Comment Re:Reddit's down, guess I'll check out slashdot. (Score 1) 125
I'm back here because Reddit is down too.
Comment system is not bad.
Stories are good.
Comment Re:Why not neither? (Score 2, Insightful) 289
The thing is, most people with a Nokia phone never install a 3rd-party app.
Comment Re:Why not both? (Score 3, Informative) 289
It's real Java. You can use most existing Java libraries. What's different is:
* It uses its own bytecode and its own virtual machine instead of the JVM.
* It uses its own GUI libraries rather than AWT or Swing.
So, you basically need to write your UI from scratch - but otherwise you can reuse any existing Java libraries and source code.
Comment Re:Android 256MB App Storage Limit (Score 2, Informative) 347
Applications can store all of their data files and resources on your SD card. Many do already. It's just the executable code that has to be installed locally.
Comment Re:Where would such technologies be really useful? (Score 1) 257
NX is great for programmers. When I'm coding, I have 30 emacs windows open, 10 terminals, 50 tabs in Firefox, etc., spread across several virtual desktops. It takes a while to recreate that state, especially when it's not just the windows, but a lot of useful stuff in each one. With NX, I can grab my laptop for a while and within 5 seconds I'm accessing the same desktop, with no perceptible latency. I just need to scroll a bit since I'm viewing a large desktop on a small screen - but it's much better to scroll a bit and continue coding where I left off, than to recreate my state on my laptop. Then later I close my laptop, go back to my desktop and now I have a nice big monitor again. It's a seamless transition.
OpenOffice Vs. Google Apps 336
jammag writes "Both OpenOffice and Google Apps are free, so the choice is purely down to which is better. Bruce Byfield, after looking at both, concluded, 'comparing Google Apps to OpenOffice.org is like clubbing a staked-out bunny — Google Apps is so far behind that the whole exercise seems like an exercise in pointless cruelty.' Ouch, that hurts."
Comment Re:Sigh... (Score 1) 783
The Dell is 1.33" thick compared to 0.95" for the MacBook. That's how they save money.
Submission + - Mac users' Internet experience to remain seamless 2
thefickler writes: Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it was intended, thanks to the renewal of a font licensing agreement between Microsoft and Apple. At TypeCon2007 Microsoft and Apple announced they have renewed their font licensing agreement, giving Apple users ongoing use of the latest versions of Microsoft Windows core fonts.
Back in 1996 Microsoft started the "Core fonts for the Web" initiative. The idea of this initiative was to create a a standard pack of fonts that would be present on all or most computers, allowing web pages to be displayed consistently on different computers. While the project was terminated in 2002, some of the fonts defined as core fonts for the web have gone on to become known as "web safe fonts", and are therefore widely used by Internet developers.
Back in 1996 Microsoft started the "Core fonts for the Web" initiative. The idea of this initiative was to create a a standard pack of fonts that would be present on all or most computers, allowing web pages to be displayed consistently on different computers. While the project was terminated in 2002, some of the fonts defined as core fonts for the web have gone on to become known as "web safe fonts", and are therefore widely used by Internet developers.
Googlebot and Document.Write 180
With JavaScript/AJAX being used to place dynamic content in pages, I was wondering how Google indexed web page content that was placed in a page using the JavaScript "document.write" method. I created a page with six unique words in it. Two were in the plain HTML; two were in a script within the page document; and two were in a script that was externally sourced from a different server. The page appeared in the Google index late last night and I just wrote up the results.
Bilingualism Delays Onset of Dementia 472
Dee writes with word of a Canadian study indicating that lifelong bilingualism delays the onset of dementia by 4 years. The scientists were reportedly "dazzled" by the results. From the article: "The researchers determined that the mean age of onset of dementia symptoms in the monolingual group was 71.4 years, while the bilingual group was 75.5 years. This difference remained even after considering the possible effect of cultural differences, immigration, formal education, employment and even gender as influencers in the results. "
Comment Re:So, can someone please tell me... (Score 3, Informative) 313
Sorry for all the posts: I now really hate the "HTML formatted" box.
The standard press description is a little confusing. A good way to think about the subject is that atomic clocks are extremely good frequency standards, which incidentally makes them good time standards as well (if I have a pendulum that oscillates once per second, I can measure time by counting the number of oscillations).
The idea behind all atomic clocks is that atoms are very picky about the kinds of light they absorb and emit (that's how astronomers can tell what kinds of atoms make up stars). There are some frequencies of light that interact very strongly with any given kind of atom, and some frequencies where the light barely interacts at all. When the atom absorbs a photon, it jumps to a higher energy state, when it emits a photon, it jumps to a lower energy state.
