Comment Re:I have nothing intelligent to post (Score 2) 725
Totally. The 'nixes & C are incredibly huge contributions to our technology filled world. This guy gave us so much of what we take for granted every day. Rest in peace.
Comment Re:Dennis Ritchie Dead (Score 0) 158
Agreed, it is off topic and this is not the place for breaking news. Some news, however, is orders of magnitude bigger than others. I think the news of Denis Ritchie passing is big enough that it warrants an intrusion into an unrelated thread.
This is a chapter in the history of computer technology coming to a close, and warrants a breaking of the rules IMHO. Your opinion may differ.
Comment Re:Dennis Ritchie has died. (Score 0) 197
Agreed.
If there was ever cause to hijack a thread, this is it. Dennis Ritchie was the R in K&R for pity sake. He helped create Unix & C.
_This_ is news for nerds.
Comment Re:Dennis Ritchie Dead (Score -1, Offtopic) 158
Shame on whoever down-modded this.
Dennis Ritchie, father of Unix & C dies and not only does it not rate a mention on the front page of /. but some genius down-mods the first mention of it.
Comment Re:This is News to Them? (Score 1) 212
I must have got the new guy when they called me.
The caller claimed to be "from Windows" and wanted to fix my PC blah blah.
I asked him again who he represented, and again he said he was "from Windows".
Oh dear. Hanging up now.
Comment The Diamond Planet Midnight! (Score 1) 204
Better watch out for extonic sunlight when lowering the leisure palace from orbit. Oh, and it is probably inhabited by the odd unnamed voice-stealing malevolent entity.
Looks like Doctor Who was right all along.
Comment Finally! Some "free market" goodness! (Score 1) 81
The mere fact that apple is adjusting their prices based on exchange rates is a very welcome move as far as I am concerned. Australian consumers pay crazy money at local retailers for games, dvds & such despite our dollar having been on parity with the US dollar for some time. Heck, I'm just glad to see prices that don't include an inexplicable "you are in Australia" price hike.
Comment It's been a very long time coming... (Score 1) 87
As an Australian, a long time fan of violent video games and as an indie game-developer, I would just like to say that IT'S ABOUT BLOODY TIME!!!
Too long has the Australian video game industry suffered under the tyranny of the uninformed do-gooders & 'think-of-the-childrens!' political types.
(This all comes a couple of months after outspoken anti porn/violence/video game/whatever crusader the honourable rev. Fred Nile being caught surfing porn from his office 'net account.
Totally a coincidence, but fun non the less!)
Submission + - Uncertainty sets limits on quantum nonlocality
An anonymous reader writes: Research in today's issue of the journal Science, helps explain why quantum theory is as weird as it is, but not weirder. Ex-hacker Stephanie Wehner, and physicist Jonathan Oppenheim show that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle sets limits on Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance'. Wired reports that the discovery was made by "thinking of things in the way a hacker might” to uncover a fundamental link between the two defining properties of quantum physics. Oppenheim describes how uncertainty and nonlocality are like coding problems, enabling us to make a quantitative link between two of the cornerstones of quantum theory.
Submission + - Life found in deepest layer of Earth's crust (newscientist.com)
michaelmarshall writes: For the first time life has been found in the gabbroic layer of the crust. The new biosphere is all bacteria, as you might expect, but they are different to the bacteria in the layers above: they mostly feed on hydrocarbons that are produced by abiotic reactions deep in the crust. It could mean that similar microbes are living even deeper, perhaps even in the mantle.
