Silverfish - Slashdot User

Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @01:32PM from the a-jetwing-and-a-prayer dept.

Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

Comment Re:Only $1.25 Billion? (Score 1) 165

by Silverfish on Thursday November 12, 2009 @01:34PM (#30075174) Attached to: Intel and AMD Settle Antitrust, Patent Lawsuits

Since the business practices are left "unspecified", Intel is certainly not admitting they were engaged in illegal business practices.

One has to wonder if this settlement isn't partly spurred on by the apparent chilly reception software patents received at the In re Bilski case the other day. I can't say I know a lot about either Intel or AMD's patent portfolios, but both companies make a substantial amount of software. If a large portion of both sides portfolios wind up being nullified, AMD's antitrust claim may be the only thing of significance left between the two cases.

Intel worries that they'll have little or no claim left against AMD, and AMD knows full well that you can't really predict how the Supreme Court will decide just because they had some hard, pointed questions for one side, so suddenly it seems like a great time to bury the hatchet.

Is Your Mood a Result of Where You Live? 364

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @07:49PM from the home-is-where-the-misery-is dept.

Ed writes "Apparently, the Centers for Disease Control released a study indicating that geography can have a significant impact on mood. You may not be surprised to learn that Kentucky is more depressing than Hawaii. However, ranking up there with Hawaii are Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin. Frustratingly, they have not yet published the study on the web, so it is left as an exercise for the reader to find the original study and post a link for the rest of us."

Comment Re:Anandtech (Score 1) 111

by Silverfish on Monday April 13, 2009 @10:46PM (#27565909) Attached to: Intel Responds To X25-M Fragmentation Issue

I'm too lazy to go back and reread the entire Anandtech article, but if I remember correctly, it speculates on the amount of memory on Intel's controller and specifically states that Intel doesn't use the controller memory the way you describe, for the exact reason you state. Or perhaps it was the other article they did about the hiccuping drive from... was it OCZ? Either way, I feel pretty confident power loss won't cause data loss (at least not at the fault of the SSD controller)

Chrome EULA Reserves the Right To Filter Your Web 171

Posted by timothy on Saturday April 04, 2009 @07:43PM from the here's-some-birdseed-for-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Recently, I decided to try out Google Chrome. With my usual mistrust of Google, I decided to carefully read the EULA before installing the software. I paused when I stumbled upon this section: '7.3 Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service. For some of the Services, Google may provide tools to filter out explicit sexual content. These tools include the SafeSearch preference settings (see google.com/help/customize.html#safe). In addition, there are commercially available services and software to limit access to material that you may find objectionable.' Does this mean that Google reserves the right to filter my web browsing experience in Chrome (without my consent to boot)? Is this a carry-over from the EULAs of Google's other services (gmail, blogger etc), or is this something more significant? One would think that after the previous EULA affair with Chrome, Google would try to sound a little less draconian." Update: 04/05 21:14 GMT by T : Google's Gabriel Stricker alerted me to an informative followup: "We saw your Slashdot post and published the following clarification on the Google Chrome blog."

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