Comment Re:Odd... (Score 1) 164
Bollocks, meant to write IAAPP not IAAPL
Comment Re:Odd... (Score 1) 164
This has been a source of confusion on Slashdot before. They usually run an experiment through the year, then stop over the winter to regroup and check the machine. This time, they haven't been running an experiment, so they've saved money which they can spend running the machine over winter, when EDF (French/Swiss power company) hike the prices up due to increased demand. IAAPL
Comment Re:How About Using Stereograms? (Score 1) 271
Comment Re:Clean Coal (Score 2, Funny) 464
Microsoft Genuine Advantage
Comment Pokemon gene (Score 1) 433
I remember coming across this while flicking through Nature to find physics stories, it seems scientists initially decided to call it "POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic factor" gene, in homage to the game. The wiki page also mentions a "Sonic the hedgehog" protein and "Pikachurin", a retinal protein.
Comment Turning the problem on its head (Score 1) 724
I would be interested to see if you could use memory errors as a method to detect cosmic rays.
Comment Re:Some other examples (Score 1) 395
What about Digital Fortress by Dan Brown?
*ducks*
Comment Re:No good ideas come to mind.... (Score 2, Interesting) 395
Primer is brilliant, but it does have its technobabble moments (as close as I can remember it):
"Come on, what's the variable you can always change, in mechanics, in the Feynman diagrams without changing anything?"
"Time."
(putting pedant hat on)
While this is accurate (most classical, and for that matter quantum theories are invariant under time reversal), this isn't true for weak interactions or thermodynamics, for example. Also, it struck me at the time as something real people, real physicists wouldn't say. They would just say "it's gone backward in time".
Still, this is unbelievable nitpicking. Primer was wonderful and thoughtprovoking, and I hope Daemon is if and when I read it.
Watch the Obama Inauguration With Moonlight 197
bigmonachus writes "Miguel de Icaza has posted on his blog that linux users will be able to watch the Obama inauguration using Moonlight. Just go to the Moonlight download page to get it. He also said that some Microsoft engineers worked hard last night to make this happen."
Woman Claims Ubuntu Kept Her From Online Classes 1654
stonedcat writes "A Wisconsin woman has claimed that Dell computers and Ubuntu have kept her from going back to school via online classes. She says she has called Dell to request Windows instead however was talked out of it. Her current claim is that she was unaware that she couldn't install her Verizon online disk to access the Internet, nor could she use Microsoft Word to type up her papers."
New Google Favicon Deja Vu All Over Again? 227
theodp writes "Last June, Google rolled out a new favicon, the small branding icon that graces your URL bar when you visit Google. Which, as it turned out, bore a striking similarity to Garth Brooks' Circle-G logo. Well, Google went back to the drawing board and has come back with a new favicon, which it says was inspired by — not copied from, mind you — its users' submitted ideas. Some are also seeing inspiration elsewhere for the new favicon, which consists of white 'g' on a background of four color swatches. Take the AVG antivirus icon, for instance. Or everybody's favorite memory toy, Simon. Or — in perhaps the unkindest cut of all — the four-color Microsoft Windows logo, shown here with a superimposed white '7'. Anything else come to mind?" What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.
Comment Re:Ethics, line 1... (Score 1) 232
1) Doctors appreciate organ doners.
Sometimes after a late night at the brain lab, what you really need is a kebab.
Scripts and Scaling In Online Games 61
CowboyRobot writes "Jim Waldo of Sun Microsystems has written an article titled Scaling In Games & Virtual Worlds, saying that they 'should be perfect vehicles to show the performance gains possible with multicore chips and groups of cooperating servers. Games and virtual worlds are embarrassingly parallel, in that most of what goes on in them is independent of the other things that are happening. Of the hundreds of thousands of players who are active in World of Warcraft at any one time, only a very small number will be interacting with any particular player.' A group of researchers at Cornell wrote a related piece about improving game development and performance through better scripting."
The Best Gaming PC Money Can Buy 360
SlappingOysters writes "Gameplayer has gone live with their best PC hardware configurations for Q1 2009. They've broken it into three tiers depending on the investor's budget. And while the prices are regional, it is comparative across the globe. The site has also detailed the 10 Hottest PC Games of 2009 to unveil the software on the horizon which may seduce gamers into an upgrade."
Comment Keyboard technique (Score 1) 523
One thing I've always wondered is how people are taught to type, and how it relates to how people play the piano. I've learnt both and one thing I've learnt playing the piano is to try and move each finger as little as possible, keeping them close to the keys. This way you expend less energy, play in a more controlled way, and avoid straining your muscles. Lots of typists, however, seem to raise their fingers quite high while typing, which surely can't be good for you? What do others think?
