casals - Slashdot User

Submission + - Newsweek will go all-digital in 2013 (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by

Tony Isaac

on Thursday October 18, 2012 @01:43PM

Tony Isaac writes: "Newsweek has announced that it will cease print publication at the end of the year, going all-digital. The new digital edition will still be based on a subscription model. Who will be next?"

Submission + - Dolphins can sleep one-half of their brain at a time say researchers (slashgear.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18, 2012 @12:48PM

An anonymous reader writes: Looks like the evolution in multi-core computing is something nature has already figured out. Dolphins will sleep one core while the other remains vigilant, running background tasks necessary for survival

Submission + - First planet found in a four-star system... by amateur planet hunters

Submitted by

The Bad Astronomer

on Monday October 15, 2012 @11:33AM

The Bad Astronomer writes: "For the first time, a planet has been found in a stellar system composed of four stars. The planet, called PH-1, orbits a binary star made of two sun-like stars in a tight orbit. That binary is itself orbited by another binary pair much farther out. Even more amazing, this planet was found by two "citizen scientists", amateurs who participated in Planet Hunters, a project which puts Kepler Observatory data online for lay people to analyze. At least two confirmed planets have been found by this project, but this is the first — ever — in a quaternary system."

Submission + - Reiser4 File-System Still In Development (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15, 2012 @11:19AM

An anonymous reader writes: Reiser4 still hasn't been merged into the mainline Linux kernel, but it's still being worked on by a small group of developers following Hans Reiser being convicted for murdering his wife. Reiser4 was updated in September on SourceForge to work with the Linux 3.5 kernel and has been benchmarked against EXT4, Btrfs, XFS, and ReiserFS. Reiser4 loses out in most of the Linux file-system performance tests, has much stigma due to Hans Reiser, and Btrfs is surpassing it feature-wise, so does it have any future in Linux ahead?

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Best Book Or Game To Introduce Kids To Programming? 1

Submitted by connorblack on Monday October 15, 2012 @09:42AM

connorblack writes: My very gifted nephew is about to turn 9 this month and I would love to get him some sort of fun, engaging book or game to introduce him to the basic concepts of programming. I have a feeling if approached correctly he would absolutely devour the subject (he is already working through mathematics at an 8th grade level). What I first was looking at were the Lego Mindstorm programmable robots- which would have been perfect, if only they weren't around 300 dollars... So if there's anything similar (or completely new!) you've either heard praise about or used yourself with your kids, it would be great to get a recommendation. Also if possible I would want to stick to an under 100 dollar budget.

Submission + - Amazon considering buying Texas Instrument's Chip Business (slashgear.com)

Submitted by puddingebola on Monday October 15, 2012 @09:31AM

puddingebola writes: From the article, "Amazon is reportedly in “advanced negotiations” to acquire Texas Instruments’ OMAP chip division, bringing chip design for its Kindle tablets in-house, and helping TI refocus on embedded systems. The deal in discussion, Calcalist reports, follows TI’s public distancing from its own phone and tablet chip business in the face of rising competition from Qualcomm, Samsung, and others, though Amazon taking charge of OMAP could leave rivals Barnes & Noble in a tricky situation."

Submission + - Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech (washingtonpost.com) 4

Submitted by

concealment

on Monday October 15, 2012 @08:14AM

concealment writes: "In the face of the violence that frequently results from anti-religious expression, some world leaders seem to be losing their patience with free speech. After a video called “Innocence of Muslims” appeared on YouTube and sparked violent protests in several Muslim nations last month, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that “when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others’ values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.”

It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance. As Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard put it in her recent speech before the United Nations, “Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.”"

Comment Damn (Score 2) 393

by casals on Tuesday May 17, 2011 @07:56AM (#36151760) Attached to: Boot Linux In Your Browser

No man pages.

