Comment Magnification (Score 2, Interesting) 229
On my monitor, the unzoomed images are about 3cm across. This corresponds to a magnification factor of around 100 million! Awesome!
Comment Whoa there (Score 1) 6
Let's not get carried away here. First of all, I don't see any mention of "closed form" in the English version of the article.
Also, there's nothing concrete about what he's actually proved. "A formula". BFD. I can go to Mathworld and bring you back a bucketful.
Finally, if that's his formula on the board behind him in the photo, then it's full of sigmas and doesn't strictly count as closed-form anyway.
(Mind you, I'm sure what he has done is impressive for a 16-year-old. Tip of the hat to ya and all that, but this might be being hyped up a bit by people with other agendas.)
Windows 7 Launch Date Leaked — 23 Oct. 2009 127
Sockatume writes "Yesterday, two Acer executives in Europe separately let slip details that give us a good date for the release of Windows 7. First, Acer's vice-president for Europe discussed a new product, launching this September, that will support Windows 7's touch features. Asked whether this confirmed the Windows 7 release date as September 2009, he coyly remarked that 'when it's in store it won't have Windows 7 pre-loaded.' Microsoft would probably prefer that he had stopped there, but he added: 'We won't be actually selling [Windows 7] a day before the 23rd October.' Then, Acer's Managing Director for the UK helpfully clarified that while their product will ship with Windows Vista at launch, because it is on sale less than 30 days before the Windows 7 release date, it will be eligible for the 'upgrade program' to get a free upgrade to the new OS."
Yeast-Powered Fuel Cell Feeds On Human Blood 250
holy_calamity writes "Canadian researchers have taken a sensible, if slightly creepy, step towards solving the problem of medical implant batteries running down. They've built a fuel cell powered by yeast that feed on the glucose in human blood. If this makes it into people, keeping your implants going will be as simple as eating a donut."
Comment Re:Truecrypt (Score 1) 121
You can put "c:\Documents and Settings" in another folder name on a different partition but it's tricky for non-corporate users. You need to burn a copy of your installation CD with a custom OEMINFO.INI and partition your drive first.
I went to the trouble of doing this for my current Windows box and it works beautifully. Now I can reinstall the OS (on the C partition) to a clean state by dd'ing a tar.gz of it from a Live CD without clobbering my user data, and at the same time my backups are more focussed as I'm not bothering with C partition (think \windows and \program files), which I would be reinstalling from installers (and dd'ing, as above) in the event of a disaster.
Comment Re:It's not a complete solution.. (Score 1) 121
Full disk crypto will encrypt your hibernation and swap files for you, so you're ok if you hibernate at the end of the day.
Comment Re:TrueCrypt is not noticeably slow. (Score 2, Informative) 121
TrueCrypt encrypted containers can be formatted as NTFS or FAT file systems. I haven't tried other file systems.
I can add ext3 to the list of filesystems known to work with TrueCrypt, useful for apps such as Nautilus and TightVNC that create files with colons in their name.
Also, although this is slightly off-topic, you can easily store a Linux home directory and mount it in place, i.e. just one big volume in
$ truecrypt -t volume.tc ~
and the full home directory replaces the previously empty directory.
The OP is asking for something similar on Windows but that's much trickier on NTFS and Windows for a variety of reasons - TrueCrypt still doesn't allow mounting at a junction point, and a directory used for this purpose must be empty, and by the time you've logged in, you've already got a lot of files open (e.g. your registry hive).
Comment How to sell Win 7 to me (Score 1) 746
The critical non-selling point for me with Vista was the blatant market segmentation. Vista Home, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate, Vista IE-free, Vista Lite, Vista Media Center, Vista This, Vista That. The only version you could count on to have the features you needed was Vista Ultimate, the most expensive by far. It was just a con, and I walked away from it because of that.
If Microsoft wants to avoid insulting its users, it should stick to one version, or if its bean-counters say it must, a normal version and a cheapo crippled version.
Comment I vote Other... (Score 1) 423
They're organized by whether it's my wife's or mine. It's most trivial to tell who's shelf it is! (Hint: she doesn't post here...)
Comment Re:Outlaw encryption (Score 2, Informative) 545
Assuming you are in the UK, then yes, you would go to jail for doing that. Even forgetting the key is illegal, so deliberately destroying it would probably get you an increased sentence.
No, genuinely forgetting a key is legal, but you have to convince the court that you really forgot it and aren't just saying so. (Could be tricky...)
Comment Re:Wallpaper (Score 1) 131
Sadly, it's no use as a wallpaper as it's a portrait image. They really should have thought more carefully about that one.
</troll>
</troll>
Top Apple Rumors, Bricks, Low Price, NVIDIA 283
Vigile writes "With the news that Apple will be releasing new MacBook products on October 14th, speculation has begun on what exactly those new products will be. Tips of a manufacturing process involving lasers and a single 'brick' of aluminum are catching on, as is the idea of a sub-$1000 netbook-type device. More interesting might be the persistent rumors of an NVIDIA chipset adoption that would drastically increase gaming ability, allow MacBooks to improve their support for OpenCL and take advantage of the new Adobe CS4 software with GPU acceleration. Will NVIDIA's ailing chipset business get a shot in the arm next week?"
The Principles of Project Management 125
zedguy writes "Ask someone what 'project management' is and you're liable to get a few blank stares — it's one of those fields people have heard of, but probably have problems pinning down a definition. So that is what the first section of the book does: provides a definition that can be summed up as applying tools and skills to complete a project. That then leads to what exactly is a "project": a set of tasks with a time-frame and goal of somehow adding value. So yes, the introduction does involve a fair bit of terminology that isn't going to be familiar to many readers coming from a coder's background, but there's a helpful appendix that lays out many of the terms. Just as important, the introduction explains what project management is not, some of the misconceptions and why it's good to know." Keep reading for the rest of Zoltan's review.
China Wants US-Owned Hotels to Censor Internet 279
jp_papin writes "The Chinese government is demanding that US-owned hotels there filter Internet service during the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing, US Senator Sam Brownback has alleged. The Chinese government is requiring US-owned hotels to install Internet filters to 'monitor and restrict information coming in and out of China,' Brownback said Thursday. 'This is an insult to the spirit of the games and an affront to American businesses,' he said. 'I call on China to immediately rescind this demand.' US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said he wasn't aware of those specific requests from the Chinese government, but Brownback said he got the information on Internet filtering from 'two different reliable but confidential sources.' The State Department is apparently continuing dialog with China about freedom of expression."
Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6 153
Michael J. Ross writes "For creating Web sites, developers are increasingly making use of content management systems (CMSs), any of which can provide the framework for a new site. But just as there are many similarities among all the leading CMSs, there are some significant differences, such as how easy they are to install, administer, and build upon, for creating new sites. If developer loyalty is any measure of the present and future success of a CMS, then Drupal should be considered a standout among other CMSs. For instance, its online documentation alone is often cited as a distinguishing advantage. But most developers would prefer learning Drupal from a book, such as Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6, by David Mercer." Keep reading below for the rest of Michael's review.
