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Comment Re:MS (Score 1) 128

by DogPhilosopher (#39684245) Attached to: Scientists Find Long-Sought Majorana Particle

You're right, better that our quantum computers only be available in one model that's produced by one company. Or maybe it'll run an operating system that comes in 101 different flavors. Who wants a generic, hardware agnostic, fairly open and friendly OS after all?

ROFL Hardware agnostic? Fairly open? Friendly? You must be a Microserf.

Have you ever heard of Windows Genuine DisAdvantage? Upgrade your graphics card and The Allseeing Eye of Redmond decides to cut you off from the eternal stream of XP patches.

The only way to lift that spell that is to drop all of your XP licenses in the fires of Doom Mountain. Not easy, since "one does not walk simply into Redmond".

Comment Re:Gold Reserves (Score 1) 353

by DogPhilosopher (#39673391) Attached to: Portugal Is Considering a "Terabyte Tax"

Meanwhile, Lisbon is sitting on $19 BILLION (â14.5 billion) worth of gold reserves, most of it still left over from the good old days of plundering South America...

A lot of it was actually plundered from the rest of Europe by the Nazis. They exchanged the gold for Portuguese wolfram ore.

http://gold.greyfalcon.us/gold6.html

"Allied intelligence concluded Portugal had received $143.8 million of gold from the Swiss National Bank, about half of the increase in Portugal’s gold reserves reported earlier in this chapter. Of this amount, the Allies were certain that $22.6 million was from gold looted from Belgium and of the remaining portion 72% was looted by the Nazis."

Anyway, it can't be used to pay of portuguese debt. It can't be sold in any significant amount, since that would seriously disrupt the gold market.

Comment Re:Meh (Score 1) 249

by DogPhilosopher (#39553277) Attached to: Flying Car Makes Successful Maiden Flight

I saw this presented on Dutch TV a few hours ago, and this thing does NOT have a parachute. The testpilot was wearing one for the test flights though. Not sure how he planned to get out and avoid the rotor and propellor.

To answer some questions in this thread, this is STOL, not VTOL. The rotor is sort of powered, but nor for lift. It just spins up before take-off to get in the air ASAP.

The company plans to get these things on the market in two years. They expect the police to use these as a cheap alternative to choppers, and there was speculation about civil use in countries with lots of space, like Australia.

So, yeah, meh.
Science

Checking the Positional Invariance of Planck's Consant Using GPS 41

Posted by Soulskill from the more-accurate-than-a-divining-rod dept.
gzipped_tar writes "Whether the fundamental constants really stay the same is always a question worth asking. In particular, the constancy of Planck's Constant is something that cannot be simply ignored, owing to its universal importance in linking the quantum and classical pictures of our world. Using publicly available GPS data and terrestrial clocks, researchers form the California State University were able to verify that the value of h indeed stays the same across different positions in the vicinity of our Earth. Their result says the local position invariance of h is satisfied within a limit of 0.007. The paper is published in the journal Physical Review Letters (abstract), and a free-to-read preprint is available on arXiv. In short: by the well-known formula E = h * f, a hypothetical variation on h induces changes in f, the transition frequency that keeps the time in atomic clocks, both on earth and aboard the satellites. When taking account of other time variations, such as general relativistic time dilation, and assuming the invariance of E (atomic transition energy) on physical grounds, we can figure out an upper bound on the variation of h reflected in the measured variation in f."
The Internet

A Quarter of the EU Has Never Used the Web 392

Posted by samzenpus from the what's-all-this-then? dept.
smitty777 writes "Reuters reports that a quarter of the EU has yet to use the internet. Further, half of those in some of the southern and western states do not even have internet access at home. From the article: 'As well as highlighting geographic disparities across one of the world's most-developed regions, the figures underline the lack of opportunity people in poorer communities have to take part in advances such as the Internet that have delivered lower cost goods and service to millions of people.' The full report created by Eurostat can be found here."

Comment The enemy of open society (Score 1) 402

by DogPhilosopher (#32730216) Attached to: Science Historian Deciphers Plato's Code

From the press release you'd think that Plato was a champion of freedom and human rights. It would be more accurate to describe him as a proto-fascist pederast. Popper has argued as much in The open society and its enemies Vol 1: The spell of Plato, but apparently this guy didn't get the memo..

A Plato quote from that book:
`The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative, neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. [..]
And even in the smallest matter he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals [..] only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it.'

Also see wikipedia:
"According to this model, the principles of Athenian democracy (as it existed in his day) are rejected as only a few are fit to rule."

"He argues that it is better to be ruled by a bad tyrant, than be a bad democracy"
Power

Europe To Import Sahara Solar Power Within 5 Years 450

Posted by kdawson from the nothing-new-under-the-sun dept.
An anonymous reader writes "If just 1% of the Sahara Desert were covered in concentrating solar panels it would create enough energy to power the entire world. That's a powerful number, and the European Union has decided to jump on its proximity to the Sahara in order to reap some benefits from the untapped solar energy beaming down on Northern Africa. Yesterday, European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger announced that Europe will start importing solar energy from the Sahara within the next five years. It is estimated that the initiative will cost €400 billion ($495 billion). It's part of an EU goal to derive 20% of its power from renewable sources by 2020. From the article: 'The EU is backing the construction of new electricity cables, known as inter-connectors, under the Mediterranean Sea to carry this renewable energy from North Africa to Europe. Some environmental groups have warned these cables could be used instead to import non-renewable electricity from coal- and gas-fired power stations in north Africa.' To this the energy minister replied, essentially, 'Good question, we'll get back to you on that.'"
Networking

Cisco's New Router — Trouble For Hollywood 335

Posted by Soulskill from the giving-pirates-a-bigger-pipe dept.
Shakrai writes "Time Magazine has published an article about the impact of Cisco's new CRS-3 router on the business practices of the MAFIAA. This new router was previously mentioned here on Slashdot and is expected to alleviate internet bottlenecks that currently impede steaming video-on-demand services. Some of the highlights from the article: 'The ability to download albums and films in a matter of seconds is a harbinger of deep trouble for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which would prefer to turn the clock back, way back. ... The hard fact is that the latest developments at Cisco, Google and elsewhere may do more than kill the DVD and CD and further upset entertainment-business models that have changed little since the Mesozoic Era. With superfast streaming and downloading, indie filmmakers will soon be able to effectively distribute feature films online and promote them using social media such as Facebook and Twitter. ... Meanwhile, both the MPAA and the RIAA continue to fight emerging technologies like peer-to-peer file sharing with costly court battles rather than figuring out how to appeal to the next generation of movie enthusiasts and still make a buck."

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