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Comment: Re:Actually, the Mandelbrot set is already 4D (Score 1) 255

by billbaggins (#30127840) Attached to: "Mandelbulb," a 3D Mandlebrot Construct, Discovered
Technically true, but look beyond the formulae for a brief moment and look at what they're *doing* and you'll see the way out: his mechanism for computing [x,y,z]^n is to convert it to spherical coordinates [r,theta,phi], then do something similar to complex exponentiation - [r^n,theta*n,phi*n] - then convert that back to rectangular coordinates. So rectangular [0,0,1] becomes polar [1,0,0], which squares to polar [1,0,0].

Makes sense as long as you think about it a little, but not too much.

Comment: Re:Celsius: It's for telling temperature (Score 1) 1233

by billbaggins (#29607817) Attached to: At What Temperature (F) Do You Prefer Your Nerd Cave?

Take one meter. Make a cube of that side, a cubic meter. Fill that with water near the sea level and you get a volume of 1 Liter of water. Which happens to have a mass of Kilogram.

Oh, and you were doing so well up to that point. A cubic meter is 1,000 liters; filled with water it would have a mass of 1,000 kilograms, or one metric ton. For a single liter, you want a cubic decimeter.

But thanks for playing, anyway.

Comment: Re:Surprise surprise! (Score 1, Offtopic) 117

by billbaggins (#27414533) Attached to: National Security Letters Reform Act Reintroduced

Why is "hate crime" legislation a good thing again?

If I beat you up and leave you for dead, that's one victim.

If I beat you up and leave you for dead because I don't like your hair color, and it's known that I belong to a large group of similarly-minded people, then not only have I victimized you, but everyone who has your same hair color is now going to be looking over their shoulders, in fear that one of my compatriots is after them next.

That's why "hate crimes" deserve special punishment - because they have the intent and effect of victimizing not just one or two or a few people, but a whole group. It's a whole new level of unacceptability.

Businesses

+ - EB games exposed

Submitted by
black hole sun
black hole sun writes "Ever walk into an EB games only to get harassed by an employee? Or have you ever overheard some steaming pile like The Shield being lavishly praised, in a thoroughly dishonest manner? Well, don't blame the employees; mystery shoppers hound them constantly to ensure they're handing out the required amount of BS to customers. They cannot give their honest opinions about games or accessories; that is, if by "honest," they mean "negative." EB corporate apparently makes them perform every trick in the book to lie, cheat and steal money from your wallet. And to think that most of them get minimum wage — they have my sympathy."
Censorship

White House Forces Censorship of New York Times 356

Posted by Zonk
from the beating-on-the-grey-lady dept.
VE3OGG writes "It would seem that scientists are not the only ones facing censorship from the White House. According to several news sources the New York Times originally had intended to run an article co-authored by a former employee of the National Security Council, critical of the current administration's policies toward Iran. The article had passed the CIA's publication review board, but was later redacted on orders from the White House. Article authors Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann were former advisers to the White House, and thus all of their publications are scrutinized by a board before they can be published. Of the numerous documents this pair has published since leaving their positions, they say this was the first that was actively censored.

FCC Commissioner Stumps For Media Diversity 159

Posted by kdawson
from the dialing-back-the-consolidation dept.
maynard writes, "Speaking at a New York City town hall meeting on corporate media consolidation and its deleterious impact on the expression of minority viewpoints, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps stumped against greater media concentration and instead argued for greater diversity of media outlets and voices. In 2003 the FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, changed media ownership rules to favor greater corporate media consolidation at the expense of local owners. In an attempt to reverse totally the prior FCC policy, Mr. Copps argued strongly in favor of independent media owners. Read on for what he had to say.

Element 118 Created 244

Posted by kdawson
from the this-time-for-sure dept.
BuzzSkyline writes, "The heaviest element yet, Element 118, has been created in Dubna, Russia by a collaboration of researchers from Russia's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US. They created the new element by fusing together Californium (element 98) and Calcium atoms. The achievement comes five years after the scandal-plagued retraction of an earlier claim, which was based on fabricated data, that three atoms of element 118 had been produced at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The achievement was reported on October 9 in the journal Physical Review C (subscription needed to read more than the abstract)."

Hackers Find Use for Google Code Search 176

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the thats-why-you-don't-comment-code dept.
An anonymous reader wrote in to say that "Google has inadvertently given online attackers a new tool. The company's new source-code search engine, unveiled Thursday as a tool to help simplify life for developers, can also be misused to search for software bugs, password information and even proprietary code that shouldn't have been posted to the Internet, security experts said Friday. "

Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics: Superiority is recessive.

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