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Comment Re:Important? How? (Score 1) 257

by charlesj68 (#38308366) Attached to: Kepler Confirms Exoplanet Inside Star's Habitable Zone

4. The economy recovers, because all this stuff has much the same effect on the world economy as WWII had on the US economy, but without the millions of people dying.

(Note: not entirely my idea)

There is at least one major drawback to this working in the same way. A significant portion of what made the US economy so powerful post-WWII was the fact that in the process of prosecuting that conflict a healthy chuck of the manufacturing capability of the rest of the world was reduced to rubble.

Comment Re:Is the real problem here? (Score 1) 357

by charlesj68 (#38206104) Attached to: Rethinking Rail Travel: Boarding a Moving Train

There's a joke out there about what would happen if structural engineers built structures the way software developers build software. I don't remember the exact punch line,

Ah, one of my favorites, Weinberg's Law: "If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization".
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll (cnet.com)

Submitted by ardmhacha
ardmhacha writes: Zynga seem to think they were a little generous handing out stock to early employees. Fearing a "Google Chef" situation they are leaning on some employees to hand back their unvested stock or face termination. The Wall Street Journal also has a take. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204621904577018373223480802.html

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Researchers begin work on Babbage Analytical Engine, hope to compute like it's . (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Daily Mail
Researchers begin work on Babbage Analytical Engine, hope to compute like it's ...
Engadget
A fully-functional Babbage Difference Engine? That's been done and duplicated. But the even more ambitious Babbage Analytical Engine? That's another story completely. Devised by mathematician Charles ...
A Before-Its-Time MachineNew York Times
Who Invented the Computer? Guess AgainTIME
British Researchers to Build Charles Babbage's 'Supercomputer'ITProPortal
The Verge-The Takeaway-Boing Boing
all 21 news articles

Google

Submission + - Google Promises To Protect Global Brands from G+ S (threatpost.com)

Submitted by
chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: "After months as a consumer-only beta, Google finally opened up its Google+ social network to companies this week, launching Google Brand pages. While response to the new brand pages was tepid (Robert Scoble penned a rather scathing review here: http://scobleizer.com/2011/11/08/i-wish-i-had-never-heard-of-googles-brand-pages/), it didn't take long for folks poking around the new feature to identify a serious shortcoming: Google allows pretty much anyone to stake out a page for any brand, regardless of their affiliation with it. Now, faced with questions about a muddy, confusing and dangerous landscape of real and phony brand pages, Google tells Threatpost that it will be taking steps to shore legitimate brand pages associated with companies, while snuffing out "lurker" pages designed to mislead G+ users, though the exact methodology it will use is a bit fuzzy."
Cloud

Submission + - When Cloud Power Meets Pediatric Cancer Research (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
gManZboy
gManZboy writes: "Kids with rare, deadly neuroblastoma cancer could be first to benefit from what's being dubbed the first personalized medicine clinical trial for pediatric cancers. Donated Dell cloud computing resources will support collaboration and data exchange among oncologists and medical researchers nationwide, including the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). The cloud-based computing resources will increase by 1,200 percent the gene sequencing and analysis capacity of TGen's existing clinical cluster. Currently, genomic sequencing of individual patients can take months, generating more than 4 terabytes of data. With the cloud technologies, the time needed for the genomic mapping and analysis of tumors can be shortened to weeks."
GUI

Submission + - Physical input devices for developers? 1

Submitted by
paysonwelch
paysonwelch writes: "Dear Slashdot, All I want for Christmas is.. Just joking. I am a developer and entrepreneur and I am considering developing a very graphically rich and custom interface for my latest application which does charting and analysis of large data sets. The application would feature lots of gauges, knobs and levers. As I was thinking about this I said to myself, why not hook up physical knobs and levers to my computer to control my application instead of designing them in 2D bitmaps? This could potentially save screen space and provide tactile feedback, and a new way of interacting digitally with one's application and data. So my question is whether or not anyone out there has advice for building a custom solution, perhaps starting with a mixing board, or if there are any pre-fab kits / controllers for achieving this?"
Businesses

Hewlett Packard's Cult Calculator Turns 30 318

Posted by timothy from the if-you-have-one-raise-your-hand-at-the-end dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Hewlett Packard's HP-12C financial calculator has remained outwardly unchanged since its introduction in 1981. 'Once you learned it on the 12C, there was no need to change,' says David Carter, chief investment officer of New York wealth-management firm Lenox Advisors, who has owned his 12C for 22 years and still keeps it on his desk. 'It's not like the math was changing.' The 12C, which costs $70 on HP's website, is HP's best-selling calculator of all time, though the company won't reveal how many units it has sold over the years. The 12C still uses an unconventional mathematical notation called 'Reverse Polish Notation,' which eschews parentheses and equal signs in an effort to run long calculations more efficiently."

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