Comment I always wondered (Score 1) 314
How does the Opera company stay alive?
They've been in operation since... about late '90s? But how exactly? A feature story on them is long overdue.
Comment Re:What exact problem is this trying to solve? (Score 1) 311
Being able to set a keyboard mapping is the minimum I'd expect even from an emergency recovery console in 2013.
I've been doing that for years before 2013. Not to mention:
- - exchanging the caps-lock and escape keys;
- - setting up the console to use UTF-8 to get all the accented characters I'll ever need, plus the Euro sign;
- - setting up "dead" keys to accent/modify the next typed character;
- - setting up a "combination" key to join the next 2 typed characters into a single approximation;
- - using the very nice Terminus bitmap font in place of the default VGA font;
- - setting up the colors for green on black (or yellow on black, or white on blue, or...);
- - using a blinking block cursor instead of the default blinking underscore.
The Linux console has been doing all of the above (and more) for years. Remember, kids: Real geeks read the docs!
Submission + - Bad grammar make good password, research say
An anonymous reader writes: NewScientist reports, "Along with birthdays, names of pets and ascending number sequences, add one more thing to the list of password no-nos: good grammar..." Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University seem to have developed a password cracking algorithm that targets grammatically correct passwords. Can bad grammar really make your password secure? This topic received attention in the media in UK and India recently...
Submission + - Computer-designed enzymes may help alleviate celiac disease (acs.org)
tbg58 writes: Computational protein design tools have allowed researchers to create enzymes that perform functions unknown in nature. Researchers have applied the technique to develop an enzyme specifically aimed at neutralizing the peptide alpha-gliadin contained in gluten, which triggers the autoimmune attack that causes celiac disease. The design of -Gliadin Endopeptidase began with the search for a naturally occurring endopeptidase with stability in an acidic-pH environment, the reproducing and modifying the naturally occurring enzyme to have the specific structure of the designer enzyme using recombinant-DNA modified strain of e. coli.
This development is only made possible by computational cataloguing and modeling of enzymes. The resulting enzyme, given the name KumaMax, shows eventual promise as an oral enzyme therapy for celiac disease taken prior to the ingestion of gluten-containing foods. It is attractive as a non-invasive oral therapeutic which can break down over 95% of the immunogenic peptide under physiologically relevant conditions.
This development is only made possible by computational cataloguing and modeling of enzymes. The resulting enzyme, given the name KumaMax, shows eventual promise as an oral enzyme therapy for celiac disease taken prior to the ingestion of gluten-containing foods. It is attractive as a non-invasive oral therapeutic which can break down over 95% of the immunogenic peptide under physiologically relevant conditions.
Submission + - The technology to fake the NASA Apollo moon landings did not exist in 1969 (examiner.com) 2
MarkWhittington writes: "The notion that the Apollo moon landings were faked is one of the more pernicious conspiracy theories, suggesting that the greatest technological feat in human history was done in a movie studio, probably by the late Stanley Kubrick. The theory has been debunked by everyone from the Mythbusters to actual photographic evidence.
Now a Jan 18, 2013 piece by Gizmodo, along with a video, proves once and for all and for all time that the Apollo moon landings really happened. The reason is that while the technology to send men to the moon certainly existed in 1969, the technology to fake video footage of them doing so did not exist."
Now a Jan 18, 2013 piece by Gizmodo, along with a video, proves once and for all and for all time that the Apollo moon landings really happened. The reason is that while the technology to send men to the moon certainly existed in 1969, the technology to fake video footage of them doing so did not exist."
Submission + - Polaris Not So Close After all (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: Last November, astronomer David Turner made headlines by claiming that one of the sky's best known objects—the North Star, Polaris—was actually 111 light-years closer than thought. If true, the finding might have forced researchers to rethink how they calculate distances in the cosmos as well as what they know about some aspects of stellar physics. But a new study argues that distance measurements of the familiar star made some 2 decades ago by the European Space Agency's venerable Hipparcos satellite are still spot on. Experts appear to agree.
Comment Re:Experiment probably worse than the real thing (Score 1) 145
A year and half in simulated mars mission where you know it is a simulation has to be worse. In a real Mars mission, the crew will be know their activities are important: for the excitement to be first on mars, for the knowledge that a serious screw up could them their lives. On a simulated mission, you're just guinea pigs. Staying motivated must very difficult.
Yeah, let's not give those NASA slobs the benefit of doubt. Clueless as they are, they surely haven't found a way to motivate the simulation crew. They could have told the crew "the results of this simulation will make or break the Mars mission", for example, but - as a Slashdot commenter - I'm sure they haven't thought this stuff out very well.
Comment New advertising technique? (Score 1) 164
1. post critical article about $product (make sure the article also contains rebuttals);
2. followup 2 weeks later with new $product announcement that proves previous criticism wrong;
3. profit!
Not necessarily carried out consciously by news aggregation sites such as this one, but possibly still orchestrated by $product's marketing dept.
Comment Re:I would use it... (Score 1) 141
Yes, I had 5.1 on a USB stick. After resume, my laptop's keyboard would not work anymore. No amount of documentation reading or googling solved that (the paper you kindly linked is one of the documents I remember reading).
I even signed up to a mailing list to report the bug, but never got a reply; so I finally gave up.
Comment I would use it... (Score 1) 141
...if only ACPI suspend/resume worked well.
Linux gets it right, why can't the BSDs? Actually, I haven't tried it with NetBSD, maybe I will.
Comment Re:Haven't read TFA (Score 1) 165
Luckily, now there's an economic crisis, so we're starting incinerating plants over here in italy too.
We're not starting, we have more than 50 incineration plants. The incinerator in Brescia has been burning trash and warming homes since 1998. It even won the WTERT industry award in 2006.
Why don't you get your facts straight before commenting?
Comment For the record (Score 1) 165
Italy does have incineration plants and recycling facilities. Although it's true that there is still way too much reliance on landfills.
Comment President (Score 1) 227
Americans sure are obsessed with their president.
Comment Immunity by (relative) obscurity? (Score 1) 460
If Linux were as popular as Windows, do you believe it would still be more immune to malware than the Microsoft OS?
Comment Re:context (Score 1) 606
if you were offended by this (what i actually find to be quite clever) joke
"wouldn't of" + "what" instead of "which" + "eachother" + "noones" + wrong capitalization + bad punctuation = You find the joke "clever".
