Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Bah humbug (Score 1) 422

by Jens Egon (#34651488) Attached to: Between Christmas and New Year's, I'll take ...

Well, there's really no compelling reason to go to all the trouble and cost to change the US to metric. I dn't see it changing any time soon...at least I hope not in my lifetime.

And that's really all there's to it. The rest of us changed our systems when there was a real need for it, and with that the need pretty much disappeared.

Today, when you see a measurement in feet, you know whose bloody foot. You don't worry whether it's a French foot, or a Swedish foot, or one of the several Bavarian feet.

Miles, on the other hand ...

Comment Re:Silver Lining (Score 1) 328

by Jens Egon (#34103036) Attached to: IE9 May Not Be Enough To Save IE

There's a difference between were there money is registered as earned, for tax purposes, and in what pockets they end up.

Anyway, yes, I think EU regulators are acting towards Microsoft as if they (Microsoft) were an immoral foreign entity.

(As opposed to one of our wholesome homegrown immoral entities.)
Television

BBC Wants DRM On HD Broadcasts 267

Posted by Soulskill from the dtv-drm-bbq dept.
NickFortune writes "The EFF's Danny O'Brien has pointed out that the BBC has asked a UK regulator for permission to add DRM to their high-definition broadcasts. Apparently, this is at the behest of content providers. 'BBC is proposing to encode the TV listings metadata that accompanies all digital TV channels with a simple compression algorithm. The parameters to this algorithm would be kept secret by the BBC: it would ask manufacturers to sign a private agreement in order to receive a copy. This license would require the implementation of pervasive DRM in the equipment they build.' Ofcom, the regulatory body in question, has detailed the proposal asked for comments, but the window closes today."
Biotech

On-Body Circuits Create New Sense Organ 289

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-tag-this-porn dept.
destinyland writes "In 'My New Sense Organ,' a science writer tests 'a new sense' — the ability to always know true north — by strapping a circuit board to her ankle. It's connected to an electronic compass and an ankle band with eight skin buzzers. The result? 'I had wrong assumptions I didn't know about ... I returned home to Washington DC to find that, far worse than my old haunt San Francisco, my mental map of DC swapped north for west. I started getting more lost than ever as the two spatial concepts of DC did battle in my head.' The device also detects 'the specific places where infrastructure interferes with the earth's magnetic fields.'
Space

First Rocky Exoplanet Confirmed 155

Posted by Soulskill from the yo-adrian dept.
Matt_dk writes "The confirmation of the nature of CoRoT-7b as the first rocky planet outside our Solar System marks a significant step forward in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. The detection by CoRoT and follow-up radial velocity measurements with HARPS suggest that this exoplanet has a density similar to that of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Earth, making it only the fifth known terrestrial planet in the Universe. The search for a habitable exoplanet is one of the holy grails in astronomy. One of the first steps towards this goal is the detection of terrestrial planets around solar-type stars. Dedicated programs, using telescopes in space and on ground, have yielded evidence for hundreds of planets outside of our Solar System. The majority of these are giant, gaseous planets, but in recent years small, almost Earth-mass planets have been detected, demonstrating that the discovery of Earth analogues — exoplanets with one Earth mass or one Earth radius orbiting a solar-type star at a distance of about 1 astronomical unit — is within reach."
Space

Kepler Mission Could Detect Exomoons 64

Posted by Soulskill from the that's-no-exomoon-hurrrr dept.
Lord Northern writes "According to several news sources, NASA's Kepler mission is said to be able to detect habitable moons orbiting planets in other star systems. Kepler is a space telescope designed to detect exoplanets. Its mission will have it orbiting the Sun for 3.5 years, after which we'll be able to tell if any of our neighboring stars actually have planetary systems around them. However, apparently we will be able to detect not only exoplanets, but also exomoons orbiting those exoplanets. The Kepler team came to that conclusion after running a computer simulation which found that the telescope was sensitive enough to detect the gravitational pull of an orbiting moon (PDF). This means that the data expected by the end of the mission is going to be very rich, and it is said that moons as small as 0.2 times the mass of earth could be detected. Further details about the Kepler mission are available from NASA."

Slashdot Top Deals

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

Close