MattyDK23 - Slashdot User

Comment Email address (Score 4, Funny) 855

by SpaceAdmiral on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @03:20PM (#26270317) Attached to: Tales From the Support Crypt

My favorite call from when I used to do tech support involved a bounced email. The caller kept trying to send an email to her minister, but it kept bouncing back as undeliverable.

She thought it had something to do with the church secretary who apparently hated her and might be interfering. She spent about half-an-hour explaining this to me without giving me a chance to get a word in edgewise.

When I was finally given a chance to ask her a question, I asked what email address she was trying to send to. She told me and I said "try it without the 'www.' at the beginning."

Comment Re:Quite a letdown... (Score 1) 297

by SpaceAdmiral on Friday December 05, 2008 @04:58PM (#26007203) Attached to: Scientists Achieve Mental Body-Swapping

And now you know the difference between 'mental body-swapping' and 'physical body-swapping'.

Submission + - Scientists achieve mental body-swapping (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by

SpaceAdmiral

on Thursday December 04, 2008 @12:48PM

SpaceAdmiral writes: "Scientists have succeeded in convincing experiment subjects that a mannequin's body is their own. The effect could prove useful in virtual reality applications and in robot technology. The paper is available here."

Comment Re:The Line (Score 1) 990

by SpaceAdmiral on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @06:03PM (#25892261) Attached to: Should We Clone a Neanderthal?

Protip: Humans are animals

Um, of course. That's why I said "the line between humans and other animals."

I'm not sure that I disagree with what you said, but I do object to the way you made it sound like you were correcting me or something.

Submission + - Evolving rocks (canada.com)

Submitted by

SpaceAdmiral

on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @05:55PM

SpaceAdmiral writes: "A new study makes the claim that rocks have been evolving throughout Earth's history. Although using loaded terms like "evolution" and referring to rocks as "species" seems to be going a bit far, the theory does demonstrate "how closely intertwined the mineral world is with life and biology.""

Submission + - Should we resurrect the Neanderthals? (slate.com)

Submitted by

SpaceAdmiral

on Monday November 24, 2008 @01:51PM

SpaceAdmiral writes: "Forget cloning a woolly mammoth, should scientists clone a Neanderthal? It should be possible soon, although it raises a number of bioethics concerns, including where to draw the line between human and other animals."

Submission + - NASA to explore "secret layer" of the Sun (nasa.gov)

Submitted by

SpaceAdmiral

on Friday September 05, 2008 @03:21PM

SpaceAdmiral writes: "Early next year, NASA will launch the experimental telescope SUMI (Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph Investigation) to study the transition region of the Sun. The transition region is about 5000km above the stellar surface and is where magnetic fields mysteriously accelerate the solar wind to a million mph. SUMI will use the technique of "Zeeman splitting." Although this technique has been used in the past to study thousands of sunspots, gas in the transition region produces spectral lines in the UV range that can't be seen with an Earth-based telescope."

Submission + - Viruses infected by viruses (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by

SpaceAdmiral

on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @05:56PM

SpaceAdmiral writes: "Scientists have discovered a virus that can infect another virus. The fact that viruses can essentially get sick may change the debate over whether they are alive or not. Check out Nature for a slightly more technical article about the "virophage.""

Comment Re:Wonder what Firefox 2 looked like ... (Score 0) 406

by MattyDK23 on Tuesday June 24, 2008 @05:39PM (#23924921) Attached to: Real-World Firefox 3 Memory Usage Leads the Field

Interesting test - pretty amazing how FF3 basically flatlines at around 120 MBytes for over 2 hours of usage ... would have been interesting if the same methodology could be used with FF2 to see how much of an improvement FF3 is over that and how well the leaks were fixed.

Flock is based off of Firefox 2, and after a bit of browsing leveled off at 190MB. Firefox 3 was a bit more volatile, but like you said, was around 120MB for the most part.

Submission + - Doughnut-shaped universe bites back (nature.com)

Submitted by

SpaceAdmiral

on Tuesday May 27, 2008 @01:00PM

SpaceAdmiral writes: "The once popular idea that the universe is small and finite is making a comeback. Many researchers thought that a 'wraparound' universe would mean that distant objects would be seen multiple times in the sky, but new research suggests '3-torus' (or 'doughnut universe') as well as other shapes could fit our actual observations."

Submission + - Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (canada.com)

Submitted by

SpaceAdmiral

on Monday May 26, 2008 @05:10PM

SpaceAdmiral writes: "The Canadian government is secretly negotiating to join the U.S. and E.U. in an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The agreement would give border guards the power to search your iPod and cellphone for illegal downloads, as well as force ISPs to hand over customer information without a warrant. According to David Fewer, staff counsel at the University of Ottawa's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic: "If Hollywood could order intellectual property laws for Christmas what would they look like? This is pretty close.""

Submission + - The physics of whipped cream (nasa.gov)

Submitted by

SpaceAdmiral

on Friday April 25, 2008 @03:28PM

SpaceAdmiral writes: "An experiment on the Space Shuttle Columbia has been analyzing your ice cream sundae. Or, rather, it looked at the phenomenon of "shear thinning," which explains why whipped cream comes out of the can like a liquid, but sits atop your sundae like a solid. The experiment actually involved shear thinning of xenon, a substance used in ion rocket engines, but whipped cream tastes better."

Submission + - New radar maps of moon (nasa.gov)

Submitted by

SpaceAdmiral

on Friday February 29, 2008 @03:32PM

SpaceAdmiral writes: "NASA has obtained new high-resolution radar maps of the Moon's south pole, likely to be valuable when astronauts return. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory collected the data using the Goldstone Solar System Radar located in California's Mojave Desert."

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