Comment Re:dramatic design hype (Score 2) 289
you start with a deeper hole...
Comment nuke power? (Score 1) 166
they gonna build it by that big body of moon water?
Comment Re:Content bundling (Score 1) 195
The best damn tv show ever was 100% Canadian. Trailer Park Boys.
Comment raining on the parade (Score 1) 160
ground level solar will never work to power the cloud. there's too much shade. duh.
Comment doesn't rock salt emit something measurable? (Score 1) 545
Would he have been pulled over if he had a few hundred pounds of rock salt in his trunk instead?
Comment What's all the fuss about... (Score 1) 41
can opener hardware in a data center?
Submission + - Stock trades to exploit speed of light (bbc.co.uk)
SpuriousLogic writes: Financial institutions may soon change what they trade or where they do their trading because of the speed of light.
"High-frequency trading" carried out by computers often depends on differing prices of a financial instrument in two geographically-separated markets.
Exactly how far the signals have to go can make a difference in such trades.
Alexander Wissner-Gross told the American Physical Society meeting that financial institutions are looking at ways to exploit the light-speed trick.
Dr Wissner-Gross, of Harvard University, said that the latencies — essentially, the time delay for a signal to wing its way from one global financial centre to another — advantaged some locations for some trades and different locations for others.
There is a vast market for ever-faster fibre-optic cables to try to physically "get there faster" but Dr Wissner-Gross said that the purely technological approach to gaining an advantage was reaching a limit.
Trades now travel at nearly 90% of the ultimate speed limit set by physics, the speed of light in the cables.
"High-frequency trading" carried out by computers often depends on differing prices of a financial instrument in two geographically-separated markets.
Exactly how far the signals have to go can make a difference in such trades.
Alexander Wissner-Gross told the American Physical Society meeting that financial institutions are looking at ways to exploit the light-speed trick.
Dr Wissner-Gross, of Harvard University, said that the latencies — essentially, the time delay for a signal to wing its way from one global financial centre to another — advantaged some locations for some trades and different locations for others.
There is a vast market for ever-faster fibre-optic cables to try to physically "get there faster" but Dr Wissner-Gross said that the purely technological approach to gaining an advantage was reaching a limit.
Trades now travel at nearly 90% of the ultimate speed limit set by physics, the speed of light in the cables.
Comment Re:Besides missing link, summary isn't accurate.. (Score 1) 263
AT&T supplied me with a small piece of hardware for my adsl connection. AT&T refers to it as a modem even though it doesn't modulate or demodulate anything. Hopefully this dumbing down of language doesn't creep into areas where specific words are used to convey precise meanings, like medicine or engineering.
Comment Re:Better than not having it (Score 2) 138
Of course they think of their computer as an appliance, that is how PC makers market them. That is how Microsoft markets Its OS. And to throw in an automotive analogy, it's how Toyota markets their vehicles.
Linux 2.6.37 Released 135
diegocg writes "Version 2.6.37 of the Linux kernel has been released. This version includes SMP scalability improvements for Ext4 and XFS, the removal of the Big Kernel Lock, support for per-cgroup IO throttling, a networking block device based on top of the Ceph clustered filesystem, several Btrfs improvements, more efficient static probes, perf support to probe modules, LZO compression in the hibernation image, PPP over IPv4 support, several networking microoptimizations and many other small changes, improvements and new drivers for devices like the Brocade BNA 10GB ethernet, Topcliff PCH gigabit, Atheros CARL9170, Atheros AR6003 and RealTek RTL8712U. The fanotify API has also been enabled. See the full changelog for more details."
The Year In Robot News 38
itwbennett writes "Who loves robots? You may love them more or less after seeing what 2010 gave us, robot-wise. It's not the rise of the machines yet, but that teddy bear creeped us out."
Submission + - Protect Your Pre-1997 IP Address (computerworld.com)
CWmike writes: With IPv4 space running out any day now, is your legacy IP address space safe? Computerworld columnist Marc Lindsey writes that if your company obtained its IP address space before 1997, you have probably received several letters from the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) encouraging you to enter into a contractual agreement to protect the IP address. But should you sign it? he asks. Be careful — there are several issues you should consider before signing up for this, writes Lindsey, who offers a deep look at the issue.
Comment espeak is cool. (Score 1) 141
Fah, anyone can do it over the internet. I broadcast a weather report from a python weather script (found in the debian repo) and espeak on a dedicated debian xen domU through the sound chip into a ramsey fm10C and into the very exclusive FM cloud. The downside is my FM cloud is only about 1/2 mile across.
Submission + - Researchers build microprocessor from plastic (eetimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: At ISSCC, researchers from Europe will describe an 8-bit, 6 Hz device running a hardcoded program on two sheets of foil just 25 microns thick, using a 10V power supply. The team hails from five organizations including the Imec research center in Belgium and startup Polymer Vision (Eindhoven, Netherlands) which is developing flexible displays. "The organic processor is showing real promise though it is some distance from real utility," said Ken Smith, one of the organizers of ISSCC.
Submission + - Time Traveller reported (nzherald.co.nz) 2
Kittenman writes: The NZ Herald is reporting that an Irish filmmaker, George Clarke, has noticed someone using a cellphone in the 'special features' section of the DVD 'The Circus', a Charlie Chaplin movie filmed in 1928. The cellphone is (reportedly) visible in the "unused footage" section. Clarke states: "The only conclusion I can come to — which sounds absolutely ridiculous I'm sure, to some people — is it's a time traveller,". Other conclusions are also possible, no doubt. One also wonders what network the traveller was using in the 1920s. Or maybe it was a satellite phone — which raises other issues. Or maybe it was something else altogether. Most remarkable is that not only that a person has an obscure Chaplin movie on DVD but that they also scanned the 'special features'.
