There's only a 1.3 second one-way communication delay between here and the Moon, making real-time control from Earth perfectly feasible (unlike Mars which has a 3 to 22 minute delay). The L2 point is even further away from the moon than the Earth is (on average around 4-5 times further) , thus there is an even larger communication delay which would make real-time control far less practical. Teleoperating a rover on the moon is a very contrived reason to place humans at the L2 point.
"Fortunately" a blogger captured this? Why exactly is this a fortunate thing? It's not like the site shows Romney doing something wrong, or trying to cover up something. Is there something particularly great about the site design that can benefit us in some way? Perhaps it contains some great scripts that we are now fortunate to have access to?
Someone made a mistake, and you say it is a "fortunate" that they can now be made fun of because of it. Politics aside, let's simply not act like assholes please. Also, be thankful that your mistakes don't turn into Slashdot stories.
Star's, not stars', unless the planet is orbiting more than one star at a time. Didn't we just talk about apostrophe abuse in another Slashdot headline a couple days ago?
The electoral college is necessary to balance power between large and small states. Civics education in this country is going down the pooper.
I think you're confusing the Senate with the Electoral College. The distribution of electors by state within the electoral college is determined by each state's population. So no, it does not keep any kind of "balance" between large and small states. What it does is keep control of the federal government directly at the State level. The States get to choose who is President of the US, and thus they get to decide what method to use to represent the popular vote of their citizens. A couple states (Maine and Nebraska) are more "democratic" than others, in that they split their electoral votes by district, thus it is possible for some of the state's votes to go to one candidate, and some to go to another.
But the spirit of the electoral college is simply that of the union of separate States into a federal government. When is the last time you, personally, got to vote on ANYTHING to do with the federal government? Never. However, the representatives you elected for your state and congressional district do get to vote. The electoral college is in this same spirit, in that we "elect" individuals to represent us at the federal level.
So why is the electoral college separate from, say, the House of Representatives (IE why doesn't the house decide the president since we chose them to represent us already, and they are even allocated by population just like the electors)? To maintain proper separation of the 3 parts of our government. The electoral college is unique and independent of the legislative and judicial branches, as it should be to maintain balance of power.
Not that I'm an advocate of the electoral system as it stands, but I can see how the concept applies to a union of individual states. Personally, I'm tired of feeling that my vote doesn't count, because it was trumped by urban voters in a few areas of dense population 400 miles from where I live. They have different needs, concerns, demographics, etc, and are not representative of those who live in my region of the state, yet only their voice is heard when it comes to electing a president.
He's not using an iPhone as an SDR. He's created yet another audio interface between a computing device (PC soundcard, iPhone, Android, whatever) and a typical radio. I go into more detail several comments down from here. This lets TNC / APRS software on the iPhone (already available in the app store by multiple developers) communicate digitally over radio using audio transmission modes (usually FM). The smartphone acts as a software modem and controller (aka a TNC).
Amateurs have been doing this for a long, long time now (IE over a decade). This is not a SDR (software defined radio), but using a computer's audio card to encode and decode packet / APRS audio, which is essentially your old school modem. To be concise, the computer (or smartphone) acts as the TNC (Terminal Node Controller), which is connected to a radio via an interface that takes audio to and from the computer to the radio, with some method of telling the radio when to transmit (typically via an audio level threshold, but there are interfaces that allow the computer to explicitly control when the radio transmits). I own an AEA PK-232 Pakratt, which is a discrete, stand-alone TNC that goes between a computer and radio. Originally the computer was just the terminal, which connected to the TNC via a serial port. Now you can simply have the computer directly process / generate the audio using a sound card without requiring an actual TNC peripheral.
The "inventor" even states that there are multiple apps for iPhone available to do this - you just need a way to hook the audio up to a radio. Basically he created yet another custom hardware audio interface, and the writer of this story got all excited about it because it was news to him.
