Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: Re:No shit (Score 1) 298

by Beuno (#35474378) Attached to: Tech Expertise Not Important In Google Managers

Also, I would not want to be "modded down" in the workplace for my political views. Slashdot people love free speech - as long as it agrees with theirs.

I don't think they meant it in a "Democrat vs Republican" sense, but rather internal company politics (ie, focusing on certain aspects of the project because it's good for a promotion).

Ubuntu

Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go? 778

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the why-can't-we-all-get-along dept.
inkscapee writes "Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero, the shining knight that would drive Linux onto every desktop and kick bad old Windows to the curb. But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux. What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"
Math

Deformable Liquid Mirrors For Adaptive Optics 196

Posted by timothy
from the mirror-mirror-on-the-magnet dept.
eldavojohn writes "Want to make a great concave mirror for your telescope? Put a drop of mercury in a bowl and spin the bowl. The mercury will spread out to a concave reflective surface smoother than anything we can make with plain old glass right now. The key problem in this situation is that the bowl will always have to point straight up. MIT's Technology Review is analyzing a team's success in combating problems with bringing liquid mirrors into the practical applications of astronomy. To fight the gravity requirement, the team used a ferromagnetic liquid coated with a metal-like film and very strong magnetic fields to distort the surface of that liquid as they needed. But this introduces new non-linear problems of control when trying to sync up several of these mirrors similar to how traditional glass telescopes use multiple hexagonal mirrors mounted on actuators. The team has fought past so many of these problems plaguing liquid mirrors that they produced a proof of concept liquid mirror just five centimeters across with 91 actuators cycling at one kilohertz and the ability to linearize the response of the liquid. And with that, liquid mirrors take a giant leap closer to practicality."

Comment: Re:Contacts good, Calendars would be better (Score 1) 115

by Beuno (#31749240) Attached to: Ubuntu One Gets iPhone App For Contact Sync

If that where the case, then couchdb is not the smartest way to do it, considering that each user has it's own DB. Cross-referencing anything from user to user is incredibly expensive (load-wise) and hard to do ;)
Canonical could be after world domination and selling data to the CIA, or we could be trying to provide a valuable service to users. Who knows.

Comment: Re:Available only to subscribers (Score 5, Informative) 115

by Beuno (#31743160) Attached to: Ubuntu One Gets iPhone App For Contact Sync

No. We partnered with Funambol to provide this service, and it carries a significant cost to both develop and maintain and scale this specific service, as the announcement says.
Supporting hundreds of different mobile phones is an incredibly expensive task, and on top of that we've added a layer that saves those contacts to couchdb and replicates them locally for you, to be used with any application you wish.
While we all love and use free software, it's completely unreasonable to demand that services be provided for free. The service also provides a 30 day free trial, where you can perform a one-time sync if you wish to have a backup of your contacts.

I personally believe that allowing people to sync their contacts from almost any mobile phone into a Linux desktop is a huge step forward.

If some day we are defeated, well, war has its fortunes, good and bad. -- Commander Kor, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3201.7

Working...