Comment: Re:Not Tonight (Score 1) 67
Goddammit. I blame Feedly for putting this article in my "Today" feed.
Comment: Not Tonight (Score 1) 67
Better get in your time machine, 'cause the AccuWeather article talking about "tonight" is from April 13.
Comment: The Software! (Score 2) 591
Current hardware is amazing, but we've become so inured to bad software (chose any definition of "bad" you like, slow, bloated, buggy, insecure, incompatible, leaky...except perhaps "ugly" which we're doing Ok on) that so far no one else has even mentioned it. Until we start addressing that, better hardware will just lower the bar on the next round of software.
Comment: Gene Hackman tought me... (Score 1) 259
All you need is an empty potato chip bag.
Australian Scientists Discover Potential Aids Cure 232
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the saving-lives dept.
from the saving-lives dept.
smi.james.th writes "Several sites report that Australian researcher David Harrich and his team have potentially discovered a way to stop HIV becoming AIDS and ultimately cure the disease. From the article: 'What we've actually done is taken a normal virus protein that the virus needs to grow, and we've changed this protein, so that instead of assisting the virus, it actually impedes virus replication and does it quite strongly.' This could potentially hail one of modern medicine's greatest victories."
Comment: Etymology of online/offline (Score 1) 457
"Online" and "offline" in the meeting sense considerably predate the internet sense. Originally it referred to equipment that was in the main production flow or pulled to the side for repairs, dating back to perhaps WWII and possibly further. The meeting sense was in use by the 1970s at least, and didn't seem new or strange then.
-- MarkusQ
Comment: It's a Lens Flare (Score 2) 472
It's a lens flare. Your photo was ruined by you pointing your camera at a very bright light source. Any other camera would've also ruined your picture with a lens flare, just not a purple one. Ruined with purple or ruined without purple, your photo is still ruined because you suck at photography.
Comment: Re:/. worthy? tech section? (Score 2) 992
what's "tech" about raising the speed limit? why is this on
/. anyway?
I think it's because of the effect it could have on all the car analogies. Raising the speed limit might subtly alter the impact of such arguments, strengthen some or totally invalidate others.
If you think of the car analogies we routinely use to explain technical subjects to a non-technical audience as cars, our shared cultural assumptions about cars (how many wheels & doors they have, how fast you are allowed to drive them, etc.) are like the fuel those cars run on. Changing the rules is like changing the fuel. Some will run better, other worse or not at all.
--MarkusQ
+ - Are climate skeptics "too rational"?-> 1
Submitted
by
ananyo
ananyo writes "An opinion piece in Nature by Dan Kahan, a professor of psychology at Yale Law School, suggests that the 'problem' with many people that reject the conclusions of climate science is not that they are 'irrational', as recent media reports suggest-but, if anything, that they are too rational.
As Kahan says in the piece: "If anything, social science suggests that citizens are culturally polarized because they are, in fact, too rational — at filtering out information that would drive a wedge between themselves and their peers.
For members of the public, being right or wrong about climate- change science will have no impact. Nothing they do as individual consumers or as individual voters will meaningfully affect the risks posed by climate change. Yet the impact of taking a position that conflicts with their cultural group could be disastrous.
Take a barber in a rural town in South Carolina. Is it a good idea for him to implore his customers to sign a petition urging Congress to take action on climate change? No. If he does, he will find himself out of a job, just as his former congressman, Bob Inglis, did when he himself proposed such action."
He suggests part of the solution would be for the media to avoid "catchy simplifications" in their reporting of psychological studies."
Link to Original Source
As Kahan says in the piece: "If anything, social science suggests that citizens are culturally polarized because they are, in fact, too rational — at filtering out information that would drive a wedge between themselves and their peers.
For members of the public, being right or wrong about climate- change science will have no impact. Nothing they do as individual consumers or as individual voters will meaningfully affect the risks posed by climate change. Yet the impact of taking a position that conflicts with their cultural group could be disastrous.
Take a barber in a rural town in South Carolina. Is it a good idea for him to implore his customers to sign a petition urging Congress to take action on climate change? No. If he does, he will find himself out of a job, just as his former congressman, Bob Inglis, did when he himself proposed such action."
He suggests part of the solution would be for the media to avoid "catchy simplifications" in their reporting of psychological studies."
