rcousine - Slashdot User

Real Reason Why the White iPhone 4 Is Delayed 182

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 27, 2010 @04:52PM from the no-phone-for-you dept.

tekgoblin writes "There have been numerous reasons why the White iPhone 4 may be delayed with one reason being the color mismatch between the home button and the body. Well this time there is another reason. A source has told CultofMac that the reason for the delay is a light leakage issue caused by the case being clear. Light from the case leaks into pictures taken by the back and front camera on the white iPhone 4, causing distorted pictures. This problem is non-existent on the black iPhone 4, because of its already black case, so Apple has been looking for a solution to this problem, thus the delay of the White iPhone 4 till spring of next year."

The Big Technical Mistakes of History 244

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @05:19AM from the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time dept.

An anonymous reader tips a PC Authority review of some of the biggest technical goofs of all time. "As any computer programmer will tell you, some of the most confusing and complex issues can stem from the simplest of errors. This article looking back at history's big technical mistakes includes some interesting trivia, such as NASA's failure to convert measurements to metric, resulting in the Mars Climate Orbiter being torn apart by the Martian atmosphere. Then there is the infamous Intel Pentium floating point fiasco, which cost the company $450m in direct costs, a battering on the world's stock exchanges, and a huge black mark on its reputation. Also on the list is Iridium, the global satellite phone network that promised to make phones work anywhere on the planet, but required 77 satellites to be launched into space."

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @05:02AM from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.

bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."

Comment Re:ultralight components (Score 1) 345

by rcousine on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:49PM (#9155660) Attached to: Bicycling Science, Third Edition

It will what???

Your numbers are wildly misremembered.

First off, a bike weight reduction really has no substantial effect on speed except on hillclimbs. I'm not going to quote badly recalled numbers, but weight differences of a pound or so will make a measurable difference (not a huge one; we're talking about gaining seconds for the most part. But that can be enough).

As for reductions in aerodynamic drag, almost none of them are as dramatic as slapping on aero bars (which make for a big change in the cyclist's body position), and that probably accounts for maybe a 5 km/h speed difference at best.

Replacing 36-spoke wheels with discs (or more likely, disc rear and deep-section aero front; cyclists hate falling over due to crosswinds) will save a few seconds over a kilometer. A really fast cyclist in a really fast time trial (say, a Prologue, which is typically a short-distance time trial at the start of a multi-stage race) will be doing 50-60 km/h depending on the course, which means 60-second kilometers.

Those same riders wouldn't be doing 100-second kilometer times on their lightweight hill-climbing bikes. Probably more like 65 seconds.

There are some gains to be had from aerodynamics, but they are small.

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