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Comment The problem with approaching Carnot efficiency... (Score 1) 121

by gyepi (#30287228) Attached to: Recycling Excess Heat From the Data Center
... is that the process will take longer and longer time. Carnot efficiency is defined by the efficiency of a reversible heat engine operating between the given temperatures; but truly reversible processes would take infinite amount of time. Efficiency is certainly an important aim, but certainly not the solely desirable aim.
Businesses

Are Game Publishers a Necessary Evil, Or Just Necessary? 173

Posted by Soulskill from the everybody-loves-ea-right dept.
An editorial at GameSetWatch examines whether game publishers really deserve all the flak they get from gamers and developers alike. While some questionable decisions can certainly be laid at their feet, they're also responsible for making a lot of good game projects happen. Quoting: "The trouble comes when the money and the creativity appear to be at odds. ... Developers and publishers often have a curious relationship. The best analogy I can think of is that of parent and child. The publisher or parent thinks it knows best, because it's been there before (shipped more games), and because 'it's my money, so you'll live by my rules.' The developer — or child — is rebellious, and thinks it has all the answers. In many ways, it does know more than the parent, and is closer to what's innovative, but maybe hasn't figured out how to hone that energy yet."

Comment 450000 permanent jobs created? (Score 2) 567

by gyepi (#29622335) Attached to: California Requests Stimulus Funding For Bullet Train

California High Speed Rail Authority officials said the train network would generate 600,000 construction-related jobs while it was being planned and built and that it would create another 450,000 permanent jobs during its operation.

450,000 new permanent jobs sounds an awful lot. Are they going to pay people to travel on the train or what?
Google

Microsoft Says Google Chrome Frame Makes IE Less Secure 459

Posted by CmdrTaco from the less-secure-than-what-exactly dept.
Mark writes "The release of Google Chrome Frame, a new open source plugin that injects Chrome's renderer and JavaScript engine into Microsoft's browser, earlier this week had many web developers happily dancing long through the night. Finally, someone had found a way to get Internet Explorer users up to speed on the Web. Microsoft, on the other hand, is warning IE users that it does not recommend installing the plugin. What does the company have against the plugin? It makes Internet Explorer less secure. 'With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers,' a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. 'Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attack area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take.'"

Comment Re:From the license... (Score 1) 419

by gyepi (#29123539) Attached to: Behind Menuet, an OS Written Entirely In Assembly
From TFA:

The 32-bit version of Menuet was released under the GPL, but the 64-bit version uses a non-open-source licence that is free for "personal and educational use". Why did you decide to licence the 64-bit version differently? Has this had any impact on encouraging people to join the effort?

Ville: With a completely new type of open source project, people seem to have strong opinions about what direction to take. Even up to a point when time is actually spent more with disputes than doing the actual coding. And when that happened, I decided to concentrate more on the original path of Menuet with the 64-bit version and with a new type of license. However, I don't have anything against open source or possibly opening up the Menuet64 source later. But with the current licence, I'd say the people are a bit more committed and willing to put more effort in to a new feature.
Security

Secret US List of Civil Nuclear Sites Released 167

Posted by Soulskill from the no-harm-no-foul-right dept.
eldavojohn writes "Someone accidentally released a 266-page report on hundreds of sites in the US for stockpiling and storing hazardous nuclear materials for civilian use. While some ex-officials and experts don't find it to be a serious breach, the Federation of American Scientists are calling it a 'a one-stop shop for information on US nuclear programs.' The document contains information about Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia, and opinions seem to be split on whether it's a harmless list or terrorist risk. One thing is for sure: it was taken down after the New York Times inquired to the Government Accountability Office about it."
Earth

Bacteria Could Help Stop Desertification 218

Posted by samzenpus from the bactine-bulldozers dept.
Bridgette Steffen writes "In attempt to slow down desertification, a student at London's Architectural Association has proposed a 6000 km sandstone wall that will not only act as a break across the Sahara Desert, but also serve as refugee shelter. Last fall it won first prize in the Holcim Foundation's Awards for Sustainable Construction, and will use bacteria to solidify the sandstone."
News

Obama Calls For Nuke-Free World 705

Posted by Soulskill from the i'll-give-up-mine-if-you-give-up-yours dept.
jamie points out news that President Obama has put out a call for a world free of nuclear weapons at a speech in Prague today. He acknowledged that it was a long-term goal, perhaps not something that can be accomplished in his lifetime, but promised to encourage the US Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty. According to the BBC, he also stated his desire to "negotiate a new treaty to end the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons," and to hold a global summit within the next year to work out agreements for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Obama said, "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it." His speech came less than a day after North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket.

Comment Re:Or they're terrified (Score 1) 921

by gyepi (#27250213) Attached to: Study Finds the Pious Fight Death Hardest
Too bad that the fine tuning argument doesn't make sense. In order to run the argument you need to assume the existence of a (probability) measure over the possible values of fundamental physical constants (to make sense of ideas such as "this interval must be extremely SMALL" / "the SMALLER the interval the less probable that it was produced by chance" etc.). But we only observe our own universe where these constants have a given value, and there is no natural measure whatsoever on the space of possible physical constants, neither probabilistic nor a priori. Since we have no empirical basis for making any claims about how this measure looks like (why not a Dirac-measure?), claims about "smallness" of intervals make no sense and the fine-tuning argument falls apart.
It always amazes me how easily people commit the fallacy of thinking that the Lebesgue measure is/should be special.
Windows

British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows 725

Posted by samzenpus from the deep-blue-screen dept.
meist3r writes "On his Government blog, Microsoft's Ian McKenzie announced today that the Royal Navy was ahead of schedule for switching their nuclear submarines to a customized Microsoft Windows solution dubbed 'Submarine Command System Next Generation (SMCS NG)' which apparently consists of Windows 2000 network servers and XP workstations. In the article, it is claimed that this decision will save UK taxpayers £22m over the next ten years. The installation of the new system apparently took just 18 days on the HMS Vigilant. According to the BAE Systems press release from 2005, the overall cost of the rollout was £24.5m for all eleven nuclear submarines of the Vanguard, Trafalgar and Swiftsure classes. Talk about staying with the sinking ship."
Image

Christmas Tree Made From 70 SCSI Hard Drives Screenshot-sm 248

Posted by samzenpus from the free-time dept.
Trigger writes "At our work we were decomissioning six old HP/Compaq servers to clear up space for new servers and, naturally, each server had a fairly large raid array. Instead of formatting every hard drive (would have taken weeks performing a DoD level wipe) and disposing them all together with the servers, I decided to disassemble the hard drives and recycle them into something neat. With a lot (a lot) of patience, I made this shiny Xmas tree. In total there are around 70 old SCSI hard drives, between 9gb and 18gb in size each. They were nice and chunky, oldschool style. There were quite a few different hard drive models, which is good because they each had different bits which I could use. The Xmas tree is made with parts from hard drives only except for one nut which I had to purchase for $0.39." It's good to see that this guy has plenty to do at work.

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