Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - NASA is Building a Virtual Mars (unrealengine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NASA will release a free virtual reality program this year that will simulate exploring the surface of Mars. "Players will be able to walk on the Red Planet as well as drive the Mars Rover..." reads the official announcement at UnrealEngine.com. The Mars 2030 Experience will be available on Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, and Samsung Gear VR, and will also "expand" to Sony PlayStation VR and HTC Vive, with additional versions for Android and iOS devices, and it will even be streamed on Twitch. NASA plans to reveal more details at this year’s South by Southwest conference in March.

Submission + - The Comments Are Where The Real America Is

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: This weekend's NY Times is all-about-the-comments. First, Michael Erard recounts the history of Web site comments and explains how their technical origins have shaped the actual commentary we’ve come to expect as usual today. On dealing with people-behaving-badly, Erard writes, "Only a few [high-traffic sites] seem to have tried user-moderation systems like the one developed by Slashdot’s creator, Rob Malda. Founded in 1997, Slashdot rapidly began to suffer from what Malda called 'signal-to-noise-ratio problems' as tens of thousands of users showed up. Rather than embracing the chaos (which was a hallmark of Usenet, another digital channel of communications) or locking things down with moderators (which e-mail lists did), Malda figured out a way for users to moderate one another. Moderation became like jury duty, something you were called to do." Next, NY Times community manager Bassey Etim, who oversees 13 comment moderators, offers up his comments on comments, agreeing that "the comments are where the real America is." So, what is the next new thing for commenting? Erard cites annotation features, offered by the likes of Medium and Rap Genius. Finally, there's Gawker's next-generation Kinja, which aims to further blur the lines between stories, blog entries, and comments.

Comment Methodology, anyone? (Score 1) 738

by necrostopheles (#33928548) Attached to: Humans Will Need Two Earths By 2030
The key phrase in tfa looks like "absorb the carbon dioxide they emit." How many earths will be needed if we shift to a low/no carbon economy? Have they factored in any allowance for increased efficiency? It'd it be nice to see some breakdown of the analysis, not just a bald number.

Comment Re:I don't like it (Score 1) 501

by necrostopheles (#31827280) Attached to: Google to Open Source the VP8 Codec
That's an interesting analogy but I don't think it's obvious that a codec belongs in the everything-else category. Firstly, it wasn't *that* long ago that OSes and compilers and network stacks were part of how manufacturers competed with one another. Secondly, I think that what's infrastructure and what's not depends on what you're interested in. For your average YouTuber, the choice of codec would be a matter of eye-glazing irrelevance, and they'd be hard-pressed to make an informed choice, which is a crucial ingredient in a market-based system.
Databases

Is the Relational Database Doomed? 344

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-more-tools-in-the-bucket dept.
DB Guy writes "There's an article over on Read Write Web about what the future of relational databases looks like when faced with new challenges to its dominance from key/value stores, such as SimpleDB, CouchDB, Project Voldemort and BigTable. The conclusion suggests that relational databases and key value stores aren't really mutually exclusive and instead are different tools for different requirements."
Robotics

Radio Controlled Cyborg Insects At MEMS 2009 46

Posted by timothy from the why-does-she-have-a-hammer? dept.
Frankie Modellismo writes "During MEMS 2009, a Micro Electro Mechanical Systems conference taking place in Sorrento (near Naples in Italy), the University of California, Berkeley showed a wireless system to control a live rhinoceros beetle. The researchers controlled the movement of the beetle thanks to six electrodes installed in the insect's brain. The rhinoceros beetles can carry up to 3gr, and fly carrying the control module that weighs a little more than 1 gr." The page is in Italian, but the pictures speak for themselves.

Slashdot Top Deals

It's fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour! -- Macy's

Close