cyocum - Slashdot User

Submission + - Progress on next-generation Python

Submitted by on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @11:47AM

An anonymous reader writes: A couple of years ago, Guido Van Rossum undertook a major overhaul of the Python language called Python 3000. Despite the fact that Python is older than languages like Java and Javascript, Guido's initial design decisions have held up remarkably well over the years. Nevertheless, it was inevitable that after 15 years, a language designer would like to redo some things. Guido says: "The idea was that Python 3000 would be the first Python release to give up backwards compatibility in favor of making it the best language going forward." Now Guido says that Python 3000 is on-track (modulo a 2 month schedule slip). Will this release prepare Python for competition with Perl 6 and Ruby 2? Does it matter?

Submission + - Invisible Galaxy Discovered (universetoday.com)

Submitted by all204 on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @11:39AM

all204 writes: A galaxy made entirely from dark matter has been discovered. A link to the original research paper can be found here.

From the original article:

"An international team of astronomers have conclusive new evidence that a recently discovered "dark galaxy" is, in fact, an object the size of a galaxy, made entirely of dark matter. Although the object, named VIRGOHI21, has been observed since 2000, astronomers have been slowly ruling out every alternative explanation."

Submission + - Elementary Proof Of Fermat's Last Theorem (mediafire.com)

Submitted by

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @11:29AM

An anonymous reader writes: Did someone apply for a job at Google by solving Fermat's Last Theorem using informal elementary methods? The file uploaded at http://www.mediafire.com/?9g9xcwbn3gi seems to check out to me, but I'm no math genius. WARNING: It's a Word document. See for yourself!

Submission + - Users give support to revamped Net Backup

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @11:23AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Users give support to revamped Net Backup Although too late for some. Brian Fonseca, Computerworld 18 June 2007 Users of Symantec's revamped Veritas NetBackup software say its improved management capabilities and performance have solved the problems that were plaguing older users of the product. Symantec has introduced Version 6.5 of the backup and recovery software and said it offered users a range of new capabilities including native disk-based backup, simplified data de-duplication, support for VMware virtualisation, heterogeneous snapshot management and continuous data protection. The upgrade might satisfy some users who have been experiencing some problems but has come too late for some — like the government of Pennsylvania's Dauphin County. George Kuharic, manager of enterprise systems for Dauphin County, said he grew increasingly frustrated with NetBackup's performance early in the decade because it consistently caused problems during backups. "NetBackup might chug along and do 90 percent of a backup, and then we'd get a network error or something, and it would just kill the job," Kuharic said. The county dumped NetBackup in favour of CommVault Systems Inc.'s Galaxy backup product last year, and the move has paid big dividends, said Kuharic. "If I were talking to [Kuharic], I would say that we've gone leaps and bounds from where we were with NetBackup 4.5," said Peter Elliman, senior product marketing manager for NetBackup at Symantec. NetBackup 6.5 is equipped with a new SAN client that lets storage administrators perform SAN backups to a disk pool, the company said. Further, the upgraded backup tool can be married to Symantec's PureDisk de-duplication technology to minimise unnecessary file duplication and wasted storage space. NetBackup 6.5 also includes links to EMC's VMware Consolidated Backup centralised backup facility to offload backups from the primary VMware server onto a secondary backup server. This article was transcripted from Techworld : www.techworld.com The UK's infrastructure & network knowledge centre © 2007 : All rights reserved http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm?Ne wsID=9182"

Submission + - Inventors claim truck runs on hydraulic power

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @11:21AM

An anonymous reader writes: "If someone told you that they had rebuilt a Nissan 4x4 truck to run with no internal combustion engine or fossil fuels, you would likely think that there's no conceivable way this could work. And so did this writer. That is, until he saw it for himself." From what I was able to read from the article it seems interesting and possibly promising.

Submission + - Evil Dead: The Musical (evildeadthemusical.com)

Submitted by dmatos on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @11:18AM

dmatos writes: Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell fans, rejoice! An intrepid troupe of writers, actors, and other theatre folk have turned your favourite trilogy into a musical. Currently playing at the Diesel Playhouse in Toronto, Ontario, Evil Dead: The Musical has received rave reviews from fans and critics alike. The writers of this musical know their audience, going out of their way to fill it with the campy, gory humour from the movies, complete with iconic one-liners. Not only that, the first three rows in the theatre are designated "splatter zone" seating, with optional ponchos. Wear a white shirt, and decline the poncho for a one-of-a-kind souvenir of the show. The website has some video links if you'd like to know just how they managed to translate a crazed man chopping off his possessed hand with a chainsaw into musical theatre.

