Posted
by
timothy
from the when-smart-people-clash dept.
The Slashdolt writes "After a stern criticism from Linus, the long-time kernel hacker Alan Cox has decided to walk away as the maintainer of the TTY subsystem of the Linux Kernel, stating '...I've had enough. If you think that problem is easy to fix you fix it. Have fun. I've zapped the tty merge queue so anyone with patches for the tty layer
can send them to the new maintainer.'" A response to a subsequent post on the list makes it quite clear that he is serious.
Ed Pegg writes: "For Popular Science, Theo Gray demonstrates the Bacon Lance, a flaming meatsword that can cut through steel. Yes, with some ordinary bacon, and some pure oxygen, it's possible to cut through security doors. This comes out right after his profusely illustrated book of science experiments, Mad Science. When he's not working on experiments or his periodic table, Theo's alter-ego is a mild-mannered programmer for Mathematica."
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the killing-nazis-is-a-now-national-pastime dept.
Attendees of this year's GDC were given an early look at Wolfenstein, the new shooter in development by id and Raven. We've previously discussed the "Veil" ability that protagonist BJ Blazkowicz uses to hide himself, and much of the coverage relates to how it affects gameplay. "Early on, Blazkowicz stumbles upon an experiment and manages to blow it up, releasing waves of ethereal blue material. The Veil seems to turn gravity on and off as Blazkowicz tries to escape the area, making for some very original gunplay. ... The folks on hand told me that the Veil would be incorporated into game's multiplayer, but wouldn't go into details." A trailer for the game is available at Joystiq, and they had this to say: "Wolfenstein's look and gameplay is dated — and not in a retro chic way. Without the Veil, the game could be mistaken for a last-gen title, so the game's success rests on how compelling this feature will be throughout an entire playthrough."
Snoskred writes with the story of a blogger who chose to remain pseudonymous, who has been outed by an Alaskan politician in his legislative newsletter. Alaska Rep. Mike Doogan had been writing bizarre emails to people who emailed him, and the Alaskan blogger "Mudflats" was one of those who called him on it. (Mudflats first began getting noticed after blogging about Sarah Palin from a local point of view.) Doogan seems to have developed a particular itch to learn who Mudflats is, and he finally found out, though he got her last name wrong, and named her in his official newsletter. The Huffington Post is one of the many outlets writing about the affair. The blogger happens to be Democrat — as is Doogan — but that is immaterial to the question of the right to anonymity in political speech. Does an American have the right to post political opinion online anonymously? May a government official breach that anonymity absent a compelling state interest?
I've been using git personally for about a year now and have finally reached the point where I am ready to get the rest of my group to adopt it for our work. The tool I am recommending to help with the early git learning curve is Easy Git, http://www.gnome.org/~newren/eg/. Easy Git (eg) is a very thin wrapper around git. It provides clear and suggestions for git usage. Unlike other porcelains, you can trivially switch between eg and git at any time.
I think Easy Git can improve the initial git experience for many potential git users.
Posted
by
kdawson
from the not-to-decide-is-to-decide dept.
KentuckyFC writes "Philosophers have long wondered at the profound link between mathematics and physics, but how deep does this connection go? Pretty deep according to the results of a quantum experiment exploring the nature of mathematical undecidability. Here's how: any logical system must be based on axioms, which are propositions that are defined to be true. A proposition is logically independent from these axioms if it can neither be proved nor disproved from them; mathematicians say it is undecidable. In the experiment, researchers encoded a set of axioms as quantum states. A particular measurement on this system can then be thought of as a proposition which, if undecidable, yields a random result — which is what they found. 'This sheds new light on the (mathematical) origin of quantum randomness in these measurements,' say the researchers (abstract)."
A similar question could be asked about computers, in the 1950's. Electric cars are very likely something that will be needed in the future. The more that gets done on them now, the cheaper they will be in the future. These first few cars will be expensive, yes, but that goes for most prototype cars.
Posted
by
kdawson
from the less-time-for-wacraft dept.
cyberpead writes in with a Developerworks article on the open source tool options that can help speed up your build process by distributing the process across multiple machines in a local area network.
Posted
by
timothy
from the unique-and-in-duplicate dept.
kpearson writes "Distributed.net's 8-year-old OGR-25 distributed computing project has just proven conclusively that the predicted shortest 25-mark Golomb ruler is optimal. 'The total length of the ruler is 480, with marks at positions: 0 12 29 39 72 91 146 157 160 161 166 191 207 214 258 290 316 354 372 394 396 431 459 467 480. (This ruler may alternatively be expressed in terms of the distance between those positions, which is how dnetc displays them: 12-17-10-33-19-...).' 124,387 people participated in the project and two people found the shortest ruler, one on October 10, 2007 and the other on March 24, 2008."
Ed Pegg writes: "For those that want to get their fingers stained red and blue with actual political data, resources beyond 538 and pollster can be accessed. In a blog item for Wolfram Research, Jeff Hamrick gives step by step details for how to import raw data from Mason-Dixon, Rasmussen, and Quinnipiac. Then he uses Mathematica to analyze the political data."
KentuckyFC writes: "A scrambled Rubik's cube can be solved in just 25 moves, regardless of the starting configuration. Tomas Rosicki, a Stanford-trained mathematician, has proven the new limit (down from 26 which was proved last year) using a neat piece of computer science. Rather than study individual moves, he's used the symmetry of the cube to study its transformations in sets. This allows him to separate the "cube space" into 2 billion sets each containing 20 billion elements. He then shows that a large number of these sets are essentially equivalent to other sets and so can be ignored (abstract on the physics arxiv). Even then, to crunch through the remaining sets, he needed a workstation with 8GB of memory and around 1500 hours of time on a Q6600 CPU running at 1.6GHz. Next up, 24 moves."
Ant writes: "Scientific American (came from Reuters) reports that United States (U.S.) researchers have identified all 1,116 unique proteins found in human saliva glands. It was a discovery they said on Tuesday that could usher in a wave of convenient, spit-based diagnostic tests that could be done without the need for a single drop of blood. As many as 20 percent of the proteins are found in saliva are also found in blood, said Fred Hagen, a researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York who worked on the study.
Seen on Boing Boing."
Endeavour will spend some extra time at the International Space Station while ground control assesses the damage done to the shuttle's heat shield during liftoff last week.