Comment Re:Really bad in Canada (Score 1) 451
Run your own you lazy git. He posted a link to the methodology he used...
Comment Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score 1) 696
This x2. My wife's on android while I've an iphone, but to my 4 year old they're both 'iphones'.
I won't say which she prefers else I'd be called an Apple shill...
Autonomous Road Train Project Completes First Public Road Test 148
theodp writes "Covered earlier on Slashdot, but lost in the buzz over the Google driverless car is Project Sartre (Safe Road Trains for the Environment), Europe's experiment with 'vehicle platooning,' which has successfully completed a 125 mile road test on a busy Spain motorway. Three Volvos drove themselves by automatically following a truck in the presence of other, normal road users. The Register reports that on-board cameras, radar and laser tracking allow each vehicle to monitor the one in front, and wirelessly streamed data from the lead vehicle tells each car when to accelerate, break and turn."
Comment Re:why do you have a northern accent? (Score 1) 516
To distinguish ourselves from you lot doon there.
'Frothy Gunk' From Deepwater Horizon Spill Harming Coral 149
sciencehabit writes "The massive oil spill that inundated the Gulf of Mexico in the spring and summer of 2010 severely damaged deep-sea corals more than 11 kilometers from the well site, a sea-floor survey conducted within weeks of the spill reveals. At one site, which hadn't been visited before but had been right in the path of a submerged 100-meter-thick oil plume from the spill, researchers found a variety of corals — most of them belonging to a type of colonial coral commonly known as sea fans — on a 10-meter-by-12-meter outcrop of rock. Many of the corals were partially or completely covered with a brown, fluffy substance that one team member variously calls 'frothy gunk,' 'goop,' and 'snot.'"
Comment Re:Easy! (Score 4, Insightful) 388
Or they could just extradite the landlady and try her in California. That's how it works, isn't it?
Comment Re:War on Piracy (Score 1) 516
As a kid, my parents would cuff me around the ear for refusing to share my toys with my friends. As an adult, Hollywood would see me in cuffs for sharing them.
In Robot Soccer, US Team RoMeLa Dominates Robocup 2011 60
Narmacil writes "U.S. Team RoMeLa has swept Robocup 2011, winning first place in both the kid size and teen size divisions. (Video) CHARLI, America's first full size autonomous humanoid, managed to also make the high score record for the teen size division. DARWIN, the kid-sized robot, beat the Darmstadt Dribblers, the previous world champs, and continued on to the finals to win out." There must be joy in Blacksburg today.
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How do you choose a Windows laptop? 7
jfruhlinger writes: "I'm a Mac guy. When our 2004-era Windows XP laptop, which was used primarily by my wife, died last summer, I got myself a new MacBook Pro and she inherited my still servicable 2008 MacBook. But after about six months, she hasn't gotten used to it, and wants a Windows machine. I don't have an ideological problem with this — it'd be her computer, and we've got a bit of money stashed away to pay for it. But trying to pick one out is my job, and I find the the whole process bewildering. Apple's product differentiation is great at defeating the paradox of choice — you have a few base models, the difference between which is quite obvious, and you can customize each. The Windows world seems totally different. Even once I've settled on a vendor for a Windows laptop (something I haven't done yet), each seems to have a bewildering array of product lines with similar specs. Often models that you find in electronics or office supply stores that seem promising in terms of form factor are exclusive to those stores and can't be found online. Obviously people do navigate this process, but I'm just feeling out of my depth. How would Slashdotters go about picking a solid, basic laptop for Web surfing and document editing that won't be obsolete in two years?"
Comment Re:Google results don't contain searched for terms (Score 1) 270
Your example link returns all four search terms if you grep the source of the page, so your search was actually 100% successful in terms of keyword occurrence.
Keyword relevance, however, is in the eye of the beholder. Look to the comments on that page for occurrences of 'open' and 'frame'...
Comment Why did you post half of your comment in the (Score 1) 360
title?
Comment Kodos FTW (Score 1, Informative) 750
I'm voting for Kodos!
Comment Re:no failures in 10 years (Score 1) 715
I bought a macbook 2006, still running strong.
Solid machines indeed. I especially *love* the self-cleaning aspect of the early Intel Mac laptops. Dirty keyboard? Simply fire up a YouTube Flash video and let the fans blow the crap out.
Twin fans means you get a mini tornado above the 'H' key.
Comment no failures in 10 years (Score 5, Funny) 715
10 years ago I bought a Powerbook G4 and ran it for 6 years without a single issue. Then I got burgled whilst on holiday, and it was no more. Once the insurance came through, I got a MacBook Pro (2006) and it's still my main workhorse today. No longer the fastest or bestest, but everything works.
While waiting for the insurance to pay up for the G4, a friend gave me an old T30 Thinkpad. I upped the RAM & HDD and installed Linux, then used it daily. That died in a house flood 2 years ago (burst water main, upstairs neighbour), again whilst I was on holiday.
This leads me to believe that the single largest cause of computer failure is going on holiday. Now, I take the fuckers with me.
Comment Re:Maybe it's the hardware.. (Score 3, Informative) 764
1) Open the picture.
On 10.5 and later, select the image and hit the space key. Use arrow keys as required to navigate.
Like how the OS calculator doesn't have scientific functions until 10.5.
In 10.4, press Command+(1/2/3) to switch views. Command+2 is 'scientific', Command+3 is 'programmer'.
Or how to extract a still from a movie, you have to re-navigate to the directory every
... fuckin' ... time.
If your movie is full screen, hit Command+Shift+3 and it'll create a picture on your desktop. If your movie is windowed, hit Command+Shift+4 and use the cross-hairs to define the area to snapshot.
Or how you can't use the standard upload file interface on websites, but have to hope it's compatible with iPhoto or some other hack.
I really don't get this. Either use the 'browse' button like anyone else, or just drag and drop the file in question into the file upload control.
Or the lack of alt-shortcuts which makes it so that you can't call up a function from a menu unless it's been hot-keyed.
Turn on 'full keyboard access' in the System Prefs (Ctrl+F1).
+5 informative my arse. Perhaps your time and energy would be better spend learning to use your damn machine instead of ranting about non-existent problems.
