Comment Johnson controller? (Score 1) 96
I know about PID and fuzzy, but what the hell is a Johnson controller?
Climate Scientists Ask For Help Fighting Somali Pirates 300
thebchuckster writes "Scientists are seeking the help of the Australian and US navies to repel Somali pirates who are threatening one of the world's key climate monitoring programs. They hope to deploy about 20 robotic instruments in a no-go area north of Mauritius. The instruments, which record ocean heat and salinity patterns, are programmed to submerge and eventually resurface to upload their data to satellites."
In Australia, Censorship vs. DNS, and Porn As Network Driver 96
daria42 writes "Remember how Australia's planning to censor its Internet? Well, it looks as though the country's second-largest ISP, Optus, has made a stumble right out of the gate. Optus today confirmed you could circumvent its filtering technology simply by setting your PC to use a different DNS server than the default. Yup, it's really that easy. Oops."
And why would anyone want to change their DNS settings? angry tapir writes "While the Australian Government has extolled the virtues of its currently under construction National Broadband Network (NBN) in delivering e-health and government agency services to every Australian, adult content will be the major driver of consumer adoption."
Comment Re:Get rid of the penny? pff (Score 1) 444
I'm guessing you're North American? Pretty much the rest of the world sensibly includes tax in the displayed price.
The Petition to Classify Wikipedia a "World Wonder" 311
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a global petition drive has started to add Wikipedia to one of UNESCO's world heritage lists joining such historic monuments and natural sites as the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Wall of China, and the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur. 'The basic idea is to recognize that Wikipedia is this amazing global cultural phenomena that has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people,' says Jimmy Wales. 'Too often, people think about us purely in terms of technology, when this is about culture, high tech and learning.' Getting Wikipedia listed will be an uphill battle although a petition drive has already started. It will have to negotiate a complicated approval process and overcome the skeptical regard of Unesco and heritage consultants to be considered for recognition. Susan Williams, the head of external media relations at Unesco in Paris, said a bid by a digital entity like Wikipedia would be unprecedented. 'Anyone can apply,' says Williams, who added that she was not aware of Wikipedia's plans. 'But it may have difficulty fulfilling the criteria.' The problem is that to be included on the World Heritage List alongside the Great Wall of China, Wikipedia must be found 'to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius,' which it's not says Adam Chen. 'We like dorking around on Wikipedia as much as the next person,' writes Chen. 'But Wikipedia resembles less the masterpiece of a genius than the fixation of an idiot savant.'"
Why Does the US Cling To Imperial Measurements? 2288
PhunkySchtuff writes "As one of only three countries on Earth that hasn't converted to a metric system of units and measurements, there is a huge amount of resistance within the US to change the status quo. Whilst the cost of switching would be huge, there is also a massive hidden cost in not switching when dealing with the rest of the world (except for Liberia & Burma, the only other two countries that don't use the metric system) With one of the largest organisations in the US, the military, using metric units extensively, why does the general public in the US still cling to their customary system of units?"
Comment Re:Still too pricey per gig for mass storage (Score 1) 165
Which is why you get a real ATX motherboard with 4 (or 6 for upper class Intel) slots rather than a little microATX board with no expansion capability.
Every microATX motherboard I've seen in the last couple of years has four RAM slots. Both AMD and Intel.
Comment Re:"Thunderbolt SATA bus interfaces"? (Score 1) 197
Yes, somebody is probably confused, but I think we will eventually see hard drive enclosures with a Thunderbolt port on the outside and a PCI-e to SATA 3.0 bridge chip inside.
Comment Re:"real holography" (Score 5, Informative) 112
The article linked to in the article
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/video-holography-0124.html
explains the actual holographic video generation part in more detail.
They are using arrays of lasers to make fringe/interference patterns. This IS "real holography", just very low resolution and framerate.
Comment Standardization of Laptop LCD Interfaces (Score 1) 356
Hopefully this will mean that it will one day be possible to swap a laptop LCD with another one from a completely different manufacturer.
Right now every laptop manufacturer seems to use different electrical configurations, connectors and EDID.
Right now every laptop manufacturer seems to use different electrical configurations, connectors and EDID.
Comment Re:MMMMMMM! Origami! (Score 1) 84
Imagine a computer with hardware that literally reforms its self to accomplish new tasks on the fly.
Reconfigurable computing is already possible with FPGAs. You can't go and buy commodity x86-type hardware such as CPUs or GPUs just yet, but "soon" (sooner than practical nuclear fusion, later than DNF) it will happen.
