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Comment Re:Or maybe on the contrary, let's (Score 2, Insightful) 496

by baKanale (#31856906) Attached to: Maybe the Aliens Are Addicted To Computer Games

Did any country yet starve because they were too busy playing to go to the supermarket, or go open the supermarket for that reason? No? Then why should we assume that any aliens would?

That's a good point. Thinking about it, the chances are that any members of a species too busy with video games and porn to remember to upkeep their civilization would probably be too busy to take care of their offspring, and thus would weed themselves out of the gene pool. And there would always be ones, especially in the early years of porn and video games, who would be more interested in taking care of themselves and their civilization. After enough time, presumably, only those not overly susceptible to distracting stimuli would remain, the rest having been to busy playing with their joysticks to successfully reproduce.

Comment Re:Fire that Judge (Score 2, Funny) 558

by bluefoxlucid (#31856632) Attached to: Girl Claims Price Scanner Gave Her Tourette's Syndrome
When I was in 5th grade I shot a kid using this principle. I loaded a test tube with water and stuck a thin straw into it; surrounded it with ice water; and then poured in a load of salt in the surrounding water. A stream of water jetted from the tube as it froze into a spike, which stabbed some kid. I lol'd. Slowest firearm ever, and ineffective at a distance over 5 inches anyway... my chem teacher was impressed and horrified at the same time.

Comment Re:WPS (Score 1) 432

by nukenerd (#31856048) Attached to: Is OS/2 Coming Back?

In what way was he (Mollog) not correct? MS did have the rights to at least some OS/2 code. That was part of the "lopsided" partnership. Quite a lot of it was put into NT.

You are incorrect in saying that after the break MS "first release[d] Windows 95". That was later. At the time of the break Windows was still on 3.0 or 3.1.

The story I heard was that during development the OS/2 graphical interface was being tried out by running it on DOS (like a sports car manufacture might try out a new car body on the road by putting a VW engine in it). This was trialled at home by some MS employees' families. They liked it so much that MS wondered if they could sell it like that. They looked at their contract with IBM and realised nothing could stop them. So they set a team to develop the idea and that's how Windows-on-DOS came about. IBM were furious but could do nothing about it.
Sci-Fi

Maybe the Aliens Are Addicted To Computer Games 496

Posted by Soulskill from the gotta-do-one-more-daily dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Geoffrey Miller has an interesting hypothesis in Seed Magazine that explains Fermi's Paradox — why 40 years of intensive searching for extraterrestrial intelligence have yielded nothing: no radio signals, no credible spacecraft sightings, no close encounters of any kind. All the aliens are busy playing computer games. The aliens 'forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they're too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism,' writes Miller. He says the fundamental problem is that an evolved mind must pay attention to indirect cues of biological fitness, rather than tracking fitness itself, and that although evolution favors brains that tend to maximize fitness (as measured by numbers of great-grandkids), no brain has capacity enough to do so under every possible circumstance. 'The result is that we don't seek reproductive success directly; we seek tasty foods that have tended to promote survival, and luscious mates who have tended to produce bright, healthy babies. The modern result? Fast food and pornography,' writes Miller. 'Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot.' Miller adds that most bright alien species probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to their pleasures, and less to their children, until they eventually die out." Who here doesn't think a TNG-style Holodeck would lead to the downfall of our civilization?
Programming

How Many Hours a Week Can You Program? 547

Posted by timothy from the please-answer-in-earth-hours dept.
An anonymous reader writes "How many hours a week should a full-time programmer program? Trying to program anywhere near 40 wears me out. On a good week, I can do 20. Often, it is around 10 or 15. I'm talking about your programming session at the console, typing — including, of course, stopping and thinking for a minute, but not meetings, reading programming books, notes, specifications, etc., which by comparison feel like lunch breaks. I rarely get called to meetings (which is good) but that means to keep my brain from overheating I spend several hours a week surfing the web (usually reading tech news but also a few stops on Facebook, email, etc.). I should add that I am interrupted a few times per day. Me and another guy maintain an intranet site of a couple dozen web apps for an IT department, so we work on a few different things: phone calls, bug fixes, feature adds, as well as writing new web apps from the ground up, all in a day's work. And I know that wears a person out more than if they had just one project to work on. I wonder if programming is like mental sprinting, not walking, so you can only do it in bursts. Am I normal or stealing?"
The Internet

