Comment Re:we need to stop coddling stupidity. (Score 1) 81
This is straight-up the best metaphor ever.
Comment This seems very familiar (Score 1) 538
From here.
I guess it's not exactly the same, as the previous one didn't use the Drake Equation...but close enough for me to raise an eyebrow.
Dinosaur Auction In Las Vegas 82
Xerfas writes "If you ever dreamed of owning your own dinosaur, here's your chance. Possibly the most impressive natural history auction ever is set to take place Oct. 3 at the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas. Here you can find everything from the T.rex to a duck-billed dinosaur and a mammoth skeleton."
How To Make Electronic Displays With Mood Ring Ink 33
Soychemist writes "Print some thermochromic ink onto a sheet of paper, put metal heating elements on the other side, and you have a rudimentary color-changing display. Chemists in the Whitesides Group at Harvard think that the devices could be used to provide a simple readout from cheap medical tests and kits that check water for pollutants. In the past year, the same scientists have made a three-cent medical test and improvised a centrifuge with an egg beater. Their aim is to invent useful gizmos with everyday materials."
Comment Re:Unpopular (Score 1) 836
To be fair, 98-99% of people who voted are probably slashdotters.
Computers Key To Air France Crash 911
Michael_Curator writes "It's no secret that commercial airplanes are heavily computerized, but as the mystery of Air France Flight 447 unfolds, we need to come to grips with the fact that in many cases, airline pilots' hands are tied when it comes to responding effectively to an emergency situation. Boeing planes allow pilots to take over from computers during emergency situations, Airbus planes do not. It's not a design flaw — it's a philosophical divide. It's essentially a question of what do you trust most: a human being's ingenuity or a computer's infinitely faster access and reaction to information. It's not surprising that an American company errs on the side of individual freedom while a European company is more inclined to favor an approach that relies on systems. As passengers, we should have the right to ask whether we're putting our lives in the hands of a computer rather than the battle-tested pilot sitting up front, and we should have right to deplane if we don't like the answer."
Comment Re:Broken... (Score 1) 291
I think it's in the title - Nintendo Announces New <em>Mario Bros</em>, <em>Mario Galaxy</em>, <em>Metroid<!--</a-->
Comment Re:dangle tags at your own peril (Score 5, Funny) 291
This story needs /emphasis
Comment Good Riddance (Score 1) 125
While the article metnions the awful client software and (easily bypassed, but still annoying) DRM and WMA format, perhaps my greatest issues with it were the metadata and album completion.
Simply trying to download an album from their selection would usually reveal that several tracks were missing. In my brief time using it, I found very few complete albums. I had wondered if this was a copyright issue with certain songs, but I discovered that some of the missing songs from albums were present on compilation albums by the same artist.
Once you had perhaps piecemealed an album together from Ruckus's offerings, the metadata was often horrible. Even without assembling an album from different tracks, I found that songs from an album would have different album titles, incorrect song names, missing or incorrect track numbers, or sometimes even the incorrect artist. I would often have to correct the metadata on a file-by-file basis instead of trying to identify what song it really was in my Winamp music library.
The fact that the organization no longer exists comes as no surprise to me.
Simply trying to download an album from their selection would usually reveal that several tracks were missing. In my brief time using it, I found very few complete albums. I had wondered if this was a copyright issue with certain songs, but I discovered that some of the missing songs from albums were present on compilation albums by the same artist.
Once you had perhaps piecemealed an album together from Ruckus's offerings, the metadata was often horrible. Even without assembling an album from different tracks, I found that songs from an album would have different album titles, incorrect song names, missing or incorrect track numbers, or sometimes even the incorrect artist. I would often have to correct the metadata on a file-by-file basis instead of trying to identify what song it really was in my Winamp music library.
The fact that the organization no longer exists comes as no surprise to me.
Ruckus Closes Down 125
An anonymous reader writes "According to TechCrunch, Ruckus, the ad-supported music service targeted at college students, has closed down for good. Ruckus was notable for its poorly-designed client software and .wma-only DRM-laden catalog of 3,000,000 tracks, somewhat less than half the size of the iTunes catalog."
Comment Re:Here's my logic bomb! (Score 1) 303
Decrease, apparently, because that's Anselm's ontological argument.
IU's Choice of Search Engine ChaCha "Explained" 94
theodp sends a follow-up to the discussion here a couple of months back about Indiana University librarians and students being forced to use the 'human-powered' ChaCha search engine because IU's President and one of its Trustees were business buddies of ChaCha CEO (and IU alum) Scott Jones. Don't be ridiculous, insisted indignant IU officials. It was ChaCha's ability to fill in gaps in a speech he was writing in 2007 that convinced IU's CIO that the University had to do a deal with ChaCha. What a coincidence, notes Valleywag. The need to fill in gaps in a speech he was writing back in 2005 is what convinced ChaCha CEO Jones that he had to create ChaCha in the first place. Way to anticipate what your customers need before they do.
Google's Ban of an Anti-MoveOn.org Ad 476
Whip-hero writes in with an Examiner.com story about Google's rejection of an ad critical of MoveOn.org. The story rehashes the controversy over MoveOn.org's ad that ran in the NYTimes on the first day of testimony of Gen. Petraeus's Senate testimony. The rejected ad was submitted on behalf of Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins — its text is reproduced in the article. The implication, which has been picked up by many blogs on the other side of the spectrum from MoveOn.org, is that Google acted out of political favoritism. Not so, says Google's policy counsel: Google's trademark policy allows any trademark holder to request that its marks not be used in ads; and MoveOn.org had made such a request.
Solar Cells Crystallized Out of Molten Silicon 83
Hot Toddy sends in a link to a story up on Digital World Tokyo about a more efficient process for manufacturing solar cells. It involves dropping molten silicon from a height of 14 m; surface tension causes tiny spheres 1 mm in diameter to form; the silicon crystallizes in the 1.5 seconds of free-fall. The spheres can be mounted on surfaces of any shape. They capture light from many directions, increasing their solar efficiency. Kyosemi is the company behind the Sphelar technology. Some of the pages on this site date to 2003 and the status of most listed Sphelar products is either "under development" or "engineering sample is available."
Intel X38 High End Chipset Launch and Benchmarks 87
MojoKid writes "Though many leaks of the product have been circulating for some time, Intel officially took the wraps off and launched their new X38 Express chipset for the high-end desktop motherboard market. With this launch, the Intel desktop chipset line-up gets a new flagship. Intel's new X38 chipset encompasses all of the technology advances that have made the P35 a success and adds a slew of new features designed to increase memory and graphics subsystem performance, like PCI Express 2.0 SerDes and Intel Extreme Memory technology in the new X38 MCH. The Asus motherboard tested by HotHardware even features an embedded Linux-based OS that boots in a matter a seconds."
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In these matters the only certainty is that there is nothing certain. -- Pliny the Elder
