Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 127
And
3. This is not at all current academic philosophy. This is what people who still refer to things as "PC" or "un-PC" believe to be current academic philosophy.
Comment Really? (Score 1, Funny) 127
"as is often the case, truth is less interesting than reality"
Journal Journal: Exploring the Journal Space
As an achiever, and regular Slashdot reader, I figured I ought to take a stab at journaling (and perhaps some other gerundings).
The Technology Behind Formula 1 Racing 175
swandives writes "The Australian Grand Prix F1 event is being held in Melbourne this weekend (27-28 March) and Computerworld Australia has interviewed the technology teams for BMW Sauber, McLaren Racing, Red Bull Racing, and Renault about how they run their IT systems and how technology has changed the sport. Each car has about 100 sensors which capture data and send anywhere up to 20GB back to the pits during a race. The tech guys arrive a week before a race to set everything up — the kit for BMW Sauber weighs close to 3200 kilograms — and when it's all over, they pack it all up and move on to the next event. Good pics too."
Hand Written Clock 86
a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."
New WoW Patch Brings Cross-Server Instances 342
ajs writes "World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion was staggered into 4 phases. The fourth and final phase, patch 3.3, was released on Tuesday. This patch is significant in that it will be the first introduction of one of the most anticipated new features in the game since PvP arenas: the cross-realm random dungeon, as well as the release of new end-game dungeons for 5, 10 and 25-player groups. The patch notes have been posted, and so has a trailer. The ultimate fight against the expansion's antagonist, the Lich King a.k.a. Arthas, will be gated as each of the four wings of the final dungeon are opened in turn — a process that may take several months. The next major patch after 3.3 (presumably 4.0) will be the release of Cataclysm, the next expansion."
Comment Review Summary's Advie (Score 2, Interesting) 121
Wait -- I'm not supposed to read the review if I'm planning to play the game?
What if I'm not sure if I'll like the game - wouldn't reading the review be a natural way to figure out whether I should try it?
I guess if I'm undecided, I am not yet *planning* to play the game, so I should read the review. Shoot, what if I read the review and it sounds perfect for me? I will have at the same time ruined the game by exposing myself to all the spoilers.
Comment Ocean orienting (Score 5, Funny) 520
For some reason, I have a very hard time keeping east and west straight. (I'm aces on north/south.) That's been the case for as long as I can remember, but I didn't realize how I'd come to try to accommodate that problem until I moved from the east coast (where I grew up and spent my first 25 years or so) to California.
Roughly a third of the time after the move, even when I was concentrating on going the right direction, I'd get on east-west highways going the wrong way. I was living in Davis at the time, so the usual mistake was getting on the freeway towards Sacramento when I was intending to go to San Francisco. After awhile, I realized I was thinking of east as toward the ocean and west away from it.
Since then, I've moved to central Florida, so that when I get east and west confused, I can only drive for an hour and a half or so before I run into a body of water.
Copyright Should Encourage Derivative Works 136
Techdirt has an interesting look at copyright and the idea that an author is the originator of a new work. Instead, the piece suggests that all works are in some way based on the works of others (even our own copyright law), and the system should be much more encouraging of "remixing" work into new, unique experiences. "Friedman also points back to another recent post where he discusses the nature of content creation, based on a blog post by Rene Kita. In it, she points out that remixing and creating through collaboration and building on the works of others has always been the norm. It's what we do naturally. It's only in the last century or so, when we reached a means of recording, manufacturing and selling music — which was limited to just those with the machinery and capital to do it, that copyright was suddenly brought out to 'protect' such things."
FBI Files a "Secret Justification" For Gag Order 167
An anonymous reader notes a story up at Ars on the FBI's continuing penchant for secrecy. "Clearly, the FBI isn't ready to give up its Bush-era secrecy addition just yet. ...in the case of Doe v. Holder, the FBI is carrying out a secret investigation using secret guidelines on what is and is not constitutional, and as part of that investigation they've compelled the secrecy of a service provider and are using a secret justification to argue that nobody's First Amendment rights are being violated."
