Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Actually works to their advantage (Score 4, Interesting) 403

by Chris Daniel (#30596124) Attached to: Ginkgo Doesn't Improve Memory Or Cognitive Skills

Yes, St. John's Wort is effective. However, you should always consult with your doctor before taking it, as it can interfere with other drugs (specifically, I have read that it prevents or retards the mechanism of absorbing drugs into the bloodstream).

However, do keep in mind that the effectiveness of a single herbal medicine does not change the effectiveness of other herbal medicines.
Transportation

Appeal For Commuter GPS Logs To Aid Electric Cars 144

Posted by timothy from the where-did-you-go-this-summer dept.
holy_calamity writes "A team at Carnegie Mellon University has begun a project seeking to design a kit to cheaply convert secondhand cars into cheap, electric ones suitable for commuting, if little else. They hope to rely heavily on smart management software to extract as much efficiency as possible from regenerative braking, and knowledge of terrain from GPS tracking. But they are hampered by a lack of public data on how commuters actually drive. Their solution is to appeal to GPS users to upload .gpx log files of their commute to the team's site. The data is plugged into a simulator that reveals how much cheaper an electric car could do your journey, and an anonymized public dataset will be created. A programming contest will award a production electric car to the coder who designs the best management algorithm using it."
Censorship

Canadian Court of Appeals Decides Website Linking Isn't Libelous 75

Posted by timothy from the reelect-that-man dept.
inject_hotmail.com writes "I found this promising news over on Michael Geist's website: In an amazing display of wisdom and understanding, British Columbia (Canada) court of appeals (in a split decision) decided that it is not libelous to link to defamatory content. The judge stated that 'there is, in my view, no substantial difference between providing a web address and a mere hyperlink. Whether the hyperlink is a web address, as is often the case, or a more specific reference, both require a decision on the part of the reader to access another website, and both require the reader to take a distinct action, in the one case typing in a web address and in the other case clicking on the hyperlink. In other words, there is a barrier between the accessed article and the hyperlinked site that must be bridged, not by the publisher, but by the reader. The essence of following a hyperlink is to leave the website one was at to enter a different and independent website.' The case was brought about by B.C. businessman Wayne Crookes, who claimed that p2pnet had damaged his character by linking to websites with which he did not agree. Presumedly, the website with the actual content in question is outside of the purview of the Canadian courts; however, p2pnet is not."
Sun Microsystems

Sneak Peek At Sun's SPARC Server Roadmap 113

Posted by Soulskill from the measuring-stick-for-oracle dept.
The folks at The Register have gotten their hands on Sun's confidential roadmap from June, which outlines the company's plans for SPARC product lines. The chart has some basic technical details for the UltraSPARC T-series and the SPARC64 line. The long-anticipated "Rock" line is not mentioned. "We can expect a goosed SPARC64-VII+ chip any day now, which will run at 2.88 GHz and which will be a four-core, eight-threaded chip like its 'Jupiter' predecessor. This Jupiter+ chip is implemented in the same 65 nanometer process as the Jupiter chip was, and it is made by Fujitsu, a company that is in the process of outsourcing its chip manufacturing to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. ... not only has Sun cut back on the threads with [the 2010 UltraSPARC model, codenamed Rainbow Falls], it has also cut back on the socket count, keeping it at the same four sockets used by the T5440 server. And instead of hitting something close to 2 GHz as it should be able to do as it shifts from a 65 nanometer to a 45 nanometer process in the middle of 2010, Sun is only telling customers that it can boost clock speeds to 1.67 GHz with Rainbow Falls."
Internet Explorer

Reports of IE Hijacking NXDOMAINs, Routing To Bing 230

Posted by kdawson from the if-I-want-bing-I-will-type-bing dept.
Jaeden Stormes writes "We just started getting word of a new browser hijack from our sales force. 'Some site called Bing?' they said. Sure enough, since the patches last night, their IE6 and IE7 installations are now routing all NXDOMAINs to Bing. Try it out — put in something like www.DoNotHijackMe.com." We've had mixed results here confirming this: one report that up-to-date IE8 behaves as described. Others tried installing all offered updates to systems running IE6 and IE7 and got no hijacking.
Update: 08/11 23:24 GMT by KD : Readers are reporting that it's not Bing that comes up for a nonexistent domain, it's the user's default search engine (noting that at least one Microsoft update in the past changed the default to Bing). There may be nothing new here.

Comment Re:Electric Universe? (Score 1) 102

by Chris Daniel (#28359013) Attached to: Measuring the Hubble Constant Better

I am disappointed that this was the best you could come up with to support your theory. The existence of cosmic plasmas such as those encountered by the TSS-1R mission is quite widely accepted. Proving that they have the effects claimed by the theory you apparently advocate is quite another matter.

I read the first chapter of the book on electric-cosmos.org, and it mostly seems to be jeering at the complexity and unintuitive nature of current theories, while also heavily emphasizing the "unprovability" of any type of astrophysical theory. How convenient. Perhaps it's a bit tough on the underdog supporters, but when it comes to scientific inquiry, the burden of proof is very much upon the challenging theory. So far, the "electric universe" crowd has produced absolutely nothing compelling, other than cries of "help help, I'm being repressed!"

It's easier for me to believe the majority of scientists ("scientific dogma" if you prefer) than an ostracized minority. There is a large difference between keeping an open mind and pouring my uneducated (I'm not an astrophysicist) efforts into supporting a currently unacceptable theory.

Comment Re:Electric Universe? (Score 1) 102

by Chris Daniel (#28272231) Attached to: Measuring the Hubble Constant Better
The website is what I was questioning, really, although another reply hits on the fact that simply being an assistant to Hubble does not necessarily make a person credible. electric-cosmos.org is a proponent of the "electric universe" "theory" -- which has been thoroughly rejected over and over, but remains a favourite of the conspiracy theorist type.

Slashdot Top Deals

The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.

Close