Comment Re:Empire was not the best of the movies. (Score 1) 167
Three words: Battle of Hoth.
Real Reason Why the White iPhone 4 Is Delayed 182
tekgoblin writes "There have been numerous reasons why the White iPhone 4 may be delayed with one reason being the color mismatch between the home button and the body. Well this time there is another reason. A source has told CultofMac that the reason for the delay is a light leakage issue caused by the case being clear. Light from the case leaks into pictures taken by the back and front camera on the white iPhone 4, causing distorted pictures. This problem is non-existent on the black iPhone 4, because of its already black case, so Apple has been looking for a solution to this problem, thus the delay of the White iPhone 4 till spring of next year."
Comment Screen? (Score 1) 302
Whenever I've taught or trained remotely I've always used screen to multiplex the session. That takes care of the coding part. For communication I usually use something like skype or google talk. Pick your poison there.
http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
The Presidential Portrait Goes Digital 295
alphadogg writes "Barack Obama's election to US president has already brought a string of firsts, and on Wednesday there came another. The official presidential portrait was shot on a digital camera for the first time. The picture was taken by the White House's new official photographer, Pete Souza, and issued by The Office of the President Elect through its Web site. It was taken on Tuesday evening at 5:38 p.m. using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, according to the metadata embedded in the image file."
MythTV Allows Multiple Front-Ends On Wide Range of Platforms 254
As the DVR becomes a much more pervasive performer in home theater setups, the level of excellence demanded by the general consumer seems to continue to rise. The open source project MythTV has been in this arena for quite a while, and now offers the ability to have multiple front-ends on your MythTV install on a wide range of different platforms. Able to run on Windows XP, Vista, Xbox, and even an Apple iPod, the new flexibility is sure to interest many consumers (and many competitors).
Feed Science Daily: Political Participation Is Partially Rooted In Genetic Inheritance (sciencedaily.com)
The decision to vote is partly genetic. Researchers have now identify a link between two specific genes and political participation. They show that individuals with a variant of the MAOA gene are significantly more likely to have voted in the 2000 presidential election. Their research also demonstrates a connection between a variant of the 5HTT gene and voter turnout, which is moderated by religious attendance. These are the first results ever to link specific genes to political behavior.
Comment Power consumption and heat dissipation (Score 4, Interesting) 113
I work in a company that has a few thousand servers running in a few regional data centers. We are looking into SSDs not because of their superior IOPs (this is a mitigating factor vs HDD performance) but because of their low power consumption and low heat dissipation. When you scale your operations reach a scale where you are using an entire data center, heating and power become more and more of a cost issue. Right now we are trying to build some hard data on actual sabings, but there's lots of spin out there that gives you an idea of what potential savings could be. Here are a few interesting links, google around for more information, there's plenty to be had:
http://www.stec-inc.com/green/storage_casestudy.php
http://www.stec-inc.com/green/green_ssdsavings.php (You have to request the whitepaper to see this one.)
http://www.stec-inc.com/green/storage_casestudy.php
http://www.stec-inc.com/green/green_ssdsavings.php (You have to request the whitepaper to see this one.)
Comment Sharp mm20 (Score 2, Informative) 250
I used a Sharp mm20 sub-notebook for a few years in college, and it worked really well. 1 GHz transmeta, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB HD, built-in wireless and ethernet, two usb ports, 10" screen. The extended life battery gave about 7 hours of life when I stopped using it. Ran Linux great.
Great laptop till the hard drive died, after a solid 3 years of use. Then I never got around to putting in a new 1.5" HD since I really didn't need it after I graduated.
Great laptop till the hard drive died, after a solid 3 years of use. Then I never got around to putting in a new 1.5" HD since I really didn't need it after I graduated.
Comment Red Hat's Response (Score 3, Informative) 371
How to Recognize a Good Programmer 529
KDan writes to share an article he has written about what some of the key factors in recognizing a good programmer. "It's not as easy as it sounds. CV experience is only of limited use here, because great programmers don't always have the 'official' experience to demonstrate that they're great. In fact, a lot of that CV experience can be misleading. Yet there are a number of subtle cues that you can get, even from the CV, to figure out whether someone's a great programmer."
Journal Journal: Call for blogging code of conduct
The BBC has picked up on a recent incident and related developments in the blogosphere.
Submission + - Intel Releases Information on Penryn, Nehalem
Justin Wheeler writes: "Intel has been slowly trickling information on their new Penryn cores (the next release after Merom/Conroe), as well as their upcoming Nehalem cores. From the articles: "At a press meeting today, Intel's Pat Gelsinger also made a number of high-level disclosures about the successor to Penryn, the 45nm Nehalem core.
Unlike Penryn, which is a shrink/derivative of Core 2 Duo (Merom), Nehalem is architected from the ground up for 45nm. This is a major new design, and Gelsinger revealed some truly tantalizing details about it.
Nehalem has its roots in the four-issue Core 2 Duo architecture, but the direction that it will take Intel is apparent in Gelsinger's insistence that, "we view Nehalem as the first true dynamically scalable microarchitecture." What Gelsinger means by this is that Nehalem is not only designed to take Intel up to eight cores on a single die, but those cores are meant to be mixed and matched with varied amounts of cache and different features in order to produce processors that are tailored to specific market segments.""
Submission + - Torvals "pretty pleased" With Latest GPL v
Novus Ordo Seclorum writes: "According to c|net, Linus Torvalds is "pretty pleased" with the current GPL v3 draft. After his earlier criticism, some had questioned whether such controversies would lead to rifts in the community, especially if the kernel ended up under a different license than the GNU tools. But now, thanks to the latest revisions, Linus will entertain moving the kernel over to the GPL v3."
Merck To Halt Lobbying For Vaccine 544
theodp writes "Reacting to a furor from some parents, advocacy groups, and public health experts, Merck said yesterday that it would stop lobbying state legislatures to require the use of its new cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, which acts against strains of the sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus. The $400, 3-shot regimen was approved by the FDA in June. Later that month, a federal advisory panel recommended that females 11-26 years old be vaccinated. The governor of Texas has already signed an executive order making its use mandatory for schoolgirls."
Comment Community Oriented (Score 3, Insightful) 43
The article was interesting, but I disagree with their claim that, "TurboGears is more community-driven than Django because it was built with pre-existing, open source components." From everything I've seen, Django has a strong community behind it. I don't think I've ever seen an open-source project whose maintainer is as helpful to users and contributors than Adrian Holovaty is. He's extremely respectful and responds quickly to bug reports and suggestions. In addition to its clean, unified feel, the community is one of the main reasons I was attracted to Django.
