adinb - Slashdot User

Winnie Wrote a Math Book 638

Posted by Zonk on Friday August 03, 2007 @12:56PM from the why-isn't-that-a-textbook dept.

SoyChemist writes "Hollywood is not known for providing a wealth of positive female role models. Danica McKellar, the actress that played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years and Elsie Snuffin on The West Wing, has written a math book for teenage girls. 'Math Doesn't Suck' is done in the style of a teen magazine. It even includes a horoscope, cute doodles of shoes and jewelry, and testimonials from attractive young career women that use math at work. It focuses on fractions and pre-algebra and uses mnemonics like calling a reciprocal a 'refliprocal', because you just take the fraction and flip it upside down. Wired interviewed McKellar about the new book and her crusade to eliminate the achievement gap between boys and girls in math courses. McKellar graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA. While studying there, she co-authored a proof and presented it at a conference. After she and Mayim Bialik — star of Blossom and a PhD in neuroscience — appeared in a 20/20 episode about intellectual actresses, several literary agents came knocking on her door."

Submission + - Diebold Source Code Reviewed, Found Vunerable (pcworld.com)

Submitted by Shteven on Friday August 03, 2007 @12:12PM

Shteven writes: The state of California has managed to independently review Diebold's source code for vulnerabilities. From the article:

"The software contains serious design flaws that have led directly to specific vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to affect election outcomes," read the University of California at Berkeley report, commissioned by the California Secretary of State as part of a two-month "top-to-bottom" review of electronic voting systems certified for use in California. The assessment of Diebold's source code revealed an attacker needs only limited access to compromise an election.

Submission + - Judge Rules Server RAM is Subject to Discovery (law.com)

Submitted by SomePoorSchmuck on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @07:18PM

SomePoorSchmuck writes: If you thought the torrent/P2P model of only providing indexing and not maintaining user data in nonvolatile memory kept your downloading activity relatively anonymous, think again. In a dogfight between popular site TorrentSpy and the MPAA, a federal judge has for the first time ruled that server RAM is subject to discovery by MPAA lawyers. The MPAA seeks records of TorrentSpy's server RAM to track the site's file transfer activity. TorrentSpy's attorney Ira Rothken explains that now "any company currently being sued — even before any liability has been found — could end up having to collect and turn over RAM data at great cost." Given its past strong-arm tactics, one can't help but wonder if obtaining RAM data is the MPAA's real goal, or simply increasing the power of the lawsuit as an administrative nightmare for the defendant.

Submission + - Scoring Systems for credibility of cited sources?

Submitted by

adinb

on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @06:28PM

adinb writes: "Does anyone know of any widely used scoring systems for evaluation of credibility of cited sources? While I've seen guides (like this one from cornell) or this wikipedia article, I haven't seen any standardized scoring systems that apply a numerical score to source credibility. I'm thinking of something as simple as +5 for a current, double-blind study published in a peer reviewed journal, funded by non-partisan sources to -5 for an out of date, non peer reviewed article from a partisan source. If there aren't any "simple" systems out there, is this something we should create to help with evaluation of content on the net and in our society?"

AT&T Announces Plans to Filter Copyright Content 436

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @06:06PM from the bad-idea dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The LA Times reports that AT&T has announced plans to work with the Hollywood movie studios and major recording labels to implement new content filtering systems on their network. The plans raise many troubling legal issues including privacy concerns, false positive filtering, and liability for failure to filter."

Submission + - Gravity Probe B's gyros were not so perfect

Submitted by mknewman on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @05:59PM

mknewman writes: The Gravity Probe B team is reporting at http://einstein.stanford.edu/ the reason for two abberations in the data they collected over the 1 year space mission, specificly an unexpected time varying polhode (wobble) period of the gyros and trapped magnetic flux causing unexpected torques on the spherical gyros.

Both of these effects are aparently caused by the sputtering method of depositing the nobium coating on the spheres, which created two 'halves' of the spheres.

The niobium coatings on the rotors were sputtered on in a series of 64 stages, turning the rotor to a new position for each new coating. This process created a very uniform niobium coating on each rotor. However, it turns out that the final, 64th layer effectively created two large patches on the rotors, defined by its edge. In other words, the edge of the final coating essentially divides the rotor into two halves, each of which is, in fact, a large electrostatic patch at opposite poles of the rotor-the very situation that we had tested for pre-launch and had determined was "not going to be an issue."

Fortunately, they have worked out some geometric and algebraic methods to extract the effects of this imperfection from the data and are planning on releasing the final results of the project in December, hopefully to prove or disprove the 'Frame Dragging' predictions of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

Interesting to note that even with these imperfections the gyros will take from 7,000 to 2,6000 years to spin down, which is less than the originally predicted 50,000 years but still one heck of a long time!

Submission + - computer failures disrupt East Coast air traffic

Submitted by jcgam69 on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @05:36PM

jcgam69 writes: A cascading computer failure in the nation's air-traffic control system caused severe flight delays and some cancellations along the East Coast yesterday. A computer system in Atlanta that processes pilots' flight plans and sends them to air-traffic controllers failed early yesterday, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere said. In response, the agency rerouted the system's functions to another computer in Salt Lake City, which overloaded under the increased volume of data, magnifying the problem.

Submission + - AT&T : the new Death star 3.0

Submitted by

palewook

on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @05:35PM

palewook writes: "First, Frontline detailed AT&T's co-operation with the NSA's domestic data logging program in Spying On The Home Front. Now, AT&T has decided to work on implementing a deep data packet inspection program of their own. After all, the NSA already logs AT&T network data to keep you safe, why not deploy technology to keep you safe from pirated content on AT&T's network. AT&T claims they will not violate user privacy or FCC directives. James W. Cicconi, an AT&T senior vice president, started working last week with the MPAA and the RIAA to develop anti-piracy technology. The old AT&T death star logo joke appears relevant again."

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