grexin - Slashdot User

TI-Nspire Hack Enables User Programming 88

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday February 28, 2010 @01:59PM from the done-and-done dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Texas Instruments' most recent, ARM-based series of graphing calculators, the TI-Nspire line, has long resisted users' efforts to run their own software. (Unlike other TI calculator models, which can be programmed either in BASIC, C, or assembly language, the Nspire only supports an extremely limited form of BASIC.) A bug in the Nspire's OS was recently discovered, however, which can be exploited to execute arbitrary machine code. Now the first version of a tool called Ndless has been released, enabling users, for the first time, to write and run their own C and assembly programs on the device. This opens up exciting new possibilities for these devices, which are extremely powerful compared to TI's other calculator offerings, but (thanks to the built-in software's limitations) have hitherto been largely ignored by the calculator programming community."

Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes After All 269

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday January 24, 2010 @01:56PM from the act-now-while-supplies-last dept.

cremeglace writes with this excerpt from ScienceNOW: "You've heard the controversy. Particle physicists predict the world's new highest-energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, might create tiny black holes, which they say would be a fantastic discovery. Some doomsayers fear those black holes might gobble up the Earth — physicists say that's impossible — and have petitioned the United Nations to stop the $5.5 billion LHC. Curiously, though, nobody had ever shown that the prevailing theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of general relativity, actually predicts that a black hole can be made this way. Now a computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole." That said, they estimate the required energy for creating a black hole this way to be roughly "a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum"; though if one of the theories requiring compact extra dimensions is true, the energy could be lower.

Researchers Pooh-Pooh Algae-Based Biofuel 238

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 21, 2010 @04:56PM from the feed-it-pooh-pooh-undies dept.

Julie188 writes "Researchers from the University of Virginia have found that current algae biofuel production methods consume more energy, have higher greenhouse gas emissions and use more water than other biofuel sources, such as switchgrass, canola and corn. The researchers suggest these problems can be overcome by situating algae production ponds behind wastewater treatment facilities to capture phosphorous and nitrogen — essential algae nutrients that otherwise need to come from petroleum."

Comment Re:Paparazzi Project (Score 1) 259

by grexin on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @09:50AM (#28094369) Attached to: Best Way To Build A DIY UAV?

Sparkfun.com has some good info to. As well as the dev/control boards you'll be looking for

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9038

Comment Re:This is a real problem (Score 1) 1654

by grexin on Thursday January 15, 2009 @12:17PM (#26466887) Attached to: Woman Claims Ubuntu Kept Her From Online Classes

You were doing so poorly then you utterly failed.

"Could you imagine if your car **mechanic** came back to you"

The key word here is mechanic. YOU are not fixing the car yourself, YOU do not know how, YOU do not even have the block spongy handled tool.

When I say you, I mean the hypothetical person in your story who went to the mechanic. You may actually know how to fix a modern cars systems and have all the tools to do so, I wouldn't know.

Gamer Plays Over 30 Warcraft Characters 189

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 16, 2008 @03:42PM from the please-go-outside dept.

If your significant other complains that you play too much World of Warcraft, just show them this article about a user named "Prepared." He plays an amazing 36 World of Warcraft accounts on 11 different computers at the same time. He is his own raid group. "It costs me exactly $5711 in subscription costs per year with 36 accounts on the 6 month pay schedule," he writes. "Not bad considering I'm looking at it like it's a hobby and there are more expensive hobbies out there than World of Warcraft."

Slashdot Top Deals