BiophysicalLOVE - Slashdot User

Submission + - Boeing 787 Dreamliner: Powered by Android, and 69TB of solid-state storage (extremetech.com)

Submitted by

MrSeb

on Thursday July 12, 2012 @09:11AM

MrSeb writes: "The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is the most-anticipated wide-bodied jet of all time: Boeing has taken a total of 859 orders since 2004, and so far it has only delivered 14 planes. By end of 2013 it intends to ramp up production to 10 units per month, but even then, most customers still have a wait time of between 5 and 10 years. This submission isn’t about the Dreamliner’s composite body, or the fact that it uses 20% less fuel than a 767, though: Inside all 859 of those planes, each and every seat will be outfitted with an Android-powered entertainment system. Boeing is offering two flavors of in-flight entertainment and connectivity (IFEC) solutions: The Thales TopSeries Avant, and the Panasonic eX3. Two days ago, Qatar Airways showed off its recently-delivered 787 Dreamliner at the Farnborough International Airshow in the UK — and inside there are 254 seats, all equipped with the Thales IEFC. There are two classes in the Qatar Airways 787, economy and business, and they’re outfitted with 17-inch and 10-inch touchscreen IEFCs respectively. The IEFCs are completely integrated — all of the hardware is stored in the seat-back unit (there’s no under-seat box). And the hardware spec well, this is the bit that blew my mind. Each IEFC has an STMicro dual-core ARM processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 256GB (!) SSD. There’s also a main server, which features 32 x86 cores (so, quad-CPU Xeon or Opteron), 128GB of RAM, and a further 4TB of SSD storage. All told, a Qatar Airways Dreamliner has 508 ARM cores, 32 x86 cores, 382GB of RAM, and 69 terabytes of solid-state storage."

Submission + - First "iPad Mini" Photos Surface Online (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

redletterdave

on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @12:15PM

redletterdave writes: "Apple will neither confirm nor deny the existence of a mini tablet — or any of its products, for that matter — which is why any time photos of iPhone or iPad components surface, it's a big deal. It may be the only peek we get at these products before their official unveiling. On Tuesday night, Gotta Be Mobile received "exclusive" photos from a trusted source within Apple's foreign supply chain, which showed various engineering samples of Apple's alleged 7.85-inch iPad. The photos line up with previous reports about the tablet, and suggest a form factor that's not only wider and longer than Google's upcoming Nexus 7, but it's also thinner than Apple's third-generation iPad released in March. According to the engineering samples, the iPad Mini would be around 213 mm tall, 144 mm wide, and about 8 mm thick."

Comment Complex Subject (Score 1) 333

by BiophysicalLOVE on Tuesday July 10, 2012 @11:51AM (#40602765) Attached to: Trying to Untangle Anarchist Attacks On Scientists

This subject was covered most exhaustively earlier in the year by nature: http://www.nature.com/news/anarchists-attack-science-1.10729. I think that both articles miss a point. Although these attacks may seemed linked, or claimed to be linked, I doubt it. This violence may be carried out by as few as two people - a motorcyclist and a gunman, yet both articles paint this as a huge sideswipe by an organised Anarchist (paradox alert) movement. For all we know these attacks may be carried out by a handful disgruntled ex-employees claiming an antiscientist rhetoric to intimidate their former employer, or, in a fit of self-delusion, jump on the anarchist bandwagon to give some sort of paper-thin reasoning for their violence tendencies. "The Olga Cell", "sorcerer of the atom" "LONG LIVE THE CONSPIRACY OF CELLS OF FIRE"? Surely anyone who has a few Anarchist cliches and stereotypes to call upon could write this stuff?

