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Comment Re:Innovation (Score 1) 449

by Sir Mal Fet (#38807159) Attached to: Ubuntu 12.04 To Include Head-Up Display Menus

here have been small pushes in this direction (e.g. the Ubiquity add-on for Firefox [mozillalabs.com] would let you type commands (like "map XXX" or "email page to XXX") and get immediately useful results), but for it to really work, from a user perspective, it has to be available in every application so that it's worth the cost to learn the new style.

I thought exactly the same when I saw the video, this is ubiquity for the whole OS. I have been a ubiquity user for a long time, in fact if you want to try it out there is still a version in development, and I simply can't live without it. So my advice would be to try out the system and *then* criticize the hell out of it, it might be great.

Also, I think that since most users of linux are already CLI power users, this seems like a great tool for the real users of Ubuntu, not the objective market that M. Shuttleworth thinks he has, but for the real one: linux users who don't want too much hassle when configuring the desktop.
Science

Submission + - Multicellular life made in months (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: The origin of multicellular life, one of the most important developments in Earth’s history, could have occurred with surprising speed, US researchers have shown. In the lab, a single-celled yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) took less than 60 days to evolve into many-celled clusters that behaved as individuals. The clusters even developed a primitive division of labour, with some cells dying so that others could grow and reproduce.

Multicellular life has evolved independently at least 25 times, but these transitions are so ancient that they have been hard to study.

The researchers wanted to see if they could evolve multicellularity in a single-celled organism, using gravity as the selective pressure. In a tube of liquid, clusters of yeast cells settle at the bottom more quickly than single cells. By culturing only the cells that sank, they selected for those that stick together. After many rounds of selection over 60 days, the yeast had evolved into 'snowflakes' comprising dozens of cells.

Many single-celled organisms, including yeast, often form clumps of genetically distinct cells. But Ratcliff’s snowflakes were made up of genetically identical cells that had budded off and stuck together. Many other multicellular organisms may well have evolved through a similar 'divide-and-stick' process.
Apple

Submission + - iTunes Match Available in most of Latin America, N (apple.com)

Submitted by Sir Mal Fet
Sir Mal Fet writes: iTunes Match, Apple's service that allows re-downloading all your music, ripped CDs, and other music files across all your libraries using the iCloud service, has been made available in most of Latin America, the Netherlands, and the Baltic states. A nice review of one user can be found here. So fellow slashdotters, is it worth the $25/year? Do you use the service?
Firefox

Submission + - Notes on Reducing Firefox's Memory Consumption (mozilla.com)

Submitted by Skuto
Skuto writes: At yesterdays linux.conf.au Browser miniconference in Ballarat, Australia, Mozilla engineer Nicholas Nethercote gave a detailed presentation about the history of Firefox's memory consumption. The 37 slides-with-notes explain in gritty detail what caused Firefox 4's memory usage to be higher than expected, how many leaks and accidental memory use bugs were tracked down with Valgrind plugins, as well as the pitfalls of common memory allocation strategies. Current work is now focused on reducing the memory usage of popular add-ons such as AdBlock, GreaseMonkey and Firebug.
Required reading for people working on large software projects, or those who missed that Firefox is now one of the most memory-efficient browsers in heavy usage.
Math

Submission + - Scientists Uncover the Mathematics Of Serial Kille

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Andrei Chikatilo, “The Butcher of Rostov,” was one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history committing at least 52 murders between 1978 and 1990 before he was caught, tried and executed. The pattern of his murders, though, was irregular with long periods of no activity, interrupted by several murders within a short period of time. Hoping to gain insight into serial killings to prevent similar murders, Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury at UCLA built a mathematical model of the time pattern of the activity of Chikatilo and found the distribution of the intervals between murders follows a power law with the exponent of 1.4. The basis of their analysis is the hypothesis that “similar to epileptic seizures, the psychotic affects, causing a serial killer to commit murder, arise from simultaneous firing of large number of neurons in the brain.” In modeling the behavior the authors didn't find that "the killer commits murder right at the moment when neural excitation reaches a certain threshold. He needs time to plan and prepare his crime” so they built delay into their model. The killings eventually have a sedative effect, pushing the neuronal activity below the “killing threshold” – which is why there are large intervals of time between groups of murders. "There is at least qualitative agreement between theory and observation (PDF)," conclude the authors. "Stats can’t tell you who the perp is, but they’re getting better and better at figuring out where and when the next crime might happen," writes criminal lawyer Nathaniel Burney adding that "catching a serial killer by focusing resources based on when and where he’s likely to strike next is a hell of a lot better than relying on the junk science of behavioral profiling.""

