So are we giving up on the idea of some sort of low metabolism sleep state?

Nah. Some frozen sperm is all that is needed. The rest of a male is unnecessary.

Because pressure can give information on what altitude you are at which enables GPS to find your position faster and more accurately.

Provided it's calibrated to the proper atmospheric pressure where you are. Simple weather changes can easily shift your altitude 100 feet either way making it no more reliable than a GPS fix. Granted, if you can obtain the local sea level pressure where you are, you can beat GPS quite handily. But if you can't, you're pretty much guessing your altitude.

In Germany, it's written all the way into the Constitution. The very first article reads (in official translation), "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." The second article, about personal development, specifically limits it to development that doesn't contradict the previous part.

That doesn't make the definitions any more concrete, but it does suggest that it's a country which takes it seriously, and the requirement pervades the rest of the national law. I don't know if that can be adopted into a country like the US, where a great many people want their First Amendment rights to trump everything else. I can even see the case for it. It's just that I hear it defended most vocally by people who aren't in a position to be harassed and don't see the way it can interfere with the rest of their lives.

This isn't a software division, it's not even like their server hardware division, it's chipmaking. It's kind of a go-big-or-go-home game where your competitors -- well-funded types like, say, Intel -- can easily pour many billions of dollars into next-generation fabrication processes and equipment which will readily put any half-assed investment to shame. I don't think IBM's chip business has the customer base to make "go big" profitable, or any reasonable plan to acquire new customers, so "go home" makes a lot of sense here.

No, the big reason why is that their big customers are leaving.

IBM supplied chips for the Wii, PS3 and Xbox360. With those consoles being last-gen nowadays, IBM's chipmaking fab is dead.

Apple dumped IBM when IBM couldn't produce enough chips that Apple wanted (it's why AMD will remain a non-starter - Apple's been screwed twice by chipmakers who just could not make what they said they could make - Motorola (twice - 68K and PowerPC) and IBM. Intel's pretty much the only one that has spare capacity. Even Samsung had to build a new fab just for Apple (for their SoCs - who knows about stuff like flash chips and such which Apple buys a ton of).

IBM would've had to spinoff the fabs then, but right around the transition, well, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all stormed in IBM's door. Both the PPUs and Xenon cores are stripped down G5s and initial availability was limited because IBM couldn't make the chips fast enough. It's why there are 3 cores on the Xenon.

But now that everyone's gone AMD, well...

Funny, Apple has this thing called iAd where you pay Apple to place targeted ads

And given the limited reach of iAds over say, Google's AdMob, there is no justifiable business case to use it. AdMob is cheaper, Google is far more accommodating, and you can reach Android, iOS and every other device with AdMob.

iAds is a serious joke - they had to reduce the minimum buy from $1M to $100K. It's probably only there to satisfy "competition" guidelines so Google can have AdMob. (As in, Google is probably by far the largest revenue source for iAds purely meant to keep up the appearance of competition).

No sane person uses iAds. Which explains why the ads are all either for apps (developers get a special deal), or about iAds itself.

Being a Commonwealth country, we still have lots and lots of WW1 issue rifles, making their use very cost effective. The only reason the Canadian Forces wants to replace it is because nobody has made parts for them in decades, so things like firing pins and trigger springs are becoming scarce.

Canada actually has a pile of them brand-new-in-box as new-old-stock. They bought a pile of them and every new ranger gets a brand new one even though they've not been made in years.

The real problem is well, that stock is diminishing and it's probably a good idea to have a replacement ready before the last one is issued.

Ad revenue.

SlashDice isn't about supporting anything which doesn't generate revenue for Dice.

Give me a break. Since when is good science disseminated by press release?

I remember when Fleischmann and Pons pulled a similar stunt. That turned out to be bunk too.

What do we want? Evidence driven change
When do we want it? After peer review.

Admittedly, the R code was probably horrible, but I inherited some of it, so I can't take all the blame. On the other hand, I'm really good at squeezing good performance out of C++.

This reminds me of the big hullabaloo Paul Graham made about how superior Lisp is because he was able to make more quickly adapt web back-ends for some website he'd done. I think attribution of this success to the language is misplaced -- his implenentation was more adaptable simply because he was a superior programmer, and Lisp probably only helped a little bit.

