Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment I was thinking about VGA the other day (Score 5, Interesting) 406

It's still almost everywhere. At work we still have VGA monitors and docks. The monitor also has a digital connector of some kind, but never more than two other flavors. My TVs have VGA.

You know what's great about VGA sticking around? Older equipment that was often expensive and built like a tank still works. Projectors, CRTs, and KVMs. I've seen retrocomputer enthusiasts build VGA adapters for all kinds of old systems. It's nice to have something that you can rely on when you're traveling; if you have a VGA dongle you know you can work.

I hope VGA has a couple more decades in it, and with the slow adoption of 4K TVs, it just might.

Comment Tactile Controls (Score 1) 208

I wish we could move toward pre-80's tactile controls. There certainly would be a lot more work creating limited interfaces that could work with them. It seems to me that it's less distracting when a function is a distinct control with some good feedback, like a switch or knob, than the controls that seem to line my dash these days.

It's probably not so much worth worrying about anymore. Automatic cruise control and braking are soon going to be the standard, and ease us into nearly automated driving. Computers don't get distracted.

Comment Colder is better (Score 1) 439

While (I believe) there's been less precipitation then normal here in Pittsburgh, it's been consistently below freezing, so we've had some good snow buildup. And it's not been icy, nor has there been a miserable cold rain. Being a little colder then normal beats the just above freezing cold rain.

I have an old AMC Eagle, an all-wheel drive car designed in 1979 if you haven't seen one and can picture it. It's part car and part Jeep. It drives very well in the snow, and there hasn't been a storm in years where it has had any problems out here.

Once the first few snows get everyone in the mental frame for driving in winter again, it's not so bad driving out there, although I wish a few more people with neither the vehicle nor the skill for driving in the snow would just stay home. Although it often probably is because of our antique labor laws that make them have to go to work for one reason or another.

But, yeah, Cold, snowy and wonderful here.

Image

Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed 1352

A survey of American voters by World Public Opinion shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. One of the most interesting questions was about President Obama's birthplace. 63 percent of Fox viewers believe Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear). In 2003 a similar study about the Iraq war showed that Fox viewers were once again less knowledgeable on the subject than average. Let the flame war begin!

Comment Re:Price (Score 1) 931

Price does have a trade off: user productivity.

Some applications, like desktop publishing, graphics, and CAD are still moving fast enough that new hardware and software every few years actually makes enough of an improvement in productivity that it can pay itself back. Someone waiting on a drawing to render on 4 year old hardware is wasting time!

Comment Old solutions (Score 1) 213

The old London sewer system had a system of gas lamps atop flues that drew the air out of the sewers, and the flame helped reduce the odor of the sewer gases. Most of these sewer problems have been looked at for a couple thousand years now. Electric wires are a new addition, but I'm sure that other ignition sources were problems before.

I'm actually surprised that several hundred gas explosions that rocket 300 pound discs of steel into populated areas is considered so minor, but perhaps the chances of death are much less then I would expect.

Television

C-SPAN Adopts Creative Commons-Style License 86

Trillian_1138 writes "C-SPAN, a network in the US dedicated to airing governmental proceedings, has adopted a Creative Commons-style license for all its content. This follows the network claiming Speaker of the House Pelosi's use of C-Span videos on her site violated their copyright. Specifically, 'C-SPAN is introducing a liberalized copyright policy for current, future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency — about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN television networks — which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution.' Here is the press release. The question remains whether videos of governmental proceedings should be public domain by default or whether the attribution requirement is reasonable in the face of easy video copying and distribution."
Space

Possible Large Impact Crater In Nevada 29

While participating in amateur rocket launches in Black Rock Desert (the site of Burning Man), Ian Kluft noticed rocks with some oddities. Through the Internet he learned the characteristics of impact craters, then found some clues in photographs and Google Maps. Examining the area, he collected samples of rock with impact patterns and other evidence. He found that previous geological puzzles in the region are well explained as impact structures. Volunteers are finding peculiarities in satellite imagery of the area. Kluft presents his evidence here — "Submitted for Study: Discovery of Possible Impact Crater at Nevada's Black Rock Desert." This is a preliminary, six-week effort intended to bring the site to the attention of geologists. Confirmation will take some time and more elaborate tools than his group has.
Networking

(Almost) All You Need To Know About IPv6 359

Butterspoon tips us to an article in Ars Technica titled "Everything you need to know about IPv6." Perhaps not quite "everything"; the article doesn't try to explain the reasons behind IPv6's meager adoption since its introduction 12 years ago. But it should be regarded as essential reading for anyone overly comfortable with their IPv4 addresses. Quoting: "As of January 1, 2007, 2.4 billion of those [IPv4 addresses] were in (some kind of) use. 1.3 billion were still available and about 170 million new addresses are given out each year. So at this rate, 7.5 years from now, we'll be clean out of IP addresses; faster if the number of addresses used per year goes up. Are you ready for IPv6?"
Data Storage

Samsung Ships Hybrid Hard Drives 118

writertype writes "ExtremeTech reports that Samsung has become the first company to begin shipping hybrid hard drives as discussed last fall on Slashdot. (Some photos here.) Unfortunately, there's no word yet (beyond 'soon') on when retail shipments will begin, or when (or if) 3.5-inch models will be available. Note that these hybrid drives are different than the ReadyBoost USB flash drives optimized for Vista; hybrid drives contain a smaller amount of flash, and work as a write cache for your notebook drive, extending battery life."

Feed The Wait for Watchmen (wired.com)

Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's 300 is here, but we're already wanting more. Watch for a summer production of Alan Moore's canonical Watchmen. In Underwire.


Feed TED: Quotable Kareem, World Peace (wired.com)

Basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dunks pearls of wisdom. Psychologist Steven Pinker tells TEDsters it's the most peaceful time ever for our species. Cassini expert reports on life in outer space. NYT's Chris Suellentrop blogs from the TED conference in Epicenter.


Sci-Fi

Submission + - IBM targets UFOs, ghosts, goblins with search tool

coondoggie writes: "IBM wants to help you find out if UFOs are real. Well, sort of. With UFO sightings seemingly on the rise, Big Blue is teaming with The Anomalies Network to offer UFO Crawler, a new search engine specifically tuned to search for information about the paranormal, unexplained or just plain bizarre. The search tool employs IBM's OmniFind Yahoo! Edition enterprise search software and the UFO Crawler should help users precisely target and gather information from relevant sources, including thousands of documents and files collected in the vast Anomalies Network archive, as well as multiple global resources across the Web on topics such as such as ghosts, conspiracy theories and extraterrestrials, the companies said in a statement. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1224 6"

Slashdot Top Deals

2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League

Working...