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Comment Mark Olson's comment means... (Score 1) 195

by trveler (#62548786) Attached to: Vast Swath of US At Risk of Summer Blackouts, Regulator Warns

"Industry prepares its equipment and operators for challenging summer conditions. Persistent, extreme drought and its accompanying weather patterns, however, are out-of-the-ordinary and tend to create extra stresses on electricity supply and demand," said Mark Olson, NERC's manager of Reliability Assessments. "Grid operators in affected areas will need all available tools to keep the system in balance this summer."

What he is saying is: To keep the system in balance, power will be taken from adjacent less-affected areas. It's going to be a miserable summer for the entire US.

Submission + - FTC Tells ISPs To Disclose Exactly What Information They Collect On Users (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Federal Trade Commission, in what could be considered a prelude to new regulatory action, has issued an order to several major internet service providers requiring them to share every detail of their data collection practices. The information could expose patterns of abuse or otherwise troubling data use against which the FTC — or states — may want to take action. The letters requesting info went to Comcast, Google, T-Mobile, and both the fixed and wireless sub-companies of Verizon and AT&T. These “represent a range of large and small ISPs, as well as fixed and mobile Internet providers,” an FTC spokesperson said. I’m not sure which is mean to be the small one, but welcome any information the agency can extract from any of them.

To be clear, the FTC already has consumer protection rules in place and could already go after an internet provider if it were found to be abusing the privacy of its users — you know, selling their location to anyone who asks or the like. (Still no action there, by the way.) But the evolving media and telecom landscape, in which we see enormous companies devouring one another to best provide as many complementary services as possible, requires constant reevaluation. As the agency writes in a press release: "The FTC is initiating this study to better understand Internet service providers’ privacy practices in light of the evolution of telecommunications companies into vertically integrated platforms that also provide advertising-supported content."
Programming

Mario AI Competition 110

Posted by Soulskill from the must-be-on-mushrooms-when-you-write-the-code dept.
togelius writes "We're running a competition to see who can program the best AI for a version of Super Mario Bros. It's about deciding what to do at each time step — run, jump, shoot etc. — based on a description of the platforms, items and enemies around Mario. This is hard. It's so hard we believe that some sort of machine learning algorithm will be necessary to reach good playing performance. But really, any approach is fair game. We welcome hard-coded submissions, commercial AI programmers, academics and amateurs alike. Whoever wins, it will be really interesting. The competition is associated with two IEEE conferences, and there are cash prizes available for the best submissions."
Microsoft

Windows 7 RTM Reviewed & Benchmarked 792

Posted by kdawson from the praising-with-faint-damns dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The code is final, and CNet has reviewed the final version of Windows 7, with benchmarks to support the case that it's not only the fastest version of Windows to shut down, but also looks like 'the operating system that both Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for.' The review continues: 'By fixing most of the perceived and real problems in Vista, Microsoft has laid the groundwork for the future of where Windows will go. Windows 7 presents a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X, while reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system.'"

Comment You missed the point (Score 1) 677

by trveler (#28404339) Attached to: A Mathematician's Lament — an Indictment of US Math Education
The author doesn't claim that the point is to get everyone to love it. The author claims that the point is to get everyone to realize what mathematics really is.
From TFA:
SALVIATI: If everyone were exposed to mathematics in its natural state, with all the challenging fun and surprises that that entails, I think we would see a dramatic change both in the attitude of students toward mathematics, and in our conception of what it means to be "good at math." We are losing so many potentially gifted mathematicians -- creative, intelligent people who rightly reject what appears to be a meaningless and sterile subject. They are simply too smart to waste their time on such piffle.
SIMPLICIO: But don't you think that if math class were made more like art class that a lot of kids just wouldn't learn anything?
SALVIATI: They're not learning anything now! Better to not have math classes at all than to do what is currently being done. At least some people might have a chance to discover something beautiful on their own.
SIMPLICIO: So you would remove mathematics from the school curriculum?
SALVIATI: The mathematics has already been removed! The only question is what to do with the vapid, hollow shell that remains. Of course I would prefer to replace it with an active and joyful engagement with mathematical ideas.

Comment Another teacher's take (Score 1) 677

by trveler (#28404195) Attached to: A Mathematician's Lament — an Indictment of US Math Education
Read "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" by John Taylor Gatto. Gatto is an award-winning schoolteacher in New York State, and he takes much the same anaylsis as Lockhart does for math to the entire industry of education. Only Gatto wrote his piece in 1992. http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

Comment Re:A subject dear to my heart... (Score 1) 291

by trveler (#28328823) Attached to: MS Money Poll

I'm using Quicken 2002 for Windows, running under VMware on the Mac.

KMyMoney is apparently tied to KDE 3 not 4, meaning the libs aren't cross-platform so there's no Mac-native KMyMoney.

Just curious - Why not run KMyMoney under VMware, on an OS that supports KDE 4 ?
Slashdot.org

Slashdot Keybindings, Dynamic Stories 220

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we're-still-here dept.
We've been working hard on the new dynamic Slashdot project (logged in users can enable this by enabling the beta index in their user preferences). I just wanted to quickly mention that there are keybindings on the index. The WASD and VI movement keys do stuff that we like, and the faq has the complete list. Also, if you are using Firefox or have Index2 beta enabled, you can click 'More' in the footer at the end of the page to load the next block of stories in-line without a page refresh. We're experimenting now with page sizes to balance load times against the likelihood that you'll click. More features will be coming soon, but the main thing on our agenda now is optimization. The beta index2 is sloooow and that's gotta change. We're aiming for 2 major optimizations this week (CSS Sprites, and removing an old YUI library) that I'm hoping will put the beta page render time into the "Sane" time frame (which, in case you are wondering, is several seconds faster than that "Insane" time frame we're currently seeing).

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Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it. -- John Keats

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