Comment Re:one small problem (Score 1) 226
PI is a ratio. Just like 1/3, neither can be precisely represented using decimals.
pi can't be printed in full in any base, but 1/3 can. 0.1 in base 3.
Guess what base I'm using? (Hint: pi = 1)
Submission + - China tries to get the UN to censor the net (wsj.com) 1
Omnifarious writes: "China (along with other member nations) is trying to push a proposal through a little known UN agency called the International Telecommunications Union (aka ITU). This proposal contains a wide variety of problematic provisions that represent a huge power grab on the part of the UN, and a severe threat to a continued global and open Internet."
Submission + - The Maths-formula that lead to the financial crash (bbc.co.uk) 1
jools33 writes: "This is a fascinating story from the bbc of how a mathematical formula revolutionised the world of finance — which ultimately could have been responsible for its downfall. The Black-Scholes mathematical model, introduced in the 70s, opened up the world of options / futures / derivatives trading in a way that nothing before or since has accomplished, its phenominal success and widespread adoption lead to the discoverer winning a nobel prize in economics and yet it could ultimately have been responsible for the financial crisis of the past few years. Its interesting to ponder how algorithms and formulas that we work on today could fundamentally influence humanity's future."
Submission + - RIAA/MPAA: the greatest threat to tech innovation (hbr.org)
TAGmclaren writes: The Harvard Business Review is running an article stating that it's not India or China that are the greatest threat to technological innovation happening in America. Rather, it's the "big content" players, particularly the movie and music industry. From the article: "the Big Content players do not understand technology, and never have. Rather than see it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, technology has always been a threat to them. Example after example abounds of this attitude; whether it was the VCR which was "to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone" as famed movie industry lobbyist Jack Valenti put it at a congressional hearing, or MP3 technology, which they tried to sue out of existence."
Submission + - Chinese Scientists Make Cow Producing Human Milk (plosone.org)
hackingbear writes: Scientists from China Agricultural University have produced 17 healthy cloned cattle expressing recombinant human lysozyme using somatic cell nuclear transfer. In this study, we just focus on four transgenic cattle which were natural lactation. Lysozyme, a bactericidal protein that protects human infants from microbial infections, is highly expressed in human milk but is found in only trace amounts in cow milk. The result not only describes transgenic cattle whose milk offers the similar nutritional benefits as human milk but also reports techniques that could be further refined for production of active human lysozyme on a large scale.
Submission + - LOTR Rewritten from Perspective of Mordor
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "It's been said that history is written by the winners but Laura Miller writes in Salon about a counterexample as she reviews a new version of "Lord of the Rings" published to acclaim in Russia by Kirill Yeskov, a professional paleontologist whose job is reconstructing long-extinct organisms and their way of life from fossil remnants. Yeskov performs essentially the same feat in "The Last Ring-bearer," reconstructing the real world of Tolkien's Arda from "The Lord of the Rings" set during and after the end of the War of the Ring and told from the perspective of the losers. In Yeskov's retelling, available in translation as a free download, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies because science "destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men" and Aragorn is depicted by Yeskov as a ruthless Machiavellian schemer who is ultimately the puppet of his wife, the elf Arwen. Sauron's citadel Barad-dur is, by contrast, described as "that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic." According to Miller "in Yeskov's scenario, "The Lord of the Rings" is a highly romanticized and mythologized version of the fall of Mordor, perhaps even outright propaganda; "The Last Ringbearer" is supposed to be the more complicated and less sentimental true story.""
Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down 634
ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."
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