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Comment Both sitting AND standing are bad for you. (Score 2) 235

by jtolds (#37725722) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Ergonomic Office Environment?

This just in, http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html

From TFA:

The bottom line:

Sit to do computer work. Sit using a height-adjustable, downward titling keyboard tray for the best work posture, then every 20 minutes stand for 2 minutes AND MOVE. The absolute time isn’t critical but about every 20-30 minutes take a posture break and move for a couple of minutes. Simply standing is insufficient. Movement is important to get blood circulation through the muscles. Research shows that you don’t need to do vigorous exercise (e.g. jumping jacks) to get the benefits, just walking around is sufficient. So build in a pattern of creating greater movement variety in the workplace (e.g. walk to a printer, water fountain, stand for a meeting, take the stairs, walk around the floor, park a bit further away from the building each day).

So the key is to build movement variety into the normal workday.

Comment Re:Sauce for the gander (Score 2) 794

by jtolds (#34444614) Attached to: PayPal Withdraws WikiLeaks Donation Service

I'm of course bummed about this news, but I can't help but wonder why there's such a difference in reaction between Amazon/EasyDNS/PayPal's actions with WikiLeaks, and Rackspace's actions with the Koran burning guy.

I feel like the general attitude here towards Rackspace when they pulled the Koran burning guy was positive, whereas the attitude about Amazon/EasyDNS/PayPal is negative.

Should we only be happy with companies that pull sites when we agree with them? Or, what? Is there some difference between these two cases? How should we resolve this cognitive dissonance?
Image

The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282

Posted by samzenpus from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.
iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."

Comment Code Reviews (Gerrit) (Score 2, Informative) 477

by jtolds (#30343674) Attached to: Defining Useful Coding Practices?

Traditional everyone set aside time and review checked in code is hard to do, difficult, and time consuming.

On the other hand, automated code review tools are life changing. There's a bunch of tools out there, but the one I think is far and away the best is Google's Gerrit tool (http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/), which is what Google uses publicly for Android.

I cannot understate how helpful Gerrit has been in this regard. So many things that are trouble down the road are easily caught by even just one other pair of eyes. Everyone who has used Gerrit at my compnay has fallen in love with automated code reviews. It's refreshing, leads to better code, etc. I seriously could gush about Gerrit for pages.
Moon

Has NASA Found the Lost Moon Tapes? 222

Posted by timothy from the don't-you-mean-the-b-roll? dept.
jra writes "For over 5 years, various people both inside and retired from NASA have been engaged in a quest. They were looking for the long-lost original slow-scan video tapes from the Apollo 11 moon landing, which went missing in a record-keeping snafu, covered in unreasonable detail in a Wired article a couple years ago. Well now, according to the UK's Sunday Express newspaper, some tapes may or may not have been found which may or may not be the Apollo video. Apparently — I love the British press — the NASA boffins are a bit put out that it leaked; they were hoping to blow everyone's minds with the scoop themselves."
AMD

A $99 Graphics Card Might Be All You Need 618

Posted by kdawson from the market-beater dept.
Vigile writes "With the release of AMD's latest budget graphics card, the Radeon HD 4770, the GPU giant is bringing a lot of technology to the table. The card sports the world's first 40nm GPU (beating out CPUs to a new process technology for the first time), GDDR5 memory, and 640 stream processors, all for under $100. What is even more interesting is that as PC gaming has evolved it appears that a $99 graphics card is all you really need to play the latest PC titles — as long as you are comfortable with a resolution of 1920x1200 or below. Since so few PC gamers have screens larger than that, could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?"
Science

New Type of Superconductivity Spotted 71

Posted by Soulskill from the hard-to-resist dept.
sciencehabit writes with this excerpt from a story about research into an unusual form of superconductivity:"Superconductors, materials that carry electricity without resistance, can be divided into two broad groups depending on how they react to a magnetic field — or so physicists thought. New experiments show that one well-studied superconductor actually belongs to both groups at the same time. The advance may not immediately lead to new gadgets and applications, but it suggests that superconductivity, which has already netted four Nobel Prizes, may be an even richer phenomenon than previously thought."
Security

FBI Issues Code Cracking Challenge 222

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the test-your-skillz dept.
coondoggie writes to tell us that the FBI has issued another cracking challenge for a new cipher on their site. Tens of thousands responded to a similar challenge last year. In addition to the challenge, the FBI is also offering a few primers on the subject. There are a number of sites offering cipher challenges, but it's funny to see the FBI encouraging such behavior.
Power

Wireless Power Consortium Pushes For Standard 221

Posted by timothy from the how-about-a-wide-range-of-standards dept.
Slatterz writes "We've already heard about wireless power before, but now we're a step closer to throwing away our power cables and chargers. A consortium of eight companies has launched an initiative to develop a wireless power standard. The drive was announced at the first Wireless Power Consortium conference at the Hong Kong Science Park yesterday. Most consumer electronic devices require a different charger, and the resulting tangle of wires and bulky devices is 'ugly, frustrating and inconvenient to use,' the group said. 'Wireless power charging takes away the need for wires and connectors. You simply drop your mobile phone, game device, electric shaver on the charging station and the battery is recharged,' explained Satoru Nishimura, senior manager at Sanyo."

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