Comment: A few more good articles on the topic (Score 1) 245
Current:
* http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
Older (after AirFrance disaster)
* http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
* http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07...
Comment: Re:Reviewed by volonteers, donated to Foundation (Score 1) 113
Thekohser, thanks for the reply, could you point me to the correct info? I only found http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... and that doc is not trivial, so any help explaining your position would greatly help. Where do 49+% go? Is it the same for all non-profits or non-profits in the same sector (if there is such a division). Thank you!
Comment: Reviewed by volonteers, donated to Foundation (Score 1) 113
Disclaimer - I work for the Wikimedia foundation, but expressing my own opinion.
Donations go to the Wikimedia Foundation, covering various technology/organizational costs, but the foundation is not involved in the actual editing or reviewing process - that has always been done exclusivelly by the community. Donations would never affect the content of an article simply because its a different group of people - those who receive the money spend it on internet/development/building/conferences, while volonteers independently decide what should stay and in what form. An analogy here would be donating money to ISP to support the service, while abusing one of the web sites on the web.
Tim Cook: If You Don't Like Our Energy Policies, Don't Buy Apple Stock 348
Posted
by
timothy
from the quantifiable-vs-unquantifiable dept.
from the quantifiable-vs-unquantifiable dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Nick Statt reports at Cnet that at Apple's annual shareholder meeting Friday, Apple CEO Tim Cook shot down the suggestion from a conservative, Washington, DC-based think tank that Apple give up on environmental initiatives that don't contribute to the company's bottom line. The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), hasn't taken kindly to Apple's increasing reliance on green energy and said so in a statement issued to Apple ahead of the meeting. 'We object to increased government control over company products and operations, and likewise mandatory environmental standards,' said NCPPR General Counsel Justin Danhof demanding that the pledge be voted on at the meeting. 'This is something [Apple] should be actively fighting, not preparing surrender.' Cook responded that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues. 'When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind. I don't consider the bloody ROI,' said Cook. 'We do a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive, We want to leave the world better than we found it.' Danhof's proposal was voted down and to any who found the company's environmental dedication either ideologically or economically distasteful, Cook advised 'if you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.'"
FLOSS Codecs Emerge Victorious In Wikimedia Vote 235
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the quest-for-internal-consistency dept.
from the quest-for-internal-consistency dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Maggs from the Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team has given a final summary of the discussion and vote about whether to support MP4 video or not. Twice as many people voted against adding MP4 to Wikimedia than voted for full support. Now they can get back to their mission of advocating openness. 'Those opposing MP4 adoption believe that in order for what we create to be truly free, the format that it is in also needs to be free, (else everyone viewing it would need to obtain a patent license in some form to be able to view it). ... From that viewpoint, any software infrastructure in Wikimedia projects must adhere to community norms regarding intellectual property, patent status, licensing or encoding methods. Current community requirements are that free/open standards should be used at all times to encode and store video files on the servers that house our data, so that both our content and software can be redistributed without any restrictions. Proprietary video containers or codecs such as MP4 are not allowed on Wikimedia projects because they are patent-encumbered and their software cannot be re-licensed freely (though MP4 content can be freely re-licensed).'"
Comment: I would have thought it costs more... (Score 0) 69
if a plane stops midflight, it might crash... costing waay more than a $100K...
World's Largest Ship Floated For the First Time 166
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the that's-a-biggun dept.
from the that's-a-biggun dept.
Zothecula writes "A ship with a hull longer than the Empire State Building is tall has been floated out of dry dock in Geoje, South Korea. Measuring 488 m (1,601 ft) long and 74 m (243 ft) wide, the hull belongs to Shell's Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility, which upon completion will be the largest floating facility ever built."
Comment: Re:Quack science is for quackers (Score 1) 254
Nailed it in one.
More like in three. And they are not the only issues. And all of them are addressed. Go read Wikipedia or something.
To me the the options are quite simple: you either shell out some cash and there's a small chance of you being reanimated, or you don't and you're gone.
Navy To Deploy Lasers On Ship In 2014 402
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the point-and-click dept.
from the point-and-click dept.
Velcroman1 writes "The Pentagon has plans to deploy its first ever ship-mounted laser next year, a disruptive, cutting-edge weapon capable of obliterating small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles with a blast of infrared energy. Navy officials announced Monday that in early 2014, a solid-state laser prototype will be mounted to the fantail of the USS Ponce and sent to the 5th fleet region in the Middle East for real-world experience. 'It operates much like a blowtorch ... with an unlimited magazine,' one official said."
Comment: Chrome is a virtual box too - NaCl (Score 1) 201
This seems to talk purely about virtual servers, not hardware. Everything above hardware is nothing but programs, even if we call them virtual PCs. They only differ in the level of integration with the rest of the machine and peripheral devices. For example, javascript running in a browser could be considered as much of a virtual pc as Oracle's VirtualBox, with the only difference being the interface with which internal code communicates with the outside. Chrome's native client (NaCl) ability to run native code without any interpretation while still maintain complete isolation from the OS and other processes is the best example of complete virtualization.
Comment: Wikipedia (MediaWiki) is also deploying Lua (Score 2) 311
MediaWiki developers are almost ready for Lua scripting to be enabled for all Wikipedia and related sites, and It has already been deployed to http://mediawiki.org./ Lua was chosen mostly because of how easy it is to sandbox and limit memory consumption.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lua_scripting/Tutorial -- Introduction
Comment: Concerns (Score 1) 505
I have had my AP open for almost a year in the middle of New York, and there are usually 10-20 mobile and other users connected. And even though I have assigned the highest priority to my own computer, sometimes network slows down considerably. It might be the "wonderful" TimeWarner messing up as usual, but it could also be some torrent usage which I would rather keep off. Sadly, specifically my revision of the linksys router does not run dd-wrt or any other open stacks, so I have no way to do any custom magic without router upgrade. And even if I do buy a new router, I don't think it is easy to filter torrent traffic. Plus I would really love to have an encrypted portion of my network for my own devices, as cookie stealing is fairly common and easy to do.
Any recommendations? Thanks!
Comment: Screen Resolution (Score 2) 398
The reasoning on Intel's part seems to be that unless the laptop gains as much usability and "coolness" factor as the recent tablets have, Intel will be looking at a considerable laptop market shrinkage. And since Intel is by far better positioned in the laptop as oppose to tablet market, it is as critical for them as it is for Microsoft.
On the other hand, what Intel seems to be missing is that the screen resolution also plays a significant role in user's device appreciation. Microsoft does not seem to have as much say about this (strangely), but Intel could have added minimum resolution to the list of their requirements.
Comment: Dvorak (Score 2) 307
I learnt it during a summer internship in about a week, and never looked back to qwerty. This is purely a preference, and I heard both positives (speed) and negatives (fingers don't move as much so causes more rep strain injuries). It def improved my overall typing speed, but caused some grief when using CTRL+ZXCV and also in various games with one hand on keyboard (usually switch back to qwerty for them). You won't have as much problem switching because you already got the motorics skills down, just need to have the new layout in your head. Btw, switching back and forth between layouts takes about a few seconds for my head.
Comment: Re:Dear Slashdot... (Score 1) 96
Its funny how a comment that was meant as a joke got flagged as flamebait. Guess my sarcasm and jokes are not