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Books

Internet Abbreviations Added To Oxford Dictionary 101

Posted by Soulskill from the stop-making-it-harder-for-me-to-criticize-my-mom's-emails dept.
f1vlad writes "Philologists have added popular internet abbreviations to the one hundred twenty-six year-old Oxford English Dictionary. Among these are the popular OMG, LOL, and FYI. 'Dictionary compilers said that although the terms are associated with modern electronic communications, some are surprisingly old. The first confirmed use of "OMG" was in a letter in 1917. "Things people think are new words normally have a longer history," Graeme Diamond, the dictionary's principal editor for new words, said Friday.'"
Japan

Android Copy of Danish Man Unveiled 147

Posted by timothy from the filled-with-chese dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Geminoid family, a series of ultra-realistic androids, each a copy of a real person, has a new member: Geminoid DK, a robot clone of a Danish researcher and the most realistic Geminoid yet. The robot has lifelike facial features and movements, blinking, smiling, frowning with incredible realism. The Danish researcher, Henrik Scharfe of Aalborg University, teamed up with Japanese animatronics firm Kokoro and roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro to create his robot twin, which he plans to use to study human-robot interaction and cultural differences in the perception of robots. This is the first Geminoid that is not based on a Japanese person; it's also the first bearded one."
Google

Bing Becomes No.2 Search Engine at 4.37% 366

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-that's-a-gap dept.
suraj.sun writes "Bing overtook Yahoo for the first time worldwide in January, and increased its lead in February, according to web analytics company, StatCounter. Its research arm StatCounter Global Stats finds that globally Bing reached 4.37%, in February ahead of Yahoo! at 3.93%. Both trail far behind Google's 89.94% of the global search engine market." Just a little more plagiarizing to go!

Comment Re:Does SHA2 still produce the same results? (Score 1) 60

by msaavedra (#35252316) Attached to: New SHA Functions Boost Crypto On 64-bit Chips

I'm not an expert on crypto, but it seems to me that, for instance, SHA-512/256 would not produce the same digest from the same input as SHA-256. I just conducted the following test on the linux command line:

$ echo hello | sha512sum
e7c22b994c59d9cf2b4 8e549b1e24666636045 930d3da7c1acb299d1 c3b7f931f94aae41edd a2c2b207a36e10f8bcb 8d45223e54878f5b316e 7ce3b6bc019629 -

$ echo hello | sha256sum
5891b5b522d5df086d0ff 0b110fbd9d21bb4fc716 3af34d08286a2e846f6be03 -

The first is the SHA-512 hash of the word "hello" (with spaces inserted to defeat the slashdot lameness filter) and the second is the hash for SHA-256. I don't see any way to truncate the the 512-bit output and get one that matches the 256-bit output. Therefore SHA-512/256 would not be compatible with plain SHA-256.

I don't see much utility in these new algorithms. Since we would already be calculating the 512-bit hash, why not just use it instead of truncating it? I suppose there are a few situations where for externally imposed reasons you just need a value of a certain length, but that's about it.
HP

HP Donates To WebOS's Major Hombrewing Group 77

Posted by timothy from the doing-good-is-doing-well dept.
Kilrah_il writes "WebOS Internals Group is the central repository for all the homebrewing done on the WebOS platform, including apps, patches and kernels. Recently it became clear that server infrastructure would fall behind future progress in the WebOS world. 'So they asked HP's Phil McKinney, who has arranged to donate an HP Proliant DL385 2u server with 32 gigs of RAM and 8 terabytes of disk space... Notably, this is a straight-up donation, no strings attached — so WebOS Internals will remain how they always have: completely independent from the company whose OS they hack on.'"
Image

DSL Installation Fail Screenshot-sm 371

Posted by samzenpus from the job-well-done dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Here's an example of fine Qwest workmanship. In our business park, they just installed a DSL connection for our neighbors, for which we share an exterior utility space. They left: a DSL modem stuffed in a cardboard box, wrapped in a Wal-Mart bag, sitting outside in what will be below-zero (F) temps, on top of a bank of ten natural gas meters in some of the driest air of the year. They also left it plugged into an exposed exterior power outlet above a snowbank, with network cables running around the building, through snowbanks, coupled and protected by zip-lock baggies, and into our neighbors office. Not to mention the hack-job of patching the phone cable directly into the demarcation box. And if you're wondering — I was told upon calling them that this is not their problem, and I need to contact my primary phone service provider."

Comment Re:This is just another waiver (Score 1) 332

by msaavedra (#34734728) Attached to: Do Sleepy Surgeons Have a Right To Operate?

They can't dump the responsibility on the patient, especially by shoving an informed consent form under his hand in the 15 minutes before surgery.

Oh yes they can (legally speaking)

This is a very questionable statement, and depends a lot on the locale and the situations of the case. Contractually waiving your rights is something that the courts often frown upon.

