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The Internet

Submission + - More Blogosphere Explosions

Submitted by
jeevesbond
jeevesbond writes: "Hot on the heels of the revealing post from Kathy Sierra of death and sexual harm threats made against her, comes this from — well known Microsoft contractor/Web Standards blogger — Molly Holzschlag:

Today I found out that I am no longer welcome at the Web Directions event. Instead, the man who used me for the last two years to forward his career will be invited.


It appears Andy Clarke used Molly to get a book published, more details on Molly's blog post: 'Stuffed with Nonsense'."
Education

Evolution of Mammals Re-evaluated 249

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the shaking-the-tree-to-see-what-falls-out dept.
AaxelB writes "A study described in the New York Times rethinks mammalian evolution. Specifically, that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs had relatively little impact on mammals and that the steps in mammals' evolution happened well before and long after the dinosaurs' death."
Games

Submission + - Games Firm Pursues 500 Pinball 'Pirates'

Submitted by
ColinPL
ColinPL writes: "Zuxxex, the German games software distributor, has hired lawyers to chase down about 500 British file-sharers, launching the first in a series of swoops by computer forensic experts.

File sharers were reported under court orders served on 18 ISPs at Davenport's request after computer forensic experts associated their IP addresses as sources for downloaders of Dream Pinball 3D, a computer game that's unleased in the UK — it goes on sale in June."
Space

Submission + - Mysterious Hexagon Spotted Over Saturn

Submitted by
popo
popo writes: "A mysterious hexagon has been spotted on Saturn's North Pole by NASA's Cassini orbiter. The bizarre geometric formation spans the size of two planet Earths and is stationary with clouds spinning around it. Kevin Baines of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides. ...We've never seen anything like this on any other planet.""
Graphics

Submission + - Boost video performance of aging AGP system

Submitted by jmke
jmke writes: While most manufacturers have forsaken AGP and are no longer bringing out new products for this platform, there are still a few left who cater to the budget minded end user. The ATI X1950 Pro chipset carries the top mid-range title in its PCI Express incarnation, the people from HIS Digital have brought it over to AGP in hopes that'll it will give a performance boost for older systems too, their X1950 Pro IceQ3 comes overclocked and with custom cooling to keep things running cool and quiet. Worth a look for those who like to play the latest games on their AGP system.
Programming

Submission + - Poll: where do you put the curly braces?

Submitted by
raner
raner writes: "Where do you put the curly braces:
* opening brace at end of line, closing brace at beginning
* both braces at the beginning of their own lines
* option 1, with some exceptions
* option 2, with some exceptions
* wherever I see fit
* I'm a COBOL programmer"
Software

Submission + - What is the best bug-as-a-feature?

Submitted by Bat Country
Bat Country writes: The workflow system at the department I develop for was hand-coded by my predecessor in a rather short amount of time, resulting in somewhat unreadable code with a number of interesting "features."

When I took over maintenance of the code base, I started patching bugs and cleaning up the code in preparation for a new set of features.

When I was done however, I got a pile of complaints about features which disappeared which turned out to be caused by the bugs in the code.
So that leads me to ask, what is your favorite bug that you either can't live without or makes your life easier?
Book Reviews

GWT Java AJAX Programming 100

Posted by samzenpus from the prefix-programming dept.
simon_kehler writes "The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java AJAX framework that provides an easy to use programming paradigm for web developers using the Java programming language. It is one of the more recent entrants into this field, but has been gaining a lot of traction and popularity. GWT Java AJAX Programming authored by Prabhakar Chaganti and published by Packt Publishing addresses the use of GWT to build ajaxified user interfaces. The author gently introduces the reader to GWT and then leads the reader through a series of tasks, each of which shows how to perform an useful action with GWT." Read below for Simon's review.
United States

Submission + - New report finds H-1Bs accelerating outsourcing

Submitted by chris_be
chris_be writes: The Economic Policy Institute's latest Briefing Paper, Outsourcing America's technology and knowledge jobs: High-skill guest worker visas are currently hurting rather than helping keep jobs at home, comes as Congress once again considers changes to U.S. high-skill immigration policy. This report disproves claims that, because of a shortage of U.S. scientists and engineers, our H-1B visa program has to expand so that employers are not forced to hire foreign workers in their home countries. The report also finds the H-1B program instead accelerates the outsourcing of high-wage, high-skill jobs to low-cost countries. In fact, the visa program's largest users are offshore outsourcing firms who sponsor very few of their workers for long-term green cards. The report also points out three major fundamental flaws in the program design. First, firms do not have to ensure that there isn't a U.S. worker who could fill the job before hiring a foreign worker. Second, the visa program's prevailing wage guidelines are riddled with loopholes, so that firms can easily pay foreign workers below-market wages that then depress the wages of U.S. workers. Third, the program has little oversight.
Programming

Submission + - Poll: do you document your code?

Submitted by
raner
raner writes: "How much documenting comments (javadoc, etc.) does your code contain:

* less than 5% code/comment ratio, and that's okay
* less than 5% code/comment ratio, but I'm feeling guilty
* between 5% and 20% code/comment ratio
* more than 20% code/comment ratio
* more than 20% code/comment ratio, and that's how it should be
* I'm agile: communication instead of documentation!"
Space

Submission + - Saturn's mysterious hexagon

Submitted by jcotton
jcotton writes: Here's your chance to name something much bigger than a street after yourself. TierneyLab hereby promises to name Saturn's mysterious hexagon after the reader who comes up with the most entertaining explanation for this 15,000-mile wide feature at the planet's north pole. NASA says it looks like clouds are whipping around. The New York Times, science times and space.com all report.
Media

Submission + - Paper pulls plug on "Anti-Christ" contribu

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "Every media site on the Web wants "user-generated content." But what happens when a user wants to generate content under a pseudonym such as "Anti-Christ." Charles Merrill — a member of both the Merrill Lynch and Johnson & Johnson families — says a paper in North Carolina yanked his posting privileges after two weeks of using that moniker. "Offensive," the paper called it. Now Merrill is launching an offensive of his own, publicly charging the paper with discriminating against atheists. ... Publishers can expect to confront these types of issues in direct proportion to the degree with which they embrace user-generated content — a reasonable price to pay, but a price nonetheless.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1303 5"
Networking

Submission + - Who needs electrons?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: All signals get gummed up, even light in fiber. At present, if you want to clean it up, you have to take the signal off the fiber, change it to an electrical signal, massage it, and then turn it back to light. This regeneration is a pain, particulary when you have a multitude of wavelengths, each with it's separate bit stream. Bell Labs may be changing all that...
http://telephonyonline.com/fttp/news/telecom_bell_ labs_creates/

Editor Note — your website is stuck on Programming topics, so please find appropriate Sciende topic
Intel

Submission + - Intel Next-Gen CPU Has Memory Controller and GPU

Submitted by
NetworkingNed
NetworkingNed writes: "Today Intel talked to analysts about their upcoming CPU architectures including the Penryn and Nehalem cores. While most of the Penryn information was already known, like the move to 45nm, SSE4 instructions and up to 12MB L2 cache, the information on Nehalem was much more interesting. Intel divulged that Nehalem was going to be a completely scalable architecture and would feature anywhere from 1-8 cores with 1-16 threads (SMT is back!) depending on the market segment. Not only that, but on-die memory controllers and on-die GPUs are planned as well. Could this be the answer to AMD's Fusion technology? This PC Perspective article has a lot more information on the technology plans introduced today."

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