Ah, now it becomes clear. I'm sorry your parents are not properly looking after you and letting you loose on the internet without adult supervision. When you grow up hopefully you'll become mature enough to realize that your parents can't be responsible for you for your entire life and that at some point you have to grow up and take responsibility for yourself.

Indeed even by the time you reach ten you'll probably be able figure out the massive logical hole in your argument that parents should be responsible for their kids for life which is simply that even your parents had parents. Hence, if we accept your argument the first humans to evolve would be responsible for the entire human race and everyone else can just sit back and relax and never have to worry about taking responsibility for anything ever again.

Given your logical reasoning skills I'd also suggest that you stop trying to tell people what they really believe or think, unless it is something like "wow, this person is nuts": you'll probably come across as telepathic if you tell them they are thinking that.

I imagine Beats/Apple isn't too happy with Bose's shenanigans regarding telling NFL players they can't wear their Beats headphones until 90 minutes after the end of the game.

Of course the players do it anyway, and Beats apparently pays the fines for them... but still.

Incidentally, the NFL isn't doing very well with regards to their endorsement deals - first Microsoft, and now Bose.

The problem is you have a conflict of endorsements.

The NFL is being paid directly by Microsoft and Bose to promote their stuff - Microsoft and Bose can put "Official NFL Product" on those things.

The problem is, the teams and players don't really see much of that money because it goes straight into the league. Sure, they may get a few bucks in the way of stadium improvements and such, but you can bet most of that money isn't going into their paycheques.

So the players and teams often have their OWN endorsement deals. This money goes directly to the team and the players themselves. Sure some goes back to the NFL in terms of league fees and whatnot, but it's extra income for the team and player.

So what's a player to do? Be forced to wear Bose which nets them ZERO dollars in the end? Or wear their Beats which nets them millions in extra dollars in their pocket?

It's obvious why the players are defying the rule. And in fact, you have to admit, it's getting a LOT of marketing for Beats as well - I mean, they're being fined, in public, for wearing Beats. With photos. In the news. Now what is better marketing - the player wearing it on the field or a news conference, or having it plastered all over the news with closeups of the offense with news they're being fined for wearing Beats headphones (and barely a Bose mention!).

It's actually kind of brilliant marketing - Bose gets made out to be the bad guy, and Beats gets plastered all over the news section, so much so that the $10,000 fine is well worth it - marketing expense.

List of NFL Finable Offenses, with fines.

Heck, one wonders if they're going to get a bunch of stickers to stick over their Bose headphones with the iconic "b". I mean, it doesn't get more interesting than that - they wear Bose headphones, but they're sporting the "b" that clearly indicates Beats.

Do you hear nothing? No, you hear a background roar of muffly rumblings.

Actually, a small (but not insignificant" amount of sound comes from around the ear as well - bone conduction can transfer the lower bass notes to the ear directly (it's why you can't have perfect silence except by being in an anechoic chamber). Of course, your ears when wearing ear defenders does crank up its gain - people in anechoic chambers do report hearing blood rushing through their veins in the ears, their heartbeats, etc. All noise conducted through the body.

It can get pretty freaky.

I shamefully admit clicking on it at least 10 times and cursing at my browser before realising.

The middle button on my mouse has acted up before, so I was clicking it and nothing was happening. I kept thinking it was the mouse so I clicked it harder, softer, and every which way. Then on a lark, I clicked a link elsewhere and a new tab opened sup, to which I noticed the link wasn't bringing up the destination in the status bar and figured that was the reason why it wasn't middle-clicking.

..is to not have a backspace ruin everything you just did just because you didn't have the focus you thought you had (Chrome!)

The big problem is the javascript "rich" editors that mess with browser state saving.

Backspace is a non-issue a lot of the time if you're using standard HTML widgets - every browser I've used from IE, Firefox and I think even Chrome save the state so if you accidentally backspace, you can hit Forward and boom, everything is restored. It's useful if you want to multi-quote Slashdot, for example.

But, rich editors break this functionality. I don't know why. Though, most rich editors work enough that backspace won't leave the page (or they use a javascript alert to keep you from blindly doing it), which is good for accidental purposes, but you lose it all when you return.

Quite annoying, really. Especially since the browsers even return text field contents if you close and re-open the tab (using Ctrl-Shift-T to reopen last closed tab, or reopening a tab from the history). Except well, rich editors. They always blank themselves...