Here is my experience. I live in California, and my old apartment was accidentally burned down by a maintenance worker who was not qualified to do the task he had been assigned. The landlord refused to reimburse me for my lost property, because I had signed a lease waiving my right to damages in such a case. I contacted a lawyer, who told me that one can't contract away responsibility for one's own negligence. The landlord was clearly negligent in the case, and the waiver clause in the lease would not hold up in court. I hired the lawyer, and we successfully sued the landlord
Google

Google Wants To Take Away Your Capslock Key 968

Posted by CmdrTaco from the they-can-have-it dept.
heptapod writes "Slashdot reported earlier about Google's Chrome notebook and keen-eyed readers would have noticed the lack of a caps lock key. 'According to Google, this will improve the quality of the comments, because people will not be able to write all in capital letters. I'm not a fan of the caps lock key myself. I never use it, so it can go to hell, for all I'm concerned. But taking away choice from people is not good, especially when this is not going to improve the quality of comments.'"
Space

Rogue Satellite Shuts Down US Weather Services 202

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ambush-backstab-vanish dept.
radioweather writes "On Sunday, the drifting rogue 'zombie' Galaxy 15 satellite with a stuck transmitter interfered with the satellite data distribution system used by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS), effectively shutting down data sharing between NWS offices nationwide, as well as weather support groups for the US Air force. This left many forecasters without data, imagery, and maps. Interference from Galaxy 15 affected transmissions of the SES-1 Satellite, which not only serves NOAA with data relay services, but also is used to feed TV programming into virtually every cable network in the US. NOAA's Network Control Facility reports that the computer system affected was NOAA's Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) used to issue forecasts and weather bulletins which uses the weather data feed. They also state the problem is likely to recur again this month before the satellite drifts out of range and eventually dies due to battery depletion."
Mozilla

Why Mozilla Needs To Pick a New Fight 351

Posted by CmdrTaco from the zombies-need-killing dept.
nk497 writes "Mozilla has succeeded in improving the browser world, and its rivals have outstripped it in terms of features. So what's the point of Firefox, then, wonders Stuart Turton. He suggests it could turn its community of developers to better use than battling it out for browser market share. 'I think Mozilla has a lot more to offer as a kind of roaming software troublemaker. The company has already proven itself brilliant at pulling a community together, offering it direction and spurring innovation in a lifeless market. Now that browsers are healthy, wouldn't it be brilliant if Mozilla started a ruck elsewhere?' And where better to start than the stagnant office suite arena: 'Imagine if Mozilla decided tomorrow to build an office suite. Imagine all those ideas. Imagine how brilliant that could be. Just imagine. Now imagine Firefox 4. Honestly, which one of those are you most excited by?'"
Firefox

Firefox 4's JavaScript Now Faster Than Chrome's 352

Posted by timothy from the when-browsers-jostle dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Firefox 4's JavaScript engine is now faster than V8 (used in Chrome) and Nitro (used in Safari) in the SunSpider benchmark on x86. On Mozilla's test system Nitro completes the benchmark in 369.7 milliseconds, V8 in 356.5 milliseconds, and Firefox 4's TraceMonkey and JaegerMonkey combination in 350.3 milliseconds. Conceivably Tech has a brief rundown of some benchmark figures from their test system obtained with the latest JS preview build of Firefox 4: 'Our AMD Phenom X6-based Dell XPS 7100 PC completed the Sunspider test with the latest Firefox JS (4.0 b8-pre) build in 478.6 ms this morning, while Chrome 8.0.560.0 clocked in at 589.8 ms.' On x86-64 Nitro still has the lead over V8 and TraceMonkey+JaegerMonkey in the SunSpider benchmark."
Google

Google Caffeine Drops MapReduce, Adds "Colossus" 65

Posted by samzenpus from the time-to-upgrade dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With its new Caffeine search indexing system, Google has moved away from its MapReduce distributed number crunching platform in favor of a setup that mirrors database programming. The index is stored in Google's BigTable distributed database, and Caffeine allows for incremental changes to the database itself. The system also uses an update to the Google File System codenamed 'Colossus.'"
Wine

Wine 1.2 Released 427

Posted by Soulskill from the pop-the-cork dept.
David Gerard writes "Stuck with that one Windows app you can't get rid of? Rejoice — Wine 1.2 is officially released! Apart from running pretty much any Windows application on Unix better than 1.0 (from 2008), major new features include 64-bit support, bi-directional text, and translation into thirty languages. And, of course, DirectX 9 is well-supported and DirectX 10 is getting better. Packages should hit the distros over the weekend, or you can get the source now."
Cellphones

Why Mobile Innovation Outpaces PC Innovation 231

Posted by Soulskill from the pc-aren't-trendy dept.
Sandrina sends in an opinion piece from TechCrunch that discusses why mobile systems are developing so much faster than the PC market. The article credits Intel with allowing hardware innovation to stagnate, and points out how much more competitive the component vendor market is for smartphones. Quoting: "In PCs, Intel dictates the pace of hardware releases — OEMs essentially wait for CPU updates, then differentiate through inventory control, channel / distribution and branding. Intel and Microsoft win no matter which PC makers excel — they literally don't care if it's Asus, Dell or HP. In the smartphone world, it's the opposite. Dozens of component vendors fight each other to the death to win designs at smartphone OEMs. This competitive dynamic forms an entirely different basis for how component vendors approach system integration and support. Consider Infineon, which supplies the 3G wireless chipset in the iPhone. In order to stay in Apple's graces, Infineon must do everything necessary to help the hardware and software play well together, including staffing permanent engineers in Cupertino or sending a team overnight from Germany. Do you think Intel does this for Dell?"

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