Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Inflammatory Title. (Score 1) 42

Full disclosure: I'm one of the main GROMACS devs (but not the dev that has been working with AMD on the Zen2 detection) We have done our own testing on this (and are working on improving it), but there should be a change in performance of about 10-23% due to a switch off our kernels (see https://redmine.gromacs.org/is...). We will likely release our own performance data for this in the near future as well.

Submission + - CERN celebrates 20 years of a free, open web

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Twenty years ago CERN published a statement that made the World Wide Web ("W3", or simply "the web") technology available on a royalty-free basis. By making the software required to run a web server freely available, along with a basic browser and a library of code, the web was allowed to flourish.

Submission + - German Ministry of Education throws away PCs for 190,000 € due to infection (google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: German IT magazine Heise reports (original in German) that the Ministry of Education in Schwerin had a Conficker virus infection on 170 machines, that was dealt with by simply throwing them on the trash. Other German authorities have now decided that "the approach taken is not up to the principle of efficiency and economy" and that the 187,300 Euro invested in this radical form of virus removal were inappropriate. The ministry had earlier estimated the cost of cleaning their desktops and servers by more conventional means to 130,000 Euro.

Comment Re:So how do I pass these radioactive bacteria? (Score 1) 53

by AcMNPV (#43534291) Attached to: Radioactive Bacteria Attack Cancer
According to the article, this is one of the major concerns and was tested on non tumor cells in the mouse model. They showed that liver and spleen had elevated radiation levels for the first day but that dropped relativly fast and no radiation was detected after a week. They also checked the liver cells for radiation damage and couldn't find anything. Still, your concern is valid and cancer therapy induced tumors are just as bad as the tumors they are supposed to kill. Good luck with your treatment!
News

Submission + - Slashdot Gets Acquired as Part of $20 Million Deal (geek.net) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Dice Holdings (Owner of Job sites including Dice.com) reported this morning that it has acquired Geeknet's online media business, including Slashdot and SourceForge.

"We are very pleased to find a new home for our media business, providing a platform for the sites and our media teams to thrive," said Ken Langone, Chairman of Geeknet. "With this transaction completed, we will now focus our full attention on growing ThinkGeek."

Dice Holdings acquired the business for $20 million in cash. In 2011, the online media properties generated $20 million in Revenues.
Space

Submission + - Nuclear Powered LEDs for Space Farming (forbes.com)

Submitted by
DevotedSkeptic
DevotedSkeptic writes: "The nearside of the Moon will never resemble your Granddad’s back forty, but agriculture remains the key to living and working off-world. All the mineral ore in the solar system can’t replace the fact that for extended periods on the Moon or Mars, future off-worlders will need bio-regenerative systems in order to prosper.

Here on earth, researchers still debate how best to make those possible, but nuclear-powered state of the art LED (Light-emitting Diode) technology is arguably what will drive photosynthesis so necessary to provide both food and oxygen for future lunar colonists.

Future long-term lunar residents will need to grow their food either in sub-lunar lava tubes or in greenhouses shielded with several meters of lunar surface regolith. With no atmosphere, the moon is regularly exposed to lethal doses of cosmic rays, solar coronal mass ejections and x-flares, not to mention micro-meteorites that would be enough to wreck anyone’s corn.

Although during the two weeks that make up the long lunar day astronauts might be able to funnel refracted sunlight into covered greenhouses or subsurface lava tunnels, they will be left without a light source during the long lunar night.

Current solar-powered battery storage technology isn’t adequate to sustain artificial light sources for two weeks at the time. Thus, the most practical solution is simply to use some sort of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG), not unlike the one powering the current Mars Science lab, to power the LEDs that will spur photosynthesis in lunar greenhouses.

Cary Mitchell, a plant biologist at Purdue University, says that as lunar light sources, LEDs would be cool, solid state and robust; lasting 50,000 hours at least, or some five times longer than conventional horticultural light sources. He also notes that that they could survive the journey to the lunar surface where they could then be strung inside inflatable lava tunnel greenhouses or in radiation-hardened, solid greenhouses on the surface.

On earth, Mitchell says it takes roughly 50 square meters of agriculture to provide both food and oxygen life to support one human. But, as he points out, who can say how productive plants are ultimately going to be on the moon, in gravity that is only one sixth that of earth?"
GNOME

Submission + - Torvalds pours scorn on De Icaza's desktop claims (itwire.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Linux creator Linus Torvalds has poured scorn on claims made by the co-founder of the GNOME Desktop project, Miguel de Icaza, that he (Torvalds) was in any way to blame for the lack of development in Linux desktop initiatives.
Programming

Submission + - How To Deal With 200k Lines of Spaghetti Code (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An article at Ars recaps a discussion from Stack Overflow about a software engineer who had the misfortune of inheriting 200k lines of 'spaghetti code' cobbled together over the course of 10-20 years. A lengthy and detailed response walks through how best to proceed at development triage in the face of limited time and developer-power. From the article: 'Rigidity is (often) good. This is a controversial opinion, as rigidity is often seen as a force working against you. It's true for some phases of some projects. But once you see it as a structural support, a framework that takes away the guesswork, it greatly reduces the amount of wasted time and effort. Make it work for you, not against you. Rigidity = Process / Procedure. Software development needs good processes and procedures for exactly the same reasons that chemical plants or factories have manuals, procedures, drills, and emergency guidelines: preventing bad outcomes, increasing predictability, maximizing productivity... Rigidity comes in moderation, though!'
Patents

Submission + - Bill to force Patent Trolls to Defendants costs (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by TrueSatan
TrueSatan writes: With support from the EFF's Defend Freedom Project two US Republican party Senators seek to introduce a bill called the "Shield Act" (https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/SHIELD_ACT_0.pdf) which, if passed, would enable judges to award costs to defendants if they are found to be the victims of meritless or frivolous patent litigation
Biotech

Submission + - Artificial DNA replicates and 'evolves' (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Scientists have demonstrated that several lab-made variants of DNA can store and transmit information much like the genuine article.
DNA is made up of nucleic acid bases — labelled A, C, G and T — on a backbone made of phosphates and the sugar deoxyribose. The artificial polymers, dubbed XNAs, carry the normal genetic 'alphabet' on a backbone made using different sugars.
The researchers engineered enzymes that transcribed DNA into the various XNAs, then back into new DNA strands. Faithful genetic transmission over successive DNA-to-XNA cycles allowed researchers to select for only those XNAs that attached to certain target proteins from a pool of random samples — a process akin to evolution over multiple generations (abstract).
The research confirms for the first time that replication, heredity and evolution can take place in artificial DNA-like molecules.

Slashdot Top Deals

"You'll pay to know what you really think." -- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

Close