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User: Satai

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  1. SLAC on To Flush Or Not To Flush · · Score: 1

    We have one of these in the office building adjacent to me at a DOE lab. In fact, when it was installed, it was a big deal. Some of us got together, walked over, and (with girlish glee) used it (one after another.) It was a little underwhelming.

  2. sigh on ESR Gets Job Offer From Microsoft · · Score: 1

    I really wish ESR would stop claiming to speak for the Open Source community if he is going to behave in this fashion.

    RMS, while a bit self-admittedly silly at times, at least conducts himself in a more courteous and polite fashion.

    This is but one of the many non-idealogical reasons that I prefer to think of myself in the Free Software Community, rather than the Open Source Community.

  3. Re:Google Maps on Simulated Universe · · Score: 1

    Funny you should bring that up. My advisor, a well-respected astrophysicist, was making a lengthy joke about extending google maps / keyhole all the way out to the local group. I'm not sure that it would work so well, because it's necessarily a two-dimensional interface, and the data is 3-d. If you mean as a planetarium interface, I think I could agree with you there.

    Right now, the best 3-d data viewer that I've seen is Partiview which was designed by Stuart Levy at NCSA and is hosted by AMNH with a couple data catalogs. I'd recommend checking out the Extragalactic catalog and the Milky way catalog. The button bar isn't as nice as in celestia, but the data is extremely extensive and I find the 3-d manipulation to be much more intuitive.

  4. Re:One small detail on Simulated Universe · · Score: 1

    True, but one of the virtues of this type of science is that the initial conditions are extremely well known from WMAP and other CMB data. The in between stuff, from the dark ages up through reionization or thereabouts are not well known -- for example, the first generation of stars. (A problem this simulation is many, many orders of magnitude from resolving, but a problem I work on for a living.)

  5. Re:you know on Apple Quietly Releases iTunes 4.8 · · Score: 1

    This is true. I have been using OGG files in iTunes for a while now, with the qtcomponents project. I believe iTunes can play anything that has a QuickTime codec... QTComponents was broken with QT7, however.

  6. Re:you know on Apple Quietly Releases iTunes 4.8 · · Score: 1

    I was under the impression that having an OGG decoder required heavy FPU usage... (Which is why the Neuros was the only one doing it for the longest time, if not still!) I seem to recall there being an int-only decoder publicized a while back, but I don't know if that ever took off or not. Does the iPod have an FPU that's up to the challenge?

  7. conflicted on Senator Clinton Slams GTA · · Score: 1

    I'm conflicted on this, and I've been conflicted long before Sen. Clinton made her remarks. On the one hand, I strongly oppose censorship, and I feel it is the obligation of the parents to, well, parent their children. Do violent video games encourage violent behavior? Maybe not, but do we want children to become desensitized to violence anyway?

    I guess the question is, since the link between violent behavior and either desensitization or video game playing is either nonexistent or unclear, is there a secondary effect we should be concerned about? Does dismissing video game violence lead to dismissing real life violence?

    If we in fact do want to prevent desensitization for the "good of society" then how would this occur, if parents are reluctant to assist in that regard?

    I am concerned, specifically by the responses I've read to this article so far, that this has become a knee-jerk issue (moreso than most, even, on Slashdot. :) I don't think Sen. Clinton has the answers, (and I know Sen. Lieberman doesn't) but I think it deserves some thought.

  8. netflix on New Battlestar Galactica Series Starts Tonight · · Score: 2, Interesting

    in response to all this, since I've never seen any of the Battlestar shows, I logged on to Netflix and added all the original series plus the miniseries. The original series, for those who don't know, is ten discs in length -- and I scrolled down my queue, and every single one was listed as "Very Long Wait." Not short wait, not "Available Now" not even "Long Wait." "Very Long Wait."

    That is, except for Disc 6 -- next to that entry, it says "Available Now."

    What the hell is wrong with Disc 6 that nobody wants it?

  9. Chicken and Egg on Chicken Genome Sequenced · · Score: 1

    This reminds me of an article Penn Jillette wrote in Jan 1992 for PC/Computing... which he has so graciously put up on his webserver here.

  10. Re:Swift Song... on Swift Observatory Launched · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You may recall the issues having that song on their site has caused for the Penn State Astro Department...

    PSU was a major partner in Swift, and the MOC will be in State College, PA. It's a great place to be right now for GRB physics...

  11. reverted on Comparing Linux C and C++ Compilers · · Score: 2, Informative

    At work we (well, I admin and made the call) reverted from the 8 series of intel to the 7 series because of some issues with fortran 90 compilation, but I hadn't noticed the 8.1 release. I'll have to give it a shot...

  12. Re:Hmmm.. weird stats... on Gmail Spam Filter Testing · · Score: 4, Informative

    no, you inversed it. You want MB/message, not message/MB.

    3778 messages / 213 MB = 17.37 messages / MB
    213 MB / 3778 messages = 0.0564 MB / message

    So that's pretty reasonable.

  13. Re:Not that interesting (?) on Possible First Photo Of Extra-Solar Planet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not true. I've seen Debes' photos, and I'm sure if you dig hard enough you can find them as well. What they look like is a central star that has been removed (some artifacts remain) with a spike in signal some distance away. The planet may not be resolved to any real detail, but that doesn't detract from the fact that it's a direct imaging.