Link to Original Source
+ - Scientists Explain How the Brain Cleans Itself-> 1
Submitted
by
Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Every organ in the body has to expel waste somehow. Despite the brain's importance in the body, scientists were previously unclear as to how the brain flushed out its toxins, because it did not have a lymphatic system like other organs, which filters out waste. The previous theory stated the cerebrospinal fluid, in which the brain is encased, expelled junk, as waste floated through tissues and made its way onto the surface – but that seemed wildly inconvenient for the amount of waste that the brain must produce. Now, researchers have discovered a second, faster cleaning system on top of the cerebrospinal fluid, and it may shed some light on what happens during disorders that affect the brain."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
+ - Curiosity survives brain transplant, prepares for first drive->
Submitted
by
alancronin
alancronin writes "If you thought your OTA update took too long, how about four days? That's how long the Curiosity "brain transplant" took, and is now finally complete. This now means that the main computers have switched over from landing mode, to surface mode — and thus we hope — meaning the rover's good to go. That said, it's still a painfully slow process, with Curiosity's wheels likely remaining steadfastly motionless for at least another week — and even then we're looking at a trip of just a few meters. When it comes to interplanetary travel, though, slow and steady definitely wins the race — in the meantime, you can soak up the view."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
+ - Ask Slashdot: How to ensure data would survive a Carrington event 2
Submitted
by
kactusotp
kactusotp writes "I run a small indie game company and since source code is kind of our life blood, I'm pretty paranoid about backups. Every system has a local copy, servers run from a raid 5 nas, we have complete offsite backups, backup to keyrings/mobile phones, and cloud backups in other countries as well. With all the talk about solar flares and other such near extinction events lately, I've been wondering though, is it actually possible to store or protect data in such a way, that if such an event occurred, data survives and is recoverable in a useful form? Optical and magnetic media would probably be rendered useless by a large enough solar flare and storing source code/graphics in paper format would be impractical to recover, so Slashdot, short of building a Faraday cage 100 km below the surface of the moon, how could you protect data to survive a modern day Carrington event? http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/03/06/3446150.htm"
Comment: Re:Wikipedia has something to say about this threa (Score 1) 452
That's an interesting story, and one I hadn't heard before. However, I can't help but wonder how the hell you burn down a marble building?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/08/are_ancient_ruins_flammable.html
tl;dr: heat
-- MarkusQ
"Severe Abnormalities" Found In Fukushima Butterflies 189
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the birth-of-mothra dept.
from the birth-of-mothra dept.
Dupple writes "The collapse of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant caused a massive release of radioactive materials to the environment. A prompt and reliable system for evaluating the biological impacts of this accident on animals has not been available. This study suggests the accident caused physiological and genetic damage to the pale grass blue Zizeeria maha, a common lycaenid butterfly in Japan. We collected the first-voltine adults in the Fukushima area in May 2011, some of which showed relatively mild abnormalities. The F1 offspring from the first-voltine females showed more severe abnormalities, which were inherited by the F2 generation. Adult butterflies collected in September 2011 showed more severe abnormalities than those collected in May. Similar abnormalities were experimentally reproduced in individuals from a non-contaminated area by external and internal low-dose exposures. We conclude that artificial radionuclides from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant caused physiological and genetic damage to this species."
+ - Survey of Human Centered Informatics->
Submitted
by
kodiaktau
kodiaktau writes "My exposure to HCI or Human Computer Interaction (now Human Centered Informatics) has been largely aged and limited to some brief early interaction with the Association of Computing Machinery. Since then I have been loosely following trends in usability but haven't really focused on the actual science behind the work we do on a day-to-day basis in creating user interfaces and using web applications. When I picked up this book I assumed it would be some unifying theory of HCI that would catch me up with where the science is today, but found it to be quite different.
In 113 pages, including the author biography, Yvonne Rogers winds a curious path through not only the theories behind HCI, but also a significant portion of time is spent giving some background in the history of the study. I was pleased to find that science is evolving and has spent a significant amount of time working with other social science disciplines as well as technical interaction. It was also interesting to see that like other social based disciplines there are many forks from the origin. I liked this book's style of simple presentation around theories. Most authors would trip over themselves trying to find long and complicated ways of explaining theory and purpose. This author is straight to the point and has practical examples for the different phases of the HCI theory evolution. In particular I really liked the way she included "...in a Nutshell" summaries of each theory. In a very small area she re-stated theory in an easy to digest manner. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a "For Dummies" kind of book, but the presentation is simple, elegant and well, usable.
The limited number of pages in the title may dissuade readers from purchasing, however this is not a case of more-is-better. I spent a lot of time reading this book in small chunks so I could completely understand each theory and how it evolved from previous models both inside the science and from other disciplines. While this book isn't for everyone I would certainly recommend this to someone moving into HCI studies, or for those who have interest in user interaction and classical theory. My biggest disappointment with this title was the quality of some diagrams supporting the theories. There is a lot of pixelation in some of the art and the fonts used in them can be a little hard to read. Really the publisher should have fixed those issues before going to print. As a survey of the body of knowledge I think this is really good. It is a little on pricey side at $35 for the amount of material, but the quality and uniqueness seems to be about right for the price."
Link to Original Source
In 113 pages, including the author biography, Yvonne Rogers winds a curious path through not only the theories behind HCI, but also a significant portion of time is spent giving some background in the history of the study. I was pleased to find that science is evolving and has spent a significant amount of time working with other social science disciplines as well as technical interaction. It was also interesting to see that like other social based disciplines there are many forks from the origin. I liked this book's style of simple presentation around theories. Most authors would trip over themselves trying to find long and complicated ways of explaining theory and purpose. This author is straight to the point and has practical examples for the different phases of the HCI theory evolution. In particular I really liked the way she included "...in a Nutshell" summaries of each theory. In a very small area she re-stated theory in an easy to digest manner. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a "For Dummies" kind of book, but the presentation is simple, elegant and well, usable.
The limited number of pages in the title may dissuade readers from purchasing, however this is not a case of more-is-better. I spent a lot of time reading this book in small chunks so I could completely understand each theory and how it evolved from previous models both inside the science and from other disciplines. While this book isn't for everyone I would certainly recommend this to someone moving into HCI studies, or for those who have interest in user interaction and classical theory. My biggest disappointment with this title was the quality of some diagrams supporting the theories. There is a lot of pixelation in some of the art and the fonts used in them can be a little hard to read. Really the publisher should have fixed those issues before going to print. As a survey of the body of knowledge I think this is really good. It is a little on pricey side at $35 for the amount of material, but the quality and uniqueness seems to be about right for the price."
Link to Original Source