Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment No duh. (Score 1) 76

No duh.
The communication device in your pocket is a TWO-WAY radio.

If you want to be able to talk to the world, expect the world know where you are so the world can listen.
Of course the cell phone provider knows where you are; they have to literally beam a signal to you.
So, no duh they know where you are, they have to.

Comment Science is not based on consensus. (Score 1) 385

Science is not based on consensus.
You do not get to vote on the truth

Here are some "facts? based on consensus"
The sky is blue; no it is not.
The earth is round; no it is not.
It is hotter than it has ever been; no it is not.
It is colder than it has ever been; no it is not.
The temperature of the Pacific Ocean is hotter than it has ever been in the last 5000 years.
How do you take the temperature of 20million cubic miles of fluid?

The Earth is a dynamic system, heated by a thermonuclear fusion engine literally 1million times bigger than the planet.
A belch of volcano gas is has a greater affects than mankind in upseting the balance of airflow and heat absorbption.
We live in the 3mile skin of an 8000mile ball.

I remind you of the parable of the elephant and the 5 blind men:
One man in the Himalayas notices to ice sheet getting smaller and declares Global Warming.
One man in Antarctica notices the ice sheet getting thicker and declares Global Cooling.
One man on the north side of an island notices the beach disappearing and declares the oceans are rising.
One man on the south end of the island notices the beach is increasing and declares the oceans are receding.
One man notices that it is the hottest summer on "record" and declares Global Warming.
One man notices the same year that his summer is the coldest on record and declares Global Cooling.

All are true

For you to "believe" that you matter, you affect the planet, shows how self-important you are, how little you understand.
We literally are a speck on a rock next to an ocean. In comparable size, we are an anthill on the football(or soccer) field.

Even if we tried, we do not affect the outcome of the game.

Comment Re:The irony (Score 1) 385

Insurance companies are in the business to make money.
If an insurance company can convince people that the threat is greater, then they can raise rate above their expected coverage amount and therefore make even more money.

Disaster Insurance companies are not altruistic. If I were an Insurance Company, I would wholeheartedly support the Global Warming crowd, for it creates fear of disaster, and fear is what drives you to buy insurance.

Not realizing the profit motive is ironic.

Comment No duh. My phone touch screen is difficult to use (Score 1) 233

No duh.
My phone touch screen is difficult to use.
When Capacitive-Touch works it works well but there is always limitations.
Gloves, calluses, skinny vegetarians and calibration all give Capacitive-Touch big problems.

To be successful in the car, buttons must be the size of coffee cups.
And you gotta have positive feedback on select that works for everyone (blind, deaf and any other lack of human sense).
Yes, blind people do ride in cars and may be asked to press a button.
Linux Business

Penumbra: Overture Goes Open Source 74

As promised when the Humble Indie Bundle hit $1 million in donations the other day, indie developer Frictional Games has released Penumbra: Overture's source code. "The code for Penumbra: Overture is a continuation of the one used for the tech demo + some addition for the not so long lived Robo Hatch project. It also contains some code from Unbirth, giving it quite some history." The release also includes the HPL1 engine. "This is engine that has powered all of the Penumbra games and it even includes the stuff used to create the 2D platformer Energetic. The engine code was started in December 2004 and was actively developed until early 2008." The repositories are available at github.
Games

Imagination In Games 94

In a recent article for Offworld, Jim Rossignol writes about how the experiences offered by games are broadening as they become more familiar and more popular among researchers and educators. He mentions Korsakovia, a Half-Life 2 mod which is an interpretation of Korsakoff's syndrome, a brain disorder characterized by confusion and severe memory problems, and makes the point that games (and game engines) can provide interesting and evocative experiences without the constraint of being "fun," much as books and movies can be appreciated without "fun" being an appropriate description. Quoting: "Is this collective imagining of games one of the reasons why they tend to focus on a narrow band of imagination? Do critics decry games because games need, more than any other media, to be something a group of people can all agree on? Isn't that why diversions from the standard templates are always met with such excitement or surprise? Getting a large number of creative people to head out into the same imaginative realm is a monumental task, and it's a reason why game directors like to riff off familiar films or activities you can see on TV to define their projects. A familiar movie gets everyone on the same page with great immediacy. 'Want to know what this game is going to be like? Go watch Aliens, you'll soon catch up.' We are pushed into familiar, well-explored areas of imagination. However, there are also teams who are both exploring strange annexes and also creating games that are very much about imaginative exploration. These idiosyncratic few do seem like Alan Moore's 'exporters,' giving us something genuinely new to investigate and explore. Once the team has figured out how to drag the thing back from their imaginations, so we get to examine its exotic experiences — like the kind we can't get at home."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Open Source FPS Game Alien Arena 2009 Released 142

Alienkillerrace writes "The open sourced, freeware FPS game Alien Arena 2009 has been released (Windows and Linux). The improvements to the game engine are very significant, and have surely raised the bar for free games of this genre. All surfaces in the game are now rendered using GLSL, not only improving the visual quality, but the performance as well. Interesting new effects like post-process distortions using GLSL have been implemented, as well as light volumes, better per-pixel lighting (reminiscent of UT3), and shaded water. Equally notable is that the sound system has been completely rewritten using OpenAL, allowing for effects such as Doppler, and adding Ogg Vorbis support. The game is free to play and available for download on its official website. It has a stats system and a built-in IRC client in its front-end game browser."
The Courts

Visualizing the Ideological History of SCOTUS 151

langelgjm writes "An interesting exercise in quantifying and visualizing ideological shifts, the website ScotusScores.com tracks changes in the ideological history of the US Supreme Court from 1937 to 2007. Ideological positions are quantified using Martin-Quinn scores, and the chart highlights the often-bumpy transitions (Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas), as well as tendencies within each Justice's career."

Slashdot Top Deals

An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.

Working...