  14. Re:little lacking on VRizer: Stereoscopic Uutput for OpenGL Programs · · Score: 1

    I meant more specifically, our setup is a quad-buffered dual-projector system with polarizing lenses. We try not to use Xinerama, and instead use active-stereo techniques that are rendered to two separate outputs on a Quadro4 card... So rgstereo negates what I wanted to do.

  15. little lacking on VRizer: Stereoscopic Uutput for OpenGL Programs · · Score: 1

    Seems a little lacking on documentation. I've spent a while trying to get it to work on our stereoscopic visualization wall, but can't seem to get it to cooperate -- but probably the fault lies with me. Maybe with the source this would be easier to figure out...

  16. Re:Grace (aka Ace/gr) on KDE Conquers Astrophysics With Kst · · Score: 2, Informative

    I like the scripting in Grace, but it had quite a learning curve. I found that the python bindings were useful. For scripted plots, supermongo (not free) is popular, but I think Grace is prettier.

  17. Re:Pychart on KDE Conquers Astrophysics With Kst · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hell, why stop there? VTK and MayaVi are also pretty amazing visualization kits, both of which are either written in or provide python bindings. (MayaVi is built on VTK, but it provides a nice wrapper.) VTK has great isosurface locaters and some pretty awesome vector algorithms for looking at 2d and 3d data. We use it for physical applications at my work...

  18. tried it on Experiences and Thoughts on SHFS? · · Score: 4, Informative

    I tried it, and I found it to be a bit unreliable. This was last fall... Random accesses on files were slow, and frequently it hung, leaving me with orphaned partitions I couldn't umount. Otherwise it worked ok -- I mean, it was easy to configure and whatnot, but performance wise when I tried it it was found lacking.

  19. neighbor's house on Silly Product Instructions? · · Score: 2, Funny

    One time I was borrowing a neighbor's summer home, and the guy plastered the whole place with postit notes -- one the fridge he had one that said "Put food in me," on his kids' piggy banks he wrote "Please don't steal from me" and on the damn ice tray he even double layered them -- on the top it said "Fill me" and below it said "With water." Man that got old.

    "He actually wrote diddly!"

  20. Re:Doesn't seem as ugly as TeX's license on XFree86 4.4: List of Rejecting Distributors Grows · · Score: 2, Informative

    You're thinking of qmail. TeX was put into the public domain; it's even been included in many commercial products. See TUG for more information.

  21. pure science research will suffer on USA To Return To Moon By 2015, Then Mars · · Score: 1

    What has been lost, for the most part, is the fact that concealed in Bush's proposal is a catch-all kill line that basically targets all pure-science research by NASA. Anything that doesn't support this new directive is going to be "scrapped" or "scaled-back" -- which is hardly a surprise from the least science-literate president in recorded history. (See: UPI Article)

    Furthermore, the idea of using the Moon as a base of operations to reach Mars is laughable at best. Easterbrook (normally only moderately eloquent) wrote a great piece doing back-of-the-envelope calculations regarding the various payloads and fuel requirements for travelling to Mars.

    This is not a good thing. As an astronomer, I lament the 'scaling back' of non-Moon/Mars projects -- many people (evidently many here on /.) believe that everyone who works for or receives funding from NASA is an astronaut. Not true -- much space science research is in fact funded NASA scientists, although it seems that may be coming to a bit of a close.

  22. Story of Riki on Ultimate DVDs for Parties? · · Score: 1

    The Story of Riki! Gore, gore, gore! And funny!

    Remember back when Kilborn hosted the Daily Show, and every time he interviewed somebody he'd play that clip of the dude getting his head smashed and it looking like a watermelon being hit with a baseball bat? It comes from this movie!

    Try it out sometime. Good stuff.

  23. oyez, nu, lessig on Oyez Project Providing Eldred MP3s (and More!) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Earlier this year I saw Lawrence Lessig speak at Northwestern University, the homeplace of the Oyez project. At the beginning of the speech he made a comment that he was coordinating with Goldman, the prof who is in charge of Oyez, to start looking into creative commons licensing for the Oyez archives.

    Anyway, Lessig gave a good speech, and Goldman (I'd had him for intro to poli sci) didn't notice me, and didn't call me by the annoying nickname he made up for me during his class, so the evening was a success in my book.

  24. after on The Matrix Going Massively Multiplayer · · Score: 5, Informative

    it says explicitly in the FAQ on the website linked that it will take place after revolutions. this was regarded as a spoiler in several communities...

  25. Re:PC or console? on THX To Certify Videogame Audio · · Score: 2, Informative

    outputting everything right up to full Dolby DTS.

    Dolby and DTS are two competing standards for audio encoding, in fact separate from the number of channels (while a light correlation does exist between sub-specifications, like Dolby EX, the Dolby Digital marker simply indicates encoding. In fact, it's required that all DVDs made to spec have a Dolby Digital audio track, even if it's mono.) www.dolby.com has further information on PS2 and X-Box capabilities (AND it's fun to read!)