Slacker - Slashdot User

Submission + - The Battle for Wireless Broadband

Submitted by Bill_McNeal on Monday March 12, 2007 @10:34AM

Bill_McNeal writes: At a panel in Washington DC this week, Skype outlined the full details of its plan to transform the wireless industry through federal legislation. Prof. Timothy Wu lashed out against the carriers for crippling their phones and networks while the CTIA defended the big four. Does Skype have a chance of opening up wireless broadband networks? Read more at http://www.dailytechrag.com/node/5075

Making Sense of Census Data With Google Earth 65

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 12, 2007 @10:25AM from the GIS-for-everyman dept.

mikemuch writes "Imran Haque has developed a mashup of Google Earth with data from the U.S. Census Bureau, called gCensus. The app uses the XML format known as KML (Keyhole Markup Language), which can create shapes and colors on the maps displayed by GE. Haque had to build custom code libraries (which he's made available as open source) that could generate KML for the project. He also had to extract the relevant data from the highly counter-intuitive Census Bureau files and store them in a database that could handle geographic data. gCensus lets you do stuff like create colorful overlays on maps showing population ages, race, and family size distributions."

Submission + - Impact from DST?

Submitted by

Lokatana

on Monday March 12, 2007 @10:24AM

Lokatana writes: "Managing the email environment for a large financial institution, I've spent the last month and a half working to prepare for the adjustments to Daylight Saving Time. There has been a large amount of effort communicating to users, upgrading old blackberries, and patching servers and workstations. Now that we're here, and the changes have been made, the silence so far has been deafening.

Is this another Y2K, and the hype has been overstated, or have all of our preparations paid off? What are others in the community experiencing in their workplaces? Is there anyone out there who did not prepare for DST, and if so, what kind of impact are you seeing today?"

Submission + - Duke detects depression

Submitted by

Matthew Sparkes

on Monday March 12, 2007 @10:21AM

Matthew Sparkes writes: "Duke Nukem is helping scientists detect and quantify depression. Depression has been linked to a shrunken hippocampus, a part of the brain that also plays a role in spatial memory, so scientists created a test where people had to navigate to as many in-game landmarks as possible within a set amount of time. Depressed people found their way to an average of 2.4 locations compared with 3.8 locations for healthy controls."

Submission + - How do you score the One Job?

Submitted by

dmayle

on Monday March 12, 2007 @10:21AM

dmayle writes: "We all know how to look for a new job. Polish up your resume, look at the job boards, beg your old college roommate, etc., it's not easy, but it eventually works. What do you do, however, when you want a specific job? How do you go about making the contacts necessary and getting through the recruiting process for your dream job? What if your dream job is in another town, or another state?"

Submission + - Distributed Proofreaders + /. = 10,000 eBooks

Submitted by Jagged on Monday March 12, 2007 @10:16AM

Jagged writes: This week Distributed Proofreaders commemorated their digital transcription of 10,000 written works. Back on November 8, 2002, Slashdot posted an article on Distributed Proofreaders. That initial Slashdotting smashed records, wore out the DP admins, and started changes in the way the volunteers worked that made Distributed Proofreaders what it is today.

Distributed Proofreaders, a wholly volunteer organization, was established in 2000 for the purpose of producing quality transcriptions of machine-readable texts from public domain sources. The resulting texts are published on Project Gutenberg.

True to its international nature, Distributed Proofreaders, while respecting U.S. copyright laws, does not limit itself to preserving solely English language content. Nearly 15% of completed titles, to date, represent over 20 languages beyond English. A look to DPs 10,000th title set reveals the diversity of world cultural content in the public domain. Among this commemorative collection are a French translation of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice; the chronicle of Portuguese explorer Serpa Pinto's African expeditions; a pair of illustrated children stories from Germany; the first part of 'Species Plantarum', a 17th century Latin botanical reference work and a translation of a 17th century Guatemalan Maya manuscript.

