Comment Re:Zuse? (Score 1) 737
Women were expected to do the programming work since, at the time, that was viewed as a low-level clerical function.
Really.
Comment Re:BASIC is irrelevant (Score 1) 548
FORTRAN man, eh? No wonder you posted as AC.
Comment Re:Exactly what you're doing (Score 1) 411
Lose a PSU and you lose half your box. Is that a "reliable" solution?
Pluto — a Complex and Changing World 191
astroengine writes "After 4 years of processing the highest resolution photographs the Hubble Space Telescope could muster, we now have the highest resolution view of Pluto's surface ever produced. Most excitingly, these new observations show an active world with seasonal changes altering the dwarf planet's surface. It turns out that this far-flung world has more in common with Earth than we would have ever imagined."
Why Time Flies By As You Get Older 252
Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.
Comment Re:And this is how we die (Score 1) 1343
I went to a public university (University of Arizona) in the US.
Wow, now there's a coincidence. I went to the University of Arizona too. My in-state tuition was only a few hundred bucks. But that was back when Nixon was president, probably long before you matriculated...
Comment Re:And this is how we die (Score 5, Insightful) 1343
Compared to the US, German universities are essentially free.
Of course you don't mean "free" as in beer. Most of your tuition is paid for by the good taxpayers of Germany who presumably view a well-educated citizenry as an overall win relative to the cost involved.
Comment Re:amusing (Score 1) 350
Of course if the devices had a USB interface so you could save your favorite pics to your flash drive, you might have a point.
As noted above, a cell phone camera will soon become a TSA voyeur's constant companion.
And of course, it is inevitable these machines will grow in sophistication and one day will be able to render faces and genitalia with far higher resolution than now shown to the public.
Comment Re:Ideas (Score 1) 533
(of course you'll have to regularly close the browser for it to be effective).
With Firefox 3.5.x I get browser crashes all the time, but I doubt that clears Flash Cookies. It would be nice if they got cleared on FF startup as well, before any page loads.
Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
Comment Re:August (Score 3, Interesting) 1146
6) Let her do things her way, even if suboptimal. When I heat a can of soup, I pour the can into the soup bowl and microwave for a few minutes. My wife insists on heating the soup in a saucepan, then ladling it into a bowl, thereby using more energy to cook and clean (and serve less soup). I've tried explaining the physics involved but it doesn't take. Live with it.
Comment Re:Beware of namechanges (Score 1) 629
unfortunetly[sic] you will hear us pitching about cell phones more than we will about a transistor
Most of the
Comment Re:Beware of namechanges (Score 5, Funny) 629
I went in to a local Shack to buy a soldering iron a couple months ago. They don't have them. They do have cell phones, and boy do they love to pitch them. I have no idea who sells soldering irons any more, though I'm sure I could use Bing to google around.
Is it proper English to use "google" intransitively?
Comment Re:Profits, but for whom? (Score 1) 624
"But how does this kind of stock trading benefit anyone other than the traders themselves?"
I think your question speaks (to me at least) of a more basic question. Do all actions have to be to benefit 'others' in your opinion? [...]
Well put. The burden of proof is not on the actor to justify his actions, but on the observer to demonstrate why the actions are bad.
Actually, I happen to agree that there's something wrong with this. Basically it results in an uneven playing field. Some subset of dealers can engage in "algo" behavior while others cannot. Plus, it looks a lot like front-running, except you're front-running somebody else's order. Plus, the exchanges should realize this just looks bad to a lot of their customers, and their reputation and eventual regulation is at stake.
Comment Re:Before using this system (Score 1) 180
This image is going to be scaled to be the exact same size on the screen in any compliant web browser.
There. Fixed it for you.