John Hodgman Asks Obama, "Are You a Nerd?" 147
Hugh Pickens writes "Watch a video of comedian John Hodgman speak after Barack Obama at the recent Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in DC and discuss the central question of our age: "how we can heal the great and shameful division that has plagued our nation for so long — the age old conflict between jocks and nerds" and ask Obama: Are you now, or have you ever been, a nerd?"
Where Does a Geek Find a Social Life? 1354
JustShootMe writes "I have a question for my fellow Slashdotters, and yes, I realize I am entering the lion's den covered in tasty meat-flavored sauce. I have never been a very social person, preferring to throw myself into technology; therefore, I've been spectacularly unsuccessful in developing any meaningful interpersonal relationships. Lately I have begun to feel that this situation is not tenable, and I would like to fix it. But I really don't know how and haven't the faintest idea where to start. I know that I am in the minority and that there are many different kinds of Slashdot readers, most of whom have more experience in this realm than I do. So please tell me: how, and more importantly, where do you meet fellow geeks — preferably including some of the opposite gender — in meatspace?"
Defining an Interactive Physical MMO For the iPhone 124
already-living-in-a-virtual-world writes "On his blog, mispeled writes about a new type of game he'd like to see for the iPhone. It's interesting stuff: '... the integration of a true gaming platform with the capabilities of a phone is unique, at least for the quality of the gaming experience offered. For all intents and purposes, the iPhone is a new system. And new systems demand that new gameplay mechanics be explored. For a long time I've been a fan of the MMORPG genre, and the iPhone offers several MMO-type games, especially those in the facebook, social-networking style. However, what I've yet to see is a game that takes advantage of the iPhone's location services, the GPS-like capability of the phone. Tons of applications use it, but no games, as far as I've seen. Why not? Motion sensing is all the rage on the consoles — the Wii popularized it, but now Microsoft and Sony are jumping on the bandwagon. But the iPhone, because it's portable, offers something more. And I want those offerings taken advantage of. I want to play an MMO that knows where I am and links my physical location to a virtual location. I want to create a game that gives the planet Earth a virtual overlay, interactable via a mobile (read: the iPhone) interface.'"
Kilometer-High Waves Flow In Saturn's Rings 31
An anonymous reader sends along a Cosmos Magazine piece on the discovery by NASA's Cassini probe of vertical structures in Saturn's rings, 150 times as high as the rings are thick. The structures were seen because a once-every-15-years orientation of the rings caused vertical features to cast visible shadows. "NASA's Cassini probe has uncovered for the first time towering vertical structures in Saturn's otherwise flat rings that are attributable to the gravitational effects of a small moon. 'We thought that this vertical structure was pretty neat when we first saw it in our simulations,' said John Weiss, the paper's lead author at the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations in the US city of Boulder, Colorado. 'But it's a million times cooler to have your theory supported by such gorgeous images. It makes you suspect you might be doing something right,' he added." Update: 06/17 19:29 GMT by KD : The CICLOPS team sent a note correcting the attribution of the quote; the linked article also had it wrong, and has since been corrected.
Is China Creating the World's Largest Botnet Army? 195
david_a_eaves writes "The Chinese government is mandating that all computers sold in China come with Internet blocking software. Rob Cottingham writes an excellent piece noting how the censorship application of this software should be the least of our concerns. This new software may create an opportunity for the Chinese Government to appropriate these computers and use them to create the worlds largest botnet army."
Update: 06/11 21:26 GMT by T : J. Alex Halderman writes "My students and I have been examining the Green Dam censorware software. We've found serious vulnerabilities that can be exploited by any web site a user visits with the software installed. We also found that some of the blacklists seems to have been taken from the American-made filtering program CyberSitter. We've posted a report and demo."
