stardyne - Slashdot User

China Begins To Extend High Speed Rail Across Asia 387

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 15, 2011 @06:07PM from the spreading-out dept.

MikeChino writes "Last year we learned that China planned to expand its high-speed rail network all the way to Europe and now the nation has launched the first step of the project with plans to extend tracks into northern Laos. The nation has also set goals of expanding the high-speed rail line into Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore."

Facebook Caught Exposing Millions of Credentials 159

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @03:27PM from the oh-yeah-sorry-bout-that dept.

fysdt writes "Facebook has leaked photographs, profiles and other personal information for millions of its users because of a years-old bug that overrides individual privacy settings, researchers from Symantec said. The flaw, which the researchers estimate has affected hundreds of thousands of applications, exposed user access tokens to advertisers and others. The tokens serve as a spare set of keys that Facebook apps use to perform certain actions on behalf of the user, such as posting messages to a Facebook wall or sending RSVP replies to invitations. For years, many apps that rely on an older form of user authentication turned over these keys to third parties, giving them the ability to access information users specifically designated as off limits."

Face-Mounted Nose Stylus Created For Phones 208

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @11:00AM from the because-he-can dept.

Lanxon writes "Designer Dominic Wilcox has come up with a Pinocchio-style 'finger-nose stylus' that lets you use your phone hands free, reports Wired. He came up with the design after he found that he wanted to use his touchphone in the bath. A wet hand is not a good touchscreen navigation device, so he found himself using his nose to scroll, but found it hard to see precisely where his nose was touching the screen. The solution was to create a nose extension 'finger' that would allow for navigation while holding the phone firmly in his one dry hand."

Opera For iPhone To Test Apple's Resolve 292

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday February 10, 2010 @08:57AM from the that's-not-gonna-work dept.

Barence writes "Opera is launching a version of its Mini browser for the iPhone in what could prove a landmark decision for Apple's app gatekeepers. Apple has been traditionally hostile to rival browsers, with Mozilla claiming that Apple made it 'too hard' for its rivals to develop a browser for the iPhone. However, Opera remains bullishly confident that its app will be approved. 'We have not submitted Opera Mini to the Apple App store,' an Opera spokesperson told PC Pro. 'However, we hope that Apple will not deny their users a choice in web browsing experience.'" I can't imagine what would motivate them to do that.

Astronomers Discover 33 Pairs of Waltzing Black Holes 101

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 04, 2010 @03:59PM from the teach-them-to-foxtrot dept.

Astronomers from UC Berkeley have identified 33 pairs of waltzing black holes, closing the gap somewhat between the observed population of super-massive black hole pairs and what had been predicted by theory. "Astronomical observations have shown that 1) nearly every galaxy has a central super-massive black hole (with a mass of a million to a billion times the mass of the Sun), and 2) galaxies commonly collide and merge to form new, more massive galaxies. As a consequence of these two observations, a merger between two galaxies should bring two super-massive black holes to the new, more massive galaxy formed from the merger. The two black holes gradually in-spiral toward the center of this galaxy, engaging in a gravitational tug-of-war with the surrounding stars. The result is a black hole dance, choreographed by Newton himself. Such a dance is expected to occur in our own Milky Way Galaxy in about 3 billion years, when it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy."

Does the Linux Desktop Innovate Too Much? 542

Posted by kdawson on Sunday June 21, 2009 @05:34PM from the billg-at-least-pretended-users-demanded-innovation dept.

jammag writes "The Linux desktop has seen major innovation of late, with KDE 4 launching new features, GNOME announcing a new desktop, and Ubuntu embarking on a redesign campaign. But Linux pundit Bruce Byfield asks, do average users really want any of these things? He points to instances of user backlash, and concludes 'Free software is still driven by developers working on what interests or concerns them. The problem is, the days when users of free software were also its developers are long gone, but the habits of those days remain. The result is that developers function far too much in isolation from their user base.' Byfield suggests that the answer could be more user testing."

Charity Refuses Donation Because of D&D Connection 216

Posted by samzenpus on Monday November 03, 2008 @04:57PM from the tainted-money dept.

An anonymous reader writes "This year's GenCon Charity Auction raised over $17,000 which they intended to donate to Gary Gygax's favorite charity, Christian Children's Fund. However, the charity refused the donation when they learned of its connection to Dungeons & Dragons." It seems to me all they would need to do is cast remove curse or dispel evil and the money would be fine to use.

Comment Re:What questions exactly? (Score 1) 539

by stardyne on Wednesday September 10, 2008 @10:33AM (#24947441) Attached to: Biologist (Almost) Creates Artificial Life

The students *were* given the theory. ( What theory are we taking about here, anyway? Big Bang? Evolution? We were taught all of that). We weren't told a larger crackpot theory. We were just given some questions that seemed not to make sense, like who do we know that the source of radioative dating material was all undecayed at the time of formation.

Your teacher did not give you all of the any of those theories you mentioned (Big Bang, Evolution). It would have taken years of additional knowledge to fully understand either of those theories. Therefore, you got a tiny subset of the theory (most likely an English summary of the theory). So, you were never given the knowledge that would be required to answer any of the questions your teacher asked. Therefore, the only logical answer to those questions would be "I don't know, let us research the theories and fully understand them before giving you an answer", not "these theories might be flawed."

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