manjunaths - Slashdot User

Alternative Uses For an Old Satellite Dish? 552

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 15, 2008 @07:58PM from the birdbath-for-condors dept.

ya really writes "My family has one of those BUDs (Big Ugly Dishes) sitting in their back yard still. The other day they asked me if I would take it apart for them. Aside from simply recycling it, I was wondering if there are any alternatives for its use. It was one of the last made before DirectTV and Dish took over satellite broadcasting, and even has a digital receiver. I'd say it was made around 1996."

Two Totally Unique Star Systems Discovered 141

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday April 01, 2008 @04:22AM from the two-of-a-kind-beats-ace-high dept.

esocid writes "Astronomers have spied a faraway star system that is so unusual, it was one of a kind — until its discovery helped them pinpoint a second one that was much closer to home. In a paper published in a recent issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Ohio State University astronomers and their colleagues suggest that these star systems are the progenitors of a rare type of supernova. In research funded by the National Science Foundation, they found a star system that is unusual, because it's what the astronomers have called a 'yellow supergiant eclipsing binary' — it contains two very bright, massive yellow stars that are very closely orbiting each other. In fact, the stars are so close together that a large amount of stellar material is shared between them, so that the shape of the system resembles a peanut."

Comment Re:True... for everyone but you of course (Score 1) 551

by manjunaths on Monday January 28, 2008 @12:50AM (#22205192) Attached to: Multitasking Makes You Stupid and Slow

"One thing at a time, And that done well, Is a very good rule As many can tell."

This had been drummed into our heads since we were kids. Maybe I am too old and nobody remembers these quotes anymore.

The kind of tasks the article is talking about is more complicated than walking and chewing gum at the same time.

I came here to see if someone has posted http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness meditation (vipassana). Mindfulness meditation is to be mindful of the tasks one does everyday. This increases concentration and makes everyday tasks a practice of meditation.

I am very surprised no one has posted this yet. Are /. Buddhists slacking (or multi-tasking) these days ?

Prosthetic-Limbed Runner Disqualified from Olympic Games 509

Posted by Zonk on Thursday January 17, 2008 @05:21PM from the street-sams-are-right-around-the-corner dept.

contraba55 wrote with a link to an Engadget story on a sign of the postmodern times. Oscar Pistorius, a world-class sprinter, has been denied a shot at participating in the Olympics this year. He's a double-amputee, but he's not out because of his handicap; he's disqualified because he's faster than most sprinters. "The runner — who uses carbon-fiber, prosthetic feet — was reviewed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (or IAAF), a review which found the combination of man and machine to be too much for its purely human competitors. According to the IAAF report, the 'mechanical advantage of the blade in relation to the healthy ankle joint of an able bodied athlete is higher than 30-percent.' Additionally, Pistorius uses 25-percent less energy than average runners due to the artificial limbs, therefore giving him an unfair advantage on the track."

RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized 668

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @03:09AM from the no-fair dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In an Arizona case against a defendant who has no legal representation, Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA is now arguing — contrary to its lawyers' statements to the United States Supreme Court in 2005 MGM v. Grokster — that the defendant's ripping of personal MP3 copies onto his computer is a copyright infringement. At page 15 of its brief (PDF) it states the following: 'It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies... Virtually all of the sound recordings... are in the ".mp3" format for his and his wife's use... Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies...'"

Submission + - Id Goes Full Steam Ahead

Submitted by Dr. Eggman on Friday August 03, 2007 @06:57PM

Dr. Eggman writes: Today, quite wisper and rumors became fact as two FPS giants, Id and Valve joined forces to bring Id games back catalog to Valve's Steam. This marks a huge influx of old classics as well as opening up the possibility of bringing some of the newest, most anticipated Id games to Steam. Expect to hear more from Valve's appearance at Quakecon soon.

Linux Kernel To Have Stable Userspace Drive 309

Posted by Zonk on Sunday July 22, 2007 @01:23AM from the users-are-the-future dept.

liquidat writes "Linus Torvalds has included patches into the mainline tree which implement a stable userspace driver API into the Linux kernel. The stable driver API was already announced a year ago by Greg Kroah-Hartman. The last patch to Linus' tree included the new API elements. The idea is to make life easier for driver developers: 'This interface allows the ability to write the majority of a driver in userspace with only a very small shell of a driver in the kernel itself. It uses a char device and sysfs to interact with a userspace process to process interrupts and control memory accesses.'"

Submission + - Microsoft pledges conditional support for ODF

Submitted by

Macthorpe

on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @01:39AM

Macthorpe writes: "BetaNews is reporting that Microsoft have announced in a letter that they will support ODF if it doesn't 'restrict choice among formats'. Citing their lack of opposition to the ratification of ODF as a standard, they go on to say: "ODF's design may make it attractive to those users that are interested in a particular level of functionality in their productivity suite or developers who want to work that format. Open XML may be more attractive to those who want richer functionality [...] This is not to say that one is better than the other — just that they meet different needs in the marketplace.""

Top Ten Open Source Innovators 152

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday February 22, 2007 @11:11PM from the leading-the-pack dept.

42istheanswer writes "Open source is so much more than Linux these days. A lot is happening beyond the popular operating system. Open source models are thriving in CRM (SugarCRM), messaging (Scalix), and systems management (Zenoss). Datamation has identified ten leading commercial open-source innovators and the projects they are working on in their article, Ten Leading Open Source Innovators."

Parasites Makes Us Dumber or Sexier 240

Posted by Zonk on Saturday December 30, 2006 @03:41AM from the that-explains-hollywood-zing dept.

odie_q writes "It has long been known that the Toxoplasma gondii parasite alters its host's behavior, but now it seems the way it alters it depends on the sex of the host. From the article: 'A common parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says ... Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women. On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.'"

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