quantum measurement - Slashdot User

DIY Laptop 178

Posted by Hemos on Monday March 05, 2007 @10:10AM from the from-the-ground-up dept.

Brietech writes "Ever felt like building your own laptop from (almost literally) scratch? This is a microcontroller-based "laptop" built from the ground up from a handful of chips and other hardware found lying around. It runs a self-hosted development environment, allowing the user to write and edit programs in "Chris++" on the machine, and then compile and run them. The carpentry looks like it could use some work, but it's a neat project!"

Computer Forensics to Help Solve Pioneer Mystery 113

Posted by Hemos on Monday March 05, 2007 @09:37AM from the deconstructing-the-past dept.

Matthew Sparkes writes "Launched 35 years ago on Friday, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to reach the outer Solar System and return pictures of Jupiter, closely followed by Pioneer 11. However, the twin Pioneer spacecraft drifted off course (see number 8) by hundreds of thousands of kilometres during their three-decade mission, and NASA eventually lost contact with them. An international team of scientists, including many amatuer hobbyists, are re-analysing the tracking and telemetry data in the hope of discovering the reason."

Linux 2.6.20-rc6 Kernel Performance 226

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @11:43AM from the up-and-to-the-right dept.

Michael writes "The Linux 2.6.20 kernel will feature KVM support, Playstation 3 support, and a variety of other improvements. With the Linux 2.6.20-rc6 kernel out the door, Phoronix has written a performance comparison of the Linux 2.6.20-rc6 kernel against the 2.6.19 and 2.6.19.2 kernels in a variety of benchmarks."

Microsoft's Charles Simonyi to be 1st Nerd in Space 234

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday October 26, 2006 @11:51PM from the flying-high dept.

Richard L. James writes "The BBC are reporting that Hungarian-born Charles Simonyi, a 58-year old Microsoft billionaire software engineer is set to become the first 'nerd in space' on board the Soyuz TMA-10 when the spacecraft launches on Thursday 09th March 2007. Charles oversaw the development of Multiplan, Word, and Excel among many other achievements. He has launched a website detailing the 3 goals he wishes to achieve on the trip: advance civilian spaceflight, assist space station research, and involve kids in space sciences. Jó szerencse pölö Charles!"

Detailed Panorama of Mars Released 92

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 26, 2006 @02:17AM from the red-planet-map dept.

dptalia writes "NASA has just released a detailed panorama of Mars taken by the Spirit rover. During the short Martian winter the rover didn't get enough sunlight to move, so it took these pictures instead. Spirit took over 1400 pictures, for a total of 500 megs of data. If you look to the left of the picture, you'll see the tracks from the rover's trip."

Comment Re:It's really great !! (Score 1) 109

by quantum measurement on Monday August 07, 2006 @03:59AM (#15857853) Attached to: Turing Equation Explains how Leopard Spots Develop

This finding about leopard spots has nothing to do with Turing machines. It is less well known among computer scientists that Turing has also done fundamental research in the field of chemical pattern formation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Pattern_ formation_and_mathematical_biology). BTW this is no news. It is well known that spotted patterns can be reproduced by reaction diffusion equations. These mechanisms have been thoroughly studied using computer simulations since the '80s. A really interesting result would be to find the actual chemical processes in the leopard that produce the spots, but no experimental evidence yet ...

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