Look online, and you'll find dozens of designs for this exact thing. Here's a list of at least a dozen kits and pre-assembled interfaces for standard PC sound cards. Most of these should work with any smartphone with the proper 4 conductor 1/8" audio jack that cell phones use for both earphone and mic combined (whereas computer sound cards have those as two separate 1/8" connectors). http://www.soundcardpacket.org/1cablekit.htm
That site is dedicated to the entire "computer as a TNC" concept, which is simply what is being down now with smartphones as well.
Russia has the 4th highest alcohol consumption per capita in the world (behind Moldova, Czech Republic and Hungary - all former Soviet republics), with no laws specifying a minimum drinking age (minimum age to purchase is 18). Why not think of those children first if they're hell bent on making laws protecting children?
Back in 1979 Disney produced a film called "The Black Hole". As a 10 year old I actually really liked the movie when I saw it back in the early 80s (on the newly-created Disney Channel of course), but it was considered one of Disney's biggest movie flops. It was pretty much a blatant rip-off of Star Wars, and was certainly an attempt to try and cash in on the huge popularity of Star Wars. The film had all the basic pieces - spaceships, laser guns, "ESP" kind of extrasensory stuff going on (aka The Force), and of course Robots.
So now, 33 years later, it looks like Disney finally got the real thing. The actual Star Wars franchise.
On a different note, I can't help but wonder if Lucas is in poor health. He always hated Hollywood, and despised studios having any control over his creative process. So for him to sell his own film company, which he built from scratch, to a major studio goes against everything he's said and done for decades.
You lament the death of this idealistic notion of "noblesse oblige" . My question is when was it ever alive? What era of what society represents your implied example, which people have forgotten and strayed away from? I'd like to know specifically what you're waxing nostalgic over, or is it something that exists only in your mind?
To quote one of Billy Joel's most insightful lyrics, "the good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems".
Also, your final statement illustrates the contradiction and true crux of this matter in the real world: "that helping each other, taking responsibility for one's actions," The problem is that we have people who DON'T take responsibility for their actions, thus they REQUIRE that someone else help them. I know, what you meant was the HAVES taking responsibility for their actions, but what I'm talking about is the other side of the coin, which are those that abuse the system and want as much of a free ride as possible. Certainly that is not the majority of the "needy" as you call them, but it is absolutely a problem that is exacerbated by "spreading the wealth".
I don't see why this can't be done by post-processing a video (as long as the camera doesn't move, pan or zoom). It's unique that it can be done with a specialized camera, but I don't think that is necessary.
I first assumed this app would connect directly to my XBox via Bluetooth, and act as an actual controller device. It doesn't. Instead it requires internet connectivity on both the XBox and phone, and goes through the XBox Live servers (you have to sign into your XBox account on your phone, and also be logged into that XBox account on the XBox itself, before it can connect). I don't feel like messing around watching network traffic today, but I'm curious if XBox Live hands my phone over directly to the XBox (they find one another on my local network), or if all communication has to go through the XBox Live servers. There is a bit of latency, so I bet all communication is going out over the internet even though the devices are only 5 feet apart and both on the same LAN.
I found the gestures a bit clunky. For example, you have to touch-hold while dragging to drag faster. However there isn't any method (that I could find) to go through a whole page at a time in the XBox menus. I had to go item by item. I think I would prefer a simple D-Pad type setup on my phone, with dedicated buttons to scroll entire pages / screens at a time.
This isn't exactly on-topic, but since the article mentions it, I'll bring it up. As someone who has played games my entire life (starting with Pong on a black ad white TV, growing up through the Arcade craze of the 80s, and every game console in between), I just don't see the appeal of Angry Birds. Sure, the game is well implemented - graphics, sound effects, and music are all very well done.
