Comment Re:I wish he wouldn't have admitted it immediately (Score 3, Funny) 112
Surely Slashdot readers are too smart to fall for this kind of thing anyway? ;-)
Comment which 90% (Score 3, Insightful) 224
Which 90% though?
Like the Coca Cola exec who remarked that he was pretty sure half of his advertising budget was wasted, he just wasn't sure which half.
China Ditches Compulsory Green Dam Plans 76
scrubl writes "China has ditched plans to force foreign and domestic computer manufacturers to install internet filtering technology in computers sold inside its borders. The Chinese government paid $5.85m to develop the software called Green Dam and claimed it was being installed to stop access to porn on computers and protect children. China's industry and information technology minister Li Yizhong said that manufacturers, Internet users, and organisations opposed to the plans had received the wrong message from his department and that installation was never planned to be compulsory."
Comment Acquine may assign funny scores... (Score 5, Insightful) 125
From the Acquine website
"A rule of thumb is that if the aesthetic quality of a photo is obvious to most people, it may not be worthwhile to seek Acquine's opinion on it because Acquine may assign funny scores in such cases."
So in cases where the correct score is obvious, Acquine's score can't be trusted? That rather neatly avoids validation or refutation of Acquine's results. This is suspicious and seems to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of its score in less obvious cases.
Libel Suits OK Even If Libel Is Truthful 301
Defeat Globalism writes to tell us that many journalists, bloggers, and media law specialists are concerned about a new ruling by a US Court of Appeals in Boston. The new ruling is allowing a former Staples employee to sue the company for libel after an email was sent out informing other employees that he had been fired for violations of company procedures regarding expense reimbursements. "Staples has asked the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling, and 51 news organizations have filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying that the decision, if allowed to stand, 'will create a precedent that hinders the media's ability to rely on truthful publication to avoid defamation liability.' But Wendy Sibbison, the Greenfield appellate lawyer for the fired Staples employee, Alan S. Noonan, said the ruling applies only to lawsuits by private figures against private defendants, that is, defendants not involved in the news business, over purely private matters."
Jet Pack Runs For Hours On Water 268
Ponca City, We love you writes "Jet packs have been around for half a century, but there's always been one problem: they run out of fuel in around 30 seconds. Now a German company has taken the standard jet pack design, run a fat yellow hose out the back, and connected it to a small unmanned boat that houses an engine, pump, and fuel tank and sends pressurized water up the hose, where it's shot out by two nozzles just behind the wearer's shoulders. Called the JetLev-Flyer, the design purportedly can reach a height of 15 meters, a speed of 72 kph, and a range of 300 kilometers based on four hours of flying time. A digital fly-by-wire system is used to control the throttle. Future designs may achieve higher altitudes, higher top speeds, and extended range, and even travel below the water's surface. The American manufacturers claim it is 'amazingly easy to learn and operate' and they're taking orders now at $130,000 each."
Facebook Nudity Policy Draws Nursing Moms' Ire 904
HSRD writes "Web-savvy moms who breast-feed are irate that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace restrict photos of nursing babies. The disputes reveal how the sites' community policing techniques sometimes struggle to keep up with the booming number and diversity of their members."
Comment low energy efficiency? (Score 1) 603
Vague memories from my physics degree suggest that as much energy is wasted while charging the capacitor as is actually stored in it. See eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor#Power_dissipation.
Does this mean that this system could only ever be 50% efficient? Does anyone know whether similar physics applies to battery systems?
Which OS Performs Best With SSDs? 255
Lucas123 writes "Linux, Vista and Mac OS perform differently with solid state disks. While all of them work well with SSDs, as they write data more efficiently or run fewer applications in the background than XP, surprisingly Windows 2000 appears to be the winner when it comes to performance. However, no OS has yet been optimized to work with SSDs. This lost opportunity is one Microsoft plans to address with Windows 7; Apple, too, is likely to upgrade its platform soon for better SSD performance."
