Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re:That's how it's done... (Score 1) 294

by tshak (#39450421) Attached to: Blackjack Player Breaks the Bank At Atlantic City

Poker between a group of players is a zero sum game, therefore, the hypothetical "average" player breaks even.

This is not necessarily true. For example, it is not uncommon to have one or two really bad players at the table feeding the rest of the game. While the "sharks" may have the largest edge, the average player may have an edge as well. The inverse is also true. One or two exceptional players could be the only players at the table with an edge.

Comment Re:Conflicting Research (Score 1) 214

by tshak (#38701802) Attached to: Introversion and Solitude Increase Productivity

I wouldn't discount research based on the research date. If the research is accurate there's no reason that time would be a factor, unless better studies were conducted and drew a different conclusion. If you're interested, do some research on the topic and you'll find that many companies from startups to major corporations utilize some form of open work spaces.

Comment HP Workhorses... (Score 1) 310

by Slurpee (#36235342) Attached to: My current printer has printed ...

I've been using a HP Laserjet 2100 since about 1999, and I've printed hundreds of thousands of pages. Still going very very strong. I've got friends with 4000 series that are still working very well.

Some of those HP SOHO or Buisness laser printers from the 90s and early 2000s just kept going.

Of course - they cost an arm and a leg. But they were worth it!
GNU is Not Unix

Bashing MS 'Like Kicking a Puppy,' Says Jim Zemlin 648

Posted by timothy from the audacity-of-hope dept.
jbrodkin writes "Two decades after Linus Torvalds developed his famous operating system kernel, the battle between Linux and Microsoft is over and Linux has won, says Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin. With the one glaring exception of the desktop computer, Linux has outpaced Microsoft in nearly every market, including server-side computing and mobile, Zemlin claims. 'I think we just don't care that much [about Microsoft] anymore,' Zemlin said. 'They used to be our big rival, but now it's kind of like kicking a puppy.' From Android and the Amazon Kindle to embedded devices, consumer electronics and the world's largest websites and supercomputers, 'Linux has come to dominate almost every category of computing, with the exception of the desktop,' Zemlin argues as Linux approaches its 20th anniversary."
Earth

Model Says Religiosity Gene Will Dominate Society 729

Posted by timothy from the getchyer-broad-brushes-n'-start-paintin' dept.
Hugh Pickens writes writes "PhysOrg reports on a study by Robert Rowthorn, emeritus professor at Cambridge University, that predicts that the genetic components that predispose a person toward religion are currently "hitchhiking" on the back of the religious cultural practice of high fertility rates and that provided the fertility of religious people remains on average higher than that of secular people, the genes that predispose people towards religion will spread. For example, in the past 20 years, the Amish population in the US has doubled, increasing from 123,000 in 1991 to 249,000 in 2010. The huge growth stems almost entirely from the religious culture's high fertility rate, which is about 6 children per woman, on average. Rowthorn says that while fertility is determined by culture, an individual's predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics, in addition to their upbringing. In the model, Rowthorn uses a "religiosity gene" to represent the various genetic factors that combine to genetically predispose a person toward religion, whether remaining religious from youth or converting to religion from a secular upbringing. Rowthorn's model predicts that the religious fraction of the population will eventually stabilize at less than 100%, and there will remain a possibly large percentage of secular individuals. But nearly all of the secular population will still carry the religious allele, since high defection rates will spread the religious allele to secular society when defectors have children with a secular partner."
The Military

Five Times the US Almost Nuked Itself 384

Posted by Soulskill from the stopping-there-for-brevity dept.
kdawson writes "io9 has a scary outline of five times the US came close to accidental nuclear disasters. Quoting: 'In August of 1950, ten B-29 Superfortress bombers took off from what was then called Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base in California, headed for Guam. Each was carrying a Mark IV atom bomb, which was about twice as powerful as the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. Shortly after takeoff, one of the B-29s had engine trouble. On board was General Robert Travis. He commanded the plane to turn back to the base when the landing gear refused to retract. Sensing the plane was going down, the pilot tried to avoid some base housing before crashing at the northwest corner of the base. The initial impact killed 12 of the 20 people aboard, including General Travis. The resulting fire eventually detonated the 5,000 pounds of conventional explosives that were part of the Mark IV. That massive explosion killed seven people on the ground. Had the bomb been armed with its fissile capsule, the immediate death toll may have reached six figures.'"
Software

