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Science

EU Scientists Working On Laser To Rip a Hole In Spacetime 575

astroengine writes "Those pesky physicists are at it again; they want to build a laser so powerful that it will literally rip spacetime apart. Why? To prove the existence of virtual particles in the quantum vacuum, potentially unravel extra dimensions and possibly find the root of dark matter. The $1.6 billion Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility (known as ELI) will be built somewhere in Europe by the end of the decade and physicists are hoping the ten high-powered lasers — delivering 200 petawatts of power at a target for less than a trillionth of a second — will turn up some surprises about the very fabric of the Universe."
Hardware Hacking

Japanese Military Invents Tumbling, Flying Sphere 156

thebchuckster writes "A Japanese developer has released a cool, new sphere that is billed as being able to go where humans can't. The sphere is 17-inches, features eight movable rudders, and can hover in the air for at least eight minutes. While reaching speeds of up to 37 miles per hour, the sphere deftly moves through the air without much effort. It doesn't take much to get it up in the air and moving, and it will be adept at going into tight areas."
United States

America: Like It Or Unfriend It 277

Hugh Pickens writes "As we celebrate America's birthday today, head over the to the NY Times and take a look at a very clever 'op-art' creation, 'Like it or Unfriend It' by Teddy Wayne, Mike Sacks, and Thomas Ng, that represents what 'America's Wall' would look like through our history. Beginning with 'Christopher Columbus wrote on America's wall: 'This IS India, right?,' through 'America added Great Britain to Kingdoms I am Fighting With,' through 'The South has changed its privacy settings to accept carpetbaggers,' and finishing with 'America stopped playing the game Wild-Goose Chase While Nation-Building,' and 'America has joined the China Network' the wall includes dozens of invitations, likes, posts and changes to privacy settings that shows a summary of American history as seen from a Facebook perspective. Our favorite from the 1980s: 'Ronald Reagan created a page: "Trickle-Down Economics" followed by "Half a million upper-income people like this.'" For another take on 4th of July data visualization, Tim O'Reilly points out flag.codeforamerica.org, which aggregates twitter posts tagged #July4 into an evolving flag tapestry.

Comment The second paddle (Score 1) 196

I most certainly have the source to a pong clone [for OpenGL and GLUT] that will compile on OSX, Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows out of the box. Not even an ifdef.

What controls are used for the second paddle in this Pong clone? If a gamepad, then since when does GLUT support gamepads? If another computer, then since when does the same networking code work without modification (not even WSAStartup()) on Windows?

Comment Re:Your model is wrong (Score 1) 1051

The problem with advertising on the internet is that people who want to advertise are not considering customs. When people watch television, they expect to see commercials. It has become a part of social life. When we go to a movie theater, we expect film advertisements before the show but not during it. When we read a newspaper, we expect ads to be printed in a certain way. If we want to buy something online, we go to something like craigslist, Amazon, or we just search for it.

But it is not our social custom to just click on ads blinking on the screen when we are not looking for something to buy. Our brains just blocked it out. When advertisers realized that, they became increasingly aggressive. They even went as far to become malicious. Now peoples' perception of browsing is that they must do it safely. Because of all the malware propagated through ads and the methods these advertisers use, this kind of business is effectively dead.

Comment Re:Meanwhile... (Score 3, Informative) 196

A simple demo game written on a Fedora system runs perfectly on [other Linux operating systems], but nobody paid for a press conference.

Unless the game was developed using the Allegro library. Distributions that switched to PulseAudio broke sound in Allegro games because PulseAudio does not like unsigned 16-bit PCM.

Comment Re:Not buying Neweggs explanation (Score 1) 447

A photo might take care of the window, if looked at from a distance. But having small plastic mockups look way cooler.

It adds costs. Besides, many people already pointed out that Intel would be happy to provide its partners with "mechanical samples" of the processor - its early prototypes. All it takes is to apply some voltage/amperage to some pins to burn the bonding wires, and then the chip is dead. There is plenty of reasons to ship mechanical samples because customers would like to hold them in their hands - something you don't do with real parts. Milling or die-casting an aluminum hunk to look like the CPU does nothing to promote the product, costs extra money compared to free prototypes, and hurts Intel's credibility.

what if for some reason (building entire walls out of them...) Asian countries needed huge amounts of these demo boxes? Which would give them a plausible reason to manufacture these locally.

Reason - yes, but not the right. The boxes carry Intel's trademark and claim to contain Intel products inside. They even have the barcode that matches a real product. What reason could possibly exist to create a real barcode for a demo box while any fake one, with a wrong checksum, would do?

Comment Tough Shit... (Score 1) 1051

If you decide to create a website, or a blog with original content in it, you are not entitled to profit, consider yourself lucky if you even get any. The more annoying people make advertising the more intensive scripts will be made to ignore them, advertising companies and content creators need to realize that the popup add and sidebanners are becoming more and more obsolete in this day, people will not be buying random bullshit that they see in an ad on their internet browser, especially in this economy. The consumer knows what they want, and they will use the correct resources to make these purchases when the time comes (Google, Newegg, Amazon, etc). Ad companies need to realize that they are in an obsolete business and need to either adapt or die.

Comment Re:RTFA (Score 2, Informative) 300

Doing it with a plough might work, but copper is a lot more robust than fibre (especially for fairly vague definitions of connection quality). Running it alongside the power lines is probably the most cost effective way to do the planning, but you still have to pay someone to go up the pole and add another one. Again, you're not saving a huge percentage by already having the poles (probably enough to pick it over trenching though). Long-haul fibre can span transoceanic distances. If you have dispersion-compensating segments you can get it up to a few hundred km without significant bandwidth loss on the to-the-home scale.

Comment Re:RTFA (Score 2, Insightful) 300

Fine. How much would you like to go and dig a trench across 100 km of sun-scorched dirt? Oh, and it has to be properly done - not just buried, but surveyed and ducted, and flood proof, and bushfire proof, and wombat proof (no I'm not kidding, the little buggers dig like mad). The cost of the fibre is, in comparison, bugger all. It's the cost of laying it that makes the difference between fibre and satellite as the best choice to Farmer Trev.

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