Comment Re:Yes. (Score 3, Informative) 363
They use sheep to mow their grass on campus. Close enough?
Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality? 735
e3m4n writes "The fictitious 'good samaritan' law from the final episode of Seinfeld (the one that landed them in jail for a year) appears to be headed toward reality for California residents after the house passed this bill. There are some differences, such as direct action is not required, but the concept of guilt by association for not doing the right thing is still on the face of the bill."
Comment Re:here's where we get to hear someone spew (Score 2, Insightful) 932
Worked for me :) "Windows? No clue -- haven't used it in a decade."
Comment Re:The browser is infrastructure (Score 1) 345
Thats my point! For now, developers are stuck with closed solutions for many applications:
- Video
- Audio
- Non-standard fonts (via sIFR, etc)
- Complicated animations
We're moving (quickly) towards openness on the web, but developers always have to cater to the lowest common denominator. Right now its IE6. Someday it could be Firefox. Standards take time to be supported by enough browsers with enough marketshare to be actually usable. It wasn't THAT long ago that CSS was weakly implemented by browsers that represented almost 90% of web market share.
Comment Re:The browser is infrastructure (Score 2, Insightful) 345
Not yet it's not.
Flash and Silverlight are everywhere. Until there is solid support for <video>, quicktime and WMV will continue to flourish.
Javascript isn't the offender here. Its open (EMCAScript) and finally has decent, standard support across major browsers.
Comment Re:Why the variation? (Score 1) 282
I believe the test actually decreases the allowed time to complete over time. The base test was designed to pass on reasonably optimized code on a top-of-the line MacBook Pro.
So yes, running the test on this years high-end computer will pass, but that doesen't mean the test will pass in 2-3 years time.
350,000 Linux (Virtual) Desktops Land In Brazil 109
xufem writes "Millions of Brazilian schoolchildren will soon be 'brought up right' running Linux on over 350,000 seats each using PC sharing hardware and software from Userful and KDE. This is world's largest virtual desktop deployment and probably also the world's largest Linux deployment, and seems to have been selected over OLPC by Brazil. Definitely a moment to celebrate — and just in time for Brazilian Carnival which starts tomorrow!"
Woman Claims Ubuntu Kept Her From Online Classes 1654
stonedcat writes "A Wisconsin woman has claimed that Dell computers and Ubuntu have kept her from going back to school via online classes. She says she has called Dell to request Windows instead however was talked out of it. Her current claim is that she was unaware that she couldn't install her Verizon online disk to access the Internet, nor could she use Microsoft Word to type up her papers."
One of HST's Cameras Is Back In Action 47
StupendousMan writes "One of the two big cameras aboard the Hubble Space Telescope is the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or WFPC2 for short. As the most recent HST status report indicates, the camera was recently powered up again and sent commands to take some test images. Today (Sunday, Oct 26), I received E-mail from a colleague at STScI indicating that the calibration images were 'nominal.' That's NASA-speak for 'fine and dandy.' The E-mail goes on to say 'The data look nominal, indicating that
Hubble optical imaging capabilities are in fine shape. (We can expect more glorious Hubble images in the near future.) ...
Science with WFPC2 has resumed, and plans are underway to restore ACS/SBC to service this coming week.' Let's hope that the other big instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), also comes back to life successfully. We should find out in just a week or so."
100x Denser Chips Possible With Plasmonic Nanolithography 117
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to the semiconductor industry, maskless nanolithography is a flexible nanofabrication technique which suffers from low throughput. But now, engineers at the University of California at Berkeley have developed a new approach that involves 'flying' an array of plasmonic lenses just 20 nanometers above a rotating surface, it is possible to increase throughput by several orders of magnitude. The 'flying head' they've created looks like the stylus on the arm of an old-fashioned LP turntable. With this technique, the researchers were able to create line patterns only 80 nanometers wide at speeds up to 12 meters per second. The lead researcher said that by using 'this plasmonic nanolithography, we will be able to make current microprocessors more than 10 times smaller, but far more powerful' and that 'it could lead to ultra-high density disks that can hold 10 to 100 times more data than today's disks.'"
Submission + - Donkey Kong Recreated Using 6,400 Post-it Notes
NickFitz writes: "Students at UCSC have recreated the first level of Donkey Kong using 6,400 Post-it notes stuck to the windows of the E2 building. It took a team of about 10 people five hours to complete the work, which will remain in place until May 1. There's a time-lapse video of the construction process."
Submission + - 9 Laws of Physics That Don't Apply in Hollywood
Ant writes: "Neatorama lists nine laws of physics that don't apply in Hollywood (movies and television/TV shows). In general, Hollywood filmmakers follow the laws of physics because they have no other choice. It's just when they cheat with special effects that people seem to forget how the world really works..."
Submission + - UK taps 439,000 phones and emails; wants 645 more
JPMH writes: With the largest density of CCTV cameras in the world, and an increasing network of automatic number-plate recognition cameras on main roads, Britain has long been a pioneer for the surveillance society. Now new official figures reveal that UK agencies monitored 439,000 telephones and email addresses in a 15 month period between 2005 and 2006. The Interception of Communications Commissioner is seeking the right for agencies to be allowed to monitor the communications of Members of Parliament as well, something which has been forbidden since the 1960s. It must be that it is bringing their numbers down: on the law of averages they should be monitoring at least 5 of the MPs.
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