However, the basic gameplay mechanics are just so-so. It's just a physics simulation. The real problem is that there is such a massive luck factor involved. For example, when someone beats a difficult "level", what is the chance that they can actually reproduce their success in the exact same way? Pretty much impossible. Things happen in a way they neither intended nor predicted. So in other words, Angry Birds is more of a "slot machine" than a skill based game. Is it just the visual satisfaction of seeing a physics simulation smoothly unfold and crap fall down? Sort of like how the bouncing cards after winning Windows Solitaire was always so satisfying in a strange kind of way?
Now that's all good and well. Some people like to play luck based games. But why such a large percent of the population? With this game your skill quickly plateaus and then you're relying on mere chance, which isn't so appealing to me. Is it that their marketing is that good, or that they reached some magic threshold that the franchise is simply self sustaining now?
How many Slashdot readers feel that Angry Birds is the deserved pinnacle and poster child of non-console, non-PC gaming? And if not, what game should be the flagship of this new gaming market?
This is simply inevitable. China has been producing rare earths at unsustainable and artificially low prices, which is why the rest of the world no longer needed to bother with mining and consuming their own finite resources.
Everyone needs to grasp that this is an inevitability - the prices of various products (mainly higher technology) will have to go up, and thus the global markets and product will rebalance themselves. The manipulation was already done in keeping the prices too low, not in making them go up. Your complaints are coming way too late in this game - you should have been complaining at least a decade ago when they flooded the market with cheap resources, not now that the bubble has burst.
Say a new hot dog stand opens up in town, and for the first month they sell hotdogs for 25 cents at a massive and unsustainable loss. Maybe that's long enough to run the other hot dog stands out of business, or at least make them realize it's just not worth bothering with. Then after the introductory price they go up to where the market belongs. Now at that point the other hot dog stands can re-open, with new owners or with their old owners - doesn't really matter. At the end of the day it's all the same end result - hotdogs cost what they're worth.
My question is this - was it wrong for the rest of us to enjoy hotdogs for only a quarter apiece while we were able to? My opinion is no, that's not wrong of us, nor is it wrong that the world enjoyed lower priced rare earths (and thus technology) because of China's willing sacrifice of their finite resources.
No, don't put tariffs on them. Why would the US want to sell or produce rare earths? They are a finite resource. If China wants to burn through their supplies so the rest of the world can enjoy cheaper technology, then that is their prerogative. Once it's out of the ground and used to manufacture products shipped to the US then it can be recycled for reuse in new products. Either way the material is no longer in China. This is a gamble China has made to try and prop up their massive industry and population, is to not only undercut worldwide labor with a very cheap workforce, but also burn through their physical resources as well.
Nothing about China is sustainable, and there will be great sorrow and suffering in that country when the bottom drops out of various markets over the next decades.
The USA's production at various rare earth mines simply idled or completely stopped as prices dropped and it was not longer profitable to mine them. The rare earths are still sitting there waiting for us when we need them. No hurry to get to those resources at all.
Okay, then what is needed is a patent for limiting the amount of sarcasm in a commenting system. I'll lay the groundwork:
For example, the point 360, which may represent fifty units of sarcasm in a five hour period, does not violate any of the policies as illustrated. However, the point 350, which represents fifty units of sarcasm in a two hour period, violates the sarcasm threshold 330. Thus, if point 350 represents a user's actions, then the policy is violated.
Now it can never be said that I didn't contribute to Slashdot in a positive way after all these years.
The OPs mockery of the summary is justified. If bisecting is the process of finding the change in which a bug was introduced, then how can you do that to the bug AFTER it has been found?
Kernel developers have found and bisected the kernel issue
Should be "Kernel developers have bisected change sets and the found kernel issue".
Man, that is some hard core stuff right there. Is there anyone frequenting Slashdot with genius-level IQ that could possibly break down this unbelievably complex, non-obvious behavior and explain it to the rest of us? This is what having billions of dollars of capital can do for you - bring the brain power to a company that is required to make these kinds of amazing discoveries. What I'm looking forward to are the physics and mathematical papers that can expand on these newly found principles and constructs. It's really the stepping-off point to marvelous things for humanity. In fact, I do believe this may even bring us a step closer to the Grand Unified Theory.
