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Comment what a shame (Score 1) 303

If that's what she said, it's tragic other than funny. This administration of sad clowns, old thieves, and incompetent assholes (except perhaps the finance minister) has to go. The sooner the better. And i say it as an Italian who lives in LA but goes back yearly and still loves his country.

Software

Submission + - MIT Blackjack King Takes SMTP Public (xconomy.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Semyon Dukach is at it again. Thumbing his nose at the establishment, that is. Dukach, a former leader of the MIT blackjack team, has taken his small company, SMTP, public today in the hopes of overturning the field of e-mail delivery and management. SMTP might sound boring, but it's the latest vehicle in Dukach's quest to "make a couple billion and then try to help the world" (without the aid of venture capitalists or investment bankers). Given his track record, people might not want to bet against him.

Comment Re:capitalists take note (Score 1) 398

While the Chinese government IS corrupt and totalitarian, (and you might call it oligarghy), i would still classify it as a government that has big power, not as a corporation. They have 50 years economic deployment plans (no corporation usually bothers to do long-term thinking), and they seem (to me at least) to care about the well being and instruction of the people or things like growth and redistribution of resources, if anything for self preservation. E.g. they also do stuff like funding universities left and right, worrying about basic research and the like.

Heck, they actually own several corporation. The difference between to own and being owned is whether decisions are dictated by short term profits or not, and for now it definitely seems not. Actually i think the staggering success of the Chinese economics politics in the last decades is that they have made use of free market rules (capitalism, if you like that definition) BUT the government has serious power to dictate the rules and distribute the resources at will. Whether it will stay like that or even Chinese government will eventually be owned by corporations it's early to say.

The fact that human rights for common people in china are not existent or not enforced does not seem to play a big part one way of another. In fact while you can make the case that human rights are sometimes a limit to corporate behavior in the US, (but that is a very optimistic view IMO), you can also make the case that corporations in the US are treated as people, so they can also use "people" rules to have it their way, in addition to paying lobbyists to create the rules they want.

Image

Woman Sues Google Over Street View Shots of Her Underwear 417

Kittenman writes "The Telegraph (and several US locals) are covering a story about a Japanese woman who had her underwear on the line while the Google car went past. She is now suing Google: 'I was overwhelmed with anxiety that I might be the target of a sex crime,' the woman told a district court. 'It caused me to lose my job and I had to change my residence.'"
Crime

Geologists Might Be Charged For Not Predicting Quake 375

mmmscience writes "In 2009, a series of small earthquakes shook the region of L'Aquila, Italy. Seismologists investigated the tremors, but concluded that there was no direct indication of a big quake on the horizon. Less than a month later, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake killed more than 300 people. Now, the chief prosecutor of L'Aquila is looking to charge the scientists with gross negligent manslaughter for not predicting the quake."

Comment only half true (Score 1) 334

While this is not implemented natively, (or at least not until you use the fixed point tools to auto-generate some code for a 64bit machine), you can do a lot of fixed point math with the fixed point toolbox:

For example:

>> x=fi(5,1,64,0,'SumMode','KeepLSB');
>> y=fi(23,1,64,0,'SumMode','KeepLSB');
>> x+y

ans =

        28

                    DataTypeMode: Fixed-point: binary point scaling
                        Signedness: Signed
                        WordLength: 32
                FractionLength: 0

                          RoundMode: nearest
                    OverflowMode: saturate
                      ProductMode: FullPrecision
    MaxProductWordLength: 128
                              SumMode: KeepLSB
                  SumWordLength: 32
                  CastBeforeSum: true

The documentation is here:
http://www.mathworks.com/products/fixed/

It is true that you need the fp toolbox to do that, though.

Image

Woman Creates 3-D Erotic Book For the Blind 113

Lisa J. Murphy has written an erotic book with tactile images for that special visually impaired porn connoisseur in your life. Tactile Mind contains explicit softcore raised images, along with Braille text and photos. From the article: "A photographer with a certificate in Tactile Graphics from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Murphy learned to create touchable images of animals for books for visually impaired children. Then she realized that there was a lack of such books for adults only. 'There are no books of tactile pictures of nudes for adults, at least the last time I looked around,' says Murphy. 'We're breaking new ground. Playboy has [an edition with] Braille wording, but there are no pictures.' She says that while we live in a culture saturated with sexual images, the blind have been 'left out.'"
Space

Geomagnetic Storm In Progress 110

shogun writes "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports a strong geomagnetic storm is in progress. The shuttle, ISS and GPS systems may be affected." They think this storm was caused by a weak solar flare on April 3rd. As you may expect, this has caused some unusually impressive northern lights since it started. What you may not expect is a photograph from Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi aboard the International Space Station showing the aurora from orbit. He apparently tweets a lot of pictures from space. He and his crewmates have taken over 100,000 pictures since coming aboard the ISS.
Image

Disputed Island Disappears Into Sea 460

RawJoe writes "India and Bangladesh have argued for almost 30 years over control of a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have ended the argument for them: the island's gone. From the article: 'New Moore Island, in the Sunderbans, has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said. "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.'"
GNOME

Ubuntu's "Lucid Lynx" Enters Beta 366

ActionDesignStudios writes "The upcoming release of Ubuntu, titled 'Lucid Lynx,' has just entered the beta cycle. Alongside the usual desktop and server versions, a special version has been released that is designed to run on Amazon's EC2 cloud service. This release of Ubuntu does away with the brown 'Human' Gnome theme we've all become accustomed to, replaced by a new version Canonical says is inspired by light. The new release also includes much better integration with social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook, among others."

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