hknust - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Something is wrong here (Score 0) 589

by hknust on Wednesday August 01, 2012 @06:42PM (#40849451) Attached to: Existing Solar Tech Could Power Entire US, Says NREL

No, the numbers work out. I think you missed the per square mile aspect of the number you are quoting

With these assumptions, figuring out how much solar energy hits the entire planet is relatively simple. 12.2 trillion watt-hours converts to 12,211 gigawatt-hours, and based on 8,760 hours per year, and 197 million square miles of earth’s surface (including the oceans), the earth receives about 274 million gigawatt-years of solar energy, which translates to an astonishing 8.2 million “quads” of Btu energy per year.

Source: http://www.ecoworld.com/energy-fuels/how-much-solar-energy-hits-earth.html

Comment What's the rate of false positives? (Score 0) 270

by hknust on Saturday October 15, 2011 @10:47AM (#37723704) Attached to: Correlating Psychopathy With Speech Patterns

Dubious. A statistical significance to a pattern is merely an indicator of an actual relationship.

Comment Re:I don't like digital-only periodical subs (Score 0) 184

by hknust on Sunday August 21, 2011 @05:47AM (#37159744) Attached to: Linux Journal Goes — Surprise! — Digital

[Quote]And I think that the only people who have the right to complain about that are the ones who are going to end up with their remaining print subscriptions transitioned to digital (because that sure ain't what they asked for).[/Quote]

Amen. Especially if you took advantage of the $100 for 100 issues offer LJ made at the time of the 100th issue.

Comment Yawn! Story from the year before yesteryear (Score 0) 178

by hknust on Friday May 06, 2011 @08:45PM (#36053600) Attached to: A New Human-Seeking Drone, Much Cheaper Than a Predator

This older story even has the price tag: $50K

http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/aeryon-scout-flying-surveillance-robot-is-possibly-the-most-intelligent/

Comment Useless with Nvidia/Dual heads (Score 0) 729

by hknust on Tuesday May 03, 2011 @11:50PM (#36020220) Attached to: Ubuntu Unity: The Great Divider

My set up has one monitor in potrait and one in landscape mode. Won't work with compiz that Unity is built on. It worked in 10.10 with Xinerama & RandR. Hardly an improvement.

I am getting used the slicker look of Unity, though. Too bad it has to go.

Coder Accuses IBM of Patenting His Work 249

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 25, 2010 @09:09AM from the do-your-own-work dept.

ttsiod writes "Back in 2001, I coded HeapCheck, a GPL library for Windows (inspired by ElectricFence) that detected invalid read/write accesses on any heap allocations at runtime — thus greatly helping my debugging sessions. I published it on my site, and got a few users who were kind enough to thank me — a Serbian programmer even sent me $250 as a thank you (I still have his mails). After a few years, Microsoft included very similar technology in the operating system itself, calling it PageHeap. I had more or less forgotten this stuff, since for the last 7 years I've been coding for UNIX/Linux, where valgrind superseded Efence/dmalloc/etc. Imagine my surprise when yesterday, Googling for references to my site, I found out that the technology I implemented, of runtime detection of invalid heap accesses, has been patented in the States, and to add insult to injury, even mentions my site (via a non-working link to an old version of my page) in the patent references! After the necessary 'WTFs' and 'bloody hells' I thought this merits (a) a Slashdotting, and (b) a set of honest questions: what should I do about this? I am not an American citizen, but the 'inventors' of this technology (see their names in the top of the patent) have apparently succeeded in passing this ludicrous patent in the States. If my code doesn't count as prior art, Bruce Perens's Efence (which I clearly state my code was inspired from) is at least 12 years prior! Suggestions/cursing patent trolls most welcome."

Military Robots to Gain Advanced Sight 71

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday January 27, 2008 @09:58AM from the stay-on-target dept.

coondoggie brings us a NetworkWorld report discussing iRobot's plans to include Laser Radar technology in their military robots. Quoting: "Specifically the robot-maker is licensing Advanced Scientific Concepts' 3-D flash Ladar which uses laser beams to scan and process targets. The system has the ability to create a virtual 3D picture of an entire area. IRobot ... believes the technology will provide new navigation and mapping capabilities for future generations of robots and unmanned ground vehicles and pave the way for autonomous vehicles to lead convoys into dangerous territory, search contaminated buildings for casualties, or enable bomb squads to safely investigate suspicious objects."

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