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Comment: Re:So many extra fees (Score 1) 91

by evilbessie (#43766825) Attached to: Canadian Cellphone Users May Get Justice Over Phantom Charges

One of the reasons that is bandied about is that advertising regions do not match up with state borders so differing sales taxes would cause the advertising to be wrong. It does piss me off when nothing in a $1 store is actually $1 though. I'm glad Europe got its shit together to get rid of most of these extra unavoidable fees.

Comment: Re:Open set it is! (Score 1) 248

by evilbessie (#43729789) Attached to: Major Advance Towards a Proof of the Twin Prime Conjecture

I was just objecting to the use of set of all primes, as you say there is no easy way to construct (or test) primes, however by showing that there must be a prime greater than an arbitrary value you have demonstrated there are an infinite number of primes* without requiring that you know all the primes in the first place.

*(N!+1)! +1 ad infinitum.

The proof in the article is that there exists an infinite subset of the primes where members are separated from at least one other member by less than 70 million. Which is a pretty hard thing to even get close to proving.

Comment: Re:Open set it is! (Score 1) 248

by evilbessie (#43729625) Attached to: Major Advance Towards a Proof of the Twin Prime Conjecture

This whole proof is much easier if you use factorials as you can always prove there must be a prime bigger than N, as N! + 1 is not divisible by any number less than N. Which sort of gets around this weird way of attacking this problem y'all seem to be using which involves ephemeral 'set of known primes' which is weird in proofs.

Technology

Samsung Testing 5G Phones With 1gbps Download Speed 128

Posted by samzenpus
from the greased-lightning dept.
Gumbercules!! writes "While many smartphone users are still on 3G and are waiting for 4G to be available, Samsung is now testing 5G networks, capable of getting speeds up to 1gbps. Obviously, we're years away from seeing these in the wild (the company is shooting for 2020) but it's still an amazing improvement over what many people are experiencing now."

Comment: Re:"they" can fuck off, the binary units are the o (Score 1) 618

by evilbessie (#42870739) Attached to: When 1 GB Is Really 0.9313 Gigabytes

Except floppy manufacturers, they exist in their own world where there are 1024 Bytes to the KiloByte and 1000 KB to the MB all so they could have a 1.44MB capacity, not 1.41MiB or 1.47MB as logic dictates, because fuck logic.

It's unlikely to cause any probes to crash into Mars so it probably doesn't matter that much.

Medicine

New SARS-Like Virus Infects Both Human and Animal Cells 62

Posted by Soulskill
from the two-for-the-price-of-one dept.
sciencehabit writes "A SARS-like virus discovered this summer in the Middle East may infect more than just humans. The pathogen, a close cousin to the one that caused the 2002 to 2003 SARS outbreak, may also be able to infect cells from pigs and a wide range of bat species, researchers report today (abstract). The findings may help public health officials track the source of the outbreak and identify the role of wild animals and livestock in spreading the virus, researchers say."

Comment: Re:250$ buys you a lot of netbook... (Score 3, Insightful) 117

by evilbessie (#42043109) Attached to: $250 Chromebook With Ubuntu Linux Is Very Fast

That'd be an Ultrabook as the 'standard' of which you talk for a small light machine, which isn't really fair as the machine will be faster with an i3/i5 and DDR3. But it'll also cost 3 times as much so. The question then becomes will a $250 netbook in 2 generations beat the ultrabook (ie would you be better to buy a new $250 machine when one comes out for 3 generations than spent the same money in one lot now. That's an interesting question but not one many people would care to ask. I don't know but if you find out you can let the rest of us know.

Businesses

Is Innovation the Most Abused Word In Business? 287

Posted by samzenpus
from the give-it-a-name dept.
dcblogs writes "Most of what is called innovation today is mere distraction, according to a paper by economist Robert Gordon, written for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Real innovations involve things like the combustion engine or air conditioning, not the smartphone. The paper includes thought experiments to help you gain more respect for genuine innovations such as indoor plumbing. The Financial Times has posted the complete 25-page paper.(pdf)"

In the long run, every program becomes rococco, and then rubble. -- Alan Perlis

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