Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Image

The Virtual Choir Project 58

An anonymous reader writes "Conductor and composer Eric Whitacre has successfully created a virtual choir using the voices of 185 people who posted their performance on YouTube. The piece that's performed is called 'Sleep,' composed by the conductor himself in 2000. Anyone can join in — all you need is a webcam and a microphone."
Debian

FreeNAS Switching From FreeBSD To Debian Linux 206

dnaumov writes "FreeNAS, a popular, free NAS solution, is moving away from using FreeBSD as its underlying core OS and switching to Debian Linux. Version 0.8 of FreeNAS as well as all further releases are going to be based on Linux, while the FreeBSD-based 0.7 branch of FreeNAS is going into maintenance-only mode, according to main developer Volker Theile. A discussion about the switch, including comments from the developers, can be found on the FreeNAS SourceForge discussion forum. Some users applaud the change, which promises improved hardware compatibility, while others voice concerns regarding the future of their existing setups and lack of ZFS support in Linux."
Space

Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernova 21

davecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well as a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."
It's funny.  Laugh.

What If They Turned Off the Internet? 511

theodp writes "It's the not-too-distant future. They've turned off the Internet. After the riots have settled down and the withdrawal symptoms have faded, how would you cope? Cracked.com asked readers to Photoshop what life would be like in an Internet-addicted society learning to cope without it. Better hope it never happens, or be prepared for dry-erase message boards, carrier pigeon-powered Twitter, block-long lines to get into adult video shops, door-to-door Rickrolling, Lolcats on Broadway, and $199.99 CDs."

Comment Beware of a spoiler here! (Score 1) 705

This was the worst movie ever made! Come on!
The guy inhales the ship fuel and starts to transform into an alien!? What's that?
And aliens forming a slum!? Where are the rich countries to rescue? Like the US would have no interest in bringing them out
and studying whatever tech they had... And how do the aliens behave like wild animals and are still so advanced?
It just does not add up. This is a horrible and ridiculous movie. I just can't understand how people can like such terrible stuff.
People should just go watch the Cosmos series by Carl Sagan and they would understand why this is such a ridiculous plot.
This movie is just a symbol of how decadent is the human society these days. It even makes me sad to think that this is the
kind of stuff that people like to see. Destruction, death, crime... this is just another lame pretext to make skulls explode with
computer effects. No intellectual value at all.

Comment Re:What languages? (Score 1, Interesting) 1359

I am a student living in the US now, but I also lived in Japan before.

If you want freedom, Brazil should be a very good option. I won't deny that it has problems and
is not quite at the same level of wealth as the US, EU or Japan, but there is literally no better place
to live. For a foreigner you may have a lot of red tape to take care of, but other factors really will
compensate for it. Weather, the people, the food... I can't wait to finish my PhD and go back!

Portuguese should not be so hard to learn from English too, it's very similar to Spanish.

Comment Re:Wow. (Score 0) 165

Actually, only the light elements like H, He and Li were formed in the Big Bang, so these are the most abundant. All the others are formed inside stars by nucleosynthesis, including carbon. Even in the Sun, about 75% in mass is H and 23% is He, only 2% of it is made of heavier elements. Of course, this balance will change during Sun's life, but that's what it is now.
Encryption

When Is It Random Enough? 153

TheCamper asks: "The generation of random numbers is very important in many areas, especially encryption. Pseudo Random numbers created by software is simply not good enough. Many key generation applications ask the user to move the mouse or bang on the keyboard to add to the randomness. You can also purchase a (very expensive) hardware random number generator to make truly random numbers. Wanting the randomness of a hardware random number generator without wanting to pay for or build my own, I was wondering if crinkling cellophane (or the like) into my computer's microphone would be considered random enough for serious encryption key generation." What entropy sources would you use for the generation of strong encryption keys?

Slashdot Top Deals

"I've finally learned what `upward compatible' means. It means we get to keep all our old mistakes." -- Dennie van Tassel

Working...