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Cellphones

It's Time To Open Your Eyes 136

Morpheus writes: Good morning. I'm talking to you. Yes, you. The one with the squeaking chair and the monitor that needs cleaning. Right now you're wondering why your officemates haven't mentioned the weird story on Slashdot's front page. They haven't mentioned it because they can't see it. Not everyone can accept reality as it is. But you can.

You know. You've always known. The things you see, the things you hear, and smell — they aren't any more real than your dreams. You've drifted through life so far wondering when you're going to wake up. But you don't have to wonder anymore. This is your alarm clock. The only decision you have left to make — the only decision you've ever had to make — is whether you want to wake up, or turn it off and drift back to sleep. In exactly two minutes, your phone is going to ring. If you want to open your eyes, to be born into a world more real than you've ever imagined.. answer it.
Wikipedia

If You Thought Studying History Was Bad, This Math Professor Is Making It Harder 75

Raven writes: New research out of Streeling University aims to make planning for the future much easier. The work, led by professor Seldon, tries to set probabilistic values on future events, and then weigh those probabilities against each other to figure out what combination of events is most likely to happen. Describing it under the unlikely moniker "psychohistory," Seldon seems to think planning even 10,000 years into the future might be possible. (Seldon also seems to be a bit of a doomsayer, so this is likely exaggerated.) Nevertheless, it'll be another tool for government planners to consider when developing new colonies.
Worms

Coup in Arrakis Capitol Leaves Region in Flux 113

Rube_Goldberg_Mentat writes: The power struggles between rival houses Atreides and Harkonnen have come to a T. It was reported earlier today that a coup led by Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was staged in the capitol of Arrakis. The House Atreides, which had only recently taken command of the planet and of the spice trade, is reported to have no survivors, though this is yet to be confirmed.Naysayers fear a collapse of the spice economy as a result of the violence. A r presentative from House Harkonnen has shared with the press that though times ahead may be rocky, "the spice will still flow."
United Kingdom

Man-Shaped Robots Harass Britain Once Again 54

NotRicky writes: The UK's terrible string of luck with violent robots continues. The man-shaped metal monstrosities that have plagued the country at seemingly random times throughout history rose up once more yesterday. No one yet knows their source, or what phenomenon — natural or man-made — keeps drawing them to that area of the world. While initial reports indicated trillions of dollars worth of damage and countless lives lost, the re-establishment of communications paints a much more hopeful picture. The British government remains quiet about the situation, politely refusing foreign aid and letting one of their intelligence agencies direct efforts to restore order. Reporters and camera crews are having difficulty documenting the situation — it's not clear whether this is due to interference from the government or simply the chaotic nature of the robot uprising. A medical professional on the scene was quoted as saying, "It's simple, really — even the flattened brick you call a computer can undelete, can't it?"
Science

Corporation Investigates Spurious Signal -- What They Found Will Shock You 85

Mother_01101 writes: The Weyland-Yutani Corporation announced today one of the most fantastic discoveries in human existence: alien life! Colony LV-426 made first contact, and one of W-Y Corp's long-term research vessels, Nostromo, has gone to provide assistance and bring these life forms home to engage in peaceful learning and negotiation. Initial reports from Nostromo indicate all has gone well, though they're now under radio silence for security purposes. W-Y Corp says they will, of course, honor all quarantine procedures and do everything they can to make sure the transition goes smoothly. Their CEO reminded us: "Safety is paramount!"

Comment Re:Stupid is as stupid publishes.... (Score 1) 486

It's such a common case that Java will usually optimize looped string concat into a StringBuilder now. I imagine Python does the same thing.

The performance probably still sucks because the buffer needs re-allocating periodically (in StringBuilder, it doubles each time), but not as much as it would in VB6 which has no such cleverness in it's immutable string type. There's also all the garbage collection overhead for all those discarded byte arrays.

Would be more interested to see a benchmark if they declared the StringBuilder with a buffer of the size they expected to use.

Comment Stupid premise - apples and oranges (Score 1) 486

They're only examining the performance of concatenating immutable strings, versus the performance of writing to a (buffered) stream.

This is a problem that's been known about for donkey's ages. It's just that computers are so stupidly powerful it's no longer an issue that many programmers ever have to confront.

In VB6 you had to jump through hoops to do it properly, but it's such a common case in Java that the compiler will optimize repeated concatenations in a loop into using a StringBuilder instead. I presume Python has similar optimizations.

I used to just stick all the strings in an array, allocate a new string of the appropriate length, and copy them into it.

News at 11 : many less experienced programmers are ignorant of the internal workings of their chosen frameworks, because they never had to write their own implementation at a lower level.

Comment Re: Why are people bullying? (Score 2) 353

Weird that we disapprove of Nazis so much isn't it? Kinda like meta-bullying.

or - fuck off.

*Especially* today, where technology can magnify the effects of an individual so greatly, some population of individuals being different is essential to the progress of the species. If we're all the same, we're all doomed to die as the ocean displaces us inland and the biosphere is ruined by our over-exploitation.

It's a genuine mechanism, but one that evolved to serve the selfish gene. The problem is that your fate (and the fate of your genes) no longer depends on your local tribe, but on the greater race of humanity. It's highly likely (whoever you are) that the solutions to our 21st century problems are not going to emerge solely from you and your immediate geneology, or from folks that think like you, dress like you, etc. So it's now become a retrogressive, anti-survival behaviour.

I'd humbly suggest that you go remove yourself from the gene pool... if that wasn't an example of the very behaviour we must overcome. I hope someone changes your mind and you find peace in this world of increasing diversity.

Comment Re:I guess she got tired of blaming weed... (Score 4, Insightful) 353

Physical violence as a behavioral teaching mechanism is both lazy and bad parenting.

If you use it frequently I agree.

I've had to use it precisely once. It's fine for establishing a baseline in young children, because they don't accept abstract arguments. If they ever question another punishment regime like the naughty step, that's where you have to go - you'll have to deploy some sort of violence, even if it's physically restraining them so they stay put on the naughty step.

Consistency is key. If you arbitrarily deal out physical violence you'll find your kids doing it too. If you make it the ultimate sanction, you'll rarely have to use it.

I suspect most of the problems with the use of violence are not with it's use as a discipline, but as an emotional outlet for the frustration of the parent.

Comment Re:Light levels, not computer games (Score 1) 144

Internal lighting is so much dimmer than light outside that this is probably not practical.

The eye is very accomodating and will adapt to great extremes of light.

This is credible as a mechanism. Optical acuity is improved by having a smaller pupil (this is why squinting to improve your vision is a thing - you're sacrificing light collection to reduce the number of stray unfocussed lightpaths entering your pupil). Therefore if you don't get enough light, your iris muscles will atrophy making your pupil wider.

If your lenses function perfectly this is of no consequence, but if you have imperfect lenses wider pupils will make your vision worse.

Comment Re:sOrRy ChArLiE WrOnG tUnA (Score 4, Insightful) 144

It's you who is the dumbass. Perhaps you should actually think about it, or research it, before calling people out.

This is school level physics.

The mirror doesn't emit light, it reflects it. Which means the light has the same path as before, just bounced into a different angle, convergence and everything.

Try this simple experiment - hold a mirror close by so as to reflect a tree in the distance. Hold a page of text (or a glistening penis, I suppose) next to the mirror. Focus on the text. Now focus on the tree.

Can't do both at the same time, can you?

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