Touch is great for accessing and consuming content.
Touch is currently horrendous for producing or modifying content.
These are not yet 'unified' avenues of usage as yet.
However it is possible. I have given content creation / editing (as in writing software) on both iPad and my Samsung Galaxy S3 the old college try. In many ways, it is this close to actually working and replacing my laptop. With my galaxy I've used both bluetooth and USB mice. I would break down the support for using a mouse on the latest version of Android as: Hardware support: 95% OS support: 75% App support: 5%
The problem lies with the apps. They simply aren't written to take proper advantage of a mouse, or even a keyboard for that matter. For example, when I plug in a keyboard, the OS must recognize I'm using an external keyboard, and thus it doesn't show the onscreen keyboard. However, certain apps I've tried must be triggering it programatically at various times (for example when switching away and back to the app), and when the onscreen keyboard pops up in landscape orientation nearly all the screen real estate is wasted. Yet even ALT-TAB works on the keyboard to allow switching between apps on Android, showing just how surprisingly complete external keyboard support is in some areas.
Text selection and copying is one of the big issues with mouse support, because at the OS level it is still being reduced down to simple touches. Thus you must click-hold to begin selecting, visual indicators designed for touch use are then unnecessarily large, etc. Can (and should) mouse based text selection work optimally on a mobile device, exactly as it does on desktop devices? Of course it can, and without having to change the existing touch-based behavior either.
Now Microsoft does have a chance to get all this right. Instead of mouse and keyboard support being hobbled on as an afterthought, which is how it has (VERY) slowly evolved with Android from version to version, Microsoft can have well thought out support from day 1. More importantly, they can require (or at least make it very easy or implicitly supported) for 3rd party developers to have proper support for these peripherals. Simple things such as not always assuming onscreen keyboards are being displayed, provide keyboard shortcuts, support for mouse scroll wheels, etc.
As others have already stated, the huge concern here is that MS is going to go off the deep end (as is their wont) and push a paradigm or concept too far. For example, if a touchpad or mouse is available, then I should NEVER need to actually touch the screen to do any standard OS GUI function.
I wish I had mod points. Unless the submitter has direct evidence that he was hacked via Bluetooth (astoundingly, not just once, but twice on completely different devices that would require entirely different attack vectors / exploits), then I seriously doubt his device is being compromised in that way. I also find it very unlikely that WiFi was used to gain access to his device either.
I question what kinds of apps, modifications, custom roms, etc, this person is using, or if anyone that has access to his device (a significant other, etc) would have motivation to install "security" software that monitors his texts, calls, etc.
My opinion? I think more mundane things have gone wrong with his last two phones (running out of storage, radio hardware failures, bloatware hogging CPU all the time, etc) and he's simply attributing those problems to his device being "hacking" by a 3rd party.
I hope it finds massive amounts of palladium, iridium or some mix of rare metals. Nothing would kick-start a race to Mars like greed. Unfortunately.
So by "Unfortunately" do you mean that the only reason we should go to the incredible expense and risk of visiting other planets is for purely academic or intellectual purposes? Is there anything of actual value to our planet Earth that we can glean from pure knowledge (and knowledge alone) of Mars? Say we learn more about the history of Mars. Humanity applies that information in exactly what way to better our species or improve our planet in some way?
At the end of the day, for it to be worthwhile beyond the science that we are doing right this minute with rovers, there has to be something of value on Mars. Real, tangible value. Materials that are rare on earth, a stopover for energy to reach other parts of the Solar System and beyond, a low gravity place to make materials that we can't produce on Earth, or even a "lifeboat" for humanity - at the end of the day there has to be something a step beyond just knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
There's only a 1.3 second one-way communication delay between here and the Moon, making real-time control from Earth perfectly feasible (unlike Mars which has a 3 to 22 minute delay). The L2 point is even further away from the moon than the Earth is (on average around 4-5 times further) , thus there is an even larger communication delay which would make real-time control far less practical. Teleoperating a rover on the moon is a very contrived reason to place humans at the L2 point.
