You can already do this using pseudo-random number generators. While pseudo-random numbers may not be random enough for certain scientific computation purposes, they are more than adequate for gaming. There seems to be a common misconception that computers are incapable of producing randomness. Pseudo-random number-generating algorithms, seeded with simple things like the system time and keyboard events, are good enough for 99% of common everyday computing tasks.

The advantage of this 'approximate computing' is that the hardware may be able to use less power. The randomness is a drawback, not a virtue.

JPEG is not a scaling algorithm. It is a (lossy) image compression format. By 'compression', I mean it allows you to compress the file size (measured in bytes) -- not the image dimensions (measured in pixels). It has nothing to do, really, with resizing an image.

Scaling algorithms are things like point sampling, bilinear interpolation, bicubic interpolation, etc.

No, that's not what a bit is. 'Bit' is short for 'binary digit'. A bit can, by definition, only hold one of two possible states. It is a fundamental unit of information. A decimal digit comprises multiple bits. Somewhere between 3 and 4 bits per decimal digit.

Most people don't have the faintest clue how technology works. It might as well be magic to them. Therefore, when people see things like the Terminator franchise, Battlestar Galactica, that terrible I, Robot movie, etc., the concept of a robot uprising seems plausible to them.

Funny, I'd rather the opposite.

Poe's law applies here. That discussion thread -- they're not serious, are they? It must be a subtle troll, no?

If you don't mind waiting a long time, perhaps you could use solar sails? Although, I'd guess that solar sails are only useful for providing radial acceleration (i.e. away from the sun), so this might not be useful if you're mining the stuff beyond the earth's orbit and are trying to bring it back home. And I doubt there's an analogue to "tacking" in the vacuum of space.

An alternative is to use solar cells to provide electrical power, and use the copper itself as propellant in some sort of high-efficiency ion engine or accelerator. You'd be cannibalizing your payload to use as reaction mass. Copper probably isn't an ideal propellant in such a system, but if you have billions of tons of it, you probably don't mind wasting a significant fraction of it.

A third option could be nuclear pulse propulsion. Something like the orion project?

It was my understanding that, if you look at a phase diagram for any material, there may well be many distinct solid phases but only one liquid phase. How can you have different phases of liquid?

See screenshot here: http://i.imgur.com/JBNcRAL.png

I am running the latest stable Firefox on Windows 7 with a 1280x800 display (not huge, but certainly not a small resolution compared to today's laptops). The little text box is cut off at the edge of the screen.

Also, may I add that there is far too much wasted space. I can only fit about 1 - 1.5 headlines on my screen at a time. I prefer a simple text-based layout where the headlines are packed together tightly. This allows me to quickly scan the headlines to see if there's an article worth reading. What's the point of having these useless images and whitespace? It just forces me to manually scroll the page more. The images add nothing of value and just increase bloat.

Remember, Slashdot's core readership is IT professionals, engineers, scientists, STEM students, etc. People who value function over aesthetics. If you sacrifice the former for the latter (and I don't even think the new design is an improvement aesthetically), you will drive away those readers.

The golden rule is K.I.S.S: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

> This will be an interesting experiment for Occulus VR.

How would this be different from the decades of accumulated anecdotal evidence from people playing video games? I know from personal experience that just because I'm playing a fast-paced game, doesn't mean that my perception of time will eventually slow down. As I progress through a game's learning curve, I get better, but this is more of a twitchy reflex type of thing. I don't really feel my conscious thought processes speed up at all.

Well, just because a hypothesis seems like it would be true, doesn't mean that it is necessarily true. It's good that scientists are actually studying this to find out, instead of just assuming. That's the point of science, really. To test out hypotheses and learn new things.

AC's joke is that people on meth tend to hallucinate things like bugs and spiders.

Mcelrath wasn't asking what a spectrometer was. His point was that this particular spectrometer doesn't have the resolution required to do anything interesting, like identify chemical compounds.

So again. . . what is it useful for?

As commenters on the IB Times page have pointed out, the embedded video restarts when the page auto-refreshes. This ruins the viewing experience. I recommend watching the video directly on youtube.

It means that young people had higher rates of death from all causes compared to people who drank less coffee.