corprew - Slashdot User

Supermassive Black Hole Is Thrown Out of Galaxy 167

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 12, 2010 @07:50PM from the moving-to-better-quarters dept.

DarkKnightRadick writes "An undergrad student at the University of Utrecht, Marianne Heida, has found evidence of a supermassive black hole being tossed out of its galaxy. According to the article, the black hole — which has a mass equivalent to one billion suns — is possibly the culmination of two galaxies merging (or colliding, depending on how you like to look at it) and their black holes merging, creating one supermassive beast. The black hole was found using the Chandra Source Catalog (from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory). The direction of the expulsion is also possibly indicative of the direction of rotation of the two black holes as they circled each other before merging."

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday November 22, 2009 @11:59AM from the take-your-pick dept.

igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

Comment Re:Im sorry (Score 2, Insightful) 472

by corprew on Wednesday June 17, 2009 @05:50PM (#28366813) Attached to: Gold Sold From Vending Machines In Germany

Out of curiosity: Is the manufacturing process for ammunition particularly trick, or are there other reasons that supply hasn't expanded to meet demand(or at least lag demand a bit less)?

You mean like the US fighting two foreign wars at once taking up most of the supply capacity of the ammo factories?

Comment Re:Larry effect again? (Score 1) 361

by corprew on Wednesday June 10, 2009 @12:37PM (#28281269) Attached to: Apple Removes Nearly All Reference To ZFS

'Larry' is often used metonymously for Oracle's corporate direction, even when Larry isn't involved directly, just as 'Steve' is for Apple.

Comment Re:Driving Blind (Score 2, Informative) 658

by corprew on Friday May 15, 2009 @04:49PM (#27972415) Attached to: Ocean Circulation Doesn't Work As Expected

All the topsoil on the canadian shield (the center parts of canada n. of where they grow grain now) pretty much got tossed south during glaciation. That's poor farmland, and acidic even where there's significant soil. It isn't trading one great plains for another, it's trading the great plains for a wasteland. Getting it warmer won't help this land not suck for crops.

Comment Re:Quit and... (Score 1) 640

by corprew on Sunday March 15, 2009 @08:36PM (#27204683) Attached to: Morality of Throttling a Local ISP?

This suggestion ignores the last mile costs, which is probably the reason that dial-up and cable are their only options (no dsl available, etc...)

It probably wouldn't be effective for him to be another dial-up provider.

Comment Re:Thinks like an os, eh? (Score 1) 380

by corprew on Tuesday March 10, 2009 @04:34PM (#27140375) Attached to: IE8 May Be End of the Line For Internet Explorer

"thinks like an OS" == "Has Internet Explorer embedded in it."

But seriously, isn't this the third or fourth engine for Internet Explorer? If there's one thing that MSFT has taught the IT industry, it's that branding and tech aren't necessarily related and there's no reason that branding (MSIE) and engine (CERN or Spyglass or whatever == IE1, IE3, IE4...) have to be related at all. (Vista == IE6, etc...)

If you're writing summaries of articles, it would be handy to understand them.

Comment Re:Removable Battery (Score 2, Interesting) 1079

by corprew on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @04:55PM (#26348563) Attached to: Apple Intros 17" Unibody MBP, DRM-Free iTunes

Prediction: Soon you will be able to buy an external battery pack that is roughly the size of a laptop battery that you can plug in through the magsafe adapter rather than changing the battery physically.

Oh, wait, whoops, the future is here.

http://www.batterygeek.net/Batterygeek_15_21_130_External_Laptop_Battery_p/15-21-130_batterygeek.htm

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