"Fortunately" a blogger captured this? Why exactly is this a fortunate thing? It's not like the site shows Romney doing something wrong, or trying to cover up something. Is there something particularly great about the site design that can benefit us in some way? Perhaps it contains some great scripts that we are now fortunate to have access to?
Someone made a mistake, and you say it is a "fortunate" that they can now be made fun of because of it. Politics aside, let's simply not act like assholes please. Also, be thankful that your mistakes don't turn into Slashdot stories.
Star's, not stars', unless the planet is orbiting more than one star at a time. Didn't we just talk about apostrophe abuse in another Slashdot headline a couple days ago?
The electoral college is necessary to balance power between large and small states. Civics education in this country is going down the pooper.
I think you're confusing the Senate with the Electoral College. The distribution of electors by state within the electoral college is determined by each state's population. So no, it does not keep any kind of "balance" between large and small states. What it does is keep control of the federal government directly at the State level. The States get to choose who is President of the US, and thus they get to decide what method to use to represent the popular vote of their citizens. A couple states (Maine and Nebraska) are more "democratic" than others, in that they split their electoral votes by district, thus it is possible for some of the state's votes to go to one candidate, and some to go to another.
But the spirit of the electoral college is simply that of the union of separate States into a federal government. When is the last time you, personally, got to vote on ANYTHING to do with the federal government? Never. However, the representatives you elected for your state and congressional district do get to vote. The electoral college is in this same spirit, in that we "elect" individuals to represent us at the federal level.
So why is the electoral college separate from, say, the House of Representatives (IE why doesn't the house decide the president since we chose them to represent us already, and they are even allocated by population just like the electors)? To maintain proper separation of the 3 parts of our government. The electoral college is unique and independent of the legislative and judicial branches, as it should be to maintain balance of power.
Not that I'm an advocate of the electoral system as it stands, but I can see how the concept applies to a union of individual states. Personally, I'm tired of feeling that my vote doesn't count, because it was trumped by urban voters in a few areas of dense population 400 miles from where I live. They have different needs, concerns, demographics, etc, and are not representative of those who live in my region of the state, yet only their voice is heard when it comes to electing a president.
He's not using an iPhone as an SDR. He's created yet another audio interface between a computing device (PC soundcard, iPhone, Android, whatever) and a typical radio. I go into more detail several comments down from here. This lets TNC / APRS software on the iPhone (already available in the app store by multiple developers) communicate digitally over radio using audio transmission modes (usually FM). The smartphone acts as a software modem and controller (aka a TNC).
Amateurs have been doing this for a long, long time now (IE over a decade). This is not a SDR (software defined radio), but using a computer's audio card to encode and decode packet / APRS audio, which is essentially your old school modem. To be concise, the computer (or smartphone) acts as the TNC (Terminal Node Controller), which is connected to a radio via an interface that takes audio to and from the computer to the radio, with some method of telling the radio when to transmit (typically via an audio level threshold, but there are interfaces that allow the computer to explicitly control when the radio transmits). I own an AEA PK-232 Pakratt, which is a discrete, stand-alone TNC that goes between a computer and radio. Originally the computer was just the terminal, which connected to the TNC via a serial port. Now you can simply have the computer directly process / generate the audio using a sound card without requiring an actual TNC peripheral.
The "inventor" even states that there are multiple apps for iPhone available to do this - you just need a way to hook the audio up to a radio. Basically he created yet another custom hardware audio interface, and the writer of this story got all excited about it because it was news to him.
Look online, and you'll find dozens of designs for this exact thing. Here's a list of at least a dozen kits and pre-assembled interfaces for standard PC sound cards. Most of these should work with any smartphone with the proper 4 conductor 1/8" audio jack that cell phones use for both earphone and mic combined (whereas computer sound cards have those as two separate 1/8" connectors).
http://www.soundcardpacket.org/1cablekit.htm
That site is dedicated to the entire "computer as a TNC" concept, which is simply what is being down now with smartphones as well.
