Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Space Based Solar Power Station (english.cas.cn)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: It could be an April Fool's story — but this story has appeared in many different media outlets

A huge space-based solar power station with 5 to 6 square kilometer total area of solar panels is in the planning stage

A space-based solar power station can generate 10 times more power than ground-based solar power generators and it can generate power up to 99% of the time since there is no 'night and day' up in the space

The proposed space-based solar power station will be in geosynchronous orbit, and the electricity generated would be converted to microwaves or lasers and transmitted to a collector on Earth

This idea is not new, in fact, it was first proposed by Isaac Asimov, in his short story, "Reason", back in 1941

Links regarding the space-based solar power station are below:

http://www.geek.com/science/ch...
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/china...
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
http://timesofindia.indiatimes...
http://english.cas.cn/newsroom...

Submission + - Global Wind Power grew by an astounding 42% in 2014 (navigantresearch.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: A new report from Navigant Research covers developments in the wind energy sector during 2014 found out that worldwide wind power installations grew by 42 percent year-over-year in 2014

Fueled by the policy-driven acceleration of installations in three key countries—China, Germany, and the United States—the global wind industry staged a remarkable comeback in 2014. Expansion in second-tier countries, such as Brazil, Turkey, France, and Canada also helped sustain a strong foundation for the industry as it matures into a significant global source of reliable, renewable energy

The revival of the U.S. and German markets meant there was a significant shake-up in the rankings of the world’s top 10 wind turbine suppliers in 2014, according to the report. Vestas remained the top supplier after strong sales both onshore and offshore and widespread across global markets. Siemens jumped two positions to second place in 2014 due to strong sales in the offshore sector and the surge of the German market. Had more planned 2014 offshore wind been fully commissioned and grid-connected, Siemens would have challenged Vestas’ top position, the report concludes

“The wind power industry achieved a record year of installations in 2014, setting the stage for steady growth in the coming years” says Jesse Broehl, senior research analyst with Navigant Research. “The industry’s development is being bolstered by key established markets and increasingly supported by new and diversified global markets”

Submission + - Hillary warns media to curb their 1st Amendment rights, or else! (madworldnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: So, Americans !

You have voted for a President who won a Nobel Peace Prize

Are you ready to vote for a President who wants the media forgo their First Amendment Rights?We already know that the Constitution of the United States of America has gone into the toilet bowl, but now, a public figure is out in the open telling the media to stop exercising their First Amendment Rights or face the music

A former first lady, Hillary intends to become the first lady president of the United States and to achieve her goal, she has issued a list of “demands” for words that the press can not say about her

As revealed by New York Times writer Amy Chozick, a list of words, including "Polarizing, Calculating, Disingenuous, Insincere, Secretive, Ambitious, Inevitable, Entitled, Over confident" are not to be used when writing news articles about Hillary

According to Hillary and her Super PAC, any media outlet / reporter will be labeled as sexist and attacked if we say any of these things about Hillary

Submission + - Rumor: Samsung Wants To Buy AMD (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Rumors are flying around the Asian press that Samsung wants to buy AMD. The deal would make a certain amount of sense from Samsung's viewpoint, giving it crucial inroads into CPU and GPU markets and a line of attack against Qualcomm. But it would also wreak havoc with the delicate network of deals and agreements within the chipmaking industry, especially when it comes to rights to x86 intellectual property.

Submission + - Physical sciences contribute 22% of economy (universityworldnews.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: According to a report published in Australit — http://www.science.org.au/scie... — physical sciences, including core disciplines of physics, chemistry, earth sciences and the mathematical sciences have contributed around 22% of the Australian economy The direct contribution of the advanced physical and mathematical sciences is equal to 11% of the economy while additional and flow-on benefits add another 11%, bringing the total benefits to almost A$300 billion a year The report also notes that this estimate is likely to be conservative, and sets out several other areas of benefit that are harder to measure The report carefully considered the pathways by which the advanced physical and mathematical sciences yielded economic benefits and the Australian community’s continuing commitment to the advanced physical and mathematical sciences would be needed to ensure that the benefits from what is essentially a global scientific enterprise will continue to accrue to the Australian economy The economists who prepared the report conducted industry consultations to determine the importance of the physical sciences to Australia’s 506 industry classes. They outline the economic contribution of the sciences to the top 10 industry groups in an appendix to the report There are three distinct sources of useful knowledge, the report says: the core disciplines of mathematics, physics and chemistry can provide useful knowledge individually and it takes banking as an example: "“Part of the banking industry relies on complex mathematically based models that support risk and investment decisions, but on no other science input. We estimate that 3.6% of Australia’s economic output is produced from inputs that embody useful knowledge from a single core discipline” The economists also estimate that 7.3% of Australia’s economic output is produced from inputs that embody useful knowledge from multiple disciplines. So the multidisciplinary nature of science means that the total impact of science is greater than the sum of the contributions of the individual sciences

