Comment Re: Existential Threat? (Score 2) 132
I think as long as the objects in LEO are well documented and publicly tracked, it would not be much of a trouble to filter them out
Comment Dis is one half (Score 1) 45
Press any key to continue ...
Comment Cabs without regulation (Score 1) 288
When I travel to Kiev, Ukraine, that's what I use. The cab industry is pretty much de facto deregulated there. And you know what? It's great! It's dirt cheap - vast majority of fares are well below $10. There are apps, that allow me to order taxi from many different companies at the best available rate, and yes - the rates are specified instantly. No need to guess how expensive your trip is going to be. I traveled many dozens of times - not a single problem. The need of regulation in this industry is overrated.
CERN Tests First Artificial Retina Capable of Looking For High Energy Particles 60
KentuckyFC writes: Pattern recognition is one of the few areas where humans regularly outperform even the most powerful computers. Our extraordinary ability is a result of the way our bodies process visual information. But surprisingly, our brains only do part of the work. The most basic pattern recognition—edge detection, line detection and the detection of certain shapes—is performed by the complex circuitry of neurons in the retina. Now particle physicists are copying this trick to hunt for new particles. A team at CERN has built and tested an artificial retina capable of identifying particle tracks in the debris from particle collisions. The retina can do this at the same rate the LHC smashes particles together: about 800 million collisions per second. In other words, it can sift through the data in real time. The team says the retina outperforms any other particle-detecting device by a factor of 400v.
Comment Energy efficiency and infrastructure (Score 1) 659
The energy efficienty of fuel cell powered cars is abysmally low in comparison to electric. Infrastructure is almost non-existent and requires major investments. Hydrogen is very leaky and requires very high pressures for storage. There is a decent electric car already mass produced: Tesla Model S. I know that the batteries are pretty expensive, and energy density needs improvement, but for the sake of keeping our planet in better shape, I hope electric beats hydrogen.
Comment Re: Addiction shmadiction? (Score 1) 89
I spend hours per day browsing internet. It seems like I am addicted to it. However when I travel overseas or do some hiking, I find absolutely zero withdrawal symptoms, even if I am offline for weeks at a time. The real addiction I have is not to the internet, but to brain stimulus. I hate boredom, and when I'm static, boredom sets in and makes me want to get online to get mentally stimulated. When I do some work around the house, talk to someone or travel, my brain is stimulated enough to not have a need for internet.
Comment Re: I've never used CAPTCHA'S (Score 1) 558
It might work if your web sites are not particularly popular. Above a certain threshold of popularity, spammers might actually personally visit your site to fine-tune their spam scripts.
Comment Why would you even compare .NET and Java? (Score 0) 319
They serve absolutely opposite purposes. Java is all about cross-platform support. .NET, on the other hand, was created by Microsoft for Microsoft lock-in. Don't even start about Mono.
The shop that I work for develops software for 5 platforms: Windows, RHEL, HP-UX, AIX, and Solaris. For our core performance demanding jobs we code in C++. Everything else - mostly Java + few scripting languages. .NET is simply not in our lexicon for a good reason. It would be utterly useless for us.
Comment Failed to leave Earth orbit (Score 1) 65
According to the latest news. Also failed to find the Sun, and there are three days of battery power left before it's dead.
BTW grunt means soil in Russian
Comment Short answer (Score 1) 382
Just go with the crowd.
WISE Discovers 95 New Near-Earth Asteroids 112
astroengine writes "NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has turned up 25,000 new asteroid discoveries, 95 of which are near-Earth objects (NEOs). This mission is as fascinating as it is frightening. Capable of spotting any cosmic object glowing in infrared wavelengths, WISE has become an expert asteroid hunter, seeing these interplanetary vagabonds, some of which get uncomfortably close to our planet."
C Programming Language Back At Number 1 535
derrida writes "After more than 4 years C is back at position number 1 in the TIOBE index. The scores for C have been pretty constant through the years, varying between the 15% and 20% market share for almost 10 years. So the main reason for C's number 1 position is not C's uprise, but the decline of its competitor Java. Java has a long-term downward trend. It is losing ground to other languages running on the JVM. An example of such a language is JavaFX, which is now approaching the top 20."
Ksplice Offers Rebootless Updates For Ubuntu Systems 211
sdasher writes "Ksplice has started offering Ksplice Uptrack for Ubuntu Jaunty, a free service that delivers rebootless versions of all the latest Ubuntu kernel security updates. It's currently available for both the 32 and 64-bit generic kernel, and they plan to add support for the virtual and server kernels by the end of the month, according to their FAQ. This makes Ubuntu the first OS that doesn't need to be rebooted for security updates. (We covered Ksplice's underlying technology when it was first announced a year ago.)"
Ocean Currents Proposed As Cause of Magnetic Field 333
pjt33 notes a recently published paper proposing that ocean currents could account for Earth's magnetic field. The wrteup appears on the Institute of Physics site; the IOP is co-owner, with the German Physical Society, of the open-access journal in which the paper appears. This reader adds, "The currently predominant theory is that the cause of Earth's magnetic field is molten iron flowing in the outer core. There is at present no direct evidence for either theory." "Professor Gregory Ryskin from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in Illinois, US, has defied the long-standing convention by applying equations from magnetohydrodynamics to our oceans' salt water (which conducts electricity) and found that the long-term changes (the secular variation) in the Earth's main magnetic field are possibly induced by our oceans' circulation."
Comment Re:from an attacker with physical access (Score 1) 398
You mean if somebody has physical access to your hardware on day-to-day basis? We are not talking about that. As several posters mentioned before - stolen laptop is the main concern here. If the disk is encrypted with a good key, this cold-DRAM-reading is the only viable and relatively easy method of stealing sensitive data from it.
The best solutions I've read so far today about:
1. Getting rid of the somehow marked sensitive information from memory, while switching to sleep mode or to locked mode. This method will need lots of code change and full cooperation of OS and application developers.
2. Using capacitor based backup power on motherboard to wipe memory clean at the moment of power loss. This method is easier to implement but less reliable, since you can pop RAM from the motherboard while it is still on, or just destroy that capacitor before power off.
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