Russia has the 4th highest alcohol consumption per capita in the world (behind Moldova, Czech Republic and Hungary - all former Soviet republics), with no laws specifying a minimum drinking age (minimum age to purchase is 18). Why not think of those children first if they're hell bent on making laws protecting children?
And everyone — users, businesses, developers, and Internet service providers — can get involved to help make it happen.
That just made an executive at an ISP laugh really, really hard.
Back in 1979 Disney produced a film called "The Black Hole". As a 10 year old I actually really liked the movie when I saw it back in the early 80s (on the newly-created Disney Channel of course), but it was considered one of Disney's biggest movie flops. It was pretty much a blatant rip-off of Star Wars, and was certainly an attempt to try and cash in on the huge popularity of Star Wars. The film had all the basic pieces - spaceships, laser guns, "ESP" kind of extrasensory stuff going on (aka The Force), and of course Robots.
So now, 33 years later, it looks like Disney finally got the real thing. The actual Star Wars franchise.
On a different note, I can't help but wonder if Lucas is in poor health. He always hated Hollywood, and despised studios having any control over his creative process. So for him to sell his own film company, which he built from scratch, to a major studio goes against everything he's said and done for decades.
You lament the death of this idealistic notion of "noblesse oblige" . My question is when was it ever alive? What era of what society represents your implied example, which people have forgotten and strayed away from? I'd like to know specifically what you're waxing nostalgic over, or is it something that exists only in your mind?
To quote one of Billy Joel's most insightful lyrics, "the good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems".
Also, your final statement illustrates the contradiction and true crux of this matter in the real world: "that helping each other, taking responsibility for one's actions," The problem is that we have people who DON'T take responsibility for their actions, thus they REQUIRE that someone else help them. I know, what you meant was the HAVES taking responsibility for their actions, but what I'm talking about is the other side of the coin, which are those that abuse the system and want as much of a free ride as possible. Certainly that is not the majority of the "needy" as you call them, but it is absolutely a problem that is exacerbated by "spreading the wealth".
I don't see why this can't be done by post-processing a video (as long as the camera doesn't move, pan or zoom). It's unique that it can be done with a specialized camera, but I don't think that is necessary.
I could call myself The Hurricane!
The rest of us will call you Sandy. Sandy Cheeks that is.
I first assumed this app would connect directly to my XBox via Bluetooth, and act as an actual controller device. It doesn't. Instead it requires internet connectivity on both the XBox and phone, and goes through the XBox Live servers (you have to sign into your XBox account on your phone, and also be logged into that XBox account on the XBox itself, before it can connect). I don't feel like messing around watching network traffic today, but I'm curious if XBox Live hands my phone over directly to the XBox (they find one another on my local network), or if all communication has to go through the XBox Live servers. There is a bit of latency, so I bet all communication is going out over the internet even though the devices are only 5 feet apart and both on the same LAN.
I found the gestures a bit clunky. For example, you have to touch-hold while dragging to drag faster. However there isn't any method (that I could find) to go through a whole page at a time in the XBox menus. I had to go item by item. I think I would prefer a simple D-Pad type setup on my phone, with dedicated buttons to scroll entire pages / screens at a time.
Yes, but are they scared or sad that they are dying?
This isn't exactly on-topic, but since the article mentions it, I'll bring it up. As someone who has played games my entire life (starting with Pong on a black ad white TV, growing up through the Arcade craze of the 80s, and every game console in between), I just don't see the appeal of Angry Birds. Sure, the game is well implemented - graphics, sound effects, and music are all very well done.