Submission + - A tale of industrial espionage (cw.com.tw)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: First, the links -

http://english.cw.com.tw/artic...

http://www.eetimes.com/documen...

http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

This tale of an industrial turncoat ought to be a lesson to all high-tech captains

An employee of TSMC defected to Samsung is the focus of this tale of industrial espionage

TSMC has paid dearly due to their inaction and is losing clients, including Apple, Qualcomm and Nvidia, to Samsung, as a result

TSMC's blind trust on its former employee, and the resultant loss of business should become a case study for all industrial captains, especially those running high-tech companies

Here's a very brief quote

Many people were puzzled why the normally decisive TSMC had suddenly gone soft. In fact, in May 2010, the vice president of TSMC's human resources division at the time, Tu Long-chin, sent an e-mail to Liang saying he had seen reports that Liang was already employed by Samsung. That, Tu warned, would constitute a violation of the non-compete clause and lead to the forfeiture of his shares, which would be handed over to the TSMC Education and Culture Foundation.

Liang immediately replied, writing: "I have never, am not now and will never in the future do anything to let down the company."

A month later Tu and Richard Thurston, then general counsel and vice president of TSMC's legal division, held a meeting with Liang at which he promised that he "will not join Samsung now or in the future." The next day, he even sent a letter to Thurston, with whom he had been close, saying that he was thinking of resigning his position at Sungkyunkwan University.

During that time, Liang even wrote a letter to Morris Chang, insisting on his innocence and saying that he had TSMC blood in his system.

Ultimately, TSMC executives decided to believe their old comrade who had fought alongside them for more than a decade and pay him the more than NT$100 million his 738,000 withheld shares were worth in three installments.

But on July 13, 2011, just two months after collecting the final installment of the stock payout, Liang formally became the chief technology officer of Samsung Electronics' System LSI division. When the news spread, it came as a slap in the face to those who trusted him

To do justice to the story, you just gotta read it yourself

Comment What NYPD is doing is part of a larger trend ... (Score 5, Insightful) 135

... of America dropping deeper and deeper into the abyss of absolute fascism

... this isn't condoning the actions of the NYPD ...

I feel sad that you choose to limit it within the very narrow context of 'action of NYPD'

The sad fact is that the United States of America, thanks to NYPD and all other local / state / federal law enforcement agencies is becoming more and more like what the Stasi did in Eastern Germany, or the secret police of the Nicolae Ceausescu regime of Romania, or under the CCP in China, or the Kim's secret police in North Korea, ...
 
If the sentence 'uprooting terrorist plots, tracking "political activity"' fails to alarm any of the Americans, the future of United States of America is bleak

I mean, please read that sentence again

They actually use the term "terrorist plots" and the term "political activity" in the same fucking sentence!

What kind of America is _that_ ?

Aren't Americans supposed to be free to associate or join with any political activity, especially in the Land of the FREE??

What the fuck has happened to the freedom of association?

Or has America turned into a place where local law enforcement agencies such as NYPD, and all other agencies from the States as well as from the Federal level, get to dictate who can mix with whom now??

Submission + - A side effect of digitization to the movie industry (priceonomics.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Do you know that there is a very effective side effect that digitization has wrought to the movie industry?

Hint: The colors

Before you start to scratch your head, consider this — What colors do most movie posters use these days?

If you still have no clue, click this link — http://pix-media.s3.amazonaws.... and this link — http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-...

The two predominant colors are orange and blue, and they are there for a reason ... and it is actually based on Science

"The big change that digitization made was it made it much easier to apply a single color scheme to a bunch of different scenes at once. The more of a movie you can make look good with a single scheme, the less work you have to do. Also, as filmmakers are bringing many different film formats together in a single movie, applying a uniform color scheme helps tie them together"

"One way to figure out what will look good is to figure out what the common denominator is in the majority of your scenes. And it turns out that actors are in most scenes. And actors are usually human. And humans are orange, at least sort of!"

There you have it. Next time you look at a movie poster wonder no more why the orange and blue are being used, again !

Comment What is more important ? (Score 3, Interesting) 700

by Taco Cowboy (#48977419) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Pros and Cons of Homeschooling?

What is more important ... schooling, or learning?

Not all the learning happen within the context of a 'school', no matter if it is home school, private school or public school. In fact, most of the learning average kids had/have were/are from OUTSIDE of the schools

Nowadays parents seem to forget that. They seem to think that once they throw their children into a school, it's the responsibility of the teachers in the school to teach their kids

NO !!