Comment From Google Translator (Score 1) 226

by casals on Tuesday September 28, 2010 @09:34AM (#33721336) Attached to: Soviet Shuttle Buran Found In a Junk Heap

"And unprecedented case. Seemingly abandoned spaceship on the streets of Moscow - it is something from the realm of fantasy. But alas, this is the true reality. Correspondent "MK" discovered orbiting Soviet "Buran" play like garbage on the outskirts of the capital. Nobody cares what was once a symbol of cosmic power of our country.
Natalia Muschinkina"

Comment Final mission (Score 1) 119

by casals on Wednesday April 14, 2010 @02:50PM (#31848126) Attached to: NASA To Send a Humanoid Robot On Shuttle's Final Mission

Does it mean we won't see the D.2 version of the robot flying around?

Comment Backspace (Score 2, Funny) 114

by casals on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @03:06PM (#31587842) Attached to: Research Lets You Type Words By Thought Alone

How does it work? "The brown dog jumped over the lazy fo no wait that's wrong no dammit erase it no don't write erase no no you no erase e ra se back go back backspace erase it oh era no you fucking piece of shit just erase the fucking thing oh gosh how do you start again new control n new document create new fuck work thats it Im taking off this fuck--"

For GUIs, Just the Right Degree of Realism 256

Posted by timothy on Friday January 22, 2010 @09:36AM from the insightful-line-drawing dept.

mr crypto writes "User interfaces make copious use of pictures and symbols, but how abstract should images be? Lukas Mathis has an interesting blog entry on where to draw the line."

Making a Liquid Invisibility Cloak 93

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday January 08, 2010 @02:37PM from the pour-to-order dept.

Researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai, China are proposing a method which could lead to the first soft, tunable metamaterial, the key ingredient in building an invisibility device. "The fluid proposed by Ji-Ping Huang of Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and colleagues, contains magnetite balls 10 nanometers in diameter, coated with a 5-nanometer-thick layer of silver, possibly with polymer chains attached to keep them from clumping. In the absence of a magnetic field, such nanoparticles would simply float around in the water, but if a field were introduced, the particles would self-assemble into chains whose lengths depend on the strength of the field, and which can also attract one another to form thicker columns. The chains and columns would lie along the direction of the magnetic field. If they were oriented vertically in a pool of water, light striking the surface would refract negatively – bent in way that no natural material can manage."

Net Users In Belarus May Soon Have To Register 89

Posted by timothy on Monday January 04, 2010 @03:59AM from the not-just-register-their-displeasure dept.

Cwix writes "A new law proposed in Belarus would require all net users and online publications to register with the state: 'Belarus' authoritarian leader is promising to toughen regulation of the Internet and its users in an apparent effort to exert control over the last fully free medium in the former Soviet state. He told journalists that a new Internet bill, proposed Tuesday, would require the registration and identification of all online publications and of each Web user, including visitors to Internet cafes. Web service providers would have to report this information to police, courts, and special services.'"

Comment Collateral (Score 1) 134

by casals on Wednesday December 30, 2009 @03:37PM (#30598356) Attached to: The Rise of Machine-Written Journalism

"[...] The latest iteration of NewsScope 'scans and automatically extracts critical pieces of information' from US corporate press releases [...]" The interesting thing on it is that it could actually raise (again) the text quality on articles (regarding grammatical correctness), since the press releases are usually carefully reviewed, and the automated part would be just a copy-and-paste process. I don't know how it goes in the US, but here in Brazil we used to have the best writing guides published by our newspapers editors - something like "The NY Times Manual of Style and Usage". They're still published, actually, but apparently not used.

Probably due to the advent of web-based latest news, the article authors are not necessarily journalists or professional writes in any way - which means the grammar is usually bad (often really bad), with errors *way* beyond the common typos. It means the articles are not even spell-checked (typos wouldn't survive here - come on, you have spell checking on Slashdot commenting!), and there's no way to get them revised or something. I've already tried to click on those please-let-us-know-what-you-thought-about-it links, and found out that they have a binary filter: you're either appraising the author or being rude/disrespectful/offensive, therefore the comment will be ignored. As an example, the last comment I made was: "Please, review you article. It's full of typos and grammar errors". Obviously, evil-flagged.

Slashdot Top Deals