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Submission + - Open-source player-tracking project kicks off (networkworld.com)

Submitted by JG0LD
JG0LD writes: Andrew Schechtman-Rook is an astronomer by profession and a serious New York Jets fan by inclination. He’s also heavily into sophisticated analysis of the game of football, and has created the first step in what may be a democratized system of player tracking.

Submission + - Is Too Much Computer Time Killing Kids' Ability to Learn?

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: A teacher's union in Northern Ireland is asserting that children spending too much time on computers are impairing their ability to learn. The asserted excessive computer use is being blamed for an inability to concentrate or socialize. As one teacher puts it, '... these gadgets are really destroying their ability to learn.' One question no one seems to be asking is whether the kids showing these symptoms are getting enough sleep.

Submission + - 5 Years Later, 'Do Not Track' System Ineffective (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In 2009, a few Internet privacy advocates developed an idea that was supposed to give people a way to tell websites they don't want to be monitored as they move from website to website. The mechanism, which would eventually be built into all the major browsers, was called Do Not Track. ... But today, DNT hangs by a thread, neutered by a failure among stakeholders to reach agreement. Yes, if you turn it on in your browser, it sends a signal in the form of an HTTP header to Web companies' servers. But it probably won't change what data they collect. That's because most websites either don't honor DNT — it's currently a voluntary system — or they interpret it in different ways. Another problem — perhaps the biggest — is that Web companies, ad agencies and the other stakeholders have never reached agreement on what "do not track" really means.

Submission + - In pictures: Best desktop distros for newbies (networkworld.com)

Submitted by JG0LD
JG0LD writes: Ah, the siren call of desktop Linux. You usually hear it just after Windows starts bullying you to restart so that it can install updates, or when you see cool screenies of Linux desktop environments like KDE and Cinammon. But which distro should the novice start with?

Submission + - Google Plus now minus chief Vic Gundotra (networkworld.com)

Submitted by JG0LD
JG0LD writes: Vic Gundotra, the man behind Google Plus and one of Google’s most prominent executives, announced today that he will leave the company “effective immediately.” Gundotra made the announcement, appropriately enough, in a lengthy Google Plus post, praising his co-workers and saying that he is “excited about what’s next.” However, he did not further outline his future plans, saying that “this isn't the day to talk about that.”

Submission + - Crowded U.S. airwaves desperately in search of spectrum breathing room (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Ahead of a major new spectrum auction scheduled for next year, America's four major wireless carriers are jockeying for position in the frequencies available to them, buying, selling and trading licenses to important parts of the nation's airwaves. Surging demand for mobile bandwidth, fueled by an increasingly saturated smartphone market and data-hungry apps, has showed no signs of slowing down. This, understandably, has the wireless industry scrambling to improve its infrastructure in a number of areas, including the amounts of raw spectrum available to the carriers. These shifts, however, are essentially just lateral moves – nothing to directly solve the problems posed by a crowded spectrum. What’s really going to save the wireless world, some experts think, is a more comprehensive re-imagining of the way spectrum is used.

Submission + - Georgia Tech researcher flags flaw in open-source vets health system (networkworld.com)

Submitted by JG0LD
JG0LD writes: Georgia Tech graduate student Doug Mackey didn’t set out to fix a potentially disastrous issue in a major government healthcare records system – originally, he’d simply meant to outline the relative vulnerability of large government computer systems in general to attacks by foreign governments, as a final project for a Master's in Information Security degree.

Submission + - Firefox's blocked-by-default Java isn't going down well (networkworld.com)

Submitted by JG0LD
JG0LD writes: The Firefox web browser will, henceforth, require users to manually activate Java objects on sites that they visit, Mozilla has confirmed. The change is aimed at improving security and moving away from a dependence on proprietary plug-ins, but critics say it will cause untold headaches for developers, admins and less-technical end-users.

Submission + - Ad injectors "stealing from advertisers," researcher says (networkworld.com)

Submitted by JG0LD
JG0LD writes: Rogue web plug-ins that inject their own content over the top of legitimate ads are still in widespread use by unscrupulous advertisers – and Google, Yahoo and other major networks are keeping them in business, according to a recent study.

Submission + - VMware CEO: OpenStack is not for the enterprise (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger says he doesn’t expect open source cloud project OpenStack to catch on significantly in the enterprise market, instead he says it’s more of a platform for service providers to build public clouds.
It’s a notion that others in the market have expressed in the past, but also one that OpenStack backers have tried hard to shake.

Submission + - Indian Linux pioneer Atul Chitnis dies at 51 (networkworld.com)

Submitted by JG0LD
JG0LD writes: Atul Chitnis, a pioneering technologist and former contributing editor to the landmark Indian IT publication PCQuest, died Monday at the age of 51, following a battle with intestinal cancer.

Submission + - Researchers show off new 400Gb/s optical technology (networkworld.com)

Submitted by JG0LD
JG0LD writes: A research team led by Bell Labs' Xiang Liu has published an article in Nature Photonics describing a way to send and receive information at 400Gbps across 12,800km of optical fiber – an enormous potential gain of both speed and effective distance compared to current technology.

http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2013.109.html
Math

Submission + - 10 ways to celebrate international Pi Day (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Welcome to March 14 (3.14) – international Pi Day — a day to pay homage to the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. To celebrate, each March 14 math-heads around the world unite to celebrate the math holiday in a variety of serious and goofy ways. Here's a collection of suggestions.
Technology

Submission + - Lernstift Digital Pen Vibrates to Indicate Bad Spelling, Grammar and Penmanship (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Use digital technology long enough and you start to become dependent upon it for such mundane tasks as spell checking. That means when you pick up a garden variety ballpoint pen you’re back in dictionary and “I before E except after C” territory. Like LiveScribe, the creators of the Lernstift digital pen hope to bring handwriting into the 21st century by having the pen vibrate to indicate when the writer makes spelling and grammatical errors or exhibits poor penmanship.

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