Beta

# Slashdot: News for Nerds

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### Thank you!

Before you choose to head back to the Classic look of the site, we'd appreciate it if you share your thoughts on the Beta; your feedback is what drives our ongoing development.

Beta is different and we value you taking the time to try it out. Please take a look at the changes we've made in Beta and  learn more about it. Thanks for reading, and for making the site better!

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### Ask slashdot: Which 100+ User Virtualization Solution Should I Use?

Cloud management... is is gigantic pile of virtualization of:
1. Networking; (NaaS)
2. Hardware; (IaaS)
3. Computing environments, and; (PaaS)
4. Applications. (SaaS)

So uhm... Openstack should run fine on RHEL and Fedora, utilizing Linux kernel features, making use of a hypervisor...

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### US Entertainment Industry To Congress: Make It Legal For Us To Deploy Rootkits

There is something about Steam that requires the lowest level of memmory access in the Linux kernel.

Take over Steam; exploit waiting to happen.

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### Ask Slashdot: Wiring Home Furniture?

The reason I got into studying embedded systems is to work on ubiquitous computing:
-Put SoC's into everything;
-Hook everything to a hybrid cloud; (NaaS)
-Serve it with a cloud server at home; (RedHat OpenStack distro on Fedora)
-Create an XML-based protocol on top;
-Have it all talk to each other;
-Build it all on Minix 3; (so it never crashes and every device server has to be hacked seperately)
-Enjoy the shit out of modern life!

Your agenda (GTK HTML5 webapp) knows when you need to wake up and plays your most listened song over Bluetooth to wake you up.But before that happens, the server gives the command to the coffee machine to warm up. All the lights switch on, to destroy the melatonin in your system. The Google self driving car parks in front of your house on time. Your phone tells you as a messenger not to forget your suitcase upon leaving the building. The climate control goes on standby and your tablet is preloaded with relevant presentations for the day. Slashdot articles are read to you in the traffic yam. Etcetera.

God, I love those guys at Xerox PARC!

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### Brain Zapping Improves Math Ability

Shocking discovery!

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### Patenting Open Source Software

Re:How to reform patent law? (60 comments)

Why not give everybody what they need?

Large coorporations should be able to invest a ton of money into R&D. They need these patents for revenue.

The only thing that sucks about it is this: free software (as in beer also) gets hurt in the process.

So why not keep the patent laws and pass a second one (or include a section in the former), that says: "may not use patents in software to make a profit from, or to compensate expenses".

Why is that so difficult?

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### Leaked Microsoft Video Parodies Chrome Ad

Microsoft is correct. They do the same thing. That is also correct.

But what I'd like to see is Facebook Vs. Google Vs. Microsoft Vs. Apple.

Let them all call each other out and show everyone how bad it sucks!

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### Major Advance Towards a Proof of the Twin Prime Conjecture

No, but that's not the point.

What is do is play Sudoku with knowledge. And the problem I'm usualy having with math (aside from not having a very broad understanding of the logical implementation) is that it can become a very... very... very tough (from my perspective) Sudoku puzzle.

But the real problem I'm having is just not giving up. That, combined with so little understanding of it, drives me nuts. So yes; you're right.

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### Major Advance Towards a Proof of the Twin Prime Conjecture

I have a question: (excuse me for the realy bad formatting)

If the result of prime numbers (plotted), can be formulated as e^x, where Xaxis = numbers (zero to infinity) v Yaxis = [amount of unique distances observed] ;
and plotted against the plotting of prime numbers themselves ;
and plot a formula_3 that averages the coordinates that both euclidean functions output, towards infinity, through where they almost intersect ;
and form a formula_4 that equals the offset of the two euclidean function, relative to formula_3, towards infinity ;
and plot two fomulas that offset formula_3 by formula_4 in both 'directions' ;
then Doesn't it make a lot of sense?

I'm terribly sorry for my bad mathmetics and would welcome a rant in which someone would explain why and where I'm making a mistake.

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### 'Einstein's Planet' Becomes First Exoplanet Discovered Using New Method

If the planet was so smart as you are, wouldn't they think that if Earth was so smart as them, that they would not have discovered them by now?

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### Psychiatrists Cast Doubt On Biomedical Model of Mental Illness

Re:Would most people be better off undiagnosed? (329 comments)

The DSM is not about diagnosis, but some retards use it that way. The purpose of the DSM is being a psychiatric dictionary. That means if psychiatrist talk about [illness xyz] then they are reffering to the collection of symption [a, b, c, d].

