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Comment I own a Surface (Score 1, Interesting) 526

by iONiUM (#42159439) Attached to: Steve Jobs Was Wrong About Touchscreen Laptops

Through my work, I get almost every tablet/thingy that comes out. I got the Surface RT the day it came out because of this, and have been using it since as my replacement for my Nexus 7, eee Netbook (ubuntu), and in tandem with iPad mini.

I see all this shit on Slashdot about how much W8 sucks, and it's true, for desktop. If you took the "desktop" mode of W8, and put JUST THAT on desktop with a start menu, then it's solid (just a win7 upgrade). If you take W8 Metro (or whatever it's called now) and use JUST THAT, it's about 80% of what you want on a tablet. I say 80% because the gestures, while powerful, are really unintuitive.

As it is, I have to say, as someone who actually USES the Surface, it's a nice device, and Metro is actually rather pleasant to look at (yes, there's no apps for it). In addition, the gestures are nice, if you learn them. And, in addition to all of that, having a "desktop" mode on the tablet (the keyboard includes a trackpad) is also nice, although it feels disconnected. I think Microsoft hasn't gotten it perfect, but I think they are on the right track.

As a side note, I don't know why there's so many pro MS articles on Slashdot lately..
NASA

Submission + - Frozen water found on Mercury (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Zibodiz
Zibodiz writes: NASA has confirmed a surprising, counterintuitive discovery. The inferno known as Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, has water. Frozen water. Three news research papers based on data obtained by the Messenger spacecraft show undeniable evidence—"clear results" as the project's director calls them.

It's not just a little bit of water. It's huge amounts. Enough to cover the capital of the United States.
Mars

Submission + - Mars Curiosity Found Nothing After All? (nasa.gov) 1

Submitted by
iONiUM
iONiUM writes: "In Slashdot's / NASA's original post, it was implied that Curiosity had found something interesting: "Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something remarkable. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good," he says.". However, during NASA's live AGU12 conference, NASA has now said "the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics", and "Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect.". Is this another NASA flop?"
Medicine

Submission + - A Blood Test That Screens for Cancer (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: People usually find out that they have cancer after developing symptoms or through a screening test such as a mammogram—signs that may appear only after the cancer has grown or spread so much that it can't be cured. But what if you could find out from a simple, highly accurate blood test that you had an incipient tumor? By sequencing the abnormal DNA that a tumor releases into a person's bloodstream, researchers are now one step closer to a universal cancer test. Although the technique is now only sensitive enough to detect advanced cancers, that may be a matter of money: As sequencing costs decrease, the developers of the method say, the test could eventually pick up early tumors as well.

Submission + - Global Warming On Pace for 4C: World Bank Worried (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
iONiUM
iONiUM writes: "From the article: "Over the years at the U.N. climate talks, the goal has been to keep future global warming below 2C. But as those talks have faltered, emissions have kept rising, and that 2C goal is now looking increasingly out of reach. Lately, the conversation has shifted toward how to deal with 3C of warming. Or 4C. Or potentially more."
Overall it seems that poorer, less developed nations will be largely impacted negatively, while some countries (like Canada and Russia) will actually experience benefits. Where does that leave the rest of the 1st world countries?"

Comment Re:Facebook Chat killed it (Score 4, Interesting) 213

by iONiUM (#41900653) Attached to: Microsoft Retiring Messenger, Replacing It With Skype

Uh.. I guess I'm nobody then. And so is my list of about 15 people I chat everyday on it with.

I like Windows Live Messenger.. it's simply, it doesn't suck like Skype, and it doesn't require Facebook. I use gTalk sometimes too, but that seems to be an Android user thing; people with iPhones rarely use gTalk, even when logged into GMail. As it is, this really pisses me off, because I really like Windows Live Messenger. It's going to be a real mess for me to find one way to talk to all these people after it goes away..
Power

Solar Panel Breaks "Third of a Sun" Efficiency Barrier 237

Posted by timothy from the bright-idea dept.
Zothecula writes "Embattled photovoltaic solar power manufacturer Amonix announced on Tuesday that it has broken the solar module efficiency record, becoming the first manufacturer to convert more than a third of incoming light energy into electricity – a goal once branded 'one third of a sun' in a Department of Energy initiative. The Amonix module clocked an efficiency rating of 33.5 percent."
NASA

JPL Employee's Firing Wasn't Due To Intelligent Design Advocacy, Says Judge 477

Posted by Soulskill from the does-not-play-well-with-others dept.
A reader writes with an update to a story from earlier this year about a lawsuit in which David Coppedge alleged he was fired from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for his advocacy of Intelligent Design. Now, a judge has ruled that Coppedge was legitimately dismissed for performance reasons. From the article: "n 2009, he apparently got a bit aggressive about promoting these ideas at work, leading one employee to complain. The resulting investigation found that he had also aggressively promoted his opinion on California's gay marriage ban, and had attempted to get JPL's holiday party renamed to 'Christmas party.' ... Coppedge was warned about his behavior at work, but he felt it was an infringement of his religious freedom, so he sued. Shortly after, as part of a set of cutbacks on the Cassini staff, he was fired. In court, Coppedge and his lawyer portrayed him as being targeted for promoting an idea that is, to put it mildly, not popular with scientists. But JPL's legal team introduced evidence that his aggressive promotion of it at work was part of a pattern of bad interactions with his fellow employees that dated back at least five years earlier."

Comment Re:VB.NET ? Seriously ? (Score 1) 418

by iONiUM (#41562989) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Am I Too Old To Retrain?

I do both Java and C#/ASP.NET/MVC4 projects, and I have to say, Java is terrible. I never want to touch it again.

Rag on .NET and Microsoft all you want, but I swear, C# is a very powerful and easy to use language, and Visual Studio is an amazing IDE. If you truly disagree with that, I'd love to see a logical and concise argument on the specific points that you hate about it.

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