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The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza Screenshot-sm 282

Posted by samzenpus from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.
iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."
Earth

Yellowstone Supervolcano Larger Than First Thought 451

Posted by timothy from the even-superer dept.
drewtheman writes "New studies of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park shows the plume and the magma chamber under the volcano are larger than first thought and contradicts claims that only shallow hot rock exists. University of Utah research professor of geophysics Robert Smith led four separate studies that verify a plume of hot and molten rock at least 410 miles deep that rises at an angle from the northwest."

Comment Music yes, but one must notice the phone (Score 1) 1019

by mousse-man (#30413230) Attached to: Music While Programming?

These in our company that listen to music while coding or other work must do it through their PC, and there's a soft phone for our Cisco CallManager installed. This way, they hear it whenthe phone ringing.

And the fire alarm problem has been solved by installing an incredibly obnoxious alarm klaxon that you WILL hear when it's going off.

Comment And of course, no non-glossy displays (Score 5, Insightful) 770

Can't Apple produce 15" or 13" laptops without that damn glossy display? These mirrors mounted on laptops get really annoying, and I'm not the only one who thinks that non-glossy displays are superior to their allegedly cheaper glossy displays.

One more guy who's looking for a used MBP on ebay.
Idle

Automated Cat Cleaner Screenshot-sm 7

Posted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes "I'm not sure why the cat doesn't like this. It has everything cats enjoy, being forced into an enclosed space, strange noises and jets of water."
Power

DOE Shines $21M on Advanced Lighting Research 238

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the bright-ideas dept.
coondoggie writes to mention that the US Department of Energy is planning to fork over close to $21 million for 13 projects promising to advance solid-state lighting research and development. "SSL lighting is an advanced technology that creates light with considerably less heat than incandescent and fluorescent lamps, allowing for increased energy efficiency. Unlike incandescent and fluorescent bulbs, SSL uses a semi-conducting material to convert electricity directly into light, which maximizes the light's energy efficiency, the DOE said in a release. Solid-state lighting encompasses a variety of light-producing semi-conductor devices, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). "
Media

Submission + - Can i be dismissed from work for blogging

Submitted by
Technomouse
Technomouse writes: "I live and work in the UK in a call centre enviroment, recently my place of work introduced a "blog" set of rules to the company handbook, i was unaware of this as they did not make it obvious to anyone. I write a livejournal and recently i posted about my work not doing something i thought should happen and i paraphrased a conversation I am now on suspension while they investigate this can i be dismissed for this considering that A) i was completely unaware of the new rules as all they did was a produce a new company handbook and NOT hand it out to everyone B) the new rules are there to prevent "bad press" for the company and my blog was and is very small and i was not portraying the company in an unfairly bad light C) as soon as i was made aware of the rules i deleted those entries"
Government

Submission + - New copyright law in Israel - mostly good news

Submitted by
Sun
Sun writes: "Last Monday the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) passed the new copyright law, scheduled to go into effect in half a year. The previous law was passed in England in 1911, and was enacted in (then Palestine) in 1922.

The bad news:
  • Copyright period was lengthened for photographs was extended to match all other rights. All copyright now lasts life+70 years, except actual recordings which last 50 years.
  • "Making available" was explicitly listed as a protected right. On the flip side, the fact that another country found it necessary to list this right explicitly may aid people defending themselves in the US.
  • Work created for the government is copyrighted, albeit with a shortened copyright period of 50 years.


The good news:
  • No anti-circumvention clauses, and not for lack of trying. The Israeli record federation tried to pass such a law, with a lot of backing from the proprietary software industry. The opponents included the Israeli ISOC chapter, as well as Hamakor (represented, among others, by myself). The most important opponent, however, was the ministry of justice! It is too optimistic to assume we heard the last word on this, but for the moment, Israel is DMCA free.
  • Explicit exclusion from copyright of control over reverse engineering for interoperability and for research purposes. Again, this one had a lot of fighting from the software industry (mostly Microsoft and Retalix), but again common sense prevailed. This time a lot of help was received from the academic community, with several professors stepping forward to state that without ability to reverse engineer, research would come to a halt.
  • Fair use was expanded. The 1911 law had a limited "close" list of what would be considered "fair use". The new law allows the court to expand the list based on economical and other considerations. The list of considerations is, itself, also subject to court discretion and expansion.
  • Transient copies — the specifically excludes transient copies made for the purpose of a legitimate activity from being controlled by the copyright holder. The fact that, in order to run a program, the bits are copied from the hard disk to the RAM can no longer be used in order to control what can be done with a program.


All in all, this is a huge improvement even over the existing law. As someone who was present during some of the deliberations, and actively participated, I can say that I think that the most important law in the Israeli codex is the law that governs how much money a party can receive in campaign contributions. Despite at least three of the last four prime ministers got into hot water over violating this law, the end result is that the Israeli legislator is, for the most part, open to hear what is best for EVERYONE, and does care to do the right thing. Interest groups can still try to present their case in a convincing manner, but the fact that such humble resources, such as a bunch of volunteers from Hamakor and from the academic world, could make a difference is a very encouraging sign."
Government

Submission + - Denmark to Hold Referendum on Euro (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "The Danish government has said it would like to hold a fresh referendum on whether to adopt the Euro. Back in 2000, the Danish people voted by 53% to 47% not to join the single currency and instead keep the krone, but recent opinion polls show a narrow majority were now in favour of switching to the Euro. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose centre-right government was re-elected last week, said that the opt-outs harmed Danish interests and should be reconsidered once the country has ratified the new EU treaty. The current arrangement was secured fourteen years ago, a year after Denmark shocked the rest of Europe by rejecting the Maastricht treaty, and allow Denmark to stay outside the development of the EU in four specific areas: the euro, defence, justice and home affairs. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/23/danes-to-hold-referendum-on-euro/ )"
Republicans

Submission + - Ron Paul sets new online fundraising records

Submitted by
yamamushi
yamamushi writes: "Remember Remember the 5th of November indeed! In observance of Guy Fawkes Night, Thousands of Presidential Candidate/Congressman Ron Paul supporters donated just over $4.3 Million dollars to his campaign within 24 hours, topping the record for the most raised online in one day for any presidential candidate, ever. His staggering amount also shadowed the most raised in a single day by any of the other Republican candidates, to which Mitt Romney owned the title at $3.1 Million. With the media burying Ron Paul, and refusing to consider him a top-tier candidate, will Paul be able to leverage the internet community into proving otherwise at the polls?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Hackers exploit DRM bug in Windows (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Mike
Mike writes: "Microsoft acknowledged that hackers are exploiting a bug in the driver 'secdrv.sys' shipped on versions of Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. Symantec researcher Elia Florio first revealed the vulnerability in fully-patched XP and Server 2003 machines and noted that it was being exploited in the wild. "At the moment, it's still not clear how the driver is used by Windows because this file does not have the typical Microsoft file properties present in other Windows system files," Florio wrote in a posting to the Symantec security blog."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft fires CIO (marketwatch.com) 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Microsoft's chief information officer has been fired for violating company policies, the company said Tuesday.

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