UMEngin - Slashdot User

Comment Missing Option: Lagrangian Points (Score 1, Interesting) 508

by UMEngin on Wednesday June 30, 2010 @08:05PM (#32751754) Attached to: NASA Should Focus On Going To..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_points The focus should be some type of hub at one of these points to launch future missions from. Unfortunately, "Mission to nowhere" would be the headline.

Comment Monty Python Style (Score 0) 451

by UMEngin on Wednesday September 16, 2009 @05:22PM (#29446527) Attached to: Favorite seasonal transition?

Missing Option: Winter -> Autumn

Comment Re:I'd watch the olympics if it wasn't done by NBC (Score 0) 399

by UMEngin on Friday August 22, 2008 @03:48PM (#24710859) Attached to: How much Olympic coverage have you watched?

CBC (Canada) has the best coverage. They always showed a great mix of different sports and stayed long enough at each sport to make it worthwhile. I live in metro Detroit and have always watched CBC for its great hockey, non-US news and Olympic coverage, it's too bad that I no longer get the station with ATT U-Verse.

Feed Techdirt: Principal Loses Lawsuit Against Students Over Fake MySpace Profile (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Friday August 22, 2008 @11:13AM

You may remember a story we had last year about a principal at a school so overreacting to some students creating a fake MySpace profile for him that he took them to court. It's one thing to ask MySpace to take down such a profile or to discipline the students in school (both of which would likely backfire as well), but to take them to court seems extreme. And, apparently, the courts think so too. An appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that there was no defamation or intentional infliction of emotional distress in the case. Of course, the judge does also scold the kids for their "unacceptable" conduct. Luckily for the kids, "unacceptable" wasn't against the law in this case.

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Submission + - Sneak Peek at Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" 1

Submitted by

Shawn M. Smith

on Friday August 22, 2008 @11:10AM

Shawn M. Smith writes: "Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle) has a new novel coming out in just a couple weeks — Anathem. Boing Boing has an excerpt from the amazing glossary (including a definition for "bulshytt") so take a peak at a copy of an abridged glossary of neologisms and language-bending goodies from the book."

Submission + - Microsoft gets a new open source chief (cnet.com)

Submitted by

mjasay

on Wednesday April 09, 2008 @12:17PM

mjasay writes: "Microsoft just promoted Sam Ramji to run its growing Linux and open source operations. The former head of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, Ramji has a long history with open source, having built out large-scale open-source based applications while at Ofoto, and continuing to run applications like World of Warcraft and Office 2003 on WINE. Microsoft has been putting increasingly open-source savvy people in this role, starting with Jason Matusow and most recently employing Bill Hilf in the role. Ramji has made friends with many in the open-source business and development communities, but will his promotion spell any sort of an about-face for Microsoft in its patent policies? It's unlikely, but at least it demonstrates a step in the right direction."

Feed Science Daily: Why Is Arctic Sea Ice Melting Faster Than Predicted? NOAA Probing Arctic Polluti (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Wednesday April 09, 2008 @12:12PM

Scientists are now flying through springtime Arctic pollution to find out why the region is warming -- and summertime sea ice is melting -- faster than predicted. Some 35 NOAA researchers are gathering with government and university colleagues in Fairbanks, Alaska, to conduct the study.

Submission + - What's The Perfect Balance For a Budget Laptop?

Submitted by cheapbob on Wednesday April 09, 2008 @11:51AM

cheapbob writes: Recently HP officially unveiled a budget ultraportable laptop aimed to compete with the likes of Asus Eee PC. According to Compal, one of Dell's assemblers, Dell is also going to enter the budget ultra-portable market soon. All of these devices lack many of the features associated with larger-sized laptops, such as optical drives and large amounts of storage space, yet demand for them is very high. Initial reviews of these devices unsurprisingly expose them to be underpowered and lacklustre, so what do you think is the perfect balance of features and price point for a budget laptop?