Code Repository Atlassian Buys Competitor BitBucket 150

Posted by kdawson from the lazy-shrug dept.
Roblimo writes "Wow. Atlassian sent press releases out about this, and we're happy for them. But isn't Git easy to install and use — for free, even if your project is proprietary and secret, not open source and public? Whatever. Some people seem to feel better about proprietary software than about FOSS, and the majority of Atlassian's business comes from meeting the needs of behind-the-firewall, proprietary code repositories. At least Atlassian has free versions of its repository for FOSS and small-scale proprietary developers. Which is sort of nice."
Apple

7-Inch iPad Rumored 233

Posted by CmdrTaco from the sure-why-not dept.
Stoobalou writes "Rumours of a cut-down Apple iPad are ramping up as Taiwanese news outlet Economic Daily News names names. The often-reliable Chinese language newspaper — which correctly predicted the first coming of the iPad when everyone else on the planet was carping on about a sub-$500 netbook from the Cupertino company — has been digging about in the skips behind a number of Chinese factories and reckons it knows who will be making which bit of the much-predicted iPad 2."
Businesses

Hollywood Accounting — How Harry Potter Loses Money 447

Posted by Soulskill from the hypocrisy-in-action dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Techdirt has the details on how it was possible for the last Harry Potter movie to lose $167 million while taking in nearly $1 billion in revenue. If you ever wanted to see 'Hollywood Accounting' in action, take a look. The article also notes two recent court decisions that may raise questions about Hollywood's ability to continue with these kinds of tricks. For example, the producers of 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' now have to pay $270 million for its attempt to get around paying a partner through similar tricks."

Comment Many users are on 10 or 25gig? (Score 4, Informative) 173

by Slurpee (#32701082) Attached to: Australia's Largest ISP Ditches Linux Mirror

10 gig or 25 gig a month? They're the luck users!

Seriously - their most popular plan has a 2gig limit for "only" $40 a month - with excess usage charged at 15c a meg. That's over $2,000 a gig! Both up and down are counted.

People who use bigpond are seriously deluded. Considering rivals offer 130gig a month for $40, no excess usage charges, and only downloads count...

no linux user users bigpond.

Friends don't let friends use bigpond.
Google

Pedestrian Follows Google Map, Gets Run Over, Sues 699

Posted by Soulskill from the america-amazes-me-sometimes dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Toronto Star reports that a Utah woman is suing Google for more than $100,000 in damages, claiming its maps function gave her walking directions that led her onto a major highway, where she was struck by a car. Lauren Rosenberg sought directions between two addresses in Utah about 3 kilometers apart and the top result suggested that she follow a busy rural highway for several hundred meters. The highway did not have sidewalks or any other pedestrian-friendly amenities, and Rosenberg was struck by a car. Rosenberg filed suit against both the driver of the car that struck her and Google, claiming both carried responsibility in her injury. Her lawyers claim Google is liable because it did not warn her that the route would not offer a safe place for a pedestrian to walk. Google has pointed out that the directions Rosenberg sought come with a warning of caution for pedestrians, but Rosenberg claims that she accessed the Maps function on her Blackberry mobile device, where it did not include the warning."
Input Devices

Project Natal Pricing and Release Date Revealed 156

Posted by Soulskill from the not-cheap dept.
tekgoblin writes "According to Edge-online.com, their source says that we can expect Microsoft's Project Natal to cost around $149. 'The figure for the standalone unit is significantly higher than a previous sub-£50 estimate, but less than pricing recently suggested by European retailers. It’s also more expensive than Sony’s Natal rival, Move, which will be available later this year with a game for less than $100.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

A penny saved is a penny to squander. -- Ambrose Bierce

Close