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Comment: Re:I remember a story (Score 1) 362

You misrepresented the story:

It worked out fine. He gathered his ministers at the shore and then ordered the sea to turn back so it would not wet his feet. It didn't listen. Then, he castigated his ministers for continually appealing to him to order things that also weren't within his power.

Canute was a brighter man than you give him credit for.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great#Ruler_of_the_waves

Comment: Taking this to its logical conclusion: (Score 1) 404

by Hartree (#40121577) Attached to: Can You Buy Tech With a Clean Conscience?

Reduce Atmospheric Use!

All that oxygen you're greedily sucking down when you go jogging just to make yourself look thinner and trimmer could be use by someone in the third world or animals. Ditto the food calories you burn up. And you exploited thir world labor for those
running shorts to be made.

How can you bear to keep existing and keeping others under the thumbs of your use of resources. Your existence prevents other more worthy beings like microbes from existing.

Commit suicide today in an environmentally friendly way, but make sure you put your body somewhere it can be reused. Like a compost heap. Or, at least sit around and do nothing so you use less.

(The rest of us will follow along right after you. We promise!)

I'm all for improving worldwide quality of life, increasing efficiency and righting wrongs, but IMHO, much of the motivation for this sort of silliness is not making it better, but assuaging guilt. Instead, you buy the same bloody thing from a company that greenwashes it. That way you can go right along with your life but get to think "I'm better than those people who didn't get a fair trade coltan sticker (or whatnot) for their cellphone.

ISS

ISS Captures SpaceX Dragon Capsule 217

Posted by Soulskill
from the congratulations-folks dept.
Today at 9:56AM EDT (13:56 GMT) the robotic arm on the International Space Station successfully captured SpaceX's Dragon capsule. It's the first time a commercial craft has connected with the ISS, and the first time a spacecraft made in the U.S. has gone to the station since the retirement of the shuttle. The approach was delayed temporarily as engineers worked out bad sensor readings due to light reflected off the ISS's Kibo laboratory. "To work around the problem, SpaceX narrowed the field of view for the laser sensor so that it wouldn't pick up light from the offending reflector. Dragon then returned to the 30-meter checkpoint and moved in for the final approach." If all goes well today, the capsule will most likely be opened tomorrow. Video of the operation is being broadcast live on NASA TV.
Science

Return of the Vacuum Tube 312

Posted by Soulskill
from the and-it-only-wants-revenge dept.
sciencehabit writes "Peer inside an antique radio and you'll find what look like small light bulbs. They're actually vacuum tubes — the predecessors of the silicon transistor. Vacuum tubes went the way of the dinosaurs in the 1960s, but researchers have now brought them back to life, creating a nano-sized version that's faster and hardier than the transistor (abstract). It's even able to survive the harsh radiation of outer space."

Comment: The solution is obvious! Voodoo economics: (Score 1) 585

by Hartree (#40073127) Attached to: BSA Claims Half of PC Users Are Pirates

Put all of the more than half of computer users that admit to using pirated software in jail forever where they can never buy software again.

By the BSA/MPAA/RIAA 's logic that will more than double the amount of software they sell, right?

If that's right, won't it also double the amount of taxes the government will collect from them?

Hardware

DDR4 May Replace Mobile Memory For Less 145

Posted by Soulskill
from the not-dance-dance-revolution dept.
Lucas123 writes "The upcoming shift from Double Data Rate 3 (DDR3) RAM to its successor, DDR4, will herald a significant boost in both memory performance and capacity for data center hardware and consumer products alike. Because of the greater density, 2X performance and lower cost, the upcoming specification and products will for the first time mean DDR may be used in mobile devices instead of LPDDR. Today, mobile devices use low-power DDR (LPDDR) memory, the current iteration of which uses 1.2v of power. While the next generation of mobile memory, LPDDR3, will further reduce that power consumption (probably by 35% to 40%), it will also likely cost 40% more than DDR4 memory."

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