restaurant holds a curry-eating competition. Top of the list in the later rounds is the 'Kismot Killer', a curry that recently replaced a naga-based one, as too many people were finishing it easily. Anyway, if you order a killer, the restaurant staff will do everything in their power to put you off - there's warnings all over the place and you have to sign a disclaimer before eating it. If you *really* insist on eating the damn thing, you can't say you weren't warned. But anyway. So two people get to the later stages (one American, FWIW) and one of them has the bright idea of vomiting immediately after eating so as to avoid the after-effects. The other continues eating *despite being in pain and feeling faint*. I mean, seriously? So despite having the red cross present (it was a charity event), they got an ambulance to take these two to hospital for safety. The hospital gave them strong anti-indigestion medication and kicked them out.
Short version - idiots did idiotic things, complained that they shouldn't have to have any personal responsibility when the inevitable happened.
Secondly, 'several ambulances'? People 'writhing on the floor, fainting and vomiting'? Here's what actually happened:
Restaurant holds a curry-eating competition. Top of the list in the later rounds is the 'Kismot Killer', a curry that recently replaced a naga-based one, as too many people were finishing it easily. Anyway, if you order a killer, the restaurant staff will do everything in their power to put you off - there's warnings all over the place and you have to sign a disclaimer before eating it. If you *really* insist on eating the damn thing, you can't say you weren't warned. But anyway. So two people get to the later stages (one American, FWIW) and one of them has the bright idea of vomiting immediately after eating so as to avoid the after-effects. The other continues eating *despite being in pain and feeling faint*. I mean, seriously? So despite having the red cross present (it was a charity event), they got an ambulance to take these two to hospital for safety. The hospital gave them strong anti-indigestion medication and kicked them out.
Short version - idiots did idiotic things, complained that they shouldn't have to have any personal responsibility when the inevitable happened.
Comment Re:but (Score 1) 194
It's already running Debian.
Comment Learn one, learn 'em all... (Score 2) 772
If you could program one language, you can program in any language. It's inherent on the Turing-completeness of programming languages. It's all just a matter of syntax. Sure, mastering a language takes time, but you've probably see already much things and that means you can easily apply what you know to the knew languages.
See, I agree with you 100%, more if I could. In my years developing, most of the languages I now use to program are not the ones I was employed to do, but ones where I've been dropped into a project, had to hit the ground running and learn on the fly. It's not difficult, once you know the concepts of *how* to program.
But. Try going in to a job interview and saying "No, I don't have 5 years of this language, but give me a week, some small changes to work on and access to google and I'll be able to program it as well as most of your other developers". It may be true, but it doesn't wash with HR people or project managers. They have a ticksheet of skills and levels and they don't care a damn how easily transferrable any of them are - if you don't have it exact, tough.
Better Copyright Through Fair Use and Ponies 169
Balinares writes "With even harmless parody sites like Peanutweeter now getting shut down by twitchy lawyers in the name of brand dilution concerns, the situation with fair use has become bleak. Yet some companies are learning at last. Variery reports that when parodies of their latest production started popping up online, Hasbro not only allowed it to happen, but started contributing some of their own. Now their My Little Pony reboot has gained a huge following and reached cult status. Fair use does make everything better. That, or it's the ponies."
Comment Re:Download and burn (Score 1) 453
Well generally, the facts that not only is it cheap enough to be an impulse purchase, but also that the last time a substantial piece of Apple software appeared on a p2p network (iLife, if I remember correctly) it had malware embedded in it.
For an evening's beer money, it hardly seems worth the risk.
For an evening's beer money, it hardly seems worth the risk.
Comment Re:Probably stupider than hacking the Corleones... (Score 1) 363
And now the boot is on the other foot. Suddenly *they* have no secrets. How awesome is that?
Comment Re:Self-deprecating version numbers are the suck (Score 5, Interesting) 184
I believe there are other reasons for not going to version 1.
Hopefully the esteemed Mr Tatham won't mind if I quote him directly, but in 2007 he wrote this about why puTTY wasn't version 1 yet:
Hopefully the esteemed Mr Tatham won't mind if I quote him directly, but in 2007 he wrote this about why puTTY wasn't version 1 yet:
But that's not primarily what's holding back a 1.0 release. The real thing I
want to do first is to sort out the data storage: there are quite a few
features on the wish list which would require a revamp of that, such as
- ability to store some settings in HKEY_CURRENT_USER and others in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, so that a sysadmin could set up some default saved
sessions and a default host key cache which would then be the starting point
for each user's personal configuration
- inheritable saved sessions (so that when I change, say, my font preference
in Default Settings it automatically propagates to all my other sessions
_except_ those in which I've specifically asked for a non-default font)
- storing configuration in a disk file as an alternative to the registry (so
that people can carry around PuTTY plus their config file on a USB stick)
- ability to configure all PuTTY's options from the command line (rather than
having to do a lot of them by the cumbersome method of creating a saved
session and using -load).
Now I'm not saying I want to have _implemented_ all those features before 1.0,
but I want to have made a commitment to a data storage format which is capable
of supporting them. Currently PuTTY's data storage only tries to be upward-
compatible, meaning that you can upgrade PuTTY and it'll still work with your
old settings. Use an older PuTTY with newer settings, and you're on your own.
My goal is that within the 1.0 series, the data storage should be compatible in
_both_ directions. (Not because I anticipate people deliberately downgrading
PuTTY, although it's been known occasionally, but because I can easily imagine
people using different versions on two machines which happen to be sharing a
network-stored configuration.)
Voicemail Hack Scandal Leads To Closure of UK Tabloid 268
Some Bitch writes "Britain's biggest selling Sunday tabloid will close after this Sunday's issue. The tabloid has been embroiled in a voicemail hacking controversy for some time now and the news that they compromised the voicemail of a murdered schoolgirl and paid bribes to Metropolitan police officers for stories kicked off a renewed assault on the paper. The News Corp daily counterpart to Sunday's News of the World is the Sun; the domain sunonsunday.co.uk was registered two days ago."
Developer Blames Apple For Ruining eBook Business 660
An anonymous reader writes "A bookseller and app developer has blamed Apple for writing its final chapter, claiming the iPad maker had pushed it out of business. 'Apple has made it completely impossible for anyone but Apple to make a profit selling contemporary ebooks on any iOS device,' BeamItDown said. 'We bet everything on Apple and iOS and then Apple killed us by changing the rules in the middle of the game.' The company blamed Apple's decision to impose a 30% commission on books sold through apps for the unhappy ending."