However, the basic gameplay mechanics are just so-so. It's just a physics simulation. The real problem is that there is such a massive luck factor involved. For example, when someone beats a difficult "level", what is the chance that they can actually reproduce their success in the exact same way? Pretty much impossible. Things happen in a way they neither intended nor predicted. So in other words, Angry Birds is more of a "slot machine" than a skill based game. Is it just the visual satisfaction of seeing a physics simulation smoothly unfold and crap fall down? Sort of like how the bouncing cards after winning Windows Solitaire was always so satisfying in a strange kind of way?
Now that's all good and well. Some people like to play luck based games. But why such a large percent of the population? With this game your skill quickly plateaus and then you're relying on mere chance, which isn't so appealing to me. Is it that their marketing is that good, or that they reached some magic threshold that the franchise is simply self sustaining now?
How many Slashdot readers feel that Angry Birds is the deserved pinnacle and poster child of non-console, non-PC gaming? And if not, what game should be the flagship of this new gaming market?
This is simply inevitable. China has been producing rare earths at unsustainable and artificially low prices, which is why the rest of the world no longer needed to bother with mining and consuming their own finite resources.
Everyone needs to grasp that this is an inevitability - the prices of various products (mainly higher technology) will have to go up, and thus the global markets and product will rebalance themselves. The manipulation was already done in keeping the prices too low, not in making them go up. Your complaints are coming way too late in this game - you should have been complaining at least a decade ago when they flooded the market with cheap resources, not now that the bubble has burst.
Say a new hot dog stand opens up in town, and for the first month they sell hotdogs for 25 cents at a massive and unsustainable loss. Maybe that's long enough to run the other hot dog stands out of business, or at least make them realize it's just not worth bothering with. Then after the introductory price they go up to where the market belongs. Now at that point the other hot dog stands can re-open, with new owners or with their old owners - doesn't really matter. At the end of the day it's all the same end result - hotdogs cost what they're worth.
My question is this - was it wrong for the rest of us to enjoy hotdogs for only a quarter apiece while we were able to? My opinion is no, that's not wrong of us, nor is it wrong that the world enjoyed lower priced rare earths (and thus technology) because of China's willing sacrifice of their finite resources.
No, don't put tariffs on them. Why would the US want to sell or produce rare earths? They are a finite resource. If China wants to burn through their supplies so the rest of the world can enjoy cheaper technology, then that is their prerogative. Once it's out of the ground and used to manufacture products shipped to the US then it can be recycled for reuse in new products. Either way the material is no longer in China. This is a gamble China has made to try and prop up their massive industry and population, is to not only undercut worldwide labor with a very cheap workforce, but also burn through their physical resources as well.
Nothing about China is sustainable, and there will be great sorrow and suffering in that country when the bottom drops out of various markets over the next decades.
The USA's production at various rare earth mines simply idled or completely stopped as prices dropped and it was not longer profitable to mine them. The rare earths are still sitting there waiting for us when we need them. No hurry to get to those resources at all.
Okay, then what is needed is a patent for limiting the amount of sarcasm in a commenting system. I'll lay the groundwork:
For example, the point 360, which may represent fifty units of sarcasm in a five hour period, does not violate any of the policies as illustrated. However, the point 350, which represents fifty units of sarcasm in a two hour period, violates the sarcasm threshold 330. Thus, if point 350 represents a user's actions, then the policy is violated.
Now it can never be said that I didn't contribute to Slashdot in a positive way after all these years.
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
Nope, Slashdot is not in violation of the patent. Investigation closed.
The OPs mockery of the summary is justified. If bisecting is the process of finding the change in which a bug was introduced, then how can you do that to the bug AFTER it has been found?
Kernel developers have found and bisected the kernel issue
Should be "Kernel developers have bisected change sets and the found kernel issue".
Man, that is some hard core stuff right there. Is there anyone frequenting Slashdot with genius-level IQ that could possibly break down this unbelievably complex, non-obvious behavior and explain it to the rest of us? This is what having billions of dollars of capital can do for you - bring the brain power to a company that is required to make these kinds of amazing discoveries. What I'm looking forward to are the physics and mathematical papers that can expand on these newly found principles and constructs. It's really the stepping-off point to marvelous things for humanity. In fact, I do believe this may even bring us a step closer to the Grand Unified Theory.
