Comment Re:The article is the summary is the article? (Score 1) 102
I wish time was this recursive.
Comment Re:It sure is news for nerds here (Score 1) 184
You should have seen the early slashdot articles. And the comments too...
Comment Re:Huh? (Score 1) 113
Intercepted: if you are caught being rich.
Wiretapping: if you are caught being poor.
Comment Re:What I'd like to see with the GPL (Score 0) 241
Troll.
Comment Re:In defense of creationists (Score 1) 1251
Ever notice how his works looked like they came straight out of manufacturer's data sheets? The more you know...
Comment Re:$200 million? (Score 1) 182
That's a steal at $0.50 cents per person. A fancy gold plated push pin on the map for every American!
Comment It has a GPS too (Score 1) 221
...but will the GPS actually work? (Galaxy S owner here...)
Comment Re:Missing option (Score 2) 763
I learned assembly language on the original ZX81. 1KB of memory was a lot back in those days.
Comment Alarmist (Score 1) 450
I have 100 amp service. That means I can use 22000 watts, more than enough. Right now, I'm using 3 1500 watt heaters in my house, for a total of 4,500 watts.
Some of my neighbors have 200 amp service. The utility company is not going to put a 12000 watt transformer up to any of our houses...
Comment Re:frequency converter drives ? (Score 4, Informative) 334
AC motors require these drives to get their speed. 60Hz would be about 1800 or 3600 rpm, depending how its wound. Most industrial drives can be programmed for 400Hz, which will spin the armature quite fast. Enrichment is like spinning glassware on a dentist's drill. Those frequencies at that high of voltage (480 volts typical) has a very high switching rate that requires exotic transistor designs. Given that these controllers aren't very common, say for a juice mixer, they can be tracked and sabotaged by the distributor quite easily.
After Online Defamation Suit, Dismissal of Malicious Prosecution Claim Upheld 267
Christoph writes "I'm the Slashdot user who was sued for defamation (and six other claims) by a corporation over negative statements on my website. I prevailed (pro-se) in 2008. The court found the other side forged evidence and lied. In 2009, I sued the other party's lawyers for malicious prosecution/abuse of process (the corporation itself is dissolved/broke). One defendant had stated in writing their client was lying, but the trial court dismissed my claim for lack of evidence. I appealed, and this Tuesday the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, completely ignoring the defendant's written admission (and other evidence). They further found it was not an abuse of process to sue to 'stop the publication of negative information and opinion.'"
Comment Re:Just because they have branded it (Score 4, Insightful) 197
In your analogy of Toyota distributing cars without following terms of the license, the dealer is NOT authorized to distribute under terms of the license. It becomes a copyright violation. The GPL is very clear about this.
Google Sues US Gov't For Only Considering Microsoft 407
An anonymous reader writes "Late last week, Google sued the US government for putting out a Request For Quotation for the messaging needs of the Department of the Interior that specified only Microsoft solutions would be considered. Google apparently had spent plenty of time talking to DOI officials to understand their needs and make sure they had a solution ready to go — and were promised that there wasn't a deal already in place with Microsoft. And then the RFQ came out. Google protested, but the protest was dismissed, with the claim that Google was 'not an interested party.'"
John Carmack On RAGE For iOS/Android 105
Andrew Smith writes "John Carmack has an article up on the Bethesda blog discussing the iPhone/iPad version of RAGE, which is said to run at an impressive 60fps. 'Managing over a gig of media made dealing with flash memory IO and process memory management very important, and I did a lot of performance investigations to figure things out. Critically, almost all of the data is static, and can be freely discarded. iOS does not have a swapfile, so if you use too much dynamic memory, the OS gives you a warning or two, then kills your process. The bane of iOS developers is that "too much" is not defined, and in fact varies based on what other apps (Safari, Mail, iPod, etc) that are in memory have done. If you read all your game data into memory, the OS can’t do anything with it, and you are in danger. However, if all of your data is in a read-only memory mapped file, the OS can throw it out at will.' And a tweet by Carmack yesterday suggests that an Android version of RAGE is on the way too."
US Says Genes Should Not Be Patentable 127
Geoffrey.landis writes "A friend-of-the-court brief filed by the US Department of Justice says that genes should not be patentable. 'We acknowledge that this conclusion is contrary to the longstanding practice of the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the practice of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies that have in the past sought and obtained patents for isolated genomic DNA,' they wrote (PDF). The argument that genes in themselves (as opposed to, say, tests made from genetic information, or drugs that act on proteins made by genes) should be patentable is that 'genes isolated from the body are chemicals that are different from those found in the body' and therefore are eligible for patents. This argument is, of course, completely silly, and apparently the US government may now actually realize that."
