Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Find out if you might get hit (Score 3, Informative) 122

Check out the prediction web site to see if it might land near you. Be sure to click the "show all passes" button to see the daylight passes in addition to the night passes. It calculates your lat/long from your ip address, then builds a table of overhead passes in the next 5 days. Look at the "El" column. That's the maximum degrees from the nearest horizon. If you see a number near 90 between Sunday night and Monday morning, watch out. Otherwise, rest easy.

Comment Europe has our back (Score 4, Interesting) 296

Cliff Mass, a University of Washington professor of meteorology, talks about the predictions around hurricane Sandy. He said:

... the best forecasting system for predicting Sandy was not American, rather it was the model of the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) in Reading, England.

Comment Re:iPhone 3G? SOL (Score 3, Interesting) 212

OK, so Apple's warranty is for only one year. As far as I know, they haven't violated any of the terms of their 25 page contract I never read. As far as I can tell, their support is as good as any cell phone company. (Not a high bar to get over.) So you're justified in calling me a whiner.

Still, after paying more for that phone than I've paid for some computers, I'm pretty unhappy with Apple. I've been using Apple computers continuously (but not exclusively) since 1985. I guess I'm pining for the days when a computer was still pretty useful and still getting updates 5 years after you bought it.

I really don't want to start another 2 year commitment on a smartphone. And the iPad I'm considering looks like less of a bargain if it is going to be made intentionally obsolete in 2 years.

Comment iPhone 3G? SOL (Score 1, Informative) 212

If you bought your iPhone between Jul 11, 2008 and Jun 7, 2009 (and perhaps after that date) you have an iPhone 3G and you're going to have this bug as long you own the phone. As of March 11, 2011, Apple stopped updating the iPhone 3G.

It look like after 2 years, you're no longer an Apple customer. You're a former customer until you prove otherwise with your wallet.

Disclaimer: I can't find any official statement from Apple about their current 3G support policy. But they did exclude th 3G from this update.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Bans Open Source From The Windows Market (thinq.co.uk) 1

Blacklaw writes: Microsoft has raised the ire of the open source community with its Windows Marketplace licence by specifically refusing to allow software covered under an open licence to be distributed. The licence, which anyone wishing to distribute Windows, Windows Phone, or Xbox applications through the company's copy of Apple's App Store is required to agree to, is the usual torrent of legalese — but hides a nasty surprise for those who support open source ideals.

Comment Math Illiteracy leads to science illiteracy (Score 5, Interesting) 382

Science illiteracy is strongly rooted in math illiteracy. Cliff Mass, a Seattle area Professor of Meteorology, gives his incoming freshman students a math test. This is a test of basic math skills that should be mastered before high school. Yet the average score for college freshman science students is only 58%.

You can find the answers to the above test in his blog article.

Comment Re:Whaaaa? (Score 1) 175

As someone else pointed out, the monkey sent random mouse events to the program to make sure nothing could crash it. When the monkey was alive, the code would keep the monkey from quitting the program or doing anything else that would stop it. The monkey made MacPaint a virtually crash proof program.

Slashdot Top Deals

Vitamin C deficiency is apauling.

Working...