necrognome - Slashdot User

Submission + - Strange things happening to the rings of Uranus (godgab.org)

Submitted by

dwayner79

on Friday August 24, 2007 @04:17PM

dwayner79 writes: "Middle Schoolers are loving it, but as the article says, "Strange things are happening to the rings of Uranus, that little blue planet way out there in the solar system.It has rings and moons, and once every 42 years, the planet's tilted angle lets earthbound observers briefly catch three edge-on views of the rings instead of the usual direct view that makes them appear as if they were sunlit paintings on the flat rim of a dinner plate. The time for the rare views is right now, and a team of astronomers from UC Berkeley and the SETI Institute in Mountain View has seen some dramatic changes — some rings are growing brighter, at least one is fading away, and another is either new-formed or unexpectedly moving outward from the planet by thousands of miles.""

Submission + - Should We Rebuild America with Minneapolis Bridge? (popularmechanics.com) 2

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Thursday August 02, 2007 @01:32PM

mattnyc99 writes: The tragic collapse last night in Minneapolis of a truss bridge—one that the U.S. Dept. of Transportation found "structurally deficient" two years ago—raises an important issue beyond just the engineering of one single span. As national security expert Stephen Flynn pleads in an op-ed on American infrastructure in the wake of yesterday's disaster, "The blind eye that taxpayers and our elected officials have been turning to the imperative of maintaining and upgrading the critical foundations that underpin our lives is irrational and reckless." Do we need to start spending to rebuild America?

Submission + - Virtualization, Vista security issues at Black Hat

Submitted by BobB on Thursday August 02, 2007 @12:44PM

BobB writes: Can rootkit malware that hides by mimicking a software-based virtual machine ever be detected? That was the topic of debate as security researchers presented their latest findings to packed audiences at the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas. Vista security questions also swirled at the event. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/080207-black -hat-virtual-machine-rootkit-detection.html

Submission + - Women's Pay: Lagging From the Start

Submitted by

gollum123

on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @05:50PM

gollum123 writes: "Time magazine reports on new data that shows women are already earning less than men before the ink on their college diplomas has dried ( http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1 613829,00.html ). The study, which looked at more than 10,000 people who received bachelor's degrees in 1999-2000, found that just one year after graduation, women who are working full time earn only 80% as much as their male counterparts do. The recent graduate numbers includes an apples-to-apples comparison of full-time workers who majored in the same subject, and the discrepancies are jarring. One year after graduation, female business majors are earning 81% of what male business majors earn. Among biology majors, women get paid only 75% as much as men. female engineers make 95% of what male engineering majors do, and women who majored in math earn only 76% of what their male counterparts earn. Part of the gap may be explained by the number of hours women work compared with men. But after controlling for all the factors known to affect wages — including occupation and parenthood — the study found that college-educated women still earn about 5% less than college-educated men one year after graduation and 12% 10 years after graduation. This gap, the study's authors go on to say, "remains unexplained and may be attributed to discrimination.""

Journal Journal: The sexist assumptions of geeks 2

Journal by Proteus on Friday January 19, 2007 @01:10PM

It's been a running joke here on Slashdot: "no one here has a girlfriend", "anyone who's that geeky is clearly single", "I believed him until he said he had a wife", etc.. I used to find it funny, but the more I see it, the more it bugs me.

See, most of my friends are women. Many of those female friends are geeks; and all of them like geeks (obviously: the set "my friends" self-selects for liking geeks). The majority of my female, geek-liking friends are single.

Submission + - Pragmatic Javascript Blog

Submitted by

Quickfingers

on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:12PM

Quickfingers writes: "A new blog has been created, in the goal of pinpointing the best and most pragmatic (real world uses) javascripts to be had. We are all tired of our javascript only working in Firefox or IE or some other browser. This blog will address every issue surrounding the mystical world of javascript and showcase its limitless power. Here's the site InYourFaceJS"

Journal Journal: "Social Networking" sites could face $300,000 fines 1

Journal by Erris on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:11PM

Senator John McCain has proposed a bill to extend federal obscenity reporting guidelines to all forms of internet communications. Those who fail to report according to guidelines could face fines of up to $300,000 for their member's posts. Any website, including Slashdot, would be covered.

Submission + - Microsoft publishes free XBox development tools

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Monday December 11, 2006 @05:39PM

prostoalex writes: "Microsoft announced the release of free XNA Game Studio Express tool for developing C# games that run on both Windows and XBox. They're also selling XNA Creators Club subscriptions, which, similar to MSDN subscriptions, offer access to sample code and additional documentation. Also, Microsoft is explicitly aiming towards uniting the Windows and XBox development platforms: "You will have to compile the game once for each platform. In this release simply create a separate project for each platform and then compile them both. Our goal is to allow as much code as possible to be shared between those two projects, allowing you to use the same source files in both projects, but platform-specific code will need to be conditionally-compiled.""

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