And yes we needed the DSM, but it has become irrelevant. You see; one can research the brain of a mouse; just scrap this and that away and see what happens. With humans on the other hand, this can't be done in vivo ("while alive"). So people started to gather common collection of symptoms so they could put a label on a person with these symptoms, and ask the 'patient' permission to study the structure of their brain after death.

Now that brain research has vastly improved, all kinds of overlaps start to appear with common 'components'. Say a person with ADHD has RDS and DAT ("dope transport from here to there in brain") problems.

Now that the mesolymbic pathway has been found not to be a pleasure centre, but more of a 'conscious intersection' of the brain, using a serotonine feedback loop to modulate dopaminergic release, all these 'illnesses' start to make a lot of sense. Dopamine actualy sort of highlights/projects emotionaly charged 'thoughts' into human consciousness.

Now all of a sudden check what effects PTSD has on hormone release. Suddenly bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, hallunications, paranoia, anxiety, autism, PDD, psychosocial all make sense. An example:

Parents neglect child.
Child doesn't learn coping mechanisms.
No coping mechanisms for strong emotional experiences result in trauma.
Trauma means; brain cannot process said experience, resulting in PTSD.
PTSD effects are less serotonine (depression), thus less oxytocine(autism, thus PDD thus psychosocial leads to "schizophrenia), less dopamine (looks like ADHD, but isn't), more cortisol (stress, self-consciousness skyrockets, anxiety) and more estrogen (hello male, here comes your body dismorphic disorder).
And so on and so forth...

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### Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Programmers Who Have Not Stayed Current?

I'll give you an example:
Imageine this guy is responsible for coding some kind of cashflow algorithm in accounting software. What you guys are going to be doing is adjusting your own code accordingly: working around the bugs.

A month or two later, you all start to get together to investiga why suddenly everything seems so disasterous. Suddenly you all spontaniously find out it is this single asshole who fscks up the entire codebase.

Armed with this spontaniously acquired knowledge you all go up to upper management and say:

We were all so productive and on schedule. The problem was that suddenly we all got miles behind on schedule [for the software that makes the company a shitload of money].

Since we are all so productive and good working class heroes, we started to investigate the issue, unpayed and in overtime. We found out that mr. A. Cocksucker messed up the entire CVS. Now the annual profit prediction will plummet.

Steve and Jack were already trying to get this guy to learn the [git manpage], but we didn't know mr. Cocksucker was so uncapable that he would absolutely ruin the perfect planning of our software that we put soooo much sweat and tears into [bla bla bla].

We wanted to tell you this because we want you to know on time, because we all love our work and we would be so sad [of course not] if the beloved customers would not benifit from our efforts. We absolutely love this company and our software and we would like to be able to have meaning in our day-to-day jobs of hard labour. [boo-fscking-hoo]

Manager: *I need to get this guy fired* "What is the damage?"

We realy can't work around this any longer, which is why we investigated this tragedy in the first place. We need to rollback at least [time it took from start to finnish].

Asshole above your social status gets fired, nicer code can be written and CVS horrors are over.

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### Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Programmers Who Have Not Stayed Current?

You let him crash and burn. You put oil on the fire, everytime gets pissed of at this guy. Later on, you get together and talk to his manager/boss/supervisor.

You do this in a clever way; as in under the radar. This, however, requires knowledge of social mechanics.

If you try to keep that person from crashing and burning; you'll have to deal with it, for as long as you work with this guy.

Version control is realy old, BTW...

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### The New AI: Where Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence Meet

PS: the mistake you are making, that that the visual cortex of the human brain, does:
A. Everything in linear stages, with parallel computation, and;
B. Likes to not waste calculation power on mundane things like: "Realy? Is that lawn all grass? Let's examine every shape first, in order to make sure there is no soldier out there with cammo, who might just try to shoot me", and;
C. That's where optical illusions come into play: the cortex uses a shitload of shortcuts.

Of course you model would work if there are no shortcuts, but that would be stupid. Unless you try to create some image technology for DARPA, but that's not a human-like form of intelligence. (it's supposed to be better, uh-huh).

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### The New AI: Where Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence Meet

These guys are total idiots. There is this thing called research and it's about figuring out how the human brain works. And it's fscking simple:
1. Distance: difference in contrast; (sky has the least amount of it, so everything with a bigger contrast with the least contrast is closest)
2. Motion: bright lights; (for spatial orientation)
3. Depth: two camera's; (compare double images appart)
4. Grouping information: color; (green shit is all nature, gray shit is all building)
5. Recognition: shapes + colors; (does it look like shit I've identified before? If not; store properties, otherwise: already identified until focus on it for a longer period);
6. Et-fscking-cetera.

Seriously...

