Comment Re:Guess this song applies to parrots, too (Score 1) 30
Natural selection at work near Darwin, Australia.
Comment Guess this song applies to parrots, too (Score 1) 30
Comment Re:Self-fulfilling prophecies (Score 1) 221
Looks like these physicists get an uncertainty principle too ;)
Comment Re:Someone said it before ;) (Score 0, Redundant) 111
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
Hooray for ambiguity
Comment Re:Not So Much With The Internet (Score 1) 160
It's about science vs. dogma, imo. We should base our policies on facts and observations rather than assumptions.
Comment Re:This is rediculous (Score 1) 344
If somebody produces an addon that gives an advantage over anyone else, paid or not, it's a problem with the game engine. Blizzard has had a long-standing policy of disabling specific functionality when it got out of hand. Patch 2.0 (burning crusade) got rid of all the old braindead button mashing mods that could practically play the game for you. This new policy will have no effect on what addons are actually capable of doing.
Excluding Intelligent Design Principles From the Search For Alien Life 308
KIdPanda writes "Prompted by pictures of man-made structures in the Utah desert, a SETI astronomer explains the sometimes-ambiguous difference between seeing the hand of God, alien intelligence, or nature. 'In my photographs, Shostak's SETI-trained eye — standing in for a pattern-crunching computer program — searched for an unexpected increase in visual order (or, in thermodynamic terms, a decrease in entropy caused by the rebellion of life against universal decay). A road or a tended field is mathematically simpler than a mountainous jumble or naturally varied vegetation. ... But there's an obvious problem: nothing is simpler than a sweep of blue sky, or the inky blackness of space. If simplicity is the benchmark, space itself is evidence of design."
New Type of Particle May Have Been Found 281
An anonymous reader writes "The LHC is out of commission, but the Tevatron collider at Fermilab is still chugging along, and may have just discovered a new type of particle that would signal new physics. New Scientist reports that the Tevatron's CDF detector has found muons that seem to have been created outside of the beam pipe that confines the protons and anti-protons being smashed together. The standard model can't explain the muons, and some speculate that 'an unknown particle with a lifetime of about 20 picoseconds was produced in the collision, traveled about 1 centimeter, through the side of the beam pipe, and then decayed into muons.' The hypothetical particle even seems to have the right mass to account for one theory of dark matter."
Windows 7 To Be 256-Core Aware 441
unassimilatible writes "As new features of Windows 7 continue to trickle out, ZDNet is now reporting that it will scale to 256 processors. While one has to wonder, like with Vista, how many of the teased features will actually make it into the final OS, I think we can all agree, 256 cores is enough for anybody." This Mark Russinovich interview has some technical details (Silverlight required).
Indian Moon Mission Launched 305
hackerdownunder writes "India's maiden lunar mission (Chandrayaan-1) got off to a flying start today. Describing the launch as 'perfect and precise,' the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), G Madhavan Nair, said that it would be 14 days before the satellite would enter into lunar orbit.
Chandrayaan carries eleven payloads: five designed and developed in India, three from the European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from NASA."
Give Up the Fight For Personal Privacy? 751
KlaymenDK writes "Over the last decade or so, I have strived to maintain my privacy. I have uninstalled Windows, told my friends 'sorry' when they wanted me to join Facebook, had a fight with my brother when he wanted to move the family email hosting to Gmail, and generally held back on my personal information online. But since, amongst all of my friends, I am the only one doing this, it may well be that my battle is lost already. Worse, I'm really putting myself out of the loop, and it is starting to look like self-flagellation. Indeed, it is a common occurrence that my wife or friends will strike up a conversation based on something from their Facebook 'wall' (whatever that is). Becoming ever more unconnected with my friends, live or online, is ultimately harming my social relations. I am seriously considering throwing in the towel and signing up for Gmail, Facebook, the lot. If 'they' have my soul already, I might as well reap the benefits of this newfangled, privacy-less, AJAX-2.0 world. It doesn't really matter if it was me or my friends selling me out. Or does it? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. How many Windows-eschewing users are not also eschewing the social networking services and all the other 2.0 supersites with their dubious end-user license agreements?"
Greek Hackers Target CERN's LHC 445
Doomsayers Delight writes "The Telegraph reports that Greek hackers were able to gain momentary access to a CERN computer system of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) while the first particles were zipping around the particle accelerator on September 10th. 'Scientists working at CERN, the organization that runs the vast smasher, were worried about what the hackers could do because they were "one step away" from the computer control system of one of the huge detectors of the machine, a vast magnet that weighs 12,500 tons, measuring around 21 meters in length and 15 meters wide/high. If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector and, said the insider, "it is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it."'"
Microsoft Concedes Vista Launch Problems 594
notdagreatbrain writes "Maximum PC just posted a lengthy feature looking back at the myriad problems that went into Microsoft's 6 billion dollar failure of the Vista launch. Aside from running benchmarks comparing Vista at launch how its performing now, they also found a Microsoft exec who was willing to speak frankly about Vista. The Microsoft source blamed bad drivers from GPU companies and printer companies for the majority of Vista's early stability problems and described User Account Control as poorly implemented but defended it as necessary for the continued health of the Windows platform. He assailed OEM system builders for including bad, buggy, or just plain useless apps on their machines in exchange for a few bucks on the back end. Finally he conceded that Apple appeals to more and more consumers because the hardware is slick, the price is OK, and Apple doesn't annoy its customers (or allow third parties to)."
Unsolicited Offer For My Personal Domain Name? 542
Batzerto writes "Last Friday I received an unsolicited email offer for my domain — click the link below for the message. Their company name matches my domain, but with a country-specific top level domain (.NL in this case). They do seem to be legitimately using the domain in their country. As for my usage, the domain is my last name(.COM) and I'm only really using it for email. I'm not really that attached to it other than the hassle of changing email addresses. There are other flavors of the domain available (.US for example) that would suit my purposes just fine. So, Slashdot veterans, I ask you, what should I do? I'm leery of making an offer and falling into someone's legal trap. I wouldn't mind getting a chunk of cash out of the deal though."
MIT Secretly Built Mega-Efficient Nano Batteries 195
mattnyc99 writes "There was plenty of chatter last week about an MIT announcement that researcher Angela Belcher had developed a way to create virus-based nanoscale batteries to power mini gadgets of the future. In a fascinating followup at Popular Mechanics, Belcher now says that her unpublished work includes full-scale models of the batteries themselves, and that they could power everything from cars and laptops to medical devices and wearable armor. Quoting: 'We haven't ruled out cars. That's a lot of amplification. But right now the thing is trying to make the best material possible, and if we get a really great material, then we have to think about how do you scale it.'"
