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Comment Drive like a german! (Score 1) 882

by cheesebilly (#28870003) Attached to: Rude Drivers Reduce Traffic Jams
Are they rude or simply better? Perhaps they have driven in countries like Germany where drivers are aware of their traffic surroundings and often break "rules" in order to allow traffic to continue moving along. They also had a tnedency to complain of American drivers on the road as a danger - they are right!

Comment Re:Roland Piquepaille - Mod Him Way Up, IMHO (Score 2, Interesting) 288

by brarrr (#26390857) Attached to: Roland Piquepaille Dies

I know this is off topic but it's worth mentioning... this is the first time in several years where I've seen a post by any of you sub 1000 (non-rob) UID folks that has content and isn't about the ahem size of your UID.

(not that I mean to rip on you guys or say that you don't make posts that I just don't see, but it is just such an infrequent occurrence in my view to be worth noting) ... and I will wait patiently for some 56 user to make a non-witty, meaningful post to prove me wrong :)

Comment Re:Look at Airplanes (Score 1) 263

by brarrr (#26029457) Attached to: Saving 28,000 Lives a Year

please mod parent up under the RTFA Funny tag.. oh wait...

yes i know it was a way to long FA but it specifically brings up the introduction of checklists in aviation - specifically. ie a plane crashed and they figured the cause was that it was too complicated to fly so pilots should have checklists to prevent such problems.
KDE

A Case Study In GPLv2 / GPLv3 Compatibility 239

Posted by kdawson from the growing-pains dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A project called OpenChange is working to develop an open source client library for Microsoft Exchange. They are heavily dependent on Samba code for the underlying protocol support and have been forced to move to GPLv3 once Samba moved. This has gotten in the way of legally adding support to other software such as KDE, which is unwilling or unable to go GPLv3." It sounds like all the developers involved expect the GPLv2/GPLv3 issues to be resolved in time.

Update: 10/01 12:26 GMT by KD : Dan Shearer, of OpenChange and the Samba Team, wrote in to correct the anonymous submitter's mistaken implication that OpenChange moved reluctantly to GPLv3. Read on for his actual position.
Science

German Physicists Claim Speed of Light Broken 429

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the don't-believe-your-optics dept.
Byzanthy writes "Two German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light by using 'microwave photons.' According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to accelerate any object beyond the speed of light. However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they did it by using a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling. The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons — energetic packets of light — traveled 'instantaneously' between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart." New Scientist, however, is running an article that suggests Einstein can rest easy. Aephraim Steinberg, a quantum optics expert at the University of Toronto, explains that the German physicist's results aren't necessarily wrong, they are just being interpreted incorrectly.
Linux Business

Microsoft Fracturing the Open-Source Community 299

Posted by kdawson from the old-divide-and-conquer dept.
TechGeek sends us to eWeek, where Mark Shuttleworth is quoted to the effect that Microsoft has succeeded in fracturing the Linux and open-source community with its patent indemnity agreements. Quoting: "Microsoft's strategy was to drive a wedge into the open-source community and unsettle the marketplace, Shuttleworth said. He also took issue with the Redmond, Wash., software maker for not disclosing the 235 of its patents it claims are being violated by Linux and other open-source software. 'That's extortion and we should call it what it is,' he said." Shuttleworth added, "I don't think this will end well for the companies that slipped up and went down that road."
Space

Astronomer Offers Theory Into 400-Year-Old Lunar Mystery 66

Posted by Zonk from the flash-from-above dept.
webdoodle writes "An astronomer at Columbia University thinks he has solved a 400-year-old mystery: the origin of strange optical flashes seen on the moon's surface. These spots, called 'Transient Lunar Phenomenon' (TLP) by the astronomy community, have confused moon-gazers since the time of ancient scientists. Arlin Crotts now thinks that TLPs are something called 'outgassing', a process where trapped gasses escape to the lunar atmosphere. 'To arrive at his theory, Crotts correlated TLPs with known gas outbursts from the lunar surface as seen by several spacecraft, particularly NASA's Apollo 15 mission in 1971 and the robotic Lunar Prospector in 1998. What he discovered was a remarkable similarity in the pattern of outgassing event locations recorded by spacecraft across the face of the moon and reported TLP sites.'"
Networking

What Does the 'Next Internet' Look Like? 283

Posted by Zonk from the hampster-dance-for-the-next-generation dept.
Kraisch writes with a link to the Guardian website, which again revisits the subject of reconstructing the internet. This time the question isn't whether it should be done, but what should the goals of a redesign be? From the article: "'There's a real need to have better identity management, to declare your age and to know that when you're talking to, say, Barclays bank, that you're really doing so,' said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute. At the moment we are still using very clumsy methods to approach such problems. The result: last year alone, identity theft and online fraud cost British victims an estimated £414m, while one recent report claimed 93% of all email sent from the UK was spam ... Many ideas revolve around so-called "mesh networks", which link many computers to create more powerful, reliable connections to the internet. By using small meshes of many machines that share a pipeline to the net instead of relying on lots of parallel connections, experts say they can create a system that is more intelligent and less prone to attack."
Portables

In Search of the Cheap Linux Laptop 421

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the ever-hopeful dept.
mr_mischief writes "According to Hot Hardware's recent review, Asus is getting ready to unleash a $199 compact notebook running Linux. This is entirely different from this recent $150 Linux laptop story which many Slashdot readers believed to be a scam. There's a dual-mode menu which offers a simple system for novice computer users, and a slightly more advanced version for others. It's not aimed squarely at the same market as the One Laptop Per Child project's XO, and is expected to be sold to end users worldwide. It's targeted at new users who don't own a computer or at people who want a cheap, small laptop for basic tasks. The reviewed version has a 7" screen and a cramped keyboard to match, but a 10" version is available for $100 more. It offers built-in wired and wireless networking, four USB 2.0 ports, and a three-hour battery life. The storage options are a bit cramped, as you only get 4 GB of on-board storage (8 GB on the $299 model) and no optical drive. As the review says, though, USB 2.0 can make up for that if you like, and the lack of moving drive parts makes the machine run dead quiet."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - MacGyver Physics

Submitted by counterfriction
counterfriction writes: This month's issue of Symmetry, a magazine jointly published by SLAC and Fermilab, is featuring an article that points out the sometimes extemporaneous and unconventional solutions physicists have come up with in (and out of) the laboratory.
From TFA, 'Leon Lederman ... used a pocket knife, tape, and items on anyone's grocery list to confirm that interactions involving the weak force do now show perfect mirror symmetry, or parity, as scientists had long assumed.'

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In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

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