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Comment User representation with the Linux Foundation (Score 1) 58

OpenStack has been compared to Linux a lot lately and justifiable so. I'd be interested in your thoughts on what the Linux Foundation can learn from the structures built within the OpenStack Foundation. Specifically, the OpenStack Foundation has a User Committee with the mission to look after the user's interest. That is: not developers, nor industry partners but users. Would you consider a similar function to be the Linux Foundation's concern?

Comment The problem is detection... (Score 1) 262

... they can penetrate almost anything they encounter ... Well... "penetrating" seems a bit out place... I think a more appropriate description would be something like "chance of interacting with other other particles is extremely low" Which of course makes detecting neutrino's a hell of a job. To get an impression of how hard that is, consider this: "About 65 billion (6.5×1010) solar neutrinos per second pass through every square centimeter perpendicular to the direction of the Sun in the region of the Earth." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino) and the size of the largest neutrino observatory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SskyDuTfH0o , http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/IceCube-schema.jpg

Comment Re:Please explain to this non-physics-type geek (Score 1) 180

Prof. Stephen Pollock considers the question of "what if there is no Higgs boson" in some detail in his course "Particle Physics for Non-Physicists: A Tour of the Microcosmos" ( http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/Course_Detail.aspx?cid=1247 ). Lecture 19 is specifically about the Higgs, but I'd recommend the course in its entirety. It's fascinating stuff. Regarding the question, to keep it short, in his view even if there is no such thing as the Higgs boson, the Standard Model is not in any danger of getting obsolete. Should the Higgs prove non-existing (little side question: how do you prove something doesn't exists?), parts of the model dealing with the Weak Force ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_Force ) might need to be revisited and perhaps expanded upon. However, for the most part there is a huge amount of experimental evidence of its correctness, which has been accumulated in decades long of research.

Comment Re:BIOS on a processor? (Score 1) 134

I don't think that AMD is that big of a motherboard vendor, so such a statement wouldn't make much sense. "Coreboot support for AMD chipsets" would have sounded less confusing to me as well. Anyway, I think this is great news... at least if as a consequence of AMD's support for Coreboot we'd actually starting to see the old BIOS being replaced on large volume mainboards. Btw... The blog creates the impression that AMD is quite committed to Coreboot... Was there any actual contribution from AMD to Coreboot or is this more related to PR and throwing off the competition? Perhaps someone from the Coreboot devs could provide some details? What does AMD's support actually mean?

Comment Re:Possibly SCO-related? (Score 3, Interesting) 221

I wonder... if the UNIX copyrights are of any good to damage Linux or Open Source, why would have other big companies involved in and benefiting from Linux and Open Source taken any risks by allowing for these assets to end up in unfriendly hands? On the other hand, if the UNIX copyrights can potentially be harmful when misused, what would a.o. IBM and Google have for an apology for letting it happen? This is of course under the assumption that the "certain intellectual property assets" did contain Novell's UNIX related IP...
Math

7 of the Best Free Linux Calculators 289

An anonymous reader writes "One of the basic utilities supplied with any operating system is a desktop calculator. These are often simple utilities that are perfectly adequate for basic use. They typically include trigonometric functions, logarithms, factorials, parentheses and a memory function. However, the calculators featured in this article are significantly more sophisticated with the ability to process difficult mathematical functions, to plot graphs in 2D and 3D, and much more. Occasionally, the calculator tool provided with an operating system did not engender any confidence. The classic example being the calculator shipped with Windows 3.1 which could not even reliably subtract two numbers. Rest assured, the calculators listed below are of precision quality."

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