ebob9 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Athletes reaching limits of natural performance?

Submitted by O.Tom on Friday December 22, 2006 @01:48AM

O.Tom writes: Asafa Powell's 100m sprint world record of 9.77 seconds may only be half a second slower than the fastest possible time for a human being over that distance.

According to an article in The Australian, a study conducted by Professor John Einmahl from Tilberg University in Germany has calculated that the fastest possible men's time for the 100m sprint is 9.29 seconds.

The professor calculated these values based upon the best performances produced by 1546 male and 1024 female athletes in 14 different disciplines.

The theoretical fastest possible time for the men's marathon may not be far off, with Paul Tergat's marathon record of 2:04.55 only 49 seconds off the calculated best possible time.

Submission + - What gadgets differentiate nerds nowadays?

Submitted by

wikinerd

on Friday December 22, 2006 @01:10AM

wikinerd writes: "In the last few years several gadgets that were previously commonly used mostly by nerds and geeks have been welcomed by the mainstream. Many ordinary people have GPS, camera phones, 3G broadband, PDAs, and other gadgets. I use my PDA for playing with PythonCE, but the device itself is not a nerds's-only gadget anymore, as many people use PDAs nowadays for calendaring and similar uses. The same is true for laser pointers, GPS receivers, and other stuff, which are now becoming commonplace. What gadgets, especially handheld devices, do self-respecting nerds and geeks use nowadays, and what mobile devices do you own? I am not talking about nerdy innovative uses of commonplace devices, or just more powerful PDAs or high-resolution cameras, but rather about mobile gadgets that are too new, strange, or especial to be ever used by mere mortals."

Submission + - MS Allows Kernel Extensions in Vista, API Release

Submitted by

CexpTretical

on Friday December 22, 2006 @12:57AM

CexpTretical writes: "SearchSecurity.com has an article about "Microsoft's Ben Fathi" announcing " a draft set of application programming interfaces (APIs)" that "have been designed to help security and non-security ISVs develop software that extends the functionality of the Windows kernel on 64-bit systems, in a documented and supported manner,".."without disabling or weakening the protection offered by Kernel Patch Protection." Microsoft's "Kernel Patch Protection Criteria" Evaluation Document" describes the details of new extension acceptance. Isn't openness is a wonderful thing?"

Is the Microsoft/Novell Deal a Litigation Bomb? 342

Posted by Zonk on Friday November 03, 2006 @04:46PM from the pengui-bomb dept.

mpapet writes "According to WINE developer Tom Wickline, the Microsoft/Novell deal for Suse support may one day control commercial customers' use of Free Software. Is this the end of commercial OSS developers who are not a part of the Microsoft/Suse pact?" From the article: "Wickline said that the pact means that there will now be a Microsoft-blessed path for such people to make use of Open Source ... 'A logical next move for Microsoft could be to crack down on 'unlicensed Linux' and 'unlicensed Free Software,' now that it can tell the courts that there is a Microsoft-licensed path. Or they can just passively let that threat stay there as a deterrent to anyone who would use Open Source without going through the Microsoft-approved Novell path,' Wickline said." Bruce Perens dropped a line to point out that most of the content actually comes from his post.

Slashdot Top Deals