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Comment Re:Just emulation anyway, not a reimplementation (Score 1) 110

by dr_blurb (#48545709) Attached to: Spectrum Vega: A Blast From the Past

If I was a Spectrum fanatic, I'd want something that was either a "true" reimplementation of the original Spectrum and/or something that looked and could be used like the original Spectrum- possibly with additional features or connectivity, but retaining the original features.

I don't care. If Sir Clive Sinclair is behind it, then I'm getting one :-)

Comment money making racket (Score 3, Funny) 307

by dr_blurb (#48416509) Attached to: UK Hotel Adds Hefty Charge For Bad Reviews Online

They must do it on purpose: set up a crap hotel, put the 100 pound fine in the small print: profit!

At http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/H... the place has 147 "terrible" ratings and 24 "poor" == 17100 pounds (about $26800) (!)

If they're smart they'll diversify: Bad review on tripadvisor: 100 pounds. Badmouthing tweet to 1000 followers or more: 500 pounds. Negative letter to paper: 500 pounds and 20 lashes. Bad review in paper: you forfeit all your bank accounts.

All hotels should do this. The Great Hotel Vengeance of 2015. In fact all reviews of any book, film, hotel, ebay seller, etc. should be included. Ah well anybody who says anything bad about anything ever. 100 pounds please.

Comment Re:Sturdy (Score 1) 304

by dr_blurb (#48100815) Attached to: The Greatest Keyboard Ever Made

A keyboard should be tough enough to beat a man to death with. And then use to write his obituary.

Wasn't the original quote something like:
"The only keyboard you can beat a user to death with, and then use it to delete his account?"

:-)

Comment Windows 10? (Score 1) 545

by dr_blurb (#47924617) Attached to: What To Expect With Windows 9

Can't we just start talking about Windows 10 already, and how it will fix the problems with Windows 9?

And will it have minecraft as the default user interface? (it should, get 'em while they're young)

Submission + - a Slashdot/Hackaday type site for programming nuggets?

Submitted by dr_blurb
dr_blurb writes: Is Slashdot no longer a place for posting stories about good programming hacks?

Recently there were stories about visualizing algorithms and about a Tetris in 140 bytes, but typically the programming stories are about IDEs/editors, programming education, software releases, and the merits of Javascript/Perl/PHP/Python/C++ etc.

Is there a site out there where programmers can submit their pet projects like on Slashdot, or maybe sites like Hackaday?

Submission + - San Onofre nuclear power plant dismantling will cost $4.4 billion, take 20 years (nanaimodailynews.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Dismantling the San Onofre nuclear power plant in Southern California will take two decades and cost $4.4 billion.

Southern California Edison on Friday released a road map that calls for decommissioning the twin-reactor plant and restoring the property over two decades, beginning in 2016.

U-T San Diego (http://bit.ly/1oZUoTU ) says it could be the most expensive decommissioning in the 70-year history of the nuclear power industry. But Edison CEO Ted Craver says there's already enough money to pay for it.

Edison shut down the plant in 2012 after extensive damage was found to tubes carrying radioactive water. It was closed for good last year.

Submission + - The high-tech warfare behind the Israel - Hamas conflict (timesofisrael.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: The Israel — Hamas conflict in Gaza is not only about bombs, missiles, bullets, but also about cyberwarfare, battles of the mind over social media, smart underground tunnels and cloud-based missile launching systems

The tunnels that Hamas has dug deep beneath Gaza are embedded with high tech gadgets, courtesy of Qatar, which has funded Hamas with billions to equipped their tunnels with intelligent sensors which are networked to control centers enabling the command and control staff to quickly notify operatives nearby that IDF units are advancing inside a certain tunnel, allowing for rapid deployment of attack units and the setting up of bobby traps inside the tunnel

In addition, Hamas has automated its rocket firing system using networked, cloud-based launching software provided by Qatar which can set off a rocket from any distance, and set them to go off at a specific time, using timers. “Anyone who thinks they have dozens of people sitting next to launchers firing rockets each time there is a barrage is mistaken,” said Aviad Dadon, a senior cyber-security adviser at several Israeli government ministries

While Doha is allowing Hamas to use its technology to fight Israel, it’s their own cyber-security the leaders of Qatar are worried about. For the Qataris, the war between Israel and Hamas is a proving ground to see how their investments in cyber systems have paid of — Qatar is very worried that one of its Gulf rivals — specifically Saudi Arabia — will use technology to attack it, and Qatar spends a great deal of money each year on shoring up its cyber-technology

Submission + - "Real" Computer Scientists 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At work yesterday, I overheard a programmer explaining his perception of the quality of the most recent CS grads. In his opinion, CS students who primarily learn Java are inferior because they don't have to deal with memory management as they would if they used C. As a current CS student who's pursing a degree after 10 years of experience in the IT field, I have two questions for my fellow Slashdoters: "Is this a common concern with new CS grads?" and, if so, "What can I do to supplement my Java-oriented studies?"

Submission + - Solving logic puzzles in FORTRAN

Submitted by dr_blurb
dr_blurb writes: Computational nanoscientist Surendra Jain has written solvers for Sudoku, Killer Sudoku, Samurai Sudoku, Calcudoku, Kakuro and many other logic problems.

All are elegantly coded and very fast: for example, the "World's Hardest Sudoku" is solved in 0.05 seconds (on a 5 year old PC) and his Knight's Tour solver is an order of magnitude faster than this one.

The page (called "Classical Geek") has all source (in Fortran 90) as well as compilation and running instructions.

Submission + - Is K-12 CS Education the Next Common Core?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In an interview with The Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton that accompanied her report on How Bill Gates Pulled Off the Swift Common Core Revolution (the Gates Foundation doled out $233 million in grants to git-r-done), Gates denied that he has too much influence in K-12 education. Despite Gates' best efforts, however, there's been more and more pushback recently from both teachers and politicians on the standards, GeekWire's Taylor Soper reports, including a protest Friday by the Badass Teacher Association, who say Gates is ruining education. “We want to get corporations out of teaching,” explained one protester. If that's the case, the "Badasses" probably won't be too pleased to see how the K-12 CS education revolution is shaping up, fueled by a deep-pocketed alliance of Gates, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and others. Google alone has already committed $90 million to influence CS education. And well-connected Code.org, which has struck partnerships with school districts reaching over 2M U.S. students and is advising NSF-funded research related to the nation's CS 10K Project, will be conducting required professional development sessions for K-12 CS teachers out of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offices this summer in Chicago, New York City, Boston, and Seattle. So, could K-12 CS Education ("Common Code"?) become the next Common Core?

Submission + - 9 Optimizations to make your Linux Desktop fly like a Rocket! (prahladyeri.com)

Submitted by prahladyeri
prahladyeri writes: This article is the result of notes I’ve prepared during tweaking, twisting and optimizing ubuntu variants over the last few years. In case you use any other distro, some of these settings may not be applicable to you. For best results, these changes must be done on top of a fresh installation, otherwise chances of things breaking increase a bit.

Submission + - TrueCrypt author claims that forking is impossible (pastebin.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On a request from Matthew Green to fork the TrueCrypt code, the author answers that this is impossible. He says that this might be no good idea, because the code needs a rewrite, but he allows to use the existing code as a reference.

"I am sorry, but I think what you're asking for here is impossible. I don't feel that forking TrueCrypt would be a good idea, a complete rewrite was something we wanted to do for a while. I believe that starting from scratch wouldn't require much more work than actually learning and understanding all of truecrypts current codebase.

I have no problem with the source code being used as reference."

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