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Submission + - Mathematicians Solve The Topological Mystery Behind The "Brazuca" Soccer Ball

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: In the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, teams used a new kind of ball called the Telstar made from 12 black pentagonal panels and 20 white hexagonal panels. This ball has icosahedral symmetry and its own molecular analogue in the form of C60, the famous soccer ball-shaped fullerene. In 2006, a new ball called the TeamGeist was introduced at the World Cup in Germany. This was made of 14 curved panels that together gave it tetrahedral symmetry. This also had a molecular analogue with tetrahedral symmetry among the fullerenes. Now teams at the current World Cup in Brazil are playing with yet another design: the Brazuca, a ball constructed from six panels each with a four-leaf clover shape that knit together like a jigsaw to form a sphere. This has octahedral symmetry. But here's question that has been puzzling chemists, topologists and..errr...soccer fans: is there a molecular analogue of the Brazuca? Or put another way, can fullerenes have octahedral symmetry? Now a pair of mathematicians have finally solved this problem. They've shown that fullerenes can indeed have octahedral symmetry just like the Brazuca, although in addition to hexagonal and pentagonal carbon rings, the ball-shaped molecules must also have rings of 4 and 8 carbon atoms. The next stage is to actually synthesis one of these fullerenes, perhaps something to keep chemists occupied until the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

Submission + - No, Linux is not dead on the desktop (itworld.com)

Submitted by JimLynch
JimLynch writes: There are certain constants in life, and one of them is a never-ending spate of predictions that Linux is dead on the desktop. It's inevitable that we see these kinds of article popping up every once in a while. CIO has one of the latest examples of this as it tries to make the case that Linux is dead on the desktop.

Bah! I hate having to wade through these kinds of articles, but it's necessary to answer them lest the perception take root that "Linux is doomed!" and all the usual blather that goes along with such nonsense. Every single time I read one of these articles my eyes roll into the back of my head and various profanities burst from my lips.

Comment Simple solution (Score 1) 231

by jones_supa (#47414433) Attached to: Avast Buys 20 Used Phones, Recovers 40,000 Deleted Photos

Simple (only tens of thousands of lines code needed, hehheh). You program a Full Secure Erase feature in the phone. It wipes all personal data, resets all the settings, removes user-installed apps, deletes caches and erases the memory card. All the jazz. Filling with zeroes is used where appropriate. Then the phone is put into OOBE (out-of-box experience) mode, which means that on next startup it says "Hey, I see you are using the phone for the first time, let's set up a couple of things."

Make this a de-facto standard feature on every smartphone. You probably want to password-protect the operation so that thieves cannot exploit it so easily to "anonymize" the phone.

Then you just advocate folk about the risks and why using this "FSE" feature is important before selling your phone.

Comment Re:Bad Ports (Score 1) 210

This is not new or unique. The PC is full of games that have ridiculously bad console-to-PC ports; With shitty controls, poor graphics, bad performance, and with absolutely no configurability.

Mmmyeah. I never got some of the mini-games, such as bowling, to work properly with keyboard and mouse in GTA IV for PC. Great quality assurance, LOL.

Comment Re:Amusing... (Score 1) 285

by jones_supa (#47407747) Attached to: The World's Best Living Programmers

The actual algorithms used in that game are fairly trivial, and he didn't invent them or anything, nor was coding them up a huge challenge.

They are not that trivial. Writing a 2.5D renderer and understanding BSP trees is quite hard. Not the hardest thing on the planet, but requires a guy with decent amount of experience.

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