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Math

Submission + - Cambridge puts Isaac Newton's notes online (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by nhstar
nhstar writes: If you're looking for a bit of light reading this holiday season, Cambridge University is here to help: they've digitized and made available online over 4,000 pages of the pioneering scientist and mathemetician Sir Isaac Newton's most important works.

  "Anyone, wherever they are, can see at the click of a mouse how Newton worked and how he went about developing his theories and experiments," Cambridge University Library's digitization manager Grant Young told the BBC.

Comment Re:non-story (Score 1) 315

by wkurzius (#35381550) Attached to: Apple: You Must Be 17+ To Use Opera

True, but it's a system that has led to a lot of bad PR ever since the App Store came around.

I'm sure they think parental controls are a good thing. Parents can leave the room for 5 minutes and not worry about their kid ending up on meatspin or whatever. However, it leads to all these other seemingly stupid warnings and restrictions, and if Apple decided to not use them, they would be the primary target of every angry and irresponsible parent out there.

Comment Re:Learn better (Score 3, Interesting) 218

by wkurzius (#33117766) Attached to: NAMCO Takes Down Student <em>Pac-man</em> Project

The reason answers exist in the back of math textbooks is not for cheating. They are there so you can check your methods and determine if you are going about things the right way.

One of my first programming experiences was making a tic-tac-toe game on the TI-83 my high school gave me. I knew the game already, I knew how it was supposed to look and work, and therefore allowed to me to concentrate on the method only. I had the answer, I just needed to figure out how to get there.

Scratch is a learning tool, aimed at elementary students, perhaps going into high school bit. Maybe the students (assuming they're students) shouldn't have posted the project online, but I encourage them to rip off every game they need to until they're comfortable enough to make their own.
Politics

Submission + - Obama's Twitter Account "Hacked" (wsj.com) 1

Submitted by Oxford_Comma_Lover
Oxford_Comma_Lover writes: A 24-year-old living with his mother in France was arrested for "hacking" into Obama's twitter accounts. Apparently he guesses the answer to a question related to password recovery in order to break into the accounts of famous people; he has no computer science training or financial motive. He posted screenshots to a few boards and twitter found out within a few hours, either from a tip or from noticing when someone from France logs onto twitter as the President of the United States. (He did not actually tweet as POTUS, but just wanted to show he could break into the account.)
Privacy

FCC Asks You To Test Your Broadband Speeds 454

Posted by kdawson from the your-mileage-will-vary dept.
AnotherUsername writes "The Federal Communications Commission is asking the nation's broadband and smartphone users to use its broadband testing tools to help the feds and consumers know what speeds are actually available, not just promised by the nation's telecoms. At http://www.broadband.gov/, users enter their address and test their broadband download speed, upload speed, latency, and jitter using one of two tests (users can choose to test with the other after one test is complete). The FCC is requiring the street address, as it 'may use this data to analyze broadband quality and availability on a geographic basis' (they promise not to release location data except in the aggregate). The agency is also asking those who live in a broadband 'dead zone' to fill out a report online, call, fax, email, or even send a letter. The announcement comes just six days before the FCC presents the first ever national broadband plan to Congress. Java is necessary to run the test." Lauren Weinstein points out some of the limitations in the FCC's testing methodology.
PC Games (Games)

An Early Look At Civilization V 286

Posted by Soulskill from the new-and-shiny dept.
c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders, and a potentially game-changing, one-unit-per-tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums."

Submission + - ABC Pulls Channels From Cablevision (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by wkurzius
wkurzius writes: Cablevision and ABC have failed to come to agreement after two years of negotiations, and as a result ABC has pulled all their channels from the Cablevision lineup. The dispute is over $40 million in retransmission fees that Cablevision says they won't give to ABC. On the other side, Cablevision has been accused of pocketing $8 billion last year and not being fair to their customers.
Privacy

Submission + - Woman Seeks Husband For Health Insurance (singularityhub.com) 3

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: Terri Carlson is willing to marry you for your healthcare. This 45 year old woman suffers from a genetic condition, C4 Complement Deficiency, which causes her body to attack itself (similar to Lupus). Faced with skyrocketing health costs, and unable to get insurance (she’s currently on COBRA), Terri did the only thing she could do: she built a website and got on YouTube. Carlson’s situation challenges the courts under a statute already on the books: GINA. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 keeps insurance companies from using genetic data to deny you coverage.
Linux

Submission + - 64-bits Flash Player for Linux finally in Alpha (adobe.com) 1

Submitted by Luchio
Luchio writes: Finally, a little bit of respect from Adobe with this alpha release of the Adobe Flash Player 10 that was made available for all Linux 64-bits enthusiasts! As noted, "this is a prerelease version", so handle with care. Just remove any existing flash player and extract the new .so file in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins (or /usr/lib/opera/plugins).

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