Redistricting Videogame Shows Problems in the System 322

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @11:09AM from the see-games-are-smart-too dept.

An anonymous reader writes "This is a cool redistricting game that was launched out of the capitol building in Washington DC last week. It was created by the USC Game Innovation Lab and has been getting lots of press. It's about time someone took on a tough issue like redistricting reform using the power of the internet." It's crazy that gerrymandering is actually good fodder for a video game.

Submission + - Court Upholds Expectation of Privacy in Emails

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @11:05AM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "A federal appeals court, in Warshak v. USA (pdf), has upheld the principle that email users maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in the content of their emails, and enjoined the United States government from seizing the contents of a personal email account maintained by an ISP without either providing the account holder with prior and an opportunity to be heard or making a fact specific showing that the account holder maintained no expectation of privacy with respect to the ISP."

Submission + - 24-hour test drive: a review of PC-BSD

Submitted by Jiilik Oiolosse on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @10:51AM

Jiilik Oiolosse writes: Over at Ars, I have published a short review of the PC-BSD operating system, one of the first few FreeBSD derivatives to target the casual user (see also DesktopBSD). "First and foremost, PC-BSD is an attempt to make a user-friendly Unix. Many Linux distributions have a similar focus and attempt to achieve it in different ways, and PC-BSD should be considered alongside these distributions." and "KDE seemed to load much faster on PC-BSD than I'm used to; [quite noticeably] faster than my Kubuntu installation on my other drive (which either says something bad about Kubuntu or something great about PC-BSD). In fact, the whole system felt very snappy."

Submission + - Manhunt 2 banned in the UK

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @10:37AM

An anonymous reader writes: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/games/story/0,,21 06517,00.html The Guardian reports the BBFC have refused to issues a classification for Manhunt 2. Rockstar games have 6 weeks to appeal, and if the ruling is upheld, it will be illegal to sell manhunt 2 in the UK

Submission + - problem in scp(secured ftp)

Submitted by

jaty

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @10:34AM

jaty writes: "Hi!I am trying to scp a file which should be automated. For that i have written a script and calling it through crontab in Unix(HP/UX). Now while calling that script(which contains the scp command) is prompting for a password(which is known to me).but how can i automate that?i.e whether it is possible to give the password automatically?"

Submission + - How to avoid hiring an American

Submitted by

netbuzz

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @10:34AM

netbuzz writes: "Keep this video in mind next time someone like Bill Gates complains that they just can't find qualified American workers to fill key tech jobs. "Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified U.S. worker," a marketing executive for a law firm tells his audience. And what's the advice for those employers who fail to achieve that goal and are confronted with a qualified American: "find a legal basis to disqualify them."

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1642 1"

Submission + - Recruiters Goal, Not to find qualified Americans (youtube.com)

Submitted by

walterbyrd

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @10:26AM

walterbyrd writes: "Immigration attorneys advise their corporate clients how to not find any qualified American Applicants (speaker starts at about 30 second mark).

"Our goal is clearly NOT to find a qualified U.S. worker ... our objective is to get this person a green card ... so certainly we are not going to try to find a place where applicants would be most numerous."
— Lawrence M. Lebowitz — Vice President of Marketing — Cohen & Grigsby

I find it disturbing, but then again we already knew this was going on."

Submission + - Online Sales Lose Steam (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @09:57AM

An anonymous reader writes: New York Times writers MATT RICHTEL and BOB TEDESCHI claim that online sales growth is significantly slowing down. They claim that this phenomenon owes to the high cost of shipping, the better "experience" of shopping in a physical store, and other relative strengths of physical stores. Slate.com writer Jack Shafer takes issue with the NYT analysis, arguing that none of these physical-store strengths are new, and in fact that online sales are still growing faster than the economy in general. NYT's view: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/technology/17eco m.html?ex=1339819200&en=2c7eebf2cf9202d9&ei=5124&p artner=permalink&exprod=permalink Slate.com's view: http://www.slate.com/id/2168647/nav/tap3/

Yahoo Co-Founder Yang Now In Charge 91

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @09:32AM from the psst-hey-jerry-i-got-some-ideas-for-ya dept.

Raver32 writes "Yahoo Inc. Chairman Terry Semel ended his six-year tenure as chief executive officer today and will hand over the reins to co-founder Jerry Yang in the Internet icon's latest attempt to regain investor confidence. Semel, 64, will remain chairman in a non-executive role. Besides naming Yang as its new CEO, Yahoo appointed Susan Decker as its president. Decker, who had been recently promoted to oversee Yahoo's advertising operations, had widely been seen as Semel's heir apparent."

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