dcclark - Slashdot User

Map of Web Content By Perspective 79

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 11, 2008 @02:23PM from the imperfect-but-neat dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Cruxlux has a perspective-based search engine up. It provides a map of results laid out by viewpoint. For example, querying 'Obama' shows a map with liberal blog posts, articles, and video clumped together, conservative stuff nearby, and nonpolitical sources farther away. It works for nonpolitical queries too (sports, etc.). It also lets you limit results to certain types of views — you can focus on hot 'Obama' content from a liberal angle, for instance."

Ask Blizzard Employees About Things That Matter 504

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 06, 2008 @02:44PM from the opportune-moment dept.

In just a few days, some of us will be making the trek to this year's Blizzcon event in Anaheim, CA. In addition to the interesting announcements, sneak peeks, and other distractions, we will be sitting down with several Blizzard employees to answer any questions you might have. So far we have scheduled some time with Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II; Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft; Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III; and Paul Sams, Blizzard COO. Please address your questions to one (or several) of these candidates and try to keep them civil and on topic. Questions about Diablo III's art style will most likely be omitted since we have limited time and that dead horse has already been beaten into submission. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply, but beyond that, the sky is the limit.

RIAA Loses $222K Verdict 342

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday September 25, 2008 @11:10AM from the turning-tide dept.

jriding writes "The $222,000 verdict against Jammy Thomas for copyright infringement by P2P is no more. US District Court Judge Michael Davis dismissed the verdict, saying it was based on the faulty 'making available' theory of distribution."

Does It Suck To Be An Engineering Student? 971

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday March 24, 2008 @11:41AM from the what-doesn't-suck dept.

Pickens writes "Aaron Rower has an interesting post on Wired with the "Top 5 Reasons it Sucks to be an Engineering Student" that includes awful textbooks, professors who are rarely encouraging, the dearth of quality counseling, and every assignment feels the same. Our favorite is that other disciplines have inflated grades. "Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films," writes Rower. "Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores." For many students, earning a degree in engineering is less than enjoyable and far from what they expected. If you want to complain about your education, this is your chance."

Comment Excellent Storytelling (Score 1) 511

by dcclark on Saturday January 19, 2008 @01:19PM (#22110420) Attached to: Cloverfield Discussion

The storytelling in the movie was amazing. Like most good stories, it focused on the relationships among people. Yes, it was a horror/action movie (and there are some nice action sequences), but that's not what it's really about. I love the fact that monster (and monsterlings) itself is only rarely seen -- and when it does, it's used to heighten the tension among the real characters. Similarly, each action had a purpose, moving the story along. The choices which the characters made (although sometimes eliciting a "don't go in there!!" yell) were exactly what I felt they should do, as characters. They felt scared, hopeless, and ultimately real.

I'm expecting some complaints about the action, the need for dramamine (I agree), and the weird acting, but overall Cloverfield was an excellent story about people thrown into an extreme situation. The action was secondary, and rightly so.

U.S. House Says the Internet is Terrorist Threat 457

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @10:18AM from the so-is-my-chilli dept.

GayBliss writes "The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill (H.R. 1955) last month, by a vote of 404 to 6, that says the Internet is a terrorist tool and that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat it."

Wolfram's 2,3 Turing Machine Not Universal 284

Posted by kdawson on Monday October 29, 2007 @08:28PM from the whoa-not-so-fast-there-big-fella dept.

Fishbat writes "In a cutting message to the Foundations of Mathematics mailing list, Stanford's Vaughan Pratt has pointed out an elementary mistake in the recently announced proof that Wolfram's (2,3) machine is universal." Update: 10/30 04:18 GMT by KD : Ed Pegg Jr. from Wolfram Research points to this response to Dr. Pratt's note, which has been submitted to the FoM mailing list but has not yet appeared there due to moderation.

