Ycros - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Stephen Conroy (Score 1) 183

by SkoZombie on Friday August 14, 2009 @06:08PM (#29072139) Attached to: Australian ISPs Soon To Become Copyright Cops

So the 68% [1] of Australians that do profess to be Christian should not partake in the federal elections? Nor have representation of their choosing? The 72.8% of people that profess a religious belief should stand aside and let themselves be dictated to by a minority?

Also, don't forget that your 28% (27.2% according to [1]) also includes people who didn't answer the religion question adequately (poor handwriting etc.), so the number of 68% Christians, should be considered the *minimum* percentage of society that expresses a belief that they're Christian (similarly for the other religions).

It's a democracy. Deal with it. Start your own party if you like, the AEC [2] would be glad to help you, that's what they're there for.

For the record, I'm a Christian and I don't vote for specifically Christian parties because they're all conservative and I'm liberal.I disagree with much of the policy of the Christian parties as it pertains to technology. I still fail to see how the Christian lobby is the problem. It's successive ministers from both parties who have shown, on a global stage, that they are utterly uneducated and inept in the realm of modern technology.

It's about technology and government, not religion.

[1] http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/bb8db737e2af84b8ca2571780015701e/bfdda1ca506d6cfaca2570de0014496e!OpenDocument
[2] http://www.aec.gov.au/

Rock Band To Allow Independent Artists To Add Their Own Songs 57

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday July 18, 2009 @12:23AM from the paging-stevie-ray-vaughan's-ghost dept.

Bakkster writes "Independent artists will be able to use the XNA Creator's Club to produce the Rock Band note-charts for their music and sell them in game later this year. Bands will use their original song masters and generate a MIDI file that produces the game 'gems' to which players can follow along. Tracks must pass a review process with other XNA members, and then a final approval from MTV Games. Songs will be sold for between 50 cents and $3, with the artist getting a 30% cut after MTV and Microsoft take their cut. The best tracks will also make their way to the Wii and PS3 after a 30-day exclusive period."

Submission + - New Zealand Introduces Internet Filtering (thomasbeagle.net)

Submitted by

Thomas Beagle

on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @05:56AM

Thomas Beagle writes: "The New Zealand government has been stealthily introducing a centralised internet child-pornography specific filtering system. Voluntary for ISPs but not for their users, ISPs representing over 94% of the market are already intending to join. Read the general FAQ and technical FAQ about the proposed Netclean Whitebox implementation."

Humans Evolving 100 Times Faster Than Ever 584

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @05:36AM from the or-maybe-we're-just-getting-more-intelligently-designed dept.

John Hawks writes "A new genomics study in PNAS shows that humans have been evolving new adaptive genes during the past 10,000 years much faster than ever before. The study says that evolution has sped up because of population growth, making people adapt faster to new diseases, new diets, and social changes like cities. Oh, and I'm the lead author. I've been reading Slashdot for a long time, and let me just say that our study doesn't necessarily apply to trolls."

Australian Army Invests in Electrical Shirts 124

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 01, 2007 @03:57AM from the shocking-sleeves dept.

Stony Stevenson writes "The Australian Defence Department has injected $4.4 million worth of funding to further Australia's national science agency's (the CSIRO) research into designing clothing which can be used as a self-recharging electrical source on the battlefield. The Defence Department is hoping the technology can be used to replace cumbersome disposable batteries that soldiers must carry on the battlefield. The Flexible Integrated Energy Device (FIED) will be used to store and provide energy over a continuous period of time. It can be charged by either vibration energy harvesting or through plugging into an electrical power point."

Comment Its not the kernel that's lagging behind (Score 2, Insightful) 518

by SkoZombie on Sunday October 28, 2007 @01:21AM (#21146037) Attached to: Know Any Hardware Needing Better Linux Support?

It's user-space support and integration. While I've got a CS degree and can get things going myself, most people don't and can't. Telling them they need to upgrade some part of the kernel and do a recompile isn't going to do much for people. Much more work needs to be done along Ubuntu's philosophy of "it should just work". If it's easier to get working in windows, people will just use windows. I'm very happy to see that more and more hardware is becoming easier to get going under linux than windows, like my HP 3055 all-in-one unit.

If kernel developers have time they want to commit, but can't find anything to do, my humble suggestion is:
- Pulling in other drivers into the main kernel tree
- Testing, Optimisation & QA
- Consider working on user-land drivers such as USB devices.

As for the overall goal of supporting users, I think cutting down the time between software/driver release and packaging is critical. This is of course a distro issue, and a very good reason as to why too many distributions is a bad idea. Co-operation on common goals and focusing of efforts is one weakness I've found in FOSS, at the same time it's also a strength, but it's something to be mindful of in a less regimented development process.

Why Microsoft Won't List Claimed Patent Violations 626

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 14, 2007 @07:20PM from the only-stick-they've-got dept.

BlueOni0n writes "Earlier today, Microsoft announced it will begin actively seeking reparations for claimed patent infringement by Linux and the open source community in general. One opinion on why Microsoft won't reveal these 235 alleged IP infringements to the public is that they're afraid of having the claims debunked or challenged — so instead they're waiting until the OS community comes to the bargaining table. But a more optimistic thought is that Microsoft may be afraid to list these supposed violations because it knows the patents can be worked around by the open source community, leaving Microsoft high and dry without any leverage at all."

