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Stephen Hawking Has a Message For One Direction Fans 109

An anonymous reader points out that Stephen Hawking recently gave some advice for One Direction fans. What is the cosmological effect of singer Zayn Malik leaving the best-selling boy band One Direction and consequently disappointing millions of teenage girls around the world? The advice of British cosmologist Stephen Hawking to heartbroken fans is to follow theoretical physics, because Malik may well still be a member of the pop group in another universe. The physicist took a break from speaking about his work as one of the world's leading scientists to answer the question from one upset fan during a talk at Sydney Opera House at the weekend. 'Finally a question about something important,' Hawking, who appeared via hologram, said to loud laughs from the audience. 'My advice to any heartbroken young girl is to pay attention to the study of theoretical physics because, one day, there may well be proof of multiple universes. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that somewhere outside of our own universe lies another, different universe and, in that universe, Zayn is still in One Direction.'"

Comment Re:Won't everything need to be recompiled? (Score 2) 85

Actually, POWER8 supports both big and little endian, and you can go out to Canonical's site and (as of 14.04) and get the LE version of Ubuntu for POWER8. You can read about that below. Quoting the article:

Why is Linux on Power transitioning from big endian to little endian?

The Power architecture is bi-endian in that it supports accessing data in both little endian and big endian modes. Although Power already has Linux distributions and supporting applications that run in big endian mode, the Linux application ecosystem for x86 platforms is much larger and Linux on x86 uses little endian mode. Numerous clients, software partners, and IBM’s own software developers have told us that porting their software to Power becomes simpler if the Linux environment on Power supports little endian mode, more closely matching the environment provided by Linux on x86. This new level of support will lower the barrier to entry for porting Linux on x86 software to Linux on Power.

- https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibm.com%2Fdeveloperw...

Comment Perhaps less is more? (Score 1) 278

Those are often driven by HR policies / databases / data retention policies / privacy policies.

There's a local company that asks a more fundamental question, which is "How can you help us?" This must, however, require a person to sit and read through every submission. To avoid spamming them, the entirety of their application form is:
Name:
Email:
Website:
Phone:
"How can you help us?" <== text box for free form entry. You could paste in a resume link, github, etc.

This approach seems more interesting.

Comment Re:The consumer. (Score 1) 270

Gay guys are likely closer to females in terms of frequent frivolous spending, i.e. spending on clothing and other accessories. Not that guys necessarily spend less, but their spending is more focused and comes in bigger chunks at less frequent intervals. Also, gay guys, like women, are more fashion and image conscious which means they'll buy into fads more readily and willfully overpay for products they fund appealing.

Umm, Not all of us? Trying to draw a connection between gay males' shopping habits and straight women's habits is superficial, and keep in mind that "gay male" is not a single population.

As one of the aforementioned gay males (and a 5-digit UID Slashdot geek), I should point out that my boyfriend and I certainly don't spend on "frivolous" things. He's more image-conscious than I am, certainly, (blame Gilt Group's iPhone app for that), but neither of us is "buys into fads more readily" than any other guy. We both have more cash because we both have pretty good jobs (game developer, sw architect) and we invest, save, and (currently) have no kids. I, personally, buy what I want, when I want, but not "fashion accessories." I buy experiences (e.g. flying into the grand canyon), and nice things (e.g. my shiny new Weber Genesis Grill).

I agree that orientation is irrelevant, but you should take a step back and reconsider what you wrote.

Comment Re:Not sure why people are knocking it (Score 1) 293

Yeah, it's funny that the Jeopardy people wanted Watson to be able to physically push the button and didn't require that it read and listen like a human.

Actually, that's to make the game fair. There's a small delay while you or I click a physical buzzer that would be removed if the system could signal directly into the Jeopardy scoring systems. To remove that unfair advantage, the machine must still "buzz" in just like a real competitor, and deal with the fact that a mechanical push-button is being depressed.

Comment Re:Can't believe it hasn't been done (Score 1) 125

So I saw that it's got a patent pending, but don't recognize the format of the number, "61361522." Searching various dbs turns up nothing, and searching the web turns up only links back to the blindtype website. I really want to read this patent app.

I even searched for a few likely keywords, and found other, competing patent apps from other companies that purport to do something similar like this one...

Comment Re:Bullshit (Score 1) 205

I just can't take the article seriously. You would think the top 100 'best places to work in IT' would include Google somewhere near the top, but it didn't even make the list.

Well, the difference here is that you're looking at those that develop IT (Microsoft, Google, even Amazon to an extent) and those that leverage IT in non-engineering businesses (the article's list). A more interesting list would be the Top 10 or Top 100 places to work in engineering.

The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For is probably what you're looking for. Several of my friends work at National Instruments for example, and every year for the last decade or so they've been on that list (they put a banner on the side of their headquarters proudly proclaiming it to all those that happen to drive by on a nearby freeway). You'll also find Google, Cisco, Adobe, Microsoft, etc.

Comment Re:But can I play Quake on it? (Score 1) 77

But can I play Quake on it?

Actually, you can. A couple of games are available on the IBM AIX software FTP site. You have your choice of Quake or Quake 2, even. Since POWER6 still runs binaries from the previous generations of software, go give it a try. Of course, you'd probably need to launch one instance of Quake per thread to really stress the system, since I'm pretty sure Quake's not multithreaded. ;-)

~ Mike

Comment Re:heard it all before (Score 1) 98

I completely understand and agree with you; hopefully as you research my background, you'll notice that I've always been an advocate of "multimodal" interaction, from the standpoint of giving users a choice based on their personal preferences, operating environment, device capabilities, etc.

Yap has been architected from the ground up to be perfectly useable for either manual, voice, or a combination of both input methods (and others that we can't reveal just yet). You decide what's best for you (we're not that arrogant where we know that up front for all potential cases).

That said, we sincerely appreciate the community's feedback. There'll be some exciting things we can do with a free-form platform to support expanding this capability for all you developers out there, so watch this space!

i.
(yap's ceo)

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