xehonk - Slashdot User

Fermilab To Test Holographic Universe Theory 166

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 21, 2010 @07:57AM from the getting-some-answers dept.

eldavojohn writes "Scientists at Fermilab have decided that it's high time they build a 'holometer' to test the smoothness of space-time. Theoretical physicists like Stephen Hawking have proposed that space-time is not smooth but it's been a lot of math and no actual data. The Fermilab team plans to build two relatively small devices that act as 'holographic interferometers' to measure the shaking or vibration in split beams of light traveling through a vacuum. If the team finds the shaking in their measurements and records them, the theory of a holographic universe will have some evidence of non-smoothness in space-time and perhaps a foothold in bringing light to the heavily debated theoretical physics."

Japan's Latest Rockstar Is a 3D Hologram 305

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 21, 2010 @02:37AM from the as-real-as-it-gets dept.

kkleiner writes "Hatsune Miku is a Japanese pop diva who's just started to play massive stadium concerts to sold out crowds. Her hair is blue, she dresses like Sailor Moon, and she'll only appear in concerts via a 3D 'hologram.' Oh, and did I forget to mention that she's completely fictional? Created by Crypton Future Media, Hatsune Miku and her virtual colleagues have gone on limited tours in Japan."

Comment Re:That's What's Holding It Down! (Score 1) 283

by xehonk on Thursday October 14, 2010 @03:48PM (#33899410) Attached to: Opera Embraces Extensions For v.11

No, not like this.

According to your link opera supports showing tabs grouped by window.
Treestyle tabs offers a hierarchical order (over several levels) for tabs in the same window. If you start with a search for a topic, all results (those opened in new tabs anyway) will show up one level below the search. If you branch further from one of the results, it'll open a new level. It's an incredibly useful and mostly automatic way to generate order in your tabs.

Chess Ratings — Move Over Elo 133

Posted by timothy on Wednesday August 04, 2010 @05:02PM from the checkmate-and-perhaps-match dept.

databuff writes "Less than 24 hours ago, Jeff Sonas, the creator of the Chessmetrics rating system, launched a competition to find a chess rating algorithm that performs better than the official Elo rating system. The competition requires entrants to build their rating systems based on the results of more than 65,000 historical chess games. Entrants then test their algorithms by predicting the results of another 7,809 games. Already three teams have managed create systems that make more accurate predictions than the official Elo approach. It's not a surprise that Elo has been outdone — after all, the system was invented half a century ago before we could easily crunch large amounts of historical data. However, it is a big surprise that Elo has been bettered so quickly!"

Comment Re:You're Doing It Wrong (Score 1) 123

by xehonk on Friday March 26, 2010 @02:20PM (#31629984) Attached to: Home-Built Turing Machine

The microcontroller is used to implement the action table of the turing machine. Nowhere in the description of a turing machine does it say how those transition rules are to be implemented.

Comment Re:Are you catholic? (Score 1) 902

by xehonk on Thursday February 26, 2009 @03:27PM (#27002137) Attached to: Designer Babies

If you kill a fetus, you have killed the potentiality of a child.

Same can be said for using a condom though. You killed the potentiality of a child by killing off your sperm. I can't say I share that view.

Apps That Officially Support Wine 354

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 03, 2009 @12:12AM from the insert-alcohol-related-line-here dept.

David Gerard writes "Wine (the Windows not-an-emulator for Unix) runs Windows applications more often than not. (Certainly more often than Vista does.) Dan Kegel on the wine-users mailing list/forum has started gathering apps that declare Wine a supported platform. And there's now a Wine Support Honor Roll page on the Wine wiki. We need more apps that work with Wine stating that they consider it a supported platform. If you write Win32 open source or shareware, please open yourself to the wider market!"

Sarcasm Useful For Detecting Dementia 389

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday December 15, 2008 @01:28PM from the yeah-that'll-work dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but Australian scientists are using it to diagnose dementia, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of New South Wales, found that patients under the age of 65 suffering from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common form of dementia, cannot detect when someone is being sarcastic."