Comment Re:Wow (Score 1) 291

by Sir Mal Fet (#38580112) Attached to: Chile Forbids Carriers From Selling Network-Locked Phones
The nice thing about how the law has impacted the market is that NO company even thought about selling the phones at full price. Under the new law, you either receive an unlocked phone at a subsidized price by signing an 18-month contract, or you buy an unlocked, provider free phone. In case you want to switch providers mid-contract, you can: a) pay a penalty fee (which is more or less the remaining price of the phone considering how long you've been on contract), or b) give back the phone. I don't think it's a bad deal at all.
Windows

Submission + - What's Keeping You on XP? 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "PC World reports that Windows XP lost more than 11 percent of its share from September to December 2011 to post a December average of 46.5 percent, a new low for the aged OS as users have gotten Microsoft's message that the operating system should be retired. Figures indicate that Windows 7 will become the most widely used version in April, several months earlier than previous estimates. Two months ago, as Microsoft quietly celebrated the 10th anniversary of XP's retail launch, the company touted the motto "Standing still is falling behind" to promote Windows 7 and demote XP and in July, Microsoft told customers it was "time to move on" from XP, reminding everyone that the OS would exit all support in April 2014. Before that, the Internet Explorer (IE) team had dismissed XP as the "lowest common denominator" when they explained why it wouldn't run IE9. The deadline for ditching Windows XP is in April 2014, when Microsoft stops patching the operating system. "Enterprises don't want to run an OS when there's no security fixes," says Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner Research rejecting the idea that Microsoft would extend the end-of-life date for Windows XP to please the 10% who have no plans to leave the OS. "The longer they let them run XP, the more enterprises will slow down their migration.""

Submission + - Law That Allows Summary Closing of Websites Passed (elpais.com)

Submitted by Sir Mal Fet
Sir Mal Fet writes: In a very polemic move by the Spanish parliament, the infamous 'Sinde' law, already discussed here, was passed on December 31st. Albeit modified from their original version, the law will allow the Spanish government to request ISPs to summary close a website due to copyright infringment (Original in Spanish, Google translation). If the ISP refuses, then it's passed to court where a judge can order the website closed. It seems it's one good, one bad over there. The law is in public consult until March, and No Les Votes, a Spanish organization that opposes the law, has already started a campaign to boicot it (Original in Spanish; Google translation).

Submission + - Chile forbids carriers from selling network-locked (twitter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As from today, network operators in Chile are no longer allowed to sell carrier-locked phones, and must unlock free of charge all devices already sold to costumers through a simple form on their respective websites. The new regulation came into effect in preparations for the rollout of Mobile Number Portability, set to begin on January 16th. This is one among other restrictions that forbid carriers to lock in the customers through "abusive clauses" in their contracts, one of which was through selling locked devices. Now if a customer wishes to change carriers he/she needs only to have the bills up to date and the process of porting the number should only take 24hrs.

Submission + - P2P Ruled as "Completely Neutral" in Spain (publico.es)

Submitted by Sir Mal Fet
Sir Mal Fet writes: In line with previous rulings discussed here, a judge in spain has ruled that P2P technologies are "completely neutral" (original in spanish ; Google translation ), thus dismissing a lawsuit originated in 2008 from the Spanish Association of Musical Producers (Promusicae), Warner, EMI, and Sony suing Pablo Soto, a spanish man who created the Blubster, MP2P y Piolet programs to share files. The labels demanded 13 million euros in damages arguing that the mere existence and distribution of P2P technologies violated copyright, but the ruling stated the technology itself was neutral, so the creator could not be held responsible for how the software was used, and demanded that they pay for legal expenses. Promusicae said it was going to appeal the ruling.

Comment Re:I have problems with this (Score 1) 1319

by Sir Mal Fet (#38209178) Attached to: Muslim Medical Students Boycott Darwin Lectures

From what I've heard recently, the pilgrims went to the US not to escape religious persecution, but to enable it, they went to a land where they could be free to persecute the crap out of whoever they felt like in order to keep their societies pure.

And watching the latest political news they seem to have been widly successful with that goal :P

Comment It's all about the Risk Free Asset (Score 1) 633

by Sir Mal Fet (#37948288) Attached to: When Having the US Debt Paid Off Was a Problem
Actually, this is finance, not (pure) economics. What happens is the following: In the Capital Asset pricing model (CAPM) model, which is the most simple (and therefore widely used) method to value assets that have volatility, the risk-free asset is one of the key pillars. This asset is represented as a sure bet, and is the minimum return an investor is willing to have for a given amount invested. Then any other asset is simply a function of the risk free asset, the expected return, and the risk premium of the volatility.

If there were no US treasury bonds, this risk free asset would "disappear", so the whole method of valuation of assets would be impacted. Actually, this is a real problem right now in finance, since after the discussion of the US debt the question of whether the risk free asset should be the US treasury bond or other asset (for example, the German treasury bond was an option, or a "pool" of different treasury bonds) was starting to be discussed. Google it, there are several papers about it. So, yeah, actually eliminating the treasury bond would have a much deeper impact than it would appear at first glance.

Comment Re:One company (Score 1) 461

by Sir Mal Fet (#37760082) Attached to: Amazon Bypassing Publishers By Signing Authors Directly

Many authors need editors in order to produce a worthwhile product. A few don't. Expect the average quality of writing to decline.

...Or expect a service of editor-for-hire to appear. If there are freelance writers created by this change, why not freelance editors? I'll be surprised if it doesn't exist already.

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