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Comment Re:Lots of services? Why? (Score 1) 158

SQL Server alone is 10 services.

*boggle*

Bloody "enterprise" software! So, install a DB server with a reasonable footprint instead. Like PostgreSQL, or even MySQL. They are available for Windows, you know. Also, if IIS is anything like that, then ditto Apache. If no-one's making any connections to it, Apache will happily sit there in the background using almost no resources.

5 of them are per-instance, which means that installing multiple instances of SQL Server will add more installations of this same service to your system.

Why would you install multiple instances of SQL server? What's the point? And where would you install them to? "c:\program files\SQL Server 1", "c:\program files\SQL Server 2", etc...? Or...?

Comment Lots of services? Why? (Score 2) 158

I'll be needing to install all of your basic Microsoft developer suites, IIS, SQl Server, ANdroid SDK, Java SDK, device emulators, etc. etc. Plus AMP and finally GIS software. There will obviously be a lot of services running, long build times, and so on.

Huh?

Why will there be "a lot" of services running? Yes, you'll have IIS and SQL server, but that's only two services - and if you've only got a small test database and a couple of dev websites, they'll hardly take any resources at all if you're not actually using them. So, if you're not sat in front of the computer actually doing development, and someone else is logged in instead, it shouldn't really affect them at all. Ditto "long build times" - what sort of things are you planning on writing that are going to take so long to build that you'll have to walk away from the computer for long enough that someone else will want to use it concurrently?

Visual Studio, the SDKs, and the emulators will put extra entries in other people's start menus, but so what? If they don't run them themselves, they won't do anything or get in the way. Presumably not all these other users run your music production and photo editing software either, and that's not hurting them, is it?

To wit, I wouldn't be able to use my desktop for my other purposes like the music editing.

Why on earth not?

Comment Re:Send them to mars (Score 1) 174

by Karellen (#45573465) Attached to: Mediterranean Sea To Possibly Become Site of Chemical Weapons Dump

That's only the case if you want to go into a controlled orbit very close to the sun. But we don't want to do that.

To crash something into the sun, we'd be happy with any orbit which is elliptical enough such that the perihelion is inside the sun's radius. We don't care what velocity we have at that point, even if it's theoretically high enough to send us back out to the orbit of Earth (or even Neptune) on the other side of the orbit, because the act of hitting the surface of the sun will remove any problems there.

So, we don't actually need to change our speed very much. We "just" need to change direction. Or any combination of direction and speed which gets us within 1 solar radius somehow. As another commenter has noted, we can use slingshots off other bodies in the solar system to change our delta-v in a large number of ways. We should be find a suitable slingshot *somewhere* to get us on a suitable orbit for impacting the sun without needing too much extra propellant.
Space

Astronomers Discover Largest Structure In the Universe 143

Posted by samzenpus from the biggest-there-is dept.
KentuckyFC writes "Until now, the largest known structure in the Universe was the Huge-LQG (Large Quasar Group), a cluster of 73 quasars stretching over a distance of 4 billion light years. Now astronomers say they've spotted something even bigger in data from gamma ray bursts, the final explosions of energy released by stars as they die and the universe's most energetic events. Astronomers have measured the distance to 283 of these bursts and mapped their position in the universe. This throws up a surprise. At a distance of ten billion light years, there are more gamma ray bursts than expected if they were evenly distributed throughout the universe. This implies the existence of a structure at this distance that is about ten billion light years across and so dwarfs the Huge-LQG. What's odd about the discovery is that the Cosmological principle--one of the fundamental tenets of cosmology--holds that the distribution of matter in the universe will appear uniform if viewed at a large enough scale. And yet, structures clearly emerge at every scale astronomers can see. The new discovery doesn't disprove the principle but it does provide some interesting food for thought for theorists."
Cellphones

Nearly 1 In 4 Adults Surf the Web While Driving 365

Posted by Soulskill from the get-off-my-roads dept.
cartechboy writes "A new survey out this week says that the number of motorists who surf the Web has nearly doubled over the past four years. In 2009, 13 percent of motorists admitted that they'd accessed the Internet while driving. In 2013, that figure had jumped to 24 percent. Smartphones are the primary culprit, making the unsafe task even easier. Other distracted driving behavior is on the rise, too, and younger drivers are the biggest issue — 76 percent of motorists 18 to 29 said that they talked on a hand-held cell phone while driving. 70 percent said they were texting. Keep in mind we have states legislating smartphone use task by task, which clearly doesn't help."
Privacy

The Boss Is Remotely Monitoring Blue-Collar Workers 228

Posted by timothy from the course-and-scope-of-employment dept.
McGruber writes "The Wall Street Journal reports on the new level of surveillance available to bosses of blue collar workers. Thanks to mobile devices and inexpensive monitoring software, managers can now know where workers are, eavesdrop on their phone calls, tell if a truck driver is wearing his seat belt and intervene if he is tailgating. 'Twenty-five years ago this was pipe dream stuff,' said Paul Sangster, CEO of JouBeh Technologies, a Canadian company that develops tracking, or 'telematics,' technology for businesses. 'Now it is commonly accepted that you are being tracked.' In the U.S., workplace tracking technology is largely unregulated, and courts have found that employees have few rights to privacy on the job. No federal statutes restrict the use of GPS by employers, nor force them to disclose whether they are using it. Only two states, Delaware and Connecticut, require employers to tell workers that their electronic communications — anything from emails to instant messages to texts — are being monitored."
The Almighty Buck

