Comment Such a pity (Score 5, Funny) 151
It's so sad when a parent outlives a child.
Comment Re:"Mechanical multicaliber gun"? (Score 1) 206
I'm not sure why one would bother with such a thing.
I imagine to test its effectiveness against different types of rounds. I also would be interested in seeing what sort of device this is.
Comment Huh (Score 1) 121
After looking at the charts I would have thought that the pink asterisk would have muted out the red dot... Maybe the red dot includes the TV?
Comment Reminds me of a Dan Brown book (Score 1) 49
Comment Also available from CADIE: (Score 4, Informative) 246
Her own personal blog with design choices reminiscent of the 90s:
http://cadiesingularity.blogspot.com/
Google Docs, now with CADIE:
http://www.google.com/google-d-s/cadie.html
Comment Could the wind mess with this? (Score 1) 226
I realize it is a very large object so perhaps the answer is no. I'm just curious.
Whenever I made rockets as a kid I lost them in the damn trees after the first launch because of that blasted parachute.
It took so long to get the decals just right too...
"It's going to land on my house!"
"Don't worry, it's going to land softly."
"Oh, ok."
*crunch*
Comment Kinda neat. (Score 1) 109
I was sort of expecting more, but kind of neat since I don't usually use street view. For a direct link of the street view (just go west):
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Sampsonia+Way+Pittsburgh&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&split=0&gl=us&ei=a5WRSaDMN4qhtwe_8ojZCw&z=16&iwloc=addr&layer=c&cbll=40.457093,-80.010843&panoid=KZ4VB6PWohXbrKaJNdNEPg&cbp=12,273.6054235095123,,0,5
Comment Odd Creature (Score 1) 233
Check out the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispaniolan_Solenodon
"Females, even though they have an irregular estrus period that is apparently unrelated to seasonal changes, may have two litters of 1-3 young per year. Usually, only 2 of the offspring (weighing 40 to 55 grams) survive, because the female only has two teats, which are found in a most unusual place: near the buttocks of the animal."
"As well as having a venomous bite, a solenodon has glands in the armpits and in the groin which allegedly give off a goat-like smell."
"When they do come out, they run on their toes with a stiff ungainly waddle, following an erratic almost zigzag course. The local people claim that solenodons never run in a straight line. Moreover, when a solenodon is alarmed and tries to put on speed it is as likely as not to trip over its own toes or even tumble head-over-heels."
Submission + - SPAM: Researcher warns of "Digital Dark Age"
alphadogg writes: A University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign assistant professor is sounding a warning that companies, government and researchers need to come up with a plan for preserving our increasingly digitized data in light light of shifting document management and other software platforms (think WordPerfect and floppy disks). Jerome P. McDonough, who teaches at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says there are 369 exabytes worth of data, and that includes some pretty hard to replace stuff, including tax files, email and photos. Open standards could play a key role in any preservation effort, he says. "If we can't keep today's information alive for future generations, we will lose a lot of our culture," ," McDonough said. "Even over the course of 10 years, you can have a rapid enough evolution in the ways people store digital information and the programs they use to access it that file formats can fall out of date."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Old Materials Resurface For "Prebiotic Soup" 263
AliasMarlowe writes "Stanley Miller performed the famous experiments in the 1950s showing that amino acids and other building blocks for biomolecules could be produced by passing lightning through a mix of simple hydrocarbons, water vapor, and ammonia (thought at the time to approximate the Earth's early atmosphere). Other experiments approximated the environment around volcanic eruptions, but those results were not published. Following his death last year, a former student discovered the materials from those experiments, in labelled vials. Analysis of this material indicates that the conditions around volcanic eruptions (still thought to be representative of such events in the early Earth) resulted in a higher yield of amino acids than the simple lightning experiments, and resulted in a greater variety of amino acids." Pharyngula has a discussion of the Science paper, including a graph of the amino acids produced.
China To Photograph All Internet Cafe Customers 223
Gwaihir the Windlord writes "Not only is the Great Firewall of China back up and running, but now if you visit an Internet cafe, your photo will be taken and your identity card scanned. And the friendly officers of the Cultural Law Enforcement Taskforce make those details, entered into a city-wide database, available at any other cafe. So much for the new levels of openness and transparency that the Olympics were supposed to usher in."
Patient "Roused From Coma" By a Magnetic Therapy 123
missb writes "Could the gentle currents from a fluctuating magnetic field be used to reverse the effects of traumatic brain injury? New Scientist reports on a patient in the US who was in a coma-like state, but can now speak very simple words after being given transcranial magnetic stimulation. This is the first time TMS has been used as a therapy to try and rouse a patient out of a coma."
Slashdot Top Deals
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing. -- Dick Brandon