The fifteen titles released today are not a cheer towards the past accomplishments of Distributed Proofreaders, nor are they pat on the back for deeds fulfilled on this day. What these titles so clearly represent, of their own merits, is the future and what awaits within the world's public domain yet to be rescued from obscurity and re-presented to an audience hungry to rediscover the cultural treasures of previous ages.

Mobile Carriers Cry "Less Operating Systems" 217

Posted by Hemos on Monday March 12, 2007 @09:59AM from the less-qq-more-pew-pew dept.

A NYTimes story says "Multiple systems have hampered the growth of new services, mobile phone executives say. " The story does a good job of capturing some of the changing dynamics in the mobile OS market — but rightly raises the point that given the sheer size of the mobile market, it's unlikely we're going to see the homogenization we have in the desktop market.

Drug Selectively Removes Rats' Memory 64

Posted by Hemos on Monday March 12, 2007 @09:54AM from the there-is-nothing-to-see-here dept.

rednuhter writes "Nature online is reporting scientists have used drugs to selectively remove one memory while not affecting another. Musical tones were played to the rats and at the same time the subjects were given a mild electric shock. Half the study group were given the drug (not approved for use in humans) and then the experiment was repeated with a new tone. The following day the rats that had not been given the treatment were afraid of both tones while the treated half were only afraid of the second tone: the memory of fear of the first had been erased."

Submission + - Recovered Bill Gates Talk

Submitted by D-K on Monday March 12, 2007 @09:49AM

D-K writes: Back in 1989 (the Windows 2.0 days), Bill Gates came to talk to the students of the University of Waterloo on the early days of Microsoft, and the future of computing. It's an interesting blast to the past, as he touches on topics such as the VGA graphics, OS/2 and software piracy, as well as the now infamous 640K of memory. Lost for nearly two decades, the tapes of the talk recently surfaced and is now available in a number of audio formats from the University of Waterloo Computer Science Club.

Bookmark The dozen space weapons myths (thespacereview.com)

by DisownedSky on Monday March 12, 2007 @09:35AM

Journal Journal: Visit the firehose if you can 10

Journal by benhocking on Monday March 12, 2007 @09:32AM

There's an entry on Halliburton and Dubai that desperately needs to see the light of day. I want to hear someone actually try to defend Halliburton on this one. Really, I do.

Submission + - Otellini, Barrett E-mails Among the Missing

Submitted by

narramissic

on Monday March 12, 2007 @09:31AM

narramissic writes: "Following Intel's admission last week that some internal Intel e-mails that may have bearing on AMD's antitrust lawsuit against the company had gone missing as a result of human error, a court transcript released by AMD now indicates that 'Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and President and CEO Paul Otellini were among those not in compliance with the company's document retention policies.'"

Submission + - Electronic Article Surveillance Systems Dangerous

Submitted by

SpectralDesign

on Monday March 12, 2007 @09:31AM

SpectralDesign writes: "A U.S. based study examining the risks of using cell-phones in hospitals (of which it finds no risk) has also deemed that EAS devices (Electronic Article Surveillance) used for theft prevention can cause a health risk to individuals with pacemakers and implanted defibrillators.

The study authors, Dr. J. Rod Gimbel of East Tennessee Heart Consultants and Dr. James Cox of the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville suggest that employee training for EAS and customer safety should be considered, as, "Simply moving the person away from the anti-theft device may save their life" according to a statement by Dr. Gimbel."

Palm Responds to the iPhone 205

Posted by Hemos on Monday March 12, 2007 @09:20AM from the trying-to-come-back dept.

Several people noted a NYT piece about Palm's response to the iPhone. Essentially, their response appears to be to hire a former Apple engineer and a couple other folks -- while also pursuing plans to perhaps sell the company. Nothing like a dual approach to the problem.

Submission + - HD-DVD and Blu-Ray keys continue falling

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12, 2007 @09:18AM

An anonymous reader writes: arnezami at Doom9 has released a program that appears to reveal most of the keys needed to decrypt both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. Along with other users determined to safely backup and fairly use the high-definition content they purchase, arnezami and friends have greatly advanced the work begun by muslix64 only three months ago.

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