Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Two device solution (Score 1) 169

=>You will not get what you want with one device (at least not in my experience.) A real training watch with GPS is not an mp3 player and vice versa

For tracking and logging relevant data (time, distance, pace/speed, heartrate, cadence) you want a dedicated device. Garmin makes some cheap watches at $100, but you're better off spending a little more and getting a Forerunner 2xx - these are great. You can also build structured workouts on them to do interval training, etc. Trying to use an Apple Watch or something else like that is going to be costly and will never be as good. Excellent battery life on these as well.

Music: I strongly advise against headphones for several reasons, but the ipod shuffle is probably the way to go if you must - small, no frills, long life.

Here's why I don't like headphones:
Situational awareness - tuning out to tune in to your music is dangerous. I also just generally believe that using headphones in public while moving (walking/running/etc.) is intrinsically bad as you're that much more likely to block others, get int he way, etc.
Headphones are frequently banned at events.
Training: if you're simply looking to cruise and finish the event, then this doesn't apply, but I think that's a poor approach to races, especially road marathons with reg fess at $100 or more. Needing music to run means you don't like running in of itself and it means you're not focusing on the running. Sounds crazy to noon-runners, but surroundings (on-road or off) should be enough stimulus when you're actually training - think about form, cadence, footstrike, etc. Running well - for speed, for distance, for anything - takes practice. When you stop paying attention or when you get tired, your form starts to decline, which is why it's so important to train conscientiously to develop good ingrained mechanics. This also makes you more efficient and helps with injury prevention.

Comment Re:I've always thought that the best way for Israe (Score 2, Insightful) 379

There's really nowhere else to put this, so here goes:
Thank you dotancohen for all your comments. They are insightful, mature, and, perhaps most importantly, civil.

As a general on the discussion so far, I find it informative that the most vitriolic comments directed against Israel and Jews were posted anonymously; the posters are well aware that their remarks are defamatory and have no appropriate place in civil discourse.

Per the preceding discussion, the staggeringly different perspectives on life, the afterlife, martydom, etc. add a dimension to the conflict that is not easily resolved. As the product of a "modern", western civilation and education, I personally find it impossible to subscribe to any sort of notion of the promise of heaven, nor do I have any willingness to sacrifice myself for a religious cause. The asymmetric philosophy that enables suicide bombings, among other atrocities, has had an outsized influence on the conflict and global perception thereof.

Mark it as flamebait all you want:
"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us." - Golda Meir

Comment Re:actual "platform" (Score 0) 668

Article I, Section 8, clauses 12 and 13:
12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
13: To provide and maintain a Navy;

The Army and Navy are treated differently, which is a key point missing from simply pointing to the relevant clauses. There is a mandate for a standing navy, but armies were intended to be temporary.

Comment Re:Try again... (Score 0) 356

the U.S. was created very explicitly with the premise that [1] there is a God [2] that this God gave freedom and dignity to each individual (therefore the individual matters)

Boy, did you get your history wrong. Did they teach the First Amendment where you went to school?

and [3] those individuals LEND limited power to government .

Which is it, Christ or Ayn Rand? Can't have both.

While the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document of the United States, the fact that its sigantories were the framers of the American government implies that the Declaration means that it should offer insight into the founding of the American government and it quite clearly lays out points [1], [2], and [3], above, and in that order.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html)

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 1233

Also, newsflash, many major religions support the cause of converting others or killing them. Including Christians and Jews. A clear majority of Muslims think that's an outdated concept just as much as Christians and Jews do too. It's just some relatively tiny sects that still support it (see Westboro Baptist Church).

Jews do not proselytize, much less support killing those of other faiths. This is distinctly different from Christianity and Islam in which proselytization is normal and routine. For example, in my local newspaper this week, there was an ad from the local catholic church offering introductions to Catholicism and the opportunity to be baptised and join the church. Jews do nothing of the sort. Traditionally, those desiring to convert to Judaism are turned away three times to prove that they are genuine in their desires. The only Jews who do anything even remotely resembling proselytization is Chabad and they specifically reach out to less observant Jews with the intention of helping them become more observant - there's no interest in converting non-Jews.

Comment Re:Why metric makes sense & base units don't m (Score 1) 2288

Item 2: In Imperial you might measure (heat) energy in BTU and mechanical energy in some mixture of foot-pounds-seconds.

Those are called horsepower (hp) if the seconds are involved (550 ft-lb/s)

And as an engineer in the US, I am very comfortable working in both sets of units. Metric is decidedly easier for calculations, but I second the earlier point of the more natural feel to English units - I do a fair amount of hands-on work and machining and everything is still in English, so that may be part of it.
The unit conversion argument isn't going to win over a lot of normal people, however, because during a regular day, how many conversions do you need to make, really? Most people compare apples to apples: this is 10 oz., that's 15, etc. And even for units with the same scale, metrics are compartmentalized - natural gas is BTU, cars are HP and even if I was running my car on natural gas, 1 BTU gas per second won't give me 1 BTU/s of power out. If you're an engineer, know both systems because there's a lot of legacy designs and parts. If you're not an engineer, you know what you know and that more than suffices. Who cares that there's 1760 yds in a statute mile (2000 in a nm) if you can estimate the width of your living room in yds/feet and can imagine what having to drive 50 miles to grandma's means.

Lastly, I don't know who tells people the military is all metric, but it ain't. It's mixed, but my work has been in English units when dealing with mechanical engineers and metric (not SI) with chemists - liters per minute, etc. all require conversion factors too and whether my code has me multiplying by 1/60e3 to put lpm in m3/s or 0.3048 to put feet in m (and vice versa), I really don't care.

