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Comment importing energy from space upsets Earth's balance (Score 1) 371

by markmuetz (#26927891) Attached to: Space Based Solar Power Within a Decade?

The downside is that importing energy from space upsets Earth's balance

Depends where you position your sunlight catching satellite. If you collect energy that would have hit Earth anyway, then the net extra energy that would hit the Earth would be zero. A suitable place to do this is the Lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun (L1), and this would has the dual effect of providing clean energy and blocking sunlight hitting the Earth, reducing global warming in the process! Now all we have to do is to engineer some massive space based mirrors, and launch them 1.5 million km into space...

Comment Re:Use Revisioning (Score 1) 553

by markmuetz (#26759807) Attached to: Phantom OS, the 21st Century OS?
Granted, the average user is going to fall flat on their face if you show them git's history trees or some Journalist's revisioning software. But give people something simple like time machine with a nice slider, and they might do OK, so long as you do a good enough job of hiding the complexity of what's going on.

Comment Use Revisioning (Score 1) 553

by markmuetz (#26759339) Attached to: Phantom OS, the 21st Century OS?

If you think solely in terms of undo histories then yes, getting back to a previous state can be time consuming, take up large amounts of memory and/or cause RSI. But If you think in terms of auto-revisioning then a scheme like this could make more sense.

Cat jumps on your keyboard? No problem, switch to an earlier revision

Accidentally delete the doc? No problem

Go back too far? Just spin forward a couple of revision

Admittedly it could be hard for the average user, and it will remember the almost all of the complete historical state of the document (including any insulting things you've written: why would you do that?!), but I'd consider it quite a benefit to be able to roll back time on all docs, not just the ones in a git/svn/hg repository.

Hmmm, maybe a time machine would be handy?
Microsoft

Bill Gates Unleashes Swarm of Mosquitoes 841

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ok-that's-awesome dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates released a glass full of mosquitoes at an elite Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference to make a point about the deadly sting of malaria. 'Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,' Gates said while opening a jar on stage at a gathering known to attract technology kings, politicians, and Hollywood stars. 'I brought some. Here I'll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected.'" Say what you will about the guy, that is showmanship. Well done.
PC Games (Games)

Crayon Physics Combines Science and Puzzles 78

Posted by Soulskill from the and-nobody-can-tell-how-bad-you-are-at-drawing dept.
IamAHack writes "NPR covered a new game that seems like it would have great appeal to Slashdot readers: Crayon Physics. Quoting: 'A new computer game went on sale this week. It's not a blockbuster like Halo or World of Warcraft. There's no first-person shooting, no sports, no guitar, no microphone. Instead, there's a crayon. The game is Crayon Physics Deluxe. It's a simple, mesmerizing game created by a 25-year-old independent games designer from Finland named Petri Purho. "It's a game where your crayon drawings come to life,' Purho tells NPR's Melissa Block. 'You draw stuff and your drawings behave physically correctly. As soon as you release the last button, the laws of physics are applied to your drawing."' A demo is available, and Opposable Thumbs has a review of the game."
Displays

Sony Shows Off Flexible OLED Screens At CES 150

Posted by timothy from the too-bad-she-won't-live dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Sony's stand at CES had a small area set aside for flexible OLED screens, along with three mock-ups of possible OLED devices (including one stunning ultra-portable with no hinge and a single display for both screen and keyboard). There was also a working OLED screen being bent back and forth while playing a video clip. Does this mean roll-up, low-power colour screens will soon hit the market? Not unless OLED prices come down — Sony's stunning XEL-1 OLED TV costs $2,500, but only has an 11in screen ..."
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.

Comment Re:Show attached block devices (Score 1) 2362

by markmuetz (#25653479) Attached to: (Useful) Stupid Unix Tricks?
Not sure if you can do this in bash, but zsh can be set up to keep one complete history from all currently (or previously I guess) open shells. Have a look at friedcpu.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/zsh-the-last-shell-youll-ever-need for how to set yourself up with it. The article also lists a few other benefits you get from using zsh. To change your shell for your user use $chsh -s /bin/zsh username

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