Comment Revelation (Score 1) 217
Wait, they are actually able to delete Facebook accounts? Here, take mine!
Submission + - 2012 Mayan Calendar 'Doomsday' Date Might Be Wrong (discovery.com) 1
astroengine writes: "A UC Santa Barbara associate professor is disputing the accuracy of the mesoamerican "Long Count" calendar after highlighting several astronomical flaws in a correlation factor used to synchronize the ancient Mayan calendar with our modern Gregorian calendar. If proven to be correct, Gerardo Aldana may have nudged the infamous December 21, 2012 "End of the World" date out by at least 60 days. Unfortunately, even if the apocalypse is rescheduled, doomsday theorists will unlikely take note."
Comment Call me dumb... (Score 1) 285
But as soon as you reach any depth considered the Challenger Deep, it would already be pitch black, right? Would they use infrared? And they plan on doing 3D? Maybe they will just use regular light.
If nothing else they will see new creatures.
Comment Help me out (Score 1) 139
I logged in just for the reason that I want to block kdawson and idle. How can I do this?
Comment Well, (Score 4, Insightful) 268
Would that click through rate include the ads for Cashback? If so, I might consider the results skewed.
Visualizing the Ideological History of SCOTUS 151
langelgjm writes "An interesting exercise in quantifying and visualizing ideological shifts, the website ScotusScores.com tracks changes in the ideological history of the US Supreme Court from 1937 to 2007. Ideological positions are quantified using Martin-Quinn scores, and the chart highlights the often-bumpy transitions (Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas), as well as tendencies within each Justice's career."
Submission + - Tokamak fusion experiment facing financial trouble (bbc.co.uk) 1
fiannaFailMan writes: An international plan to build a nuclear fusion reactor is being threatened by rising costs, delays and technical challenges.
Emails leaked to the BBC indicate that construction costs for the experimental fusion project called Iter have more than doubled. Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome and that the development of fusion as a commercial power source is still at least 100 years away. At a meeting in Japan on Wednesday, members of the governing Iter council will review the plans and may agree to scale back the project.
Iter will be a Tokamak device, a successor to the Joint European Torus (JET) in England. Meanwhile, an experiment in fusion by laser doesn't seem to be running into the same high profile funding problems just yet.
Comment Hell has frozen over (Score 2, Interesting) 393
Could it be that Windows is actually safer?
Sci Fi Channel Becoming Less Geek-Centric "SyFy" 798
narramissic writes "According to a TV Week article, NBC Universal has decided to change the name of their Sci Fi Channel to SyFy. Why? To pull in a more 'mainstream' audience. If you're unclear what 'more mainstream' means, TV Historian Tim Brooks spells it out for you: 'The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular.' Yes, we should probably all be offended. And telling us that a crack marketing team came up with the name because that's how tech-savvy 18-to-34 year-olds would text it really doesn't help."
Comment Re:Yeah, no kidding. (Score 1) 488
Agreed. In fact, I think it might have been mentioned that the entire footstep scene was pre-rendered. Not surprising, considering the director, Zhang Yimou, is apparently "an internationally acclaimed Chinese filmmaker and cinematographer" according to Wikipedia.
Submission + - MS says Vista compatibility not solved in SP1
Devistater writes: "Microsoft says there's no need for businesses to wait for Windows Vista SP1, since "Applications that have compatibility issues with Windows Vista today will most likely continue to have the same issues with Windows Vista with SP1." That is a quote from one of a batch of Microsoft Vista RC SP1 whitepapers dated today, entitled "Enterprise Guidance for Application Compatibility Testing and Windows Vista SP1." In the same document they also state that SP1 may break Vista compatibility, "There is a chance that some applications ultimately will not run on the final version of Windows Vista SP1, even though they run on Windows Vista today.""
Kmart Drops Blu-Ray Players 392
Lord Byron II writes "K-mart has decided to stop selling Blu-Ray players in their stores, primarily because of the high cost of Blu-Ray compared to HD-DVD (now under $200). They will continue to sell the PS3 for the time being. Will lower prices speed the adoption of HD-DVD in the upcoming holiday shopping season?"
Feed The Register: Record industry pushes ISPs to cut off file sharers (theregister.com)
Inside the P2P talks
Exclusive The record industry is pressing the UK's ISPs for a deal that would see persistent illegal file sharers automatically booted off the net.
Submission + - Unexpectedly bright comet appears in night sky
swordgeek writes: Comet 17P/Holmes, a relatively obscure and dim object has suddenly flared to be literally a million times brighter than it was two days ago, going from below magnitude 14 to 2.8 in less than 24 hours. It is just outside of the constellation Perseus, which puts it high in the sky and ideal for viewing at this time of year.
The comet is now readily visible with the naked eye, and remarkable in binoculars or a telescope. This is a completely unexpected once-in-a-lifetime event, so get out your finest optics (even if it's just your eyes) and go comet watching! No one knows how long this will last, so grab the chance while it's there.
Submission + - South Africa adopts ODF as a government standard (tectonic.co.za)
ais523 writes: As reported by Tectonic, South Africa's new Mininimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in government (MIOS) explain the new rules for which data formats will be used by the government; according to that document, all people working for the South African government must be able to read OpenDocument Format documents by March, and the government aims to use one of its three approved document formats (UTF-8 or ASCII plain text, CSV, or ODF) for all its published documents by the end of 2008. A definition of 'open standard' is also included that appears to rule out OOXML at present (requiring 'multiple implementations', among other things that may also rule it out).
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