Surprise Arrest For Online Scientology Critic 954

Posted by kdawson on Thursday May 10, 2007 @09:36AM from the don't-make-fun-of-the-FSM dept.

destinyland writes "An online critic of Scientology was confronted at a routine hearing Tuesday with surprise arrest warrants and thrown into jail. Six years as a fugitive ended in February. (After picketing a Scientology complex in 2000 over the unexplained death of a woman there, he'd been arrested for 'threatening a religion' over a Usenet joke about 'Tom Cruise Missiles.') But 64-year-old Keith Henson had been out on bail, and was even scheduled to address the European Space Agency conference on Space Elevators. He's a co-founder of the Space Colony movement, and one of the original researchers at Texas Instruments. In this interview he discusses both space-based solar energy and his war with the Scientologists — just a few days before he was arrested."

Exhaustive Data Compressor Comparison 305

Posted by kdawson on Sunday April 22, 2007 @09:10PM from the pick-one-smaller-or-faster dept.

crazyeyes writes "This is easily the best article I've seen comparing data compression software. The author tests 11 compressors: 7-zip, ARJ32, bzip2, gzip, SBC Archiver, Squeez, StuffIt, WinAce, WinRAR, WinRK, and WinZip. All are tested using 8 filesets: audio (WAV and MP3), documents, e-books, movies (DivX and MPEG), and pictures (PSD and JPEG). He tests them at different settings and includes the aggregated results. Spoilers: WinRK gives the best compression but operates slowest; AJR32 is fastest but compresses least."

Radical Transparency at NASA Via Second Life 123

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday April 10, 2007 @05:36PM from the gaaames-in-spaaace dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Aaron Rowe over at Wired has an article about a couple of young scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center working to open source the space program through software development and other ways to allow the public to participate in real NASA programs. According to Robert Schingler, the NASA CoLab project manager, 'CoLab is building an infrastructure to encourage and facilitate direct participation from the talented and interested public...' Apparently, the group holds weekly meetings on their island in the popular online virtual world Second Life."

WEP Broken Even Worse 393

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 03, 2007 @04:43PM from the give-me-a-minute dept.

collin.m writes in with news of results out of Darmstadt. Erik Tews and others there have demonstrated how to recover a 104-bit WEP key in under a minute, requiring the capture of fewer than 10% the number of packets the previous best method called for. The paper is here (PDF). Quoting: "We were able to extend Klein's attack and optimize it for usage against WEP. Using our version, it is possible to recover a 104 bit WEP key with probability 50% using just 40,000 captured packets... for 85,000 data packets [the success probability is] about 95%... 40,000 packets can be captured in less than one minute under good condition. The actual computation takes about 3 seconds and 3 MB main memory on a Pentium-M 1.7 GHz..."

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Brings Boston to a Halt 804

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @06:32PM from the we-do-whatever-we-want-to-whomever-we-want-at-all-times dept.

An anonymous reader writes "An ad campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force featuring the Mooninites Ignignot and Err caused major security concerns in Boston, MA when magnetic light displays were mistaken for possible bombs. The displays included one of Ignignot flipping the bird (as hard as he could), but Gov. Deval Patrick was not amused."

Journal Journal: Ethics of Ashley X or how some ethicist's are total idiots

Journal by siddster on Saturday January 06, 2007 @12:53AM

From the article:

"THE case of a severely mentally and physically disabled girl whose parents have stunted her growth so she remains a manageable and more portable size has divided medical ethicists...She has a severe brain impairment known as static encephalopathy and cannot walk, talk, keep her head up in bed or even swallow food." University of Pennsylvania ethicist Art Caplan said the case was troubling and reflected "slippery slope" thinking among parents who belie

NASA Needs Fake Moon Dust 179

Posted by Zonk on Friday December 29, 2006 @06:38PM from the like-to-see-the-requisition-form-for-that dept.

crisco writes "NASA's renewed interest in lunar exploration and 'in situ resource utilization,' or ISRU, is driving the need for tons of carefully faked lunar dust and sand for testing purposes: 'We don't have enough real moondust to go around,' says Larry Taylor, director of Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. To run all the tests, "we need to make a well-qualified lunar simulant.' And not just a few bags will do. 'We need tons of it, mainly for working on technologies for diggers and wheels and machinery on the surface,' adds David S. McKay, chief scientist for astrobiology at the Johnson Space Center (JSC)."

Scott Adams Suggests Bill Gates For President 1224

Posted by kdawson on Monday November 20, 2006 @05:38AM from the not-in-it-for-the-money dept.

gerrysteele writes to point out a recent post to the Dilbert blog, in which Scott Adams discusses the atheist ascendancy in America and rationalizes the need for an atheist leader. From the article: "Ask a deeply religious Christian if he'd rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don't seem so bad lately. I think that in an election cycle or two you will see an atheist business leader emerge as a legitimate candidate for president. And his name will be Bill Gates."

Slashdot Top Deals