sat1308 - Slashdot User

Grigory Perelman and the Poincare Conjecture 241

Posted by kdawson on Sunday December 20, 2009 @07:17PM from the another-tortured-genius dept.

EagleHasLanded writes "Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman doesn't talk to journalists. Actually, he doesn't talk to anyone anymore. So we'll have to settle for insights via his biographer, Masha Gessen, who, strangely enough, has never talked to him either. But she has spoken with just about everyone who has ever had any significant interaction with Perelman, and the result is the book Perfect Rigor, which more than adequately explains why Perelman has gone into self-imposed exile, and why he probably won't collect the million dollars he won by solving the Poincare Conjecture."

Biden Promises 'Right Person' As Copyright Czar 492

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 22, 2009 @09:54PM from the film-appreciation dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Vice President Joe Biden lauded Hollywood at a gala dinner in Washington, assailed movie piracy, and promised film executives that the Obama administration would pick 'the right person' as its copyright czar. Biden warned of the harms of piracy at the private event organized by the Motion Picture Association of America in the sumptuous, newly renovated Great Hall of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. 'It's pure theft, stolen from the artists and quite frankly from the American people as consequence of loss of jobs and as a consequence of loss of income,' Biden said, according to a White House pool report. Biden addressed President Obama's forthcoming decision about who will be named the intellectual-property enforcement coordinator, better known as the copyright czar. Under a law approved by the US Congress last October, Obama is required to appoint someone to coordinate the administration's IP enforcement efforts and prepare annual reports. Copyright industry lobbyists sent a letter to the president asking him to pick someone sympathetic to their concerns, while groups that would curb copyright law sent their own letter (PDF) urging the opposite approach. We 'will find the right person for intellectual property czar,' Biden said."

Comment Some choice quotes since none of you RTFA (Score 1) 124

by sat1308 on Monday March 02, 2009 @01:59PM (#27042271) Attached to: Facebook Nearly Added Twitter To Friends List

Emphasis mine.

"At that point, Facebook offered Twitter around $100 million in cash, with the rest of the deal in stock. Facebook said it would come up with the $100 million by selling more of its stock to outside investors. Twitter agreed on one condition: that the Facebook stock it received be valued at the price company shares garnered on the open market. Facebook blinked and the deal talks ended. "They wanted to buy us but there was not much conviction," the person says."

"Analytics Web site Compete shows Twitter has 6 million unique users, up from around 800,000 last year. Yet Twitter doesn't generate any revenue, despite its surge in popularity."

And finally the best quote of all from Portfolio's interview with Twitter's CEO:

I can't imagine how many times you've been asked, "But how will you make money?"
We will make money, and I can't say exactly how, because we can't predict exactly what's going to work.

Comment Target Market? (Score 2, Interesting) 194

by sat1308 on Saturday April 19, 2008 @11:59PM (#23132428) Attached to: InPhase Technologies Promises Holographic Drive in May

From TFA:
Which gets us to InPhase's target market: archiving. That's why they were showing at NAB.

I don't get it. No matter how valuable your content, why would you pay $18,000 for a burner and $180 for for a 300GB disc? Just for the price of the media, you can mirror your data across three different brand-new hard disks. Surely the odds of 3 hard disks failing at the same time are lower than that of an untested, brand-new technology with no redundancy?

Maybe I'm too thick, but why would anyone buy this at this price? (Other than the coolness/my dick is bigger than yours factor, of course.)

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