The Ouroborus 67
If I could do this I'd never leave the house.
Comment Re:Ouch (Score 1) 849
Or better yet, email him:
RIF@scsenate.org
Comment Re:Good riddance. (Score 1) 280
Maybe he was kidding?
Comment Missing Option (Score 1) 887
I only pretend to work you insensitive clod!
Comment Re:US citizens will be next? (Score 1) 248
That's right. Soon the only people not in the government db will be those who entered the country illegally outside of designated entry points.
Comment When will you learn? (Score 1) 83
When will you Aussie's stand up for your rights and oust that lout Mugabe. Ohh, wait. That's some other commonwealth country. Who's your dictator again?
Comment Re:proving my point... (Score 2, Interesting) 235
I don't buy it. Academia may have some issues, but there are certainly things that Academia is good for and some things that an open-source-type community is good for.
It has been a long time dince academicians have developed a new pulic worthy OS, but I would be highly surprised to see the public at large develope something as difficult, complex, abstract and important as the PCP Theorem (probably the greatest recent comment on the P != NP conjecture--for those of you who are interested, the theorem says that supposing P!=NP, then there is a limit as to how close an approximation algorithm can approximate a solution, conversely, if an approximation algorithm can come closer than that limit, then P=NP).
Comment Re:I've never heard of this before. (Score 2, Insightful) 170
I think that a better solution to the fat finger problem would be tactile feedback. The reason that touch screen keyboards have more of a fat finger problem is that the user can feel that they are pressing a key correctly.
Science's Alternative To an Intelligent Creator 683
Hugh Pickens writes "Discover magazine has an interesting article on the multiverse theory — a synthesis of string theory and the anthropic principle that explains why our universe seems perfectly tailored for life without invoking an intelligent creator. Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. While most of those universes are barren, some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life. The idea that the universe was made just for us — known as the anthropic principle — debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. The anthropic principle languished on the fringes of science for years, but in 2000, new theoretical work threatened to unravel string theory when researchers calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions, perhaps as many as 101,000, with each solution representing a unique way to describe the universe. The latest iteration of string theory provides a natural explanation for the anthropic principle. If there are vast numbers of other universes, all with different properties, at least one of them ought to have the right combination of conditions to bring forth stars, planets, and living things." So far xkcd is simulating just one single universe.
Judge Refuses To Sign RIAA 'Ex Parte' Order 239
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA just can't get enough of going after University of Maine students, but it appears that the judges in Portland, Maine, may be getting wise to the industry's lawyers' antics. RIAA counsel submitted yet another ex parte discovery order to the Court ('ex parte' meaning 'without notice'), in BMG v. Does 1-11, but this time the judge refused to sign, pointing out that there is no emergency since there is no evidence that records are about to be destroyed [PDF]. This is the same judge who has previously suggested the imposition of Rule 11 sanctions against the RIAA lawyers, accusing them of gamesmanship."
Microsoft Installs New Software Without Permission 760
Futurepower(R) writes "Even though I have Automatic Updates turned off, on August 28, 2007, between 3:49 and 3:51 AM PDT, Microsoft installed new files on my Windows XP computer." Nine files are updated on Vista and on XP SP1, a different set of on each, relating to Windows Update itself. Microsoft-watch.com's Joe Wilcox and ZDnet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes confirm the stealth update.
Submission + - AT&T censors PerlJam--Band fires back (arstechnica.com)
kramer2718 writes: Recently, AT&T censor Pearl Jam for some anti-Bush comments during a performance.
The band fired back saying, "This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media. What happened to us this weekend was a wake-up call, and it's about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band."
Other public interest groups have used this censorship as an argument for net-neutrality.
Ars Technica has more. What do slashdotters think?
The band fired back saying, "This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media. What happened to us this weekend was a wake-up call, and it's about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band."
Other public interest groups have used this censorship as an argument for net-neutrality.
Ars Technica has more. What do slashdotters think?
Submission + - Intel and IBM using hafnium gate insulators
5pp000 writes: The initial story is short on details, but it sounds like they have at least a partial solution to the gate leakage problem (the problem that is keeping us from 5GHz+ CPUs).
Submission + - Intel claims low leakage process
Aryabhata writes: "As per the New York Times, Intel has overcome a potentially crippling technical obstacle of transistor switches;their tendency to leak current as they grow smaller. As a transistor's tiny switches are made ever smaller they tendency to leak current as the insulating material gets thinner. The Intel advance uses new metallic alloys in the insulation itself and in adjacent components.
Their combination of processing power and energy efficiency could make it possible, for example, for cellphones to play video at length — a demanding digital task — with less battery drain."
Submission + - Intel 45nm CPUs to use metal gates, high-k dielect
An anonymous reader writes: Intel's 45nm microprocessors will incorporate transistors constructed with metal gates and high-k dielectric materials, the chip maker revealed today. That said, it was tight-lipped about which materials will actually make up these components in its 45nm dual-core die, 'Penryn'.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/01/27/intel_ 45nm_metal_gates/