Google To Sell Truly Open Android Dev Phone 219

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday December 08, 2008 @10:32AM from the what-were-they-waiting-for dept.

binary.bang writes "Google has announced an unlocked version of T-Mobile's G1 for sale at the same unlocked price of $399. The Android Dev Phone 1 is the G1, except being truly open: no SIM-lock, no hardware lock. Feel free to flash your customized Android build — the bootloader won't be checking for signatures. Don't be misled by the word 'Dev,' looks like all you need to qualify is an Android Market account. This looks like the Open Handset Alliance delivering the promised Open Handset: yes root, yes flash-your-build, no contract, no strings attached. Anyone else relieved & thrilled?"

Windows Drops Below 90% Market Share 595

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @03:09PM from the easing-the-stranglehold dept.

ozmanjusri writes "Online market share of the dominant Windows operating system has taken its biggest monthly fall in years to drop below 90%, according to Net Applications Inc. Computerworld reports that Microsoft's flagship product has been steadily losing ground to Mac OS X and Linux, and is at its lowest ebb in the market since 1995. 'Mac OS X... [ended] the month at 8.9%. November was the third month running that Apple's operating system remained above 8%.' The stats show that while some customers are 'upgrading' from XP to Vista, many are jumping ship to Apple, while Linux is also steadily gaining ground. A Net Applications executive suggests the slide may be caused by many of the same factors that caused the fall in Internet Explorer use. 'The more home users who are online, using Macs and Firefox and Safari, the more those shares go up,' he said. November has more weekend days, as well Thanksgiving in the US, a result that emphasizes the importance of corporate sales to Microsoft."

Look What's Cooking At Microsoft Labs 125

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @12:17PM from the smart-people-cool-toys dept.

stinkymountain writes "Writer John Brandon spent two days at Microsoft Research Labs in Redmond and got an inside look at some pretty interesting projects under development, including a robotic receptionist, a new type of touch screen for people with fat fingers, and an electronic table that allows multiple people to collaborate in real time. Brandon also talks about some of these research projects on this NPR podcast."

Wolfram Research Releases Mathematica 7 234

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday November 19, 2008 @01:23PM from the just-installing-it-would-make-me-feel-dumber dept.

mblase writes "Wolfram Research has released the seventh version of Mathematica, and it does a lot more than symbolic algebra. New features range from things as simple as cut-and-paste integration with Microsoft Word's Equation Editor to instant 3D models of mathematical objects to the most expensive clone of Photoshop ever. Full suites of genome, chemical, weather, astronomical, financial, and geodesic data (or support for same) is designed to make Mathematica as invaluable for scientific research as it is for mathematics."

Two Europeans Indicted In US For 2003 DDOS Attacks 93

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @12:32PM from the how-about-some-shrimp-echouafni dept.

narramissic writes "In a continuation of the first successful U.S. investigation ever into DDOS attacks, Axel Gembe, 25, of Germany and Lee Graham Walker, 24, of England were indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Los Angeles, California, on one count of conspiracy and one count of intentionally damaging a computer system. The two men were allegedly hired by Jay R. Echouafni, owner of Orbit Communication, a Massachusetts-based company that sold home satellite systems, to carry out DDOS attacks against two of Orbit's competitors."

Comment Re:Discussion != Endorsement (Score 1) 892

by xehonk on Sunday September 14, 2008 @05:12PM (#25001355) Attached to: Royal Society and Creationism In Science Classes

While we're at it, let them teach about all the other religious creation myths in science classes as well. They're about as scientific and some have more believers than creationism.
Or.. let's stick to science in science classes.

Valve Responds to Steam Territory Deactivations 258

Posted by Zonk on Friday October 26, 2007 @09:10PM from the read-the-fine-print dept.

An anonymous reader passed us a link to Shack News, which is reporting on official commentary from Doug Lombardi of Valve about the international Orange Box code problem we talked about yesterday. According to Lombardi, the folks who bought copies of the game from a Thai gaming store are pretty much out of luck. They'll need to buy a local copy to have a working version. That said, they should be able to replace the old code with a new one. "'Some of these users have subsequently purchased a legal copy after realizing the issue and were having difficulty removing the illegitimate keys from their Steam accounts,' added Lombardi. 'Anyone having this problem should contact Steam Support to have the Thai key removed from their Steam account.'"

Slashdot Top Deals