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Grigory Perelman turns down $1m Millenium Prize-> 1

Submitted by Kleiba
Kleiba writes "After turning down the prestigious Field Medal in 2006 for his contributions to mathematics, the reclusive Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman announced yesterday that he is rejecting a $1 million Millennium Prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute for solving the Poincare conjecture."
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Comment: Re:Cure? (Score 2, Interesting) 363

by Kleiba (#32205222) Attached to: Cheap Cancer Drug Finally Tested In Humans

I disagree with your conclusion. Although it is correct that Patient dead => won't buy other products, it doesn't follow that Patient alive => will buy other products.

Even though your actual statement was less strict ("more likely to buy"), I still doubt that it would make sense economically to reason that way. You don't invest large amounts with vague expectations for ROI which would - if at all - only occur with a substantial delay. Also, how do you know that the patient is going to buy those other products from you and not from your competitor?

Medicine

Study Shows TV Makes Kids Fat, Computers Don't 276

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the now-pass-the-cheetos dept.
Xemu writes "Computers don't make children fat, but watching TV for the same length of time does. This is shown by a recent Swedish study of all school children in Lund's county conducted by RN Pernilla Garmy. The results were clear: The child's obesity was directly affected by placing a TV in the child's room, but placing a computer in the room had no effect at all. One theory is that it's common to have a snack in front of the TV, while a computer requires a more active user, for example when chatting or playing games."
Transportation

The World's First Commercially Available Jetpack 303

Posted by kdawson
from the quieter-in-version-2 dept.
ElectricSteve writes "It's been a long time coming. While Arthur C. Clarke's geosync satellites have taken to space, and James Bond's futuristic mobile technology has become commonplace, still the dream of sustained personal flight has eluded us — until now. At $86,000, the Martin Aircraft jetpack costs about as much as a high-end car, achieves a 30-minute flight time, and is fueled by regular gasoline. A 10% deposit buys you a production slot for 12 months hence." Here's a video of some indoor test flights. This isn't Buck Rogers's jetpack — it's about 5 by 5 feet and weighs more than the average human. You won't be able to commute with it (the FAA has not certified this class of device) so it's recreational only for now.

Comment: Re:this is going to suck (Score 1) 683

by Kleiba (#31357162) Attached to: Ubuntu Gets a New Visual Identity

See - people are different and one person's preference will be very different from the next one's.

First, which side of the window, and for that matter the screen, are all of the menus on? That's right, the left-hand side. So why would you want to have to move your mouse a thousand pixels to close a window?

To make it harder to accidentally close a window if all you want to do is access the menu.

Second, what is the most destructive operation you can perform on a window? Closing it. Why on earth are you beating your users over the head by putting the most destructive operation that close to the corner? When it's on the corner, it's much easier to hit by accident, for example when reaching to resize the window. This has happened time and again with me on Windows to the point of absolute fury

Interesting. I personally have never tried to resize a window by grabbing the top right corner - and especially if I knew I could hit the close button by mistake, I'd probably use one of the other corners and reposition the window if necessary.

Every Mac user can immediately appreciate the position of the window controls, if they use them at all. They are clearly colored for improved accuracy, they're out of the way, and what's even better, you usually don't have to use them, since OS X's Expose is so much more convenient, even more so than Compiz, anyways

I don't find a lot of relevant and/or accurate observations in that last part of your rant. For instance, why would color coding improve accuracy? Why would Expose be relevant here, since it serves a totally different purpose than the window buttons? But in the end, I guess, most of what goes in this whole thread is a matter of taste and, as they say, de gustibus non est disputandum.

The Almighty Buck

1938 Superman Comic Sells For $1M 267

Posted by kdawson
from the check-those-boxes-in-the-attic dept.
slasher999 writes in to note a new world record sale for a comic: an instance of Action Comics #1, 1938, sold for $1 million at auction. Both the buyer and the seller remain anonymous. This comic marked the first time a superhero went to work in a city, and the first time a man flew without mechanical aid.

German airport cops soon to go Segway?

Submitted by Kleiba
Kleiba writes "In an apparent attempt to become the ridicule of luggage thieves, terrorists and ordinary air passengers, German police men are considering the use of Segways at Duesseldorf Air Port. A test phase started last Friday with four vehicles — each of which comes at a price of $8000. Similar case studies have been tried before, e.g. at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. With a maximum speed of 12.5 mph though, it seems unlikely that potential criminals will have a hard time escaping the motorized airport cops — especially since the machines are automatically stopped in front of stairways."

Denmark decides on open document formats->

Submitted by KlaymenDK
KlaymenDK writes "The Danish government has taken its good long time to decide on regulation of document formats for public documents. Today, finally, a majority has announced their support for proper open standards, with the final vote taking place on Tuesday.

The following principles must be fulfilled before a standard can be included on the list. The standard must be:

  • - Fully documented and publicly available;
  • - Freely implementable without economical, political or legal limitations on implementation and use;
  • - Approved by an internationally recognized standards organisation such as ISO, and standardized and maintained in an open forum through an open process;
  • - It must be demonstrable that the standard can be directly implemented by anyone in its entirety on multiple platforms;
  • - Interoperable within the functionality parameters with the other standards on the list

Take special note of the last point — what is interesting is that initially, ODF is the only standard on the list, so what this means is that even if OOXML should make the cut, it must "play well" with ODF. There is an additional provision that documents that are not intended for editing must be published in PDF/A-1 format."
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Keep the number of passes in a compiler to a minimum. -- D. Gries

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