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User: AchilleTalon

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  1. Re:Entropy vs. T-symmetry on Particle Physicists Confirm Arrow of Time Using B Meson Measurements · · Score: 1
    FTFA, what makes the difference here is the measurement was made independantly from the CP violation. Here is the key passage:

    “It was important to measure time reversal independently of charge-parity violation because there was always the possibility something was wrong with the full picture,” says Fabio Anulli of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Rome, who is physics coordinator for BaBar.

    Measurements indicating time reversal was likely violated had already been made in kaons at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois and at CERN near Geneva, but in those experiments, according to Anulli, the measurement of time reversal were not disentangled from violations of charge-parity that were also present."

  2. Re:CPLEAR on Particle Physicists Confirm Arrow of Time Using B Meson Measurements · · Score: 5, Informative

    From TFA: "Measurements indicating time reversal was likely violated had already been made in kaons at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois and at CERN near Geneva, but in those experiments, according to Anulli, the measurement of time reversal were not disentangled from violations of charge-parity that were also present."

  3. Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me on One Step Toward a Babel Fish: Real-Time Voice Translation For Phones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, the only problem is everyone has to learn English and its culture, but no one from English speaking countries really need to learn others languages and cultures. So, it's not exactly a good thing neither.

  4. Re:The remote shell is NOT a surprise on Critical Vulnerabilities In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, CryEngine 3 · · Score: 2

    Contrary to what the movies would have you believe, actual exploits are (especially in a modern environment full of vulnerability mitigations) very difficult to produce in most cases. Many security researchers don't even bother with that step; it's enough to find the vulnerability and flag it "probably exploitable".

    On another hand, unpatched, unresolved, unfixed security issues will attract hackers until they find a way to exploit them. So, no need to find an easy exploitable scenario to flag them as probably exploitable. Why someone should sit and wait it becomes exploitable to fix it? It's a kind of security through obscurity you are talking about. I'm sorry, but this must be secure by design.

  5. Re:Forward Looking Policy? on Germany Exports More Electricity Than Ever Despite Phasing Out Nuclear Energy · · Score: 1

    Expensive, but still profitable. Particularily with the high rates per kWh the Germans are paying. Nuclear plants are still producing at a lower cost than windfarms including decommissoning at the end of the life cycle.

  6. Re:Insufficient information on Canada's Supreme Court Tosses Viagra Patent For Vagueness · · Score: 2

    The Supreme Court decision intent to relax the suffering conditions of many Canadians due to the NHL lock-out. It should be seen as its contribution to ease these hard times with a little slack in the pockets of the poor Canadians deprived from the national sport show.

  7. Simple enough on What To Do After You Fire a Bad Sysadmin Or Developer · · Score: 1

    Give me a gazillions boxes and I will fix everything.

  8. Use whatever system you wish. Anyway, nobody is using Bob's system. Give Bob a copy of every document to put into his system and let him play alone with his system while you are using the usable one. Just make sure to give him an update of every document for him to play with. He shouldn't notice since he is the only user of his system.

  9. Re:Two words: dumb customers on Why Can't Industry Design an Affordable Hearing Aid? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yep, there is plenty of hearing aids in the range of 300$ to 1600$. Here, in my country, the hearing aids are covered by the medical insurance plan from the country. So, the government agency is negociating prices with manufacturers and I can ensure you, no hearing aids above 500$ each are on the list. However, you must know they are not the bleeding-edge products from these companies, they are the end of line products. Even, they are no longer advertised on their respective websites. However, due the negociation for a large number of hearing aids per year, the governement is able to drive down the prices. The contract with the manufacturers include maintenance plan for three or six years.

    Obviously, the companies don't want to sell these on the free market and are trying to sell top of line products instead at the higher tag price with the large profit margin.

  10. Re:He was really saying... on Captive Beluga Was Able To Mimic Speech · · Score: 1

    Bah! It's nothing, the other day I saw a sponge on a TV show which was capable to speak and understand the human language.

  11. Crawling the world wide web on Making Biodegradable Computer Chips Out of Spider Silk · · Score: 1

    Crawling the world wide web will make much more sense.

  12. Scientific data gathered during the jump on Felix Baumgartner's Supersonic Skydive Attempt · · Score: 1

    Anybody knows if Redbull plans to release in the public the scientific data gathered during the jump? It would be interesting to have the crowd being able to dig the data.

  13. Re:Yay. Slashdot is up to date and current finally on Felix Baumgartner's Supersonic Skydive Attempt · · Score: 1

    So, that was a nice jump. Let us hope Baumgartner won't die slipping on a banana peel as it happened once to the first guy to jump the Niagara Falls in a barrel who died slipping on an orange peel.

  14. Re:ASL translator on Giving Your Computer Interface the Finger · · Score: 1

    Reading ASL and other countries sign language would require a little bit more work than what has been done so far. It needs facial expressions recognition as well and at least the whole upper body reading. ASL isn't limited to hands and fingers gestures. But, you are right to talk about it. The idea isn't new. The Google glasses would be a better candidate for such a system since it is portable and likely to be ubiquitious in a few years with possibily enough processing power.

  15. Re:But that's not the real problem. on To Encourage Biking, Lose the Helmets · · Score: 0

    Not true. Even if I am an adult, cyclist and I don't wear an helmet. Following your rational, the government shouldn't impose speed limits, neither the safety buckle, neither any security mechanisms in cars, nor winter tires in upper States and so on.

