quibus - Slashdot User

Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernova 21

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday November 28, 2009 @01:50PM from the that's-a-big-star dept.

davecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well as a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."

Comment It's just painful (Score 2, Insightful) 76

by quibus on Saturday October 24, 2009 @09:16AM (#29856037) Attached to: MySpace Trying To Regain Lost Ground With Games and Music

In my humble opinion, MySpace is just too painful to be true:

1) it tells me to install Flash, while I have it installed and working fine on other sites (using even proprietary Flash 10 on my Debian amd64 box)
2) it doesn't have a single way to give feedback to the administrators of MySpace (e.g. for issue 1)
3) it's a pain to the eyes to see most MySpace pages. Things are messed up, bad color schemes, hardly any well-thought about layout.

Who needs MySpace?

Unfortunately, many music composers seem to like it... :(

Barack Obama Wins the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize 1721

Posted by kdawson on Friday October 09, 2009 @08:52AM from the taliban-not-happy dept.

Barack Obama has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The BBC opines: "In awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian committee is honoring his intentions more than his achievements. After all he has been in office only just over eight months and he will presumably hope to serve eight years, so it is very early in his term to get this award. ... The committee does not make any secret of its approach. It states that he is being given the prize 'for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples.' This is of course an implied criticism of former US president George W Bush and the neo-conservatives, who were often accused of trying to change the world in their image." The Washington Post collects more reactions from around the world.

Jazz Technical Lead Erich Gamma Answers Your Questions 54

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday July 08, 2009 @03:30PM from the direct-line-to-the-experts dept.

Last week you asked Jazz technical lead Erich Gamma questions about Jazz or anything else in his realm of expertise. Here are his answers, along with many external links and places to continue the conversation if you are interested.

ScummVM 0.13.0 Delivers New Adventure Games 69

Posted by Soulskill on Friday March 06, 2009 @07:16AM from the ever-expanding-selection dept.

KingofGnG writes "The classics, by definition, never go out of fashion, let alone if they are the graphic adventures of past decades. The preferred tool of true adventurers is ScummVM, software that works as an interpreter between data files of such adventures and modern operating systems. 6 months after the release of version 0.12.0, developers have now delivered a new main release of the virtual machine, which includes novelties both for the interface and supported games."

QT 4.5 Released, Plus New IDE and Analysis Tool 62

Posted by timothy on Tuesday March 03, 2009 @11:41AM from the cute-train-is-the-q-train dept.

stoolpigeon writes "QT 4.5 has arrived and is now available for download. This new release is quite significant due to licensing changes that now make it simpler to use QT in a wider range of products without cost as well as a number of new features. The latest version of Webkit is now integrated into the product. Qt 4.5 sees the introduction of QtBenchLib, a new component to make measuring the performance of the toolkit and checking for regressions easier. Mac developers who use Qt will note a major reworking of 4.5 on the Mac, now providing 64-bit support. QT Creator is a new IDE that looks to have combined a number of previously separate tools. And there is much more."

The Broken Design of Microsoft's "Fix it" Tool 165

Posted by kdawson on Friday February 06, 2009 @12:52PM from the teething-problems dept.

$luggo writes "Curious about MS Fix It, I recently went hunting in the MS knowledge base for articles that provide the new EZ-button. After locating on few, I decided to click the button to download the Microsoft Installer package containing the executable and/or files that automatically enable the DVD Library feature in Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate — on my XP Media Center. 'Surely, MS will use some scripting, HTTP User-Agent sniffing, or even Genuine Windows validation to verify that I am running Vista,' I thought. It did not and I canceled the download when I received the prompt to save the file. So, I wonder: is there a Fix-it for Fix it? Because I can easily imagine someone doing what I did without scrolling to the bottom of the KB article and verifying that the article applies to their OS/version. This is a great example poor design. Why not simply use the download approach that other articles / fixes / service packs use, whereby the user must select the appropriate OS?"

New Google Favicon Deja Vu All Over Again? 227

Posted by timothy on Sunday January 11, 2009 @08:52PM from the matters-of-deep-significance dept.

theodp writes "Last June, Google rolled out a new favicon, the small branding icon that graces your URL bar when you visit Google. Which, as it turned out, bore a striking similarity to Garth Brooks' Circle-G logo. Well, Google went back to the drawing board and has come back with a new favicon, which it says was inspired by — not copied from, mind you — its users' submitted ideas. Some are also seeing inspiration elsewhere for the new favicon, which consists of white 'g' on a background of four color swatches. Take the AVG antivirus icon, for instance. Or everybody's favorite memory toy, Simon. Or — in perhaps the unkindest cut of all — the four-color Microsoft Windows logo, shown here with a superimposed white '7'. Anything else come to mind?" What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.

Submission + - Intel, Microsoft sell 150,000 laptops to Libya (zdnet.com)

Submitted by

quibus

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @05:12PM

quibus writes: "ZDNet has a story about the fate of the XO laptop in Libya:

"Intel and Microsoft are supplying Libya's government with 150,000 rugged laptop computers that cost $200 to build and are designed to meet the needs of children in developing countries."

Didn't they have plans to order a lot of XO's instead?

However, according to an Intel spokeswoman:
"She also said that Intel had signed up Nigeria as a Classmate PC customer, though she said she did not know how many machines the government would order, or whether they would run on Windows or the rival Linux operating system. Classmate PCs are capable of running both types of software."

Maybe there is still hope for Nigeria..."

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