If you look carefully at the spectrum of light that an atom absorbs or emits, you'll find that the atom isn't equally picky about every kind of transition that it can make. There are some transitions (in cesium, they're called hyperfine transitions) where the atom isn't just picky, it's positively fastidious. What you'll find is that if you want to excite these transitions, you'll have to shine light that is exactly the right frequency, plus or minus a tiny amount (the "linewidth" -- literally, if you plotted absorbtion vs. frequency, the width of the peak you would see on the graph.)
So reasoning backwards, if I'm shining a laser at a cavity of cesium atoms and I measure that they're strongly absorbing the light, then I know the frequency of the laser has to be *exactly* the frequency that excites the atom, plus or minus a tiny linewidth. So I can count the oscillations of my laser and figure out how much time has elapsed. That's basically how an atomic clock works.
But if you wanted to get really anal about it, you could point out that I really don't know the exact frequency of my laser at all -- all I know is that it's the frequency of the atomic transition, plus or minus the linewidth. So if a hypothetical Alice and Bob in adjacent laboratories had lasers locked to the same transition, it's possible that Alice could have her laser locked at the atomic transition frequency minus a linewidth, while Bob has his locked at the atomic transition frequency plus a linewidth. (The linewidth was chosen to be really small, but it's still not zero: also, really narrow lines are hard to lock a laser to, so there's always a tradeoff involved.) So Alice and Bob's clocks will drift a tiny bit relative to each other. But because the linewidth is so small, it will take an insane number of oscillations before Bob measures that one more second has passed than Alice measures. The "1 second in 30 billion years" is just a reflection of this: it measures the linewidth of the transition relative to the frequency of light involved.
The appeal of using Mercury or Strontium atoms (small world: one of my best friends is also working on a Strontium time standard) is that they have a special transition that is even narrower relative to the transition frequency than Cesium's hyperfine transition.
The standard press description is a little confusing. A good way to think about the subject is that atomic clocks are extremely good frequency standards, which incidentally makes them good time standards as well (if I have a pendulum that oscillates once per second, I can measure time by counting the number of oscillations).
The idea behind all atomic clocks is that atoms are very picky about the kinds of light they absorb and emit (that's how astronomers can tell what kinds of atoms make up stars). There are some frequencies of light that interact very strongly with any given kind of atom, and some frequencies where the light barely interacts at all. When the atom absorbs a photon, it jumps to a higher energy state, when it emits a photon, it jumps to a lower energy state.
If you look carefully at the spectrum of light that an atom absorbs or emits, you'll find that the atom isn't equally picky about every kind of transition that it can make. There are some transitions (in cesium, they're called hyperfine transitions) where the atom isn't just picky, it's positively fastidious. What you'll find is that if you want to excite these transitions, you'll have to shine light that is exactly the right frequency, plus or minus a tiny amount (the "linewidth" -- literally, if you plotted absorbtion vs. frequency, the width of the peak you would see on the graph.)
So reasoning backwards, if I'm shining a laser at a cavity of cesium atoms and I measure that they're strongly absorbing the light, then I know the frequency of the laser has to be *exactly* the frequency that excites the atom, plus or minus a tiny linewidth. So I can count the oscillations of my laser and figure out how much time has elapsed. That's basically how an atomic clock works.
But if you wanted to get really anal about it, you could point out that I really don't know the exact frequency of my laser at all -- all I know is that it's the frequency of the atomic transition, plus or minus the linewidth. So if a hypothetical Alice and Bob in adjacent laboratories had lasers locked to the same transition, it's possible that Alice could have her laser locked at the atomic transition frequency minus a linewidth, while Bob has his locked at the atomic transition frequency plus a linewidth. (The linewidth was chosen to be really small, but it's still not zero: also, really narrow lines are hard to lock a laser to, so there's always a tradeoff involved.) So Alice and Bob's clocks will drift a tiny bit relative to each other. But because the linewidth is so small, it will take an insane number of oscillations before Bob measures that one more second has passed than Alice measures. The "1 second in 30 billion years" is just a reflection of this: it measures the linewidth of the transition relative to the frequency of light involved.
The appeal of using Mercury or Strontium atoms (small world: one of my best friends is also working on a Strontium time standard) is that they have a special transition that is even narrower relative to the transition frequency than Cesium's hyperfine transition.
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