  16. Re:What? on How Noah Kagan Got Fired From Facebook and Lost $100 Million · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anyway, the lessons he learned don't worth 100M. Almost everyone learn them for free. Nothing special in this story at my humble opinion. Everyone with about 5 years at the workplace got these lessons. I estimate that 5 years is the average time to be fired these days.

  17. Re:Since 1995.. on Ask Slashdot: What Distros Have You Used, In What Order? · · Score: 1
    1. SoftLanding Linux kernel 0.92
    2. Slackware
    3. RedHat
    4. Fedora testing
    5. Linux from Scratch
    6. Gentoo
  18. Re:Romney *is* a moron on Torvalds Uses Profanity To Lambaste Romney Remarks · · Score: 3, Interesting
  19. Re:Amazing! on GNOME 3.6 Released · · Score: 4, Informative

    I must admit there is much more innovation in this release of Gnome than in the iPhone5.

  20. Re:RIM's Main Problem on Flatlining User Base May Spell End of RIM · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but I don't believe the only ones who need that level of security are the highest echelons and the DoD. No serious business can afford the cost of lack of security and secure its data.

    Given that, you scenario where RIM is going kaput is unlikely, they still have a niche market and if they care about it, they can still keep this precious customer base.

    The point being, why should RIM target the mass market and the next door guy who need a smartphone to play some game while commuting and never use his phone for business purpose?

    It may be wiser for RIM to secure its enterprise customer base rather than being after a market that has no recognition for the capabilities of their products and just want some flashy device.

    It is not the first time a hightech company seems to die and at the end rebirth from its ashes. It even happened to Apple.

  21. Re:Isn't that good... on Presentation Scales In Massive Online Courses; Does Interaction? · · Score: 1

    I forgot to talk a little about the meetup. Again, so far I haven't have a chance to join one in my area. I am aware there is now one, less than half a dozen students are registered and I am waiting for the first meetup.

  22. Re:Isn't that good... on Presentation Scales In Massive Online Courses; Does Interaction? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Having followed about a dozen courses at Coursera and one at MITx. I believe there is still much room to improvement on Coursera's forum. The quality isn't equal. Some teaching assistants and Professors are outstanding. Others are so, so. The main point is that professors aren't paid to put their courses on-line. So, in some cases, the time commitment is just not there. Same thing apply to teaching assistants.

    The forum could be easier and more user-friendly searching isn't always easy. There is no performant search engine and classification with tags is depends on the students. Provided the number of students from many different locations and culture, it is easy to imagine not everyone is taking care about the tags.

    Beside that, you can usually find good help on the forum if you are up-to-date with the course material and not lagging to much behind, otherwise, you are reduced often to dig into the already existing threads to find your answers. There is not always a great willing to help those lagging behind. And, as I said, since there is no search engine, you may endup reading more pages on the forum than the actual course material to find the help and information you are seeking for. This can really be a time consuming task. At my sense, it should be a top priority in the list of the improvements to implement on the forum.

    For disabled students, the material isn't always available on time and isn't always accurate. That can be a concern for those needing it since they may at the end have much less time than others to complete the lessons, assignments, homeworks before the deadlines. This is a problem Coursera can easily fix by better planning the lauch of each course making sure a professor do not start a course without having already a given number of videos already adapted for disabled students. This is really just a planning issue. And, it is sad to say that disabled students may be penalized in a course by this lack of planning.

    For many teachers, this is the first experience at this scale, they need some guidance from Coursera which should be the primary ressource and should ensure the quality of the material by supervising the preparation and lauching of the new courses.

    I strongly believe in MOOC and despite my comments I believe Coursera did a great job. On the side of the on-line help on the forum, my experience with MITx is the forum environment at MITx was a little bit superior to Coursera's environment. Now, let see what edX will offer. Starting a new course today with them.

  23. Re:1 2 3 4 5 6 on The Man Who Hacked the Bank of France · · Score: 1

    The actual password once typed on a phone keyboard appears to be encrypted as: 1CFGLO why is it considered unsecured?

  24. What about offending Islamic people with movies? on Can a Court Order You To Delete a Facebook Account? · · Score: 1

    So, you are jailed for an irresponsible, irrespective comment on FB. On another hand, you can produce a bad movie offending thousands of people and it's free speech. The movie will result in killing of half a dozen people and you are free and protected by the Constitution. Someone can explain this one?

  25. Re:Hearing aids have been discussed before on Ask Slashdot: Hearing Aids That Directly Connect To Smart Phones? · · Score: 4, Informative

    These are toys, not real hearing aids. They just amplify the sound, it's like what I got 30 years ago. Even some of these are what my mother got 60 years ago and never really used because of the bad quality of the sound. I'm sorry, be this isn't serious stuff. Also, none of these are having BT except one model which is just a regular headset/earpiece, nothing to do with hearing aids again.

    Here, in my country, the government is dealing directly with manufacturers to get the best price they can for hearing aids since they are provided for free to people with an audiologist/ORL prescription. They ensure to have medium quality devices that will last at least 6 years. The manufacturers are required to guarantee and do the repairs for the whole duration of the contract. There is two styles of hearing aids available: the analog hearing aids and the digital sound processor hearing aids. They are not the top of line products, but they are good products. The pricing is around 700-1000$/pair of hearing aids. Considering they will last six years and they quality is much more better than these toys, I think the pricing is competitive.

    For the Bluetooth gateway, I had to pay 400$ for it. This is exagerated given the price of the BT chips. The hearing aids themselves are coupled with the gateway via an induction loop and a radioMF signal, so the hearing aids themselves have nothing special, the coupling with BT is all handled by the gateway.