3000$….. disons que lorsque ca brise (ou je suis tres pour briser des cles USB), ca fait un petit pincement au coeur.

The new result comes from what’s called microlensing.

This kind of event takes an extraordinarily precise alignment, so they’re extremely rare. To compensate, you need to look at a lot of stars. So astronomers did: a survey using two telescopes covered several million stars every night, looking for the tell-tale bump(s). Over the course of six years, they found three — yes, only three — planets orbiting other stars acting like wee distant lenses. But that number is actually pretty good: when combined with previous surveys, and also taking into account how many lenses they didn’t see (which is important, statistically), they can extrapolate with some confidence about the numbers and types of exoplanets out there.

Via: dvorak.org: Kopimism – The Swedish File Sharing Religion

For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament.

Hopefully, this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution, says Isak Gerson, spiritual leader of the Church of Kopimism.

LOL!!! Tout aussi ridicule que les autres religions

Les fabricants de pneus nous disent qu’ils conçoivent
déjà des pneus performants pour un gonflage à l’air.
Donc, nous ne nous sommes pas laissé dégonfler ! Au
lieu de remplir nos pneus à l’azote, en payant de 5 $ à
8 $ de plus par pneu (multiplié par quatre pneus d’été
et quatre pneus d’hiver, ça fait une somme rondelette),
nous avons préféré utiliser les économies réalisées
pour nous abonner au Québec sceptique.

A Proposal in Stop Motion from FIREPIT PICTURES on Vimeo.

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Projections from Obscura Digital on Vimeo.

slashdot.org: Lower Limit Found For Sudoku Puzzle Clues

An Irish mathematician has used a complex algorithm and millions of hours of supercomputing time to solve an important open problem in the mathematics of Sudoku, the game popularized in Japan that involves filling in a 9X9 grid of squares with the numbers 1–9 according to certain rules.

Gary McGuire of University College Dublin shows in a proof posted online on 1 January1 that the minimum number of clues — or starting digits — needed to complete a puzzle is 17; puzzles with 16 or fewer clues do not have a unique solution. Most newspaper puzzles have around 25 clues, with the difficulty of the puzzle decreasing as more clues are given.

“The approach is reasonable and it’s plausible. I’d say the attitude is one of cautious optimism,” says Jason Rosenhouse, a mathematician at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and the co-author of a newly released book on the maths of Sudoku.

Having spent two years testing the algorithm, McGuire and his team used about 700 million CPU hours at the Irish Centre for High-End Computing in Dublin, searching through possible grids with the hitting-set algorithm. “The only realistic way to do it was the brute force approach,” says Gordon Royle, a mathematician at the University of Western Australian in Perth who had been working on the problem of counting 17 clue puzzles using different algorithms.

Papier en format PDF

Via: Bad Astronomy: Colbert on Tyson

awesomelinux.blogspot.com: KMix Lockups, Freezes, and Performance

Regardless, I eventually figured a solution to the problem: Quit kmix. You may need to actually kill the program. Next move/delete/rename the folder ‘kmix’ in the folder ‘~/.kde/share/apps/. Restart kmix, and it will recreate a default ‘~/.kde/share/apps/kmix/’ folder with default settings.

Via: slashdot.org: Comet Lovejoy Plunges Into the Sun and Survives

“It’s absolutely astounding,” says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. “I did not think the comet’s icy core was big enough to survive plunging through the several million degree solar corona for close to an hour, but Comet Lovejoy is still with us.”

The most dramatic footage so far comes from SDO, which saw the comet go in (movie) and then come back out again (movie).

Comet Lovejoy was discovered on Dec. 2, 2011, by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy of Australia. Researchers quickly realized that the new find was a member of the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets. Named after the German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first studied them, Kreutz sungrazers are fragments of a single giant comet that broke apart back in the 12th century (probably the Great Comet of 1106). Kreutz sungrazers are typically small (~10 meters wide) and numerous. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory sees one falling into the sun every few days.

Full rotation of Jupiter from Jean-Luc Dauvergne on Vimeo.

La phrase sous le graphique est la meilleure description de Noel…. EVER!

Launched by the Wolfram Group, the CDF standard is a computation-powered knowledge container—as everyday as a document, but as interactive as an app.

Adopting CDF gives ideas a broad communication pipeline—accelerating research, education, technical development, and progress.

Le “viewer” demande 684MB d’espace! On est loin d’adobe flash quand meme, ce qui explique qu’il est plus gourmand. Le rendu 3D me semble un peu ordinaire, mais l’idee pourrait interesser les matheux qui veulent partager des documents.

Via: slashdot.org: Red Cross Debates If Virtual Killing Violates International Humanitarian Law

Now, a committee of the Red Cross is debating if gamers might be violating the International Humanitarian Law as they slaughter each other online.

Hahahahaha. C’est tellement stupide que je me suis demande si on etait deja le premier avril.

SENSE OF FLYING from Goovinn on Vimeo.

Via: likecool.com: The Vertical Chess Set

Il est possible d’en trouver un moins cher sur d’autres sites.

Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.

Our fantasy is that on any given road trip, you will be able to find a nerd stop somewhere along your route, or perhaps even plot out a nerd odyssey across the UK.

Et il y a maintenant beaucoup de liens en dehors du Royaume Uni.

Via: slashdot.org: Researchers Expanding Diff, Grep Unix Tools

The new programs, called Context-Free Grep and Hierarchical Diff, will provide the ability to parse blocks of data rather than single lines. For each new type of data structure, a vendor would provide a pattern library identifying the basic structure of the data, which the software would then use to “extract the constructs of interest from the document,” Weaver said.

The problem with the run-of-the-mill Cantor crank is that they never even try to actually address Cantor’s proof. They just say “look, here’s a mapping that works!”

So the entire disproof of their “refutation” of Cantor’s proof is… Cantor’s proof. They completely ignore the thing that they’re claiming to disprove.

Pas mal, n’est-ce pas? LOL

Explanation: The longer you look at this image, the more you see. Perhaps your eye is first drawn to the picturesque waterfall called Skogarfoss visible on the image right. Just as prevalent, however, in this Icelandic visual extravaganza, is the colorful arc of light on the left. This chromatic bow is not a rainbow, since the water drops did not originate in rainfall nor are they reflecting light from the Sun. Rather, the drops have drifted off from the waterfall and are now illuminated by the nearly full Moon. High above are the faint green streaks of aurora. The scene, captured one night last month, also shows a beautiful starscape far in the background, including the Big Dipper, part of the constellation of the Great Bear (Ursa Major).

22 months
1,357 hours
30 people
2 ladders
1 still camera
288,000 jelly beans

Je vais probablement ecouter les autres conferences suggerees par Sean Carroll, mais pour l’instant je n’ai ecoute que la premiere qui est vraiment interessante.

“7FT Gundam” – Ultimate Papercraft from Taras Lesko on Vimeo.

I find that when someone’s taking time to do something right in the present, they’re a perfectionist with no ability to prioritize, whereas when someone took time to do something right in the past, they’re a master artisan of great foresight.