SMT - Slashdot User

Scientists Work Towards Naturally Caffeine-Free Coffee 312

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 15, 2012 @10:29AM from the preemptive-buzzkill dept.

First time accepted submitter eternaldoctorwho writes "Research has been underway to produce a coffee bean plant that naturally has no or little caffeine content. Now, it looks like that might become a reality in the near future: Paulo Mazzafera of the University of Campinas in Brazil has come closer than ever with a strain containing 'only 2% of normal caffeine levels.' Coffee, anyone?"

Quantum Test Found For Mathematical Undecidability 223

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @02:25PM 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)."

Submission + - Microsoft offers US $20 billion for Yahoo: report (itwire.com)

Submitted by

gadgetopia

on Sunday November 30, 2008 @09:19AM

gadgetopia writes: "Did anyone really believe Ballmer when he said that he wasn't still interested in buying Yahoo? Well, truth be told, Ballmer always said he'd be interested in doing a deal for Yahoo's search business. Looks like the money dancer is firing his latest shot! http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21992/53/"

Google's Gatekeepers 150

Posted by kdawson on Saturday November 29, 2008 @07:16PM from the can't-read-that-here-try-a-proxy dept.

theodp writes "With control of 63% of the world's Internet searches, as well as ownership of YouTube, the NY Times reports that Google is the most powerful and protean of the Internet gatekeepers, exerting enormous influence over who can find an audience on the Web around the world. Deciding what controversial material does and doesn't appear on the local search engines Google maintains in many countries — as well as on Google.com, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and Orkut — falls on the shoulders of Nicole Wong and her colleagues, who have arguably been given more influence over online expression than anyone else on the planet. Some find Google's gatekeeper role worrisome: 'If your whole game is to increase market share,' says Lawrence Lessig, 'it's hard to do good, and to gather data in ways that don't raise privacy concerns or that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.'"

Comment re: Quest for the Holy Grail. (Score 1) 88

by SMT on Monday April 19, 1999 @11:40PM (#1926632) Attached to: Fermi's 2000 Node Beowulf Cluster

CORBA could certainly do this. CORBA is a middleware solution and acts much like a software bus overtop of the network. But like you said, the apps would have to be written.

I just finished a course in distributed systems and this looks like it will be a big thing. I guess a number of the telcos are already looking into this stuff.

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