19569722
submission
G3ckoG33k writes:
Fact free science is not a joke, it is very much on the move and it is quite possibly the most dangerous movement in centuries, for the entire mankind. One can say it began as counter-movement to Karl Popper's ground-breaking proposals in the early 20th century, which insisted that statements purporting to describe the reality should be made falsifiable. A few decades later some critics of Popper said that statements need peer acceptance, which then makes also natural science a social phenomenon. Even later, in 1996, professor Alan Sokal submitted a famous article ridiculing the entire anti-science movement. Now New York Times has an article describing the latest chilling acts of the social relativistic postmodern loons. It is a chilling read, and they may be swinging both the political left and right. Have they been successful in transforming the world yet? How would we know?
19548988
submission
G3ckoG33k writes:
Openbenchmarking.org has received 37,027 benchmarks (mainly Linux, and some Macs) in the first week since its inauguration. 241,384 completed tests using 468,344 components from 438 hardware vendors. All results submitted by end users. I guess the hardware support for Linux must become even better thanks to this effort. Yes, the benchmarks are easy to install and run, and you can readily compare your own system anonymously with the results already submitted, using any or all of hundreds of free applications in 47 categories.
11789962
submission
G3ckoG33k writes:
An article at The Register Hardware describes how Hasselblad film cameras dating back to 1957 can be brought to a new life using a digital "back-end" to get images at a super resolution of 39 Megapixels! The article writes "The CFV-39 digital back allows you to get those cameras out from the last century and use the V-System cameras with their beautiful glass once again, it simply fits in place of where the roll film used to be. Hasselblads have never been inexpensive, but talk about a return on investment. Here is a manufacturer looking after a fiercely loyal user-base and along with it offering what could be seen as the ultimate green camera system." Oh, by the way most pictures taken during the Apollo space program in the 1960s were taken with Hasselblad.
11284724
submission
G3ckoG33k writes:
The name of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster will change to Sophophora melangaster. The reason is that scientists have by now discovered some 2,000 species of the genus and it is becoming unmanageably large. Unfortunately, the "type species" (the reference point of the genus), Drosophila funebris is rather unrelated to the D. melanogaster, and ends up in a distant part of the relationship tree. However, geneticists have, according to Google Scholar, more than 300,000 scientific articles describing inumerable aspects of the species, and will have to learn the new name as well as remembering the old. As expected, the name change has created an emotional (and practical) stir all over media. While name changes are frequent in science, as they describe new knowledge about relationships between species, these changes rarely hit economically relevant species, and when they do, people get upset. What is more important here, scientific accuracy in the naming or the practical aspects of learning a new name?
5732253
submission
G3ckoG33k writes:
According to Electronic Arts officer Rich Hilleman, "[...]the price of producing console games has rocketed, with marketing costing up to three times more than the development of a title." Wow, so that gave me yet another excuse to not feel sorry for game producers porting between platforms anymore. The burn-rate comes from the marketing guys. Are these guys really needed? Can't good titles sell on their own anymore?
2310593
submission
G3ckoG33k writes:
Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is a popular way to run Windows programs on Linux, and it has an impressive compatibility list. After 15 years of development it reached version 1.0 a few months ago. Now, Wine developer Maarten Lankhorst have succeeded in running 'Hello World' in 64-bit, natively! The 64-bit variety is unexpectedly named Wine64.