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### Localized (Visual) Programming Language For Kids?

The only way to do it (185 comments)

Kay worked at just that, at Xerox PARC. It was not visual, but let's be honest here; Xerox fscking PARC.

You should check this out:

No... It is better.

1 year,15 hours
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### European Researchers Propose Quantum Network Between Earth and ISS

Re:10,000 times faster than the speed of light? (209 comments)

Yeah they probably mean this paper, lol:

Also "Spooky action at a distance" == Einstein fail...

But nothing can go faster than light, because time is a measurement of change. Something can't possibly go faster, unless it doesn't change but folds dimensionaly. (E8, Lisi, standard model and information theory).

1 year,10 days

# Submissions

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### [Ask Slashdot] Hiding in plain sight |Between extremes

V!NCENT (1105021) writes "Is there a way to not hide on the web, while also not being able to be tracked automatically?

In other words; no cryptography, no Tor, etc., but also not leaving traces and keeping the possibility of being under surveillance, but only in such a way that basically only a human being from the government can do it as they wish?

It is not that I have something to hide, but in real life there shouldn't be a nanny, watching over your shoulder, writing down any move you make.

So Slashdot, is there a place, somehow, between these extremes? Or is there a way to engineer one? What does such 'luxury' take to achieve?"
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### Scientists replace a small piece of rat brain

V!NCENT (1105021) writes "We humans are melding with machines. This is not about using machines to amplify our knowledge (the Internet) but actually embedding chips within our bodies, to amplify our thoughts. The cochlear implant, used to augment hearing, is perhaps the best known brain-computer interface but the last decade has seen great leaps, translating even memories and thoughts into digital code. Now scientists out of Tel-Aviv University have managed to build an artificial cerebellum to restore brain function in injured rats."
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### Google and Verizon try to shape net-neutrality law

V!NCENT (1105021) writes "Verizon Communications Inc. and Google Inc. may soon announce an agreement that the companies hope could be used as a model for legislation aimed at preventing telephone or cable companies from delaying or blocking Internet traffic.

The two companies have been negotiating with each other for months on a compromise on the thorny issue of so-called net neutrality—the principle that Internet providers such as phone or cable companies should not deliberately slow or block Internet sites or services."

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### MS publishes papers for a modern, secure browser

V!NCENT (1105021) writes "As web sites evolved into dynamic web applications composing content from various web sites, browsers have become multi-principal operating environments with resources shared among mutually distrusting web site {\it principals}. Nevertheless, no existing browsers, including new architectures like IE 8, Google Chrome, and OP, have a multi-principal operating system construction that gives a browser-based OS the exclusive control to manage the protection of all system resources

In this paper, we introduce Gazelle, a secure web browser constructed as a multi-principal OS. Gazelle's Browser Kernel is an operating system that exclusively manages resource protection and sharing across web site principals"

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### S3 Graphics Responds About Linux Support

V!NCENT (1105021) writes "Phoronix has an update on S3's Linux driver state.

"We are doing an internal build of the Chrome 500 Linux driver to incorporate some of the additional hardware features and upgrades (over the Chrome 400 Series GPUs).
If you want to test the Linux now, the Chrome 400 Series drivers also support the Chrome 500 Series since it is a unified driver architecture."
"

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### Goldeneye:Source beta 3 reached gold status

V!NCENT (1105021) writes "From the Goldeneye:Source website:

We'd like to announce that the GoldenEye: Source BETA 3 will be publicly available on FEBRUARY 7th, 2009. That's right, the highly anticipated GoldenEye: Source BETA 3 has officially gone Gold! After extensive development, and hard work by our testers, we've finally got a stable build, ready for release. The BETA 3 has been a long development process, and probably even a longer wait for our community. The process all started with the switch to the new Source Orange Box Engine, and completely started our code from scratch, in light of the new Engine"

You can watch the gameplay trailer at http://www.moddb.com/mods/goldeneye-source/videos/ges-beta-3"

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### Intel dumps Vista

V!NCENT (1105021) writes "ACCORDING TO A memo circulating a few weeks ago, it looks like Intel is taking a wise decision and avoiding the Broken OS entirely. Yes, Intel is not going to use Vista on its corporate machines... ever."
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### MSI develops a heat-driven cooler

V!NCENT (1105021) writes "Hardware.info has an article about the new MSI heat powered cooler that doesn't draw energy. It is based on the striling theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine [Wikipedia]. A flash video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG36EIFNI-Y&eurl=http://core.tweakers.net/nieuws/52196/msi-bouwt-actieve-koeler-zonder-dorst-naar-elektriciteit.html [YouTube]"

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