rod - Slashdot User

First Self-Replicating Creature Spawned In Conway's Game of Life 241

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday June 17, 2010 @12:27PM from the emergent-gameplay dept.

Calopteryx writes "New Scientist has a story on a self-replicating entity which inhabits the mathematical universe known as the Game of Life. 'Dubbed Gemini, [Andrew Wade's] creature is made of two sets of identical structures, which sit at either end of the instruction tape. Each is a fraction of the size of the tape's length but, made up of two constructor arms and one "destructor," play a key role. Gemini's initial state contains three of these structures, plus a fourth that is incomplete. As the simulation progresses the incomplete structure begins to grow, while the structure at the start of the tape is demolished. The original Gemini continues to disassemble as the new one emerges, until after nearly 34 million generations, new life is born.'"

Anti-Speed Camera Activist Buys Police Department's Web Domain 680

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday June 08, 2010 @11:54AM from the I-bought-the-law dept.

Brian McCrary just bought a website to complain about a $90 speeding ticket he received from the Bluff City PD — the Bluff City Police Department site. The department let its domain expire and McCrary was quick to pick it up. From the article: "Brian McCrary found the perfect venue to gripe about a $90 speeding ticket when he went to the Bluff City Police Department's website, saw that its domain name was about to expire, and bought it right out from under the city's nose. Now that McCrary is the proud owner of the site, bluffcitypd.com, the Gray, Tenn., computer network designer has been using it to post links about speed cameras — like the one on US Highway 11E that caught him — and how people don't like them."

Comment Re:Lame.... Not that lame anymore (Score 1) 43

by rod on Sunday February 28, 2010 @12:37PM (#31306568) Attached to: Gaming With GPS On Your Smartphone

No.... plain GPS receivers doesn't work in buildings, in the woods. But if there is data network, then things change.
The new wave in LBS is merging A-GPS with social location information and other data.
Mobile phones have A-GPS (Assisted GPS) and other technologies, like Cell ID based locations and WIFI Hotspots information. By merging all this information, "positioning systems" that are not simply GPS anymore are getting much better.
A-GPS gathers Almanaque and Ephemeris data from the network, "making a weak signal stronger".
Cell ID (from the operators' cell phone antennas, BTSs) and WIFI help in between buildings, inside places by applying algorithms using simple techniques.
By gathering this information and crossing it, right now there can be pretty good results.
I'm using a Nokia E63 WITHOUT a GPS receiver. With the help from Nokia location based servers (supl.nokia.com) , I get pretty accurate location information without a GPS.

I'm a geek. I like sports :-)

Breaking the Squid Barrier 126

Posted by timothy on Sunday February 14, 2010 @09:33PM from the calimari-for-the-5000 dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Steve O'Shea of Auckland, New Zealand is attempting to break the record for keeping deep sea squid alive in captivity, with the goal of being able to raise a giant squid one day. Right now, he's raising the broad squid, sepioteuthis australis, from egg masses found in seaweed. This is a lot harder than it sounds, because the squid he's studying grow rapidly and eat only live prey, making it hard for them to keep the squid from becoming prey themselves. If his research works out, you might one day be able to visit an aquarium and see giant squid."

Eight PHP IDEs Compared 206

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 03, 2010 @11:32AM from the colonic-extraction dept.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Rick Grehen provides an in-depth comparative review of eight PHP IDEs: ActiveState's Komodo IDE, CodeLobster PHP Edition, Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT), MPSoftware's phpDesigner, NetBeans IDE for PHP, NuSphere's PhpED, WaterProof's PHPEdit, and Zend Studio. 'All of these PHP toolkits offer strong support for the other languages and environments (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL database) that a PHP developer encounters. The key differences we discovered were in the tools they provide (HTML inspector, SQL management system) for various tasks, the quality of their documentation, and general ease-of-use,' Grehen writes.'"

PlayStation Network Expanding To Involve Other Devices 63

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday January 07, 2010 @03:44AM from the making-toasters-smarter dept.

At CES, Sony's Kaz Hirai confirmed that the company will build out its PlayStation Network for use with other devices, such as televisions, Blu-ray players, and PCs. Quoting: "... the expansion starts next month with the availability of the PSN video store on these other devices, and Hirai explained they are constructing a mechanism to create a single user ID across the entire network (if you have a PSN account, it's good to go on any other applicable Sony device, and if you create one on another device, it'll work on PSN). And finally, Hirai also announced the formation of a new Sony division — called Sony Network Entertainment, Inc. — to drive this expansion of the PSN service into a Sony-wide network."

Ocean-Crossing Dragonflies Discovered 95

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 06, 2010 @10:45PM from the incredible-journey dept.

grrlscientist writes "While living and working as a marine biologist in Maldives, Charles Anderson noticed sudden explosions of dragonflies at certain times of year. He explains how he carefully tracked the path of a plain, little dragonfly called the Globe Skimmer, Pantala flavescens, only to discover that it had the longest migratory journey of any insect in the world."

Comment Re:Computers don't suck at math (Score 1) 626

by rod on Sunday November 01, 2009 @01:05AM (#29939553) Attached to: Why Computers Suck At Math

Yes, you're both correct. Humans suck in almost everything. When they go right, humans are good creating meta-whatever, but never good in being precise. This is stupid public workers (or hired to stupid people) boring work, and would end up wrong.

Computers are great. Humans made mistakes.

tsk

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