Touch is great for accessing and consuming content.
Touch is currently horrendous for producing or modifying content.
These are not yet 'unified' avenues of usage as yet.
However it is possible. I have given content creation / editing (as in writing software) on both iPad and my Samsung Galaxy S3 the old college try. In many ways, it is this close to actually working and replacing my laptop. With my galaxy I've used both bluetooth and USB mice. I would break down the support for using a mouse on the latest version of Android as:
Hardware support: 95%
OS support: 75%
App support: 5%
The problem lies with the apps. They simply aren't written to take proper advantage of a mouse, or even a keyboard for that matter. For example, when I plug in a keyboard, the OS must recognize I'm using an external keyboard, and thus it doesn't show the onscreen keyboard. However, certain apps I've tried must be triggering it programatically at various times (for example when switching away and back to the app), and when the onscreen keyboard pops up in landscape orientation nearly all the screen real estate is wasted.
Yet even ALT-TAB works on the keyboard to allow switching between apps on Android, showing just how surprisingly complete external keyboard support is in some areas.
Text selection and copying is one of the big issues with mouse support, because at the OS level it is still being reduced down to simple touches. Thus you must click-hold to begin selecting, visual indicators designed for touch use are then unnecessarily large, etc. Can (and should) mouse based text selection work optimally on a mobile device, exactly as it does on desktop devices? Of course it can, and without having to change the existing touch-based behavior either.
Now Microsoft does have a chance to get all this right. Instead of mouse and keyboard support being hobbled on as an afterthought, which is how it has (VERY) slowly evolved with Android from version to version, Microsoft can have well thought out support from day 1. More importantly, they can require (or at least make it very easy or implicitly supported) for 3rd party developers to have proper support for these peripherals. Simple things such as not always assuming onscreen keyboards are being displayed, provide keyboard shortcuts, support for mouse scroll wheels, etc.
As others have already stated, the huge concern here is that MS is going to go off the deep end (as is their wont) and push a paradigm or concept too far. For example, if a touchpad or mouse is available, then I should NEVER need to actually touch the screen to do any standard OS GUI function.
I wish I had mod points. Unless the submitter has direct evidence that he was hacked via Bluetooth (astoundingly, not just once, but twice on completely different devices that would require entirely different attack vectors / exploits), then I seriously doubt his device is being compromised in that way. I also find it very unlikely that WiFi was used to gain access to his device either.
I question what kinds of apps, modifications, custom roms, etc, this person is using, or if anyone that has access to his device (a significant other, etc) would have motivation to install "security" software that monitors his texts, calls, etc.
My opinion? I think more mundane things have gone wrong with his last two phones (running out of storage, radio hardware failures, bloatware hogging CPU all the time, etc) and he's simply attributing those problems to his device being "hacking" by a 3rd party.
Wow, they finally discovered the concept of "follow the money".
I hope it finds massive amounts of palladium, iridium or some mix of rare metals. Nothing would kick-start a race to Mars like greed. Unfortunately.
So by "Unfortunately" do you mean that the only reason we should go to the incredible expense and risk of visiting other planets is for purely academic or intellectual purposes? Is there anything of actual value to our planet Earth that we can glean from pure knowledge (and knowledge alone) of Mars? Say we learn more about the history of Mars. Humanity applies that information in exactly what way to better our species or improve our planet in some way?
At the end of the day, for it to be worthwhile beyond the science that we are doing right this minute with rovers, there has to be something of value on Mars. Real, tangible value. Materials that are rare on earth, a stopover for energy to reach other parts of the Solar System and beyond, a low gravity place to make materials that we can't produce on Earth, or even a "lifeboat" for humanity - at the end of the day there has to be something a step beyond just knowledge for the sake of knowledge.