Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Your memory (Score 1) 300

by saffron (#39551327) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Is the Best Note-Taking Device For Conferences?

Having some sort of capture device, like pen and paper, is a good way to free up your attention for the speaker.

As you're listening, you'll be struck by some thought or another, some idea to follow up on, some insight. If you can write this down quickly and cheaply, you don't have to occupy your mind with remembering YOUR idea. Then you can listen more freely to THEIR ideas.

I discovered the value of using a trusted external system to store stuff like this, instead of only my own mind, when I began playing with David Allen's ideas in his book Getting Things Done.
Biotech

First X-Ray Diffraction Image of a Single Virus 57

Posted by kdawson from the caught-ya dept.
KentuckyFC writes "X-ray crystallography has been a workhorse for chemists since the 1940s and 50s, revealing the 3D structure of complex biological molecules such as haemoglobin, DNA and insulin. But the technique has a severe limitation: it only works with molecules that form into crystals and that turns out to be a tiny fraction of the proteins that make up living things. But today, a team of US researchers say they have created the first image of a single uncrystallized virus using x-ray diffraction. The trick is to take a diffraction pattern of the virus and then subtract the diffraction pattern of its surroundings (abstract). The breakthrough paves the way for scientists to start teasing apart the 3D structures of the many proteins that have eluded biologists to date."
Transportation

100-Year-Old Electric Car Design Makes a Comeback 385

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the they-do-make-em-like-they-used-to dept.
CNet's Green Tech Blog is reporting that Detroit Electric plans to release a small number of cars based around a car designed nearly 100 years ago. Detroit Electric is a joint venture between Santa Rosa, CA-based electric transportation specialist, Zap and China's Youngman motors. "Back in 1917, a Detroit Electric cost anywhere from $1,775 to $2,375--in other words, fit for the proletarian or plutocrat. The cars could go 65 miles to 100 miles on a battery charge, but only go at speeds ranging from 6 miles per hour to 25 mph."
Idle

Real Programmers 2

Posted by CmdrTaco from the god-bless-xkcd dept.
Today's xkcd has something painfully true about real programmers for you to peruse. It's funny because it's true: I keep my butterflies in box next to the bowl with all those extra screws I seem to accumulate.
Space

Carnegie Mellon To Compete In Google Lunar X-Prize 59

Posted by Zonk from the and-beyond dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google's Lunar X-Prize already has a prominent entry. William Whittaker, a researcher from Carnegie Mellon University said that he will be assembling a team to develope a robot that will be be competing for the $20 million grand prize. According to a TG Daily story, Whittaker has some unfair advantages, as he previously developed a lunar rover for NASA that 'can find concentrations of hydrogen, possibly water and other volatile chemicals on the moon that could be mined to produce fuel, water and air that are essential for supporting lunar outposts.' The Lunar X-Prize runs until the end of 2012 and Carnegie Mellon's announcement could be a first indication that researchers are taking this challenge very seriously."
Science

Method of Reading Discovered 181

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the going-crosseyed dept.
Scientists have discovered that the method our eyes use to process letters on a page is different than previously believed. Instead of assimilating one letter at a time our eyes actually lock on to two different letters simultaneously about half the time. "The team's results demonstrated that both eyes lock on to the same letter 53% of the time; for 39% of the time they see different letters with uncrossed eyes; and for 8% of the time the eyes are crossing to focus on different letters. A follow-up experiment with the eye-tracking equipment showed that we only see one clear image when reading because our brain fuses the different images from our eyes together."
Google

Google Shows Off Ad-Supported Cell Phone 290

Posted by Zonk from the gotta-love-freebies dept.
taoman1 writes "Today Google showed off a ad-supported cellphone that the company plans to offer for free to interested parties. The product could reach the marketplace within a year, and will offer Google search, email, and a web browser. 'The move would echo another recent product launched by a phone industry outsider, Apple Inc.'s iPhone. But Google's product would draw its revenue from a sharply different source, relying on commercial advertising dollars instead of the sticker price of at least US$499 for an iPhone and $60 per month for the AT&T Inc. service plan. Negotiating the fairest way to split those advertising revenues with service providers could be a big hurdle for Google, one analyst said. Another problem is the potential that consumers could be scared off by the prospect of listening to advertisements before being able to make phone calls, said Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst in Atlanta.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.

Close