Comment 2010 ACM Turing Award Citation (Score 1) 61
Here's the link to the citation describing Les Valiant's work:
http://www.acm.org/news/featured/turing-award-2010
Submission + - iPhone workers still sick after chemical poisoning (cio.com.au)
swandives writes: "Chinese workers who suffered chemical poisoning after being exposed to n-hexane on an iPhone production line are still experiencing health problems, even though Apple reports "all affected workers have been treated successfully" in its most recent progress report on its suppliers. n-hexane is a chemical cleaning agent that was used at one of its supplier's factories in Suzhou, China."
Submission + - Employee Termination Procedures 3
RoyaleA writes: I've worked in the IT industry for 8 years and for whatever reason I've never had to deal with a disgruntled employee that either quits or is terminated. It just happened last week. This employee was a VP, so they had access to a lot of company data (client information, financials, etc). Now, I like to think of myself as paranoid when it comes to keeping records of everything that goes on since I still have access log files from 2003, but I'm wondering what exact procedures other SysAdmins take when dealing with this. It's a small company (10 client nodes, 2 servers) so there's no real policy in place to go by. So far, I've disabled the account on the LDAP, disabled the employee's website credentials, archived all of the access logs to an encrypted flash drive, and cloned their old PC to an offsite backup machine. Being a responsible admin, I need to ask...is there anything I'm overlooking? This employee was pretty pissed off...
Submission + - Company resells Open Source Software (blender.org)
sylphsama writes: "A company named "IllusionMage" deceptively resells a 3D open source animation package (www.blender.org) and claims it as their own. The software, dubbed IllusionMage, portrays flagrant similarities with Blender, although outdated compared to the original. The website itself is a patchwork of sorts, using renders from different users and numerous other packages as a way to impress its visitors. Not only is that a breach in copyright, but they intentionally hide that the software is distributed under the GNU GPL license, rendering it free to use. Here's their website: http://computeranimations.org./ The Blender Foundation itself has spoken out through its chairman Ton Roosendaal."
Comment Live TeXing (Score 1) 569
There is an on-going discussion of note taking during lectures over at Math Overflow.
See: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/12638/taking-lecture-notes-in-lectures, especially Anton Geraschenko's comments on Live TeXing. It works!
Comment Re:So what was the UNIX Reference (Score 1) 331
It is spelled sudo in the game (it's spelled that way in the subtitles.) Legion is the character who says it. The only time I encountered that line was when he was hacking into a turret.
Comment Re:What super bowl party? (Score 1) 560
Oh please, Mark Sanchez and Rex Ryan smacked that ass
Comment The NFL at its best (Score 3, Insightful) 560
Face it, the NFL are brilliant. They are not about football. They are about revenue. They had two goals in mind when setting out on their broadcasting endeavor:
a) Sell high-cost adspace
b) Get people to care about the adspace
Now you hear people always saying "I watch the superbowl for the commercials!" Mission A-Ccomplished NFL. Was that enough? It's never enough. So the last 10 years have been their attempt to make more money by becoming some of the biggest douchebags in the IP industry.
"That's the thing about greed, Arch, it's blind. And it doesn't know when to stop" -- Lenny Cole
a) Sell high-cost adspace
b) Get people to care about the adspace
Now you hear people always saying "I watch the superbowl for the commercials!" Mission A-Ccomplished NFL. Was that enough? It's never enough. So the last 10 years have been their attempt to make more money by becoming some of the biggest douchebags in the IP industry.
"That's the thing about greed, Arch, it's blind. And it doesn't know when to stop" -- Lenny Cole
Comment It will NEVER catch on. (Score 2, Insightful) 178
Never. I'd love to believe that this will be some great new leap forward, but it is just a massive mis-step by a company trying to find new revenue streams. BR adoption is tepid at best, and that doesn't even exclude most of the population by requiring special glasses. It's always been a gimmick and nothing more. 3D offers very little to the viewer and certainly not enough to warrant wearing glasses for every movie you sit down to watch. Majorly flawed.
Comment coral cache (Score 3, Interesting) 418
Comment Re:Not the Pioneer Anomaly (Score 1) 89
The European Space Agency's ESA Portal has a short article on the unexplained variations in orbital energy experienced by these spacecraft.
See http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEMUCV3VU1G_0.html
Comment Re:Well Then (Score 1) 754
Is the 'pain' part really reflexology?
I've always been skeptical of the claims about curing diseases - which is what I really understood as reflexology - because I haven't seen any consistent evidence.
But the idea that applying localized pressure relieves pain seems sensible to me, and matches my own anecdotical experience (anecdotical by population size, but has been consistent). For that matter, so does a good movie or a deep conversation.
Focused sensation distracts from 'normal' sensation, and it is easier to focus on sharp, local stimuli over dull, distributed discomfort or pain. Never thought it had much to do with reflexology - although I could see how it could support its less ambitious claims.
Comment Re:Oregon's Final Report on Milage Taxes (Score 1) 792
Actually, the equivalent single axle load (ESAL) is 0.000019425 for the Fit and 0.0007716 for the F-150 (assuming equal distribution on axles). So really that F-150 does over 39 times the damage the Fit does. To be fair though, that's nothing compared to semis for which the legal single axle load is 18,000lbs for an ESAL of 1.0. Either way though, it doesn't take away from the fact they are doing the same amount of damage by traveling the same number of miles they were previously, and paying less to do so which is the entire point of the VMT tax.
ESALs explained. http://pavementinteractive.org/index.php?title=ESAL
Comment Epistemological problem (Score 1) 754
all the other absurd lying pieces of worthless trash out there who profit off of the superstition and naivety
fyi, these guys actually believe in what they are doing. So they aren't lying - deluded is more accurate. It's an epistemological problem, something which many of us know little about.
fyi, these guys actually believe in what they are doing. So they aren't lying - deluded is more accurate. It's an epistemological problem, something which many of us know little about.
Comment Re:Democratic? (Score 1) 278
Online voting doesn't solve any problems. If you can't get your arse down to a local school/town hall etc every 5 years to tick a fucking box then you don't deserve a vote. You want a paper trail so you can do recounts and prevent fraud. It's not so hard to understand.
