Video
Plantronics Helps Make Remote Workers' Lives Easier (Video)
233
Video Plantronics Helps Make Remote Workers' Lives Easier (Video)
Comment Re:problems with LaTeX and e-books (Score 1) 470
We also need to get some sanity with hyphenation and re-flow, and, I am disappointed that my reader doesn't seem to do a good job of kerning, or do ligatures at all.
Comment problems with LaTeX and e-books (Score 4, Insightful) 470
Disclaimer: I am a technical writer, and have a lot of experience with publishing workflows.
I love the ease of obtaining books for my e-book reader. I also love the space savings I get from e-books and not having to choose which physical book to dispose of when I get a new one.
Given good content to work with, any programmer could figure out how to make it beautiful using LaTeX. There are even several excellent packages for typesetting novels out there on CTAN. However, there isn't a mature, standardized workflow to get from LaTeX to epub. I sort of expected this by now. It'd be nice if XeLaTeX had an output driver for epub. Everything on planet LaTeX revolves around PDF output, and it doesn't do tagged PDF output, which means that paragraphs cannot be reflowed. So, you can generate a beautiful document for your e-book reader, as long as you don't plan to zoom, and you have to generate a different PDF file for every size of device out there.
That's not to say that LaTeX and friends haven't come a long way. Synctex and TeXworks make editing a joy. XeTeX and fontspec make font selection easy-cheesy.
However, I pine for the day when I can just do epublatex document.tex or taggedpdflatex document.tex and get awesome output. I don't want to have to rasterize my graphics either... I just want it to work. It's coming, I'm sure.
Comment Justice is served (Score 4, Informative) 334
The right thing to do with something that isn't yours is not to pick it up and sell it. Duh. He will learn a lesson from this.
Submission + - Faced with a breach, Hypercom screws merchants (hypercom.com)
infernalC writes: "Hypercom, faced with a recently discovered security vulnerability in their Savannah payment software, decided to drop support and terminate the product immediately rather than fix the problem. Credit card processing servers are very mission critical to merchants. Interestingly enough, this comes as their acquisition by VeriFone is held up on anti-trust grounds. VeriFone makes a very similar competing payment platform, PC Charge.
According to the notification, with zero advance notice, the only support they will offer merchants is to uninstall. No refunds if you bought the software before April. How's that for a mission-critical application?"
According to the notification, with zero advance notice, the only support they will offer merchants is to uninstall. No refunds if you bought the software before April. How's that for a mission-critical application?"
Submission + - Release of 33GiB of scientific publications (thepiratebay.org)
An anonymous reader writes: A Wikipedian, Greg Maxwell, has released 33GiB of scientific publications from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in response to the arrest of Aaron Swartz for, effectively, downloading too many articles from JSTOR. The release consists of 18,592 scientific articles previously released at $8-$19 each and all published prior to 1923 and so public domain.
Submission + - Meet: NASA's Nuclear-Powered Mars Rover Curiosity (techtribune.com)
techtribune writes: While we know that the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle is already developed, it's still years away from completion. In the meantime, all eyes can be on the next Mars mission with NASA's new Mars Science Laboratory rover called 'Curiosity'. Curiosity is about the size of a mini cooper and is four times more heavy than the Spirit and Opportunity which were launched in 2004. The Curiosity also comes with a larger robot arm, a laser that can split rocks, a weather station, and a percussive drill for drilling rocks. Unlike the Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity also has on board 10.5 pounds of plutonium-238! Yes, Curiosity is nuclear-powered instead of solar powered like the previous rovers. No sun is required to power the systems on board.
Comment This already exists: US-CERT (Score 4, Informative) 160
From the US-CERT "About Us" page:
US-CERT's mission is to improve the nation's cybersecurity posture, coordinate cyber information sharing and proactively manage cyber risks to the nation while protecting the constitutional rights of Americans. US-CERT vision is to be a trusted global leader in cybersecurity - collaborative, agile, and responsive in a complex environment.
Information is available from the US-CERT web site, mailing lists, and RSS channels.