A Crowdsourcing Project To Make Predictions More Precise 69

Posted by timothy from the what-think-ye? dept.
databuff writes "Predictions are critical to modern life. Police predict where and when crimes are most likely to take place, banks predict which loan applicants are most likely to default, and hotels forecast seasonal demand to set room rates. A new project called Kaggle facilitates better predictions by providing a platform for forecasting competitions. The platform allows organizations to post their data and have it scrutinized by the world's best statisticians. It will offer a robust rating system, so it's easy to identify those with a proven track record. Organizations can choose either to follow the experts, or to follow the consensus of the crowd — which, according to New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki, is likely to be more accurate than the vast majority of individual predictions. The power of a pool of predictions was demonstrated by the Netflix Prize, a $1m data-prediction competition, which was won by a team of teams that combined 700 models. Kaggle's first competition is underway, and it is accessing the 'wisdom of crowds' to predict the winner of this May's Eurovision Song Contest." Understandably, participation requires registration.
Image

Genetic Disorder Removes Racial Bias and Social Fear 319

Posted by samzenpus from the all-you-need-is-love-and-different-genes dept.
People who suffer from a rare genetic disorder called Williams Syndrome have a complete lack of social fear. They experience no anxiety or concerns about meeting new people or being put into any social situation, and a new study by Andreia Santos suggests that they also don't have any racial bias. From the article: "Typically, children start overtly gravitating towards their own ethnic groups from the tender age of three. Groups of people from all over the globe and all sorts of cultures show these biases. Even autistic children, who can have severe difficulties with social relationships, show signs of racial stereotypes. But Santos says that the Williams syndrome kids are the first group of humans devoid of such racial bias, although, as we’ll see, not everyone agrees."
Books

Hollywood's Growing Obsession With Philip K. Dick 244

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can-we-call-him-pip dept.
bowman9991 writes "Even after Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, Impostor, and Next, it appears Hollywood's lust for movies based on Philip K. Dick material continues. The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Terence Stamp, is the latest, and features some classic Dick themes, including the fragile nature of reality and a fight against a world controlled and manipulated by powerful unseen entities. When Congressman David Norris meets the love of his life after a political defeat, he must peel back the layers of reality to discover why a mysterious group is so desperate to make sure they never meet again. He is up against the agents of fate itself — the men of The Adjustment Bureau. The Adjustment Bureau adaptation follows news that Terry Gilliam will adapt Dick's novel The World Jones Made, that Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and Ubik are being adapted, and that a remake of Total Recall is being developed by the ironically named Original Films Studio."
Software

Review of Adobe Creative Suite 5 204

Posted by CmdrTaco from the draw-me-a-picture dept.
Barence writes "Adobe today updated its Creative Suite software to version 5, and PC Pro has an absolutely massive collection of reviews. Along with an overview of the entire suite, from Design to Web to Production bundles, every individual component gets the full in-depth treatment. It includes video demonstrations of Photoshop CS5's fabulous Content-Aware fill trick and new Puppet Warp function; a long-awaited step up to 64-bit for Premiere Pro CS5; and big updates to Dreamweaver CS5, After Effects CS5, and the rest."
Graphics

Adobe Flash CS5 Exports Animations To HTML5 Canvas 166

Posted by timothy from the take-this-jobs-and-shove-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Adobe's Flash CS5 will seek to make the Flash runtime less relevant with support for exporting animations to HTML5 canvas. Seth Weintraub from 9to5mac writes, 'In a previous post, I'd wondered why Adobe didn't spend its time building HTML5 authoring tools rather than putting so much time/energy/money into its Flash -> iPhone Apps exporter tool for Flash CS5. As it turns out, Adobe does have some, albeit rudimentary, HTML5 Canvas exporting tools, as demonstrated in the video above.'"
Wikipedia

Aussie Tech-Focused Wiki Launched 155

Posted by timothy from the history-is-written-by-the-koala dept.
daria42 writes "Wikipedia's great for some things — like looking up the in-depth history of 4chan, for example — but not great for others, such as finding out the micro-history of the technology sector in certain countries. That's why Australian technology publication Delimiter has launched a public wiki site purely focused on the Australian technology sector — its personalities, issues, companies, and events. Already the site has better coverage of some areas than Wikipedia, leading to the question of whether more such small wikis should be created for certain verticals."

Comment Re:Welcome to the new world! (Score 1) 711

by PenguSven (#31807756) Attached to: Steve Jobs Weighs In On iPhone Programming Language Mandate

At least Microsoft never prevented you from putting your product on theirs.

Actually, they did. They threatened PC manufacturers who wanted to bundle Netscape/Realplayer with their PCs.

And they never said you had to buy all your software through their store.

Obviously you haven't followed the news about Windows Phone 7.

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