mstrick44 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Looking back at the Commodore 64 (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @09:30PM

An anonymous reader writes: It's the 30th anniversary of the Commodore 64 this week — news that has made more than a few gaming enthusiasts feel their age. This story looks back at some of the peculiarities that made the machine so special — a true mass-market computer well into the era where a computer in every home was a novelty idea, not a near reality.

Submission + - Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops (go.com) 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @04:37PM

An anonymous reader writes: "A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

“This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,” Jordan said today from his Waterford home. “I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.” "

Submission + - Hubble pic of a 30 octillion ton baby's tantrum (hubblesite.org) 2

Submitted by

The Bad Astronomer

on Thursday December 15, 2011 @03:00PM

The Bad Astronomer writes: "In what is one of the most staggeringly beautiful Hubble pictures ever taken, a newly-born massive star is blasting four separate jets of material into its surrounding cocoon, carving out cavities in the material over two light years long. But only three of the jets appear to have matter still inside them, and the central star is off-center. This may be a gorgeous picture, but the science behind it is equally as compelling."

Submission + - Not a joke: Each book downloaded to ereaders incre (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by whoever57 on Sunday October 30, 2011 @07:02PM

whoever57 writes: According to Prof Kubiatowicz from University of California, Berkeley, each time an additional book is downloaded to an ereader, the mass of the ereader increases. The effect doesn't really make the devices more difficult to carry: the professor calculates that 4GB of books adds 1e-18g. to the mass — about the mass of a single virus or DNA molecule.

Submission + - Another step towards Graphene semiconductors (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by derGoldstein on Sunday October 30, 2011 @05:20PM

derGoldstein writes: Ars has an article up about the two latest "papers demonstrating that, if you change the way the graphene stacks, you obtain a voltage-controlled bandgap ... Between these two papers, a fairly complete understanding of the bandgap behavior in three layer graphene has been obtained, leaving only the challenge of making the stuff".

Submission + - Lego Robot Beats Human World Record For Solving th (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by

kkleiner

on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @11:25AM

kkleiner writes: "The current official human record for the Rubik’s cube 3×3 puzzle is just 5.66 seconds. Now a robot called CubeStormer II did it in just 5.35 seconds. CubeStormer II is controlled by four Lego NXT ‘bricks’ that communicate via Bluetooth with a Samsung Galaxy SII smart phone. A special app on the phone takes a picture of the cube, solves the puzzle virtually, and then relays the solution to the Lego robot. From click to finish the whole process takes just seconds."

Comment Re:Yawn (Score 1) 110

by mstrick44 on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @08:16PM (#27235271) Attached to: World-First VDSL2 Demo Gets 500Mbps Data Transfers

I take your point, but please remember there are some countries -- or at least regions of countries -- where DSL lines are the only option. Most of South America falls in this catagory.

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