US-CERT also provides a way for citizens, businesses, and other institutions to communicate and coordinate directly with the United States government about cyber security.
Who runs US-CERT?
US-CERT is the operational arm of the National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Where is US-CERT located?
US-CERT is located in the Washington DC Metropolitan area.
What is US-CERT's relationship to NCSD and DHS?
US-CERT is the operational arm of the National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The NCSD was established by DHS to serve as the federal government's cornerstone for cyber security coordination and preparedness, including implementation of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace .
Comment Name-based virtual hosts and TLS/SSL (Score 1) 665
Most web sites run on name-based virtual hosts. This allows multiple web sites to use the same instance of the web server (Apache, IIS, etc.), reducing costs.
This presents a chicken-an-egg problem with TLS/SSL (the encryption used for https).
When the web server receives the initial request from the browser, it sends back a certificate for it's domain that says to the browser, "Yes, I am really where-ever.com, because I paid money to GoDaddy, Comodo, Verisign or whoever and they'll corroborate."
The problem is, when that first request comes in, and you are using TLS/SSL and name-based virtual hosting, the server can't read what domain name was requested to present the correct certificate. You haven't finished negotiating the TLS/SSL connection yet, so you can't read the URI embedded in the request.
So, you need a different IP for each domain that you are going to serve (IP addresses are becoming rare) or use some other hack to accomplish this.
Comment Remember Google bringing SVG to IE? (Score 2) 535
Do you remember this: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/22/1246248/Google-Brings-SVG-Support-To-IE ?
I remember when Google announced the svgweb javascript library to enable SVG support in IE. That sort of reinforced the notion that Microsoft was playing catch-up in the browser technology arena. Microsoft is now, at least trying, I think, to present the appearance that Google is the company that is behind. Not to mention it doesn't hurt MS to have value added to Chrome when it runs on Windows. They're not going to make this happen for Chrome running on GNU/Linux.
Comment Time for a new category... (Score 4, Funny) 99
Jennings: I'll take CAPTCHAs for 1000, Alex...
Big Blue: Damnit.
One Night Stands May Be Genetic 240
An anonymous reader writes "So, he or she has cheated on you for the umpteenth time and their only excuse is: 'I just can't help it.' According to researchers at Binghamton University, they may be right. The propensity for infidelity could very well be in their DNA. In a first of its kind study, a team of investigators led by Justin Garcia, a SUNY Doctoral Diversity Fellow in the laboratory of evolutionary anthropology and health at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has taken a broad look at sexual behavior, matching choices with genes and has come up with a new theory on what makes humans 'tick' when it comes to sexual activity. The biggest culprit seems to be the dopamine receptor D4 polymorphism, or DRD4 gene. Already linked to sensation-seeking behavior such as alcohol use and gambling, DRD4 is known to influence the brain's chemistry and subsequently, an individual's behavior."
Advent Calendar For Geeks
65
bLanark writes "Well, as children and adults all over the world begin their day with chocolate, with the traditional Advent calendar, I'd like to remind you that there's an alternative for geeks. The Perl Advent calendar will give you a new Perl tip every day right up to Christmas."
Building a Telegraph Using Only Stone Age Materials 238
MMBK writes "It's the ultimate salvagepunk experiment, building a telegraph out of things found in the woods. From the article: 'During the summer of 2009, artist Jamie O’Shea of the organization Substitute Materials set out to test whether or not electronic communication could have been built at any time in history with the proper knowledge, and with only tools and materials found in the wilderness of New Jersey.'"
Study Shows Babies Think Friendly Robots Are Sentient 159
seanonymous writes "A study from University of Washington claims that babies think robots are human, so long as the robots are friendly. No word on what evil robots are thought to be. From the article: 'At 18 months old, babies have begun to make conscious delineations between sentient beings and inanimate objects. But as robots get more and more advanced, those decisions may become harder to make. What causes a baby to decide a robot is more than bits of metal? As it turns out, it takes more than humanoid looks — babies rely on social interaction to make that call.'"