Submission + - Cheap cancer drug finally tested in humans (edmontonjournal.com) 1

John Bayko writes: Mentioned on Slashdot a couple of years ago, the drug dichloroacetate (DCA) has finally finished its first clinical trial against brain tumours in humans. Drug companies weren't willing to test a drug they could not patent, so money was raised in the community through donations, auctions, and finally government support, but the study was still limited to five patients, showing extremely positive results in four of them. It also raises the question of where all the money donated to Canadian and other cancer societies, and especially the billions spent buying merchandise with little pink ribbons on it goes, if not to actual cancer research like this.

Comment Brown University (Score 1) 4

While at Brown (2005 - 2009), Linux was not well supported by the University. There was, however, a Linux users' group who managed to solve most if not all integration problems, such that I was able to run Linux without any difficulties. Having purchased a new desktop, and now living off campus, I don't really know what the status of Linux computing is at Cornell.
For Brown, one had to contact the Linux users' group to learn how to make the VPN and secure wifi work, but it did in the end. The unencrypted wifi worked out of the box. I don't recall any classroom applications beyond Matlab from the CS department and that was available both in the department computer lab and for personal machines in *nix as well as Mac and PC. Other than that, there was never any software or applications for class that I would have wanted to put on my computer - the software that was used for homework and projects was either Matlab/Maple which are available as Octave and Maxima, essentially, and the rest were CAD and FEA packages that were far too intensive for most students computers - those were all run in a lab.

Comment Re:compasses (Score 1) 158

No, but it may reek havoc on analogue navigational instruments, and the migration of many animals (there's a hypothesis that birds use the magnetic field to know where to go).

It's hard to tell what flip would do to modern society and the earth's ecosystem.

...but on the subject of our everyday compasses, they shouldn't be at all affected considering that they point to a lump of iron ore in Canada rather than the actual North Pole (hence a correction of ~-11/12 degrees when I go hiking in Harriman)

Earth

Compressor-Free Refrigerator On the Way 67

Iddo Genuth writes "Scientists from Penn State University are designing the future of refrigerators and other cooling devices through magnetic field refrigeration. The investigation pertaining to electrically induced heat effects of some ferroelectric polymers might one day replace electrically powered refrigerators and their compressors and coils. The researchers are focusing on ferroelectric polymers that exhibit temperature changes at room temperature under an electrical field. The same technology might also find its way into computers and other devices in the future, making them run cooler without complex cooling mechanisms."
Displays

Submission + - Microsoft Engineers Invent Energy-Efficient LCD Co (ieee.org)

MechEMark writes: "From the article ( http://spectrum.ieee.org/jul08/6466 ):
"Researchers from Microsoft say they've built a prototype of a display screen using a technology that essentially mimics the optics in a telescope but at the scale of individual display pixels. The result is a display that is faster and more energy efficient than a liquid crystal display, or LCD, according to research reported yesterday in Nature Photonics...
The design greatly increases the amount of backlight that reaches the screen. The researchers were able to get about 36 percent of the backlight out of a pixel, more than three times as much light as an LCD can deliver. But Microsoft senior research engineer Michael Sinclair says that through design improvements, he expects that number to go up — theoretically, as high as 75 percent. ""

Image

Girl Wins Right to Change Stupid Name 3

A 9-year-old New Zealand girl, Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii, has been made a ward of the court so that she can be given her a name that won't "... make a fool of the child and set her up with a social disability and handicap." This was not the first crazy name Family Court Judge Rob Murfitt has encountered. Among some of the most memorable: twins named Benson and Hedges, Violence, and Number 16 Bus Shelter. Some other New Zealand Names that were denied by The Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages include Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Stallion, and Sex Fruit. On a more personal note, there are still some hard feelings at our office as Mr. Malda did not name his child "Zanzibar Buck Buck Mcfate" as agreed to at lunch.
Technology

Next Generation CPU Refrigerators 154

Iddo Genuth writes "Researchers at Purdue University are developing a miniature refrigeration system, small enough to fit inside laptop computers. According to the researchers, the implementation of miniature refrigeration systems in computers can dramatically increase the amount of heat removed from the microchips, therefore boosting performance while simultaneously shrinking the size of computers."
The Military

New Rifle Tech Offers Variable Muzzle Speed 443

Ponca City, We love you writes "A gun that fires variable-speed bullets that can be set to kill, wound, or just inflict a bruise is being built by a Lund and Company Invention, a toy design studio that makes toy rockets powered by burning hydrogen obtained by electrolyzing water. The company is being funded by the US Army to adapt the technology to fire bullets instead. The new weapon, called the Variable Velocity Weapon System or VWS, lets the soldier use the same rifle for crowd control and combat, by altering the muzzle velocity. It could be loaded with 'rubber bullets' designed only to deliver blunt impacts on a person, full-speed lethal rounds, or projectiles somewhere between the two. Bruce Lund, the company's CEO, says the gun works by mixing a liquid or gaseous fuel with air in a combustion chamber behind the bullet. This determines the explosive capability of the propellant and consequently the velocity of the bullet. 'Projectile velocity varies from non-lethal at 10 meters, to lethal at 100 meters or more, as desired,' says Lund. The existing VWS design is a .50 caliber (12.7 mm) rifle weapon, but Lund says the technology can be scaled to any size, 'handgun to Howitzer.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

Working...