The Children of Hurin 209

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 12, 2008 @02:41PM from the pre-rings dept.

stoolpigeon writes "Throughout much of his life, J.R.R. Tolkien worked on a series of stories set in his well known middle earth. A few he considered his "Great Tales" and he would return to them often, writing them multiple times and in multiple forms. One story that he worked on often over many years was the tale of Hurin and his children Turin and Nienor. Following his death, Tolkien's youngest son Christopher has worked to collect, edit and publish much of what his father wrote but never published. The tale of Hurin's children has been told in part already in some of those works. But it is in this book that for the first time the complete tale is told from start to finish of The Children of Hurin." Read below for the rest of JR's review.

Submission + - Sneak peek at Windows Server 2008

Submitted by stinkymountain on Monday February 25, 2008 @01:00PM

stinkymountain writes: Microsoft's long-awaited Windows Server 2008 delivers advancements in speed, security and management, but its virtualization and network-access control features come up short, according to Tom Henderson of Extreme Labs. Henderson tested gold code of WS08, which will be released officially on Wednesday. http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2008/022108-windows-2008-server-test.html

Feed news.com: Microsoft to launch beta of Internet Explorer 8 (news.com)

From feed by cnetfeed on Monday February 25, 2008 @10:52AM

Set for release in the first half of the year, IE 8 beta 1 will be made available for download shortly and further detailed at Microsoft's Mix conference next week.

Free 'Ad-Backed' Games the Future? 59

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday January 22, 2008 @01:28PM from the i-think-signs-point-to-yes dept.

MacarooMac writes "EA Games recently announced they are to release a free online version of their PC game 'Battlefield Heroes', supported by in game adverts and micro payments. EA hopes the model of a free game as a download that is supported by advertising could be applied to other franchises it owns. For this particular title, no adverts will appear in the game itself due to incompatibility with the game's fictional world. Instead, adverts will appear on the website and the 'front-end' of the game. But many other titles can and do provide for product placement during game play itself. How long before improvements in video graphics, combined with dynamic, and perhaps even interactive in-game advertising, start to generate revenue increases that enable publishers to substantially reduce the price of their games?" Already a very common model for Eastern online titles, and being adapted here in the states by a number of companies.

Feed news.com: Masdar City in Abu Dhabi lays claim to greenest city (news.com)

From feed by cnetfeed on Friday January 18, 2008 @01:32PM

A model of Masdar City--a zero waste, zero emissions, and car-free city--will be shown on Monday.

Submission + - Open Source speech recognition suite goes alpha (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by

bedahr

on Friday January 18, 2008 @01:11PM

bedahr writes: "The first version of the open source speech recognition suite simon was released.

It uses the Julius large vocabulary continuous speech recognition to do the actual recognition and the HTK toolkit to maintain the language model.

These components are united under an easy-to-use graphical user interface.

Simon can import dictionarys directly from wiktionary (a subproject of wikipedia) or from files formated in the HADIFIX- or HTK format and grammar structures directly from personal texts.
It also provides means to train the language model with new samples and add new words.
With the recognition results it can execute programs, type texts and open places.

Simon "encapsulates" the julius engine in the seperate "juliusd" program and communicates with it over TCP/IP (so that the actual recognition could even be done on a central server).

This opens a whole new door for open source speech recognition which was really limited to "tech-demos" (the julius enginge only has a commando line interface which just outputs the recognition results) and is the first step to a serious competition for dragon-naturally-speaking-under-wine which was the only (hardly functioning and commercial) way to get functional dictation under linux.

The target language is primarly German but the ui has been translated to English and the software can handle language models independant of their language (julius for example was primarly developed for Japanese).

As the currently released version is only 0.1-alpha-1 it is indeed unstable and feature-incomplete but the basic system is working and it looks very promising."

BioShock Receives Record-Breaking 12 AIAS Nominations 65

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 18, 2008 @12:25PM from the dang-good-games dept.

dampeal writes "The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences today announced the nominees for the 11th annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The nominations for the peer-based awards have been dominated by two blockbuster first-person shooter games, BioShock (2K Games) and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision) by receiving an astounding 10+ nominations from industry leaders and members of the interactive entertainment software business. In addition, finalists in close lead with top nominations include: The Orange Box (Electronic Arts and Valve Software), Rock Band (MTV Games) and Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo of America), all up for the Overall Game of the Year Award."

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