Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Monster? (Score 5, Funny) 345

Not to drag this dry videophile discussion out too long, but I presume you're not using cheap factory-raised unicorn horn, notorious for its poor standing wave sync-sweetening and shallow inter-bitstream raster resonance?

Only unicorns raised in the Swiss Alps have the protein content in their horns that allows a digital signal to hit such crisp, sparkling 1s and deep, thick 0s.

Books

Newton's Apple Story Goes Online 114

Hugh Pickens writes "Although many historians are skeptical of the story, Rev. William Stukeley, a physician, cleric, and prominent antiquarian, wrote that he was once enjoying afternoon tea with Sir Isaac Newton amid the Woolsthorpe apple trees when the mathematician reminisced that he was just in the same situation as when the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. The original version of the story of Sir Isaac Newton and the falling apple first appeared in Stukeley's 1752 biography, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life. Now BBC reports that UK's Royal Society has converted the fragile manuscript into an electronic book, which anybody with internet access will now be able to read and decide for themselves. 'The story of Newton and the apple, which had gradually become debunked over the years. It is now clear, it is based on a conversation between Newton and Stukeley,' says Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University's Trinity College. 'We needn't believe that the apple hit his head, but sitting in the orchard and seeing the apple fall triggered that work. It was a chance event that got him engaged with something he might have otherwise have shelved.'"

Comment Re:World War III - The Cyber War (Score 1) 651

Could this happen?

I mean, not just vanilla NAT but the development of an alternative flavor of IP to be deployed on state-owned routers with standard IP gateways on the outside ends.

Imagine some exotic fork of IPv6 with a few strange omissions and other surprising features, geared toward efficient DPI, content filtering, and social network analysis, designed by some of China's most brilliant network architects, theorists, and engineers.

Comment Re:distinction (Score 2, Funny) 766

Nah, someone would have to actually try bringing GMO seeds aboard a plane and shouting in Arabic while attempting to throw them out the bulkhead hatch.

Then the TSA would not only ban bringing seeds on planes, but also issue guidelines stating that passengers may not look out the window while flying over farmland, may not read books about farming during the middle two hours of a trip, and may not think about corn at any time while the plane is in the air.

Comment Re:cultural information (Score 5, Interesting) 113

That's actually really interesting to consider -- You could think of Netflix popularity as a band pass of the full spectrum of movie popularity. Imagine a few graphs for other channels that signify different levels of investment: theatrical viewing and DVD purchase above rental, cable viewing below it, and torrenting at the bottom. Now imagine these distributions overlaid on top of each other. I wonder what that graph would look like...

Comment Re:Welcome to the beginning of the end (Score 1) 421

I think this could have happened earlier in the Internet revolution, but today it may very well be too late for such a crackdown. It's as if we went from the Model T to 1970s levels of car ownership in a decade. Legislation was able to kill a few freedoms here and there (particularly the DMCA in the US and sister legislation elsewhere) but overall, expansion of state powers couldn't keep up with the pace of technological progress. The inertia of the installed base is too great to make a sweeping change now.

Actually, going back to the car analogy, perhaps this is kind of what happened in India, and look at the wild west that is their motorways. Try regulating that explosion! The good thing is that you can't hit pedestrians with the Internet. You can do a lot of damage if someone's unprotected, but unlike navigating a crowded Delhi highway, anyone can take a few steps to greatly reduce their risks.

Slashdot Top Deals

UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker

Working...