Comment The actual papers (Score 2) 122

by BiophysicalLOVE on Monday July 09, 2012 @04:32AM (#40589189) Attached to: Arsenic-Friendly Microbe Now Seems Unlikely

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/07/06/science.1219861 and http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/07/06/science.1218455

Submission + - UN Wades Into Patent War Mess (bbc.com)

Submitted by Rambo Tribble on Saturday July 07, 2012 @09:52AM

Rambo Tribble writes: The BBC is reporting that the worldwide, tangled mess of IP litigation has come to the attention of the UN's International Telecommunication Union. The agency has announced it will be holding talks aimed at reducing this massive drag on the digital economy. Good luck.

Submission + - Firefox remarkably improved in latest browser showdown (tomshardware.com) 2

Submitted by Billly Gates on Friday July 06, 2012 @08:12PM

Billly Gates writes: Tomshardware did another benchmark showdown since several releases of both Firefox and Chrome came out since the last one. Did Mozilla clean up its act and listen to its users? The test results are listed here. Firefox 13.01 uses the least amount of ram with 40 tabs opened while Chrome uses the highest surprisingly. Overall it scored medium with memory efficiency which measures ram released after tabs are closed. What is also surprising is IE 9 still is king of the lowest ram usage for just 1 tab. Bear in mind in the comments below is that these tests were benchmarked in Windows 7. Windows XP and Linux users will have different results due to differences in memory management. It is too bad IE 10 which is almost finished wasn't available to benchmark.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Choosing a database

Submitted by

bis22111978

on Wednesday June 27, 2012 @06:59AM

bis22111978 writes: "I am looking at storing data from all the energy measuring meters in the surrounding. I am assuming that the maximum number of energy measuring meters will be 100,000.
I believe that the data will be streaming from all the meters concurrently.I would like to come out with a low cost storage solution. Should I use a normal RDBMS (Postgres,MySql etc) or a NoSQL database? Which database use will be leveraged in a better way? Can I use R easily to run analytic s from the chosen dataset in a reliable and fast manner? Please share your thoughts and experience in the scenario I have described. All your thoughts and reviews will be very helpful."

Submission + - EU:Microsoft fined $1 billion for antitrust violation (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by a_n_d_e_r_s on Wednesday June 27, 2012 @05:49AM

a_n_d_e_r_s writes: The ongoing sage since 2004 about Microsoft then misuse of dominant position in the EU marketplace to block competitors may be finally over and the fine has been set to 860 million euro (just over 1 billion dollars). In 2004 Microsoft was ordered to provide certain information to competitors but failed to do so and was given an hefty fine. Now the EU General Court in Luxemburg has upheld the EU Commission decision and ruled against Microsoft.

Submission + - Fit teenagers less likely to suffer from depression as adults (cisionwire.com)

Submitted by G3ckoG33k on Thursday June 14, 2012 @04:55AM

G3ckoG33k writes: A study of more than a million men reveals that good physical fitness at the age of 18 is associated with a reduced risk of serious depression later in life. Previous studies have shown that a sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of depression, but most of these have been based on interviews with adults. The study covers men born between 1950 and 1987 in good mental health on enlisting for military service. For these 1,117,292 men, the researchers compared the results of physical tests at the time of enlistment with national disease registers. Separate analyses were performed to allow for reverse causality – in other words the possibility of very early symptoms of depression leading to reduced fitness in the physical tests. But even after taking this into account, there were still the same associations. Even more remarkable is that the increase in risk could be observed up to 40 years later. By undertaking a special analysis of the roughly 380.000 brothers covered by the study, the researchers were also able to rule out environmental and hereditary factors. So, slashdotters, how fit were you when you were 18?

Submission + - UK Government Retreats on Secret Courts System (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by BiophysicalLOVE on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @09:49AM

BiophysicalLOVE writes: The current UK Government has been trying a pass a change in the justice system to allow for an expected increase in court cases which contain militarily or politically sensitive information — for instance the UK Citizens in Guantanamo Bay planning action against the Government. There has been much talk on secret courts and cases falling through due to witness exposure. I expect the courts to secretly still go ahead.

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