I have met people from public school backgrounds who are, while not very technically savvy, they are super streets smart, able to detect troubles before the troubles actually begin

On the other hand, some of those who were home schooled might know a lot of stuffs, but unfortunately they lack many of the skills to successfully interact with others, particularly strangers, and often fall pray to scams because they are not aware of the darker side of humanity

No matter which school you send your kids in, you, as the parents, have to know that your kids learn from you more than they ever could learn from their teachers

Learning is not schooling, and no amount of schooling can equip your children if they do not have the opportunity to learn OUTSIDE of the school

Comment It's Psychological Warfare (Score 4, Insightful) 577

When the government comes out and says anything resembling "planned", "suggested", "considered", etc., it really means that they've been doing it for decades

No matter if the American government has carried out this 'car plate scanning' thing for decades, this announcement by itself is a PSY-OP and this mark the beginning of the government of the United States of America launching PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE on the Citizens of the United States of America

In other words, the government of the United States of America is no longer a government of the People, by the People and from the People --- The government of the United States of America has become a government AGAINST the People

Comment NSA would have loved this ! (Score 1) 88

How can NSA not loving this feature?

I mean, the two way encrypted channels between userA and serverA, if NSA would like to crack it, they would need to invest some crunch time just to take a peek

With this new protocol all NSA needs to do is to perform a MITM act ... get the info needed and then tell the user (and the server) to update keys and such

Mission accomplished !

Submission + - Islamic State promises to behead Obama in the White House (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes:

''We will cut off your head in the White House'

That's the promise from the Islamic State to Obama and they vow to turn America into an "Islamic Province" (or in Islamic-speak, 'Wilayah Islamia'

Now that Islamic State has issued that threat, why Obama and his NSA / CIA gang do something about it?

If an American says similar thing Obama and his goons would have swoop down and pounded that poor fella, but when Islamic State issued that threat, nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING !

Is the American government a coward or what? A government which only dare to punish innocent Christians and not the bloody Moslems?

Comment Without Steve Jobs ... (Score 5, Interesting) 458

by Taco Cowboy (#48946561) Attached to: How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft

I'm sure they are working up a neurocannula down there in Cupertino...the iJack

Without Steve Jobs Apple is just like Microsoft

No matter how you hate Steve Jobs, that guy is the one with the radical views

The world already got its walkmans for decades but it was Steve Jobs who knew he could do much better than the Sony Walkman (and all the copycats) and iPod was the answer

There were already smartphones (actually what was available before iPhone should not be categorized as smartphones, they were more like featurephones than smartphones) with the a-z keyboard on the keypad

It was Steve Jobs who moved the keyboard from the keypad to the screen

Let's compare Bill Gates with Steve Jobs

Bill Gates is from a very wealthy family, with a mother who knows people in high places

Steve Jobs is adopted. His birth dad is from Lebanon, and after knocking up his birth mother, abandoned his birth mother and went back alone to the Middle East

That is why Steve was put up for adoption because his birth mother couldn't bring up a son on her own

Steve Job's adopted parents are middle class people. Financially stable, but in no way can be compared to the wealth of Bill Gates' family

Bill Gates was enrolled into the first class university, and dropped out - he dropped out because he has no fear, after all, he got his wealthy family to fall back on

Steve Jobs didn't make it to first class university - there wasn't enough $$$ anyway. His 'university' is Reed College in Portland, Oregon

When Steve Jobs dropped out, he did not have a $$$ filled family to support him, he needed to find the money himself

When Bill Gates created Microsoft he could afford to rent comfortable office space and hire people --- Bill Gates got so much money that he could even afford to buy a program, called QDOS, from Tim Paterson

On the other hand, Steve Jobs started Apple with his pal, Wozniak, in a garage

Bill Gates' successful break was from his mom's link to IBM's hotshot

Steve Jobs' break is based on his ingenuity and determination

Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple once - and without Steve Jobs around, Apple Inc turned into a pool of Apple jam - they actually brought out a dud - the Apple Newton

Only when the Apple Inc was in rock bottom that they brought Steve Jobs back --- and promptly with Steve's Macintosh Apple rebound

Microsoft ? With or without Bill Gates Microsoft will still be Microsoft, because Bill Gates, unlike Steve Jobs, has little or no vision

On the other hand, Apple with Steve Jobs is a jar of Apple jam

Since the departure of Steve Jobs, Apple Inc hasn't come up with any new stuff that make sense - all it got is iteration of the same-old-shit, iPad and iPhone, that's all

Comment IBM has turned into GM (Score 1) 99

by Taco Cowboy (#48945439) Attached to: Cutting Through Data Science Hype

I've never had much of a chance to use IBM offerings. What is AIX like? What is DB2 like? What is Informix like? What is Lotus like? What is WebSphere like? What is the XL C/C++ compiler like?

IBM is repeating what General Motors has been doing, putting out junks, after junks, after junks

Decades ago it didn't matter if you bought Pontiac or Chevrolet or Buick, you bought the same fucking junk

Nowadays it doesn't matter if it is Informix or WebsSphere or AIX or DB2 ... they simply don't worth their sticker price

Slashdot Top Deals

If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.

Close