Comment Bah! (Score 1) 530
There is no such thing as a single measure of IQ or a measure of general intelligence.
Anyone with a high-enough IQ could have told you that!
Comment E on Bodhi (Score 2) 117
I use Enlightenment on Bodhi Linux for my older machines and it performs wonderfully! It's fast and lean and, once it's all configured, very productive. The community forums are active and helpful, you'll even get a reply from Rasterman himself on occasion. Kudos for keeping this project alive for all those years, it keeps getting better!
Killer Convicted, Using Dog DNA Database 97
lee1 writes "It turns out that the UK has a DNA database — for dogs. And this database was recently used to apprehend a South London gang member who used his dog to catch a 16-year-old rival and hold him while he stabbed him to death. The dog was also accidentally stabbed, and left blood at the scene. The creation of human DNA databases has led to widespread debates on privacy; but what about the collation of DNA from dogs or other animals?"
The 1-Second Linux Boot 156
An anonymous reader writes "Less than one second Linux boot! This video shows an OMAP3530 capturing video data from a camera and rendering it to an LCD display — the video appears on the LCD display in less than a second from reset."
Google Buys AI Social Search Service Aardvark 41
eldavojohn writes "MIT's Tech Review is covering an acquisition it finds very interesting. Google (which recently announced Buzz) has acquired Aardvark. The review covered Aardvark and the artificial intelligence it uses in its searches in 2009."
Comment Re:Killing yourself with good intentions (Score 1) 401
Mod up the Master of Magic reference! I love that game.
Facebook Master Password Was "Chuck Norris" 319
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris.' Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."
Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2 vs. Early Fedora 13 Benchmarks 157
Given that early benchmarks of the Lucid Lynx were less than encouraging, Phoronix decided to take the latest alpha out for a spin and has set it side-by-side with an early look at Fedora 13. "Overall, there are both positive and negative performance changes for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Alpha 2 in relation to Ubuntu 9.10. Most of the negative regressions are attributed to the EXT4 file-system losing some of its performance charm. With using a pre-alpha snapshot of Fedora 13 and the benchmark results just being provided for reference purposes, we will hold off on looking into greater detail at this next Red Hat Linux update until it matures."
Tower Switch-Off Embarrasses Electrosensitives 292
Sockatume writes "Residents in Craigavon, South Africa complained of '[h]eadaches, nausea, tinnitus, dry burning itchy skins, gastric imbalances and totally disrupted sleep patterns' after an iBurst communications tower was put up in a local park. Symptoms subsided when the residents left the area, often to stay with family and thus evade their suffering. At a public meeting with the afflicted locals, the tower's owners pledged to switch off the mast immediately to assess whether it was responsible for their ailments. One problem: the mast had already been switched off for six weeks. Lawyers representing the locals say their case against iBurst will continue on other grounds."
Comment First post!~ (Score 5, Funny) 206
Yay! First post of 2009!
Comment How much CO2 is your code producing? (Score 1) 752
I was interested in how many kgs of coal a badly written Flash Ad would consume. I did some quick calculations based on the typical Wattage of a desktop and assumed a 10 second view by 1 million people over the course of a year. This assumes that the crappy Flash Ad consumed 100% of a core. I also assumed that all power comes from coal (most of it in the US does).
That's a lot of assumptions but should still get us in the "ballpark" for the final figure which, to my surprise, was quite high! I estimated that this would consume around 90 TONS OF COAL!
Looking at the figure I am convinced that I made a mistake somewhere in my reasoning, calculations or raw data but I haven't found any problems yet.
I would appreciate any interested Slashdotters to set me straight or confirm my work. Here's my blog article with all the calculations on it: http://blog.bit-matrix.com/2009/01/20/how-green-is-your-code/
Thanks.
First MySQL 5.5 Beta Released 95
joabj writes "While MySQL is the subject of much high-profile wrangling between the EU and Oracle (and the MySQL creator himself), the MySQL developers have been quietly moving the widely-used database software forward. The new beta version of MySQL, the first publicly available, features such improvements as near-asynchronous replication and more options for partitioning. A new release model has been enacted as well, bequeathing this version the title of 'MySQL Server 5.5.0-m2.' Downloads here."
Comment Re:Exit to parking lot, run in serpentine fashion! (Score 1) 407
As the old saying goes: Broke the internets once, shame you. Broke the internets twice... eh, you won't brokeded them again!
Submission + - How green is your code? (bit-matrix.com)
skaralic writes: In the Internet era, power consumption is a numbers game and small code inefficiencies when multiplied over millions of users generate real impact in terms of power usage. While you might optimize your server-size code efficiency and performance, less attention is paid to casual client-side apps. This blog article puts some numbers to a typical such scenario of a power hungry Flash widget and how much CO2 is released in the atmosphere when you brute-force or hack something that could have been done more efficiently.