Underground Mac Community Foils a Coup 253

Posted by kdawson on Sunday September 09, 2007 @03:24PM from the fortunately-bloodless dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In an attempted palace coup that would not have been out of place in a Shakespearian tragedy, a moderator faction at Mac Serial Junkie, one of the largest underground Mac communities, was shut out this weekend after it was discovered that many staff members were plotting a coup. The plans included a surreptitious takeover of the domain name macserialjunkie.com. In an Open Letter to the Community, the founders of MSJ explain how a number of people at the highest levels of the underground planned their takeover activities for almost two years, only to be foiled at the last minute."

Computer Program Learns Baby Talk in Any Language 170

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @06:13PM from the what-was-your-machines-first-word dept.

athloi writes "Researchers have made a computer program that learns to decode sounds from different languages in the same way that a baby does. The program will help to shed new light on how people learn to talk. It has already raised questions as to how much specific information about language is hard-wired into the brain."

Deathly Hallows / OOTP Movie Discussion 1147

Posted by Zonk on Sunday July 22, 2007 @04:47PM from the nice-broom dept.

At midnight on Friday Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released, ending the ten year run of J.K. Rowling's extremely popular book series. I imagine that there are a few folks here who have already read the book and want to talk about it. Likewise, the movie version of Order of the Phoenix was recently released (a film I was kind of underwhelmed by). So ... what did you think of them? Be forewarned: I imagine the comments will be filled with spoilers.

Feed Photos: HP's hardware graveyard (com.com)

From feed by cnetfeed on Thursday June 14, 2007 @03:53PM

At a massive facility just north of Sacramento, Calif., consumer hardware gets taken apart and made into something new.

Submission + - Net Neutrality Comment Period Ends Friday (wired.com)

Submitted by FatherBash on Thursday June 14, 2007 @03:50PM

FatherBash writes: Friday marks the final day for citizens, corporations, and paid spinmeisters alike to file comments with government regulators on Net Neutrality. Wired has the story with a link to the FCC page where you too can throw in your two cents!

Judge Orders TorrentSpy to Turn Over RAM 726

Posted by Zonk on Thursday June 14, 2007 @01:33PM from the i-do-not-think-that-word-means-what-you-think-it-means dept.

virgil_disgr4ce writes "In an impressive example of the gap of understanding between legal officials and technology, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian 'found that a computer server's RAM, or random-access memory, is a tangible document that can be stored and must be turned over in a lawsuit.' ZDNet, among others, reports on the ruling and its potential for invasion of privacy."

Apple Confirms No (Default) ZFS In Leopard 362

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @11:37AM from the zf-never dept.

javipas writes "Despite recent rumors about the possible inclusion of ZFS as the filesystem of choice for MacOS X 10.5 'Leopard', an Apple executive has denied this possibility. Brian Croll, senior director of product marketing for the Mac OS has as much as said 'ZFS is not happening ... Croll declined to comment on statements made last week by Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz, who said the use of ZFS would be announced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Upon further questioning, Croll would only confirm that Apple had never said ZFS would be a part of Leopard. A representative with Sun did not have any immediate comment.' Users of the future operating system will have to keep working with HFS+, a filesystem that is almost ten years old now." Update: 06/12 19:57 GMT by KD : An Apple spokesman contacted InformationWeek with a correction, which they ran as a comment on their original story: What Apple meant to say was, "ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."

Research Team Makes Quantum Computing Progress 125

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 07, 2007 @02:17PM from the zero-one-two dept.

Timogen writes to tell us Wired is reporting that a research team is reporting that they have found a way to "controllably couple qubits" bringing us one step closer to quantum computing. "In classical computer science, bits -- or binary digits -- hold data encoded as ones and zeros. In quantum computing, data is measured in qubits, or quantum bits. As such, a qubit can have three possible states -- one, zero or a "superposition" of one and zero. This unique property theoretically makes quantum computing able to solve large-scale calculations that would dwarf today's supercomputers. But qubits in isolation are not very useful. It's only when they can be connected to one another that large-scale processing becomes possible."

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