Comment Re:Frosty RIP (Score 2) 344
I haven't viewed Slashdot in some time and happened to pass through and see this news.
Roblimo will be missed. Thanks for all the work you did to further the community here and around open source.
Comment Summary != Article (Score 1) 523
Was this summary written by an oil company executive? Or was this a contest to see how different the summary can be from the actual article? I RTFA'd this news story yesterday was glad that the Roadster has achieved its purpose -- now Tesla Motors can focus on its Model S, not to mention the Mercedes A-Class E-Cell, Smart EV, and Toyota Rav4 EV 2nd gen. I think the 10s could be the decade of the electric car.
Comment Blu-ray competes with downloads (Score 1) 1162
It's simple: Blu-ray adoption is competing with digital downloads. And people sticking to DVDs are the same people who bought VHS tapes well into the 00s and audio cassette tapes well into the 90s -- they'll switch eventually, but don't hold your breath.
Comment Unique precedent (Score 1) 617
I see this creating a precedent whereby any damaged party could sue a U.S. company for importing / selling any products made overseas by manufacturers who have broken laws in their home country, including environmental. Say good-bye to pretty much anything sold in the U.S.
Australian Visitors Must Declare Illegal Porn To Customs Officers 361
Australian Justice Minister Brendan O'Connor has advised visitors to take a better safe than sorry policy when it comes to their porn stashes, and declare all porn that they think might be illegal with customs officers. From the article: "The government said it changed the wording on passenger arrival cards after becoming aware of confusion among travellers about what pornography to declare. 'People have a right to privacy and while some pornography is legal and does not need to be disclosed, all travellers should be aware that certain types of pornography are illegal and must be declared to customs,' Mr O'Connor said."
Darth Vader Robs Long Island Bank 190
Apparently the destruction of the second Death Star has stretched the Galactic Empire's coffers so thin that Lord Vader himself is robbing banks. From the article: "Impotent Rebel Alliance security forces tell Newsday (paywall) that Vader marched into a Chase bank in Setauket around 11:30 a.m. today. Brandishing a completely unnecessary handgun — as he had the power to choke the oxygen out every teller's throat — the fallen Jedi demanded cash."
Willow Garage Robot Fetches Beer, Engineers Rejoice 114
kkleiner writes "Willow Garage has pulled off the ultimate engineering feat: teaching a PR2 robot to fetch you a beer from the fridge. Not only can the PR2 select the correct brew from the fridge, it can deliver, and even open the beer as needed. That's right, all the humans have to do is drink and relax. Prepare yourself for some major robot-envy as you check out the PR2 delivering much-needed refreshment in the video."
Over a Third of the Internet Is Pornographic 247
Th'Inquisitor writes "Pornography makes up 37% of the total number of web pages online, according to a new study published by Optenet, a SaaS provider. According to the report, which looked at a representative sample of around four million extracted URLs, adult content on the Internet increased by 17% in the first quarter of 2010, as compared to the same period in 2009."
The Big Technical Mistakes of History 244
An anonymous reader tips a PC Authority review of some of the biggest technical goofs of all time. "As any computer programmer will tell you, some of the most confusing and complex issues can stem from the simplest of errors. This article looking back at history's big technical mistakes includes some interesting trivia, such as NASA's failure to convert measurements to metric, resulting in the Mars Climate Orbiter being torn apart by the Martian atmosphere. Then there is the infamous Intel Pentium floating point fiasco, which cost the company $450m in direct costs, a battering on the world's stock exchanges, and a huge black mark on its reputation. Also on the list is Iridium, the global satellite phone network that promised to make phones work anywhere on the planet, but required 77 satellites to be launched into space."
Comment Re:Free BD Authoring Tool: Multiavchd (Score 5, Funny) 139
Get off my lawn.
Comment Re:Bread and circuses (Score 1) 391
Or, at the very least, disable all uploading ability on YouTube or posting ability on Blogger or any other user-contributed Google sites from Italian users, citing this case and the unwillingness of Google to accept any more user submissions from Italian users until the case is resolved. I think that would be totally fair and completely within Google's rights.
Comment Re:Doesn't bode well (Score 1) 283
That being said, regardless of what technology is used to create the setting for a film adaptation of Foundation, it would have to be considerably ground-breaking and not your average "sci-fi" look. This because Foundation is set tens of thousands of years in the future and life would need to be fundamentally different. Throughout Asimov's Robots-Empire-Foundation timeline stories are hints that the human race has evolved somewhat since then, like when the protagonist of "Pebble in the Sky" ends up in the future and they're surprised to see where he has hair growing and that he has extra teeth.
Emmerich is just about the worst candidate (Michael Bay aside) for making a good film adaptation of Foundation, if one is even possible at all.
Why Time Flies By As You Get Older 252
Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.
Man Uses Drake Equation To Explain Girlfriend Woes 538
artemis67 writes "A man studying in London has taken a mathematical equation that predicts the possibility of alien life in the universe to explain why he can't find a girlfriend. Peter Backus, a native of Seattle and PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, near London, in his paper, 'Why I don't have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation to love in the UK,' used math to estimate the number of potential girlfriends in the UK. In describing the paper on the university Web site he wrote 'the results are not encouraging. The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy.'"
Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221
Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."
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The degree of technical confidence is inversely proportional to the level of management.