NSA Chief Built Star Trek Like Command Center 372

Posted by samzenpus from the make-it-so dept.
Bruce66423 writes "As the NSA scandal moves from appalling to laughable, the latest report in the Guardian indicates that the current NSA chief spent US taxpayers' money to create a command center for his intelligence operations that was styled just like Star Trek. From the PBS News Hour report: 'When he was running the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a 'whoosh' sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather 'captain's chair' in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen. "Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard," says a retired officer in charge of VIP visit '"
Earth

Exxon Charged With Illegally Dumping Waste In Pennsylvania 246

Posted by samzenpus from the looks-like-you-spilled-something dept.
Exxon has been charged with illegally dumping over 50,000 gallons of wastewater at a shale-gas drilling site in Pennsylvania. From the article: 'Exxon unit XTO Energy Inc. discharged the water from waste tanks at the Marquandt well site in Lycoming County in 2010, according to a statement on the website of Pennsylvania’s attorney general. The pollution was found during an unannounced visit by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. The inspectors discovered a plug removed from a tank, allowing the wastewater to run onto the ground, polluting a nearby stream. XTO was ordered to remove 3,000 tons of soil to clean up the area. Wastewater discharged from natural-gas wells can contain chlorides, barium, strontium and aluminum, the attorney general’s statement showed. “Criminal charges are unwarranted and legally baseless,” the XTO unit said yesterday in a statement posted on its website. “There was no intentional, reckless or negligent misconduct by XTO.”'
Businesses

Do Developers Need Free Perks To Thrive? 524

Posted by timothy from the man-does-not-live-by-free-bread-alone dept.
jammag writes "Free sodas, candy and energy bars can be surprisingly important to developers, says longtime coder Eric Spiegel. They need the perks, not to mention the caffeine boost. More important, free sodas from management are like the canary in the coal mine. If they get cut, then layoffs might be next. 'The sodas are just the wake-up call. If the culture changes to be focused more on cost-cutting than on innovation and creativity, then would you still want to work here? I wouldn't.' Are free perks really that important?"

Comment Hang on... (Score 5, Interesting) 286

by Karellen (#43077845) Attached to: Microsoft: the 'Scroogled' Show Must Go On

See also Scroogled by Cory Doctorow (translations)

Wow, Microsoft appropriating the name of someone else's pre-existing work in a particular domain, particularly when that domain is the criticism and commentary on a near-monopolist, and the original author is one of the most vocal and prominent proponents of copyright and other IP-related reform. I think my irony meter just exploded.
Government

State Rep. Says Biking Is Not Earth Friendly Because Breathing Produces CO2 976

Posted by samzenpus from the pedal-price dept.
terbeaux writes "The fact that Rep Ed Orcutt (R — WA) wants to tax bicycle use is not extraordinary. The representative's irrational conviction is. SeattleBikeBlog has confirmed reports that Orcutt does not feel bicycling is environmentally friendly because the activity causes cyclists to have 'an increased heart rate and respiration.' When they contacted him he clarified that 'You would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving in a car...' Cascade blog has posted the full exchange between Rep Ed Orcutt and a citizen concerned about the new tax."
Science

New Research Sheds Light On the Evolution of Dogs 374

Posted by samzenpus from the a-caveboy-and-his-dog dept.
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The first dogs descended from wolves about 14,000 years ago but according to Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods humans didn't domesticate dogs — dogs sought out humans and domesticated us. Humans have a long history of eradicating wolves, rather than trying to adopt them which raises the question: How was the wolf tolerated by humans long enough to evolve into the domestic dog? 'The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish. But essentially, far from the survival of the leanest and meanest, the success of dogs comes down to survival of the friendliest.' Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around, probably while they were scavenging around garbage dumps on the edge of human settlements. The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated. In a few generations, these friendly wolves became distinctive from their more aggressive relatives with splotchy coats, floppy ears, wagging tails. But the changes did not just affect their looks but their psychology. Protodogs evolved the ability to read human gestures. 'As dog owners, we take for granted that we can point to a ball or toy and our dog will bound off to get it,' write Hare and Woods. 'But the ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable. Even our closest relatives — chimpanzees and bonobos — can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can. 'With this new ability, these protodogs were worth knowing. People who had dogs during a hunt would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Finally when times were tough, dogs could have served as an emergency food supply and once humans realized the usefulness of keeping dogs as emergency food, it was not a huge jump to realize plants could be used in a similar way.' This is the secret to the genius of dogs: It's when dogs join forces with us that they become special," conclude Hare and Woods. 'Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization.'"
Biotech

Fireflies Bring Us Brighter LEDs 111

Posted by samzenpus from the bright-bugs dept.
Zothecula writes "Fireflies have helped an international team of scientists get over 50 percent more light out of existing LED bulbs. It was discovered that in the Photuris genus of firefly, scales in the insect's exoskeleton possess optical qualities that boost the amount of bioluminescence that can shine through. Those same qualities were found to dramatically increase the light output of an LED bulb."
Medicine

Four Cups of Coffee A Day Cuts Risk of Oral Cancer 151

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the time-to-pick-up-a-smoking-habit dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Coffee may help lower the risk of developing oral and pharyngeal cancer and of dying from the disease. The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, was conducted using the Cancer Prevention Study II. The large cohort study began in 1982 by the American Cancer Society. Researchers were able to examine 968,432 men and women, none of whom had cancer at the time of their enrollment in the study." Four or more cups a day lowered the risk of getting oral cancers by a whopping 49%.

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