ErikPeterson - Slashdot User

Submission + - RIAA Proposes Taxing Radio Stations (noperformancetax.org)

Submitted by jfreaksho on Sunday May 31, 2009 @03:24PM

jfreaksho writes: Local radio stations in my area have been playing advertisements for http://www.noperformancetax.org/, a website dedicated to preventing the passage of http://www.noperformancetax.org/clips/Leahy_S379.pdf and http://www.noperformancetax.org/clips/CONYER_bill.pdf which will levy a tax on radio performances. This is ostensibly being done for the artists, but we all know how that goes. The ads are presented as the "foreign-owned" recording companies asking for a bailout from U.S. taxpayers.

Submission + - A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul 1

Submitted by

theodp

on Sunday May 31, 2009 @02:30AM

theodp writes: "What if an aeronautics engineer couldn't reconcile his elegant design for a state-of-the-art jumbo jet with Newton's second law of motion and decided to tweak the equation to fit his design? In a way, Newsweek reports, this is what's happened in quantitative finance, which is in desperate need of reform. And 49-year-old Oxford-trained mathematician Paul Wilmott — arguably the most influential quant today — thinks he knows where to start. With his CQF program, Wilmott is out to save the quants from themselves and the rest of us from their future destruction. 'We need to get back to testing models rather than revering them,' says Wilmott. 'That's hard work, but this idea that there are these great principles governing finance and that correlations can just be plucked out of the air is totally false.'"

Submission + - Harsh Words From Google On Linux Development (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by

jeevesbond

on Saturday May 30, 2009 @01:17PM

jeevesbond writes: "The alpha version of Google Chrome is now available for GNU/Linux. Google Chrome developer and former Firefox lead Ben Goodger has some problems with the platform though. His complaints range from the lack of a standardised UI toolkit, inconsistencies across applications, the lack of a unified and comprehensive HIG, to GTK not being a very compelling toolkit. With Adobe getting twitchy about the glibc fork and previously describing the various audio systems as welcome to the jungle, is it time to concentrate on consolidation and standardisation in GNU/Linux in general, and the desktop in particular?"

Comment Eclipse (Score 4, Informative) 1055

by ErikPeterson on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @03:08AM (#28105909) Attached to: What Free IDE Do You Use?

I use Eclipse http://www.eclipse.org/ for all my IDE needs. I have found that it works well on any platform (and with any language) that I find myself sitting behind (or coding in). Eclipse gets my vote mainly for its very wide language AND platform support.

Submission + - Intel Unveils Whopping 16-Thread "Nehalem" (thecoffeedesk.com)

Submitted by on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @12:22AM

An anonymous reader writes: Intel today unveiled their new Nehalem-EX CPU Architecture in a press conference. The new CPU design has 8 cores, 24MB cache, and 16 threads (2 threads per core). However, as operating system vendors continue to fall behind adequate support of these new multicore advancements, IBM seems to be on board and has acheived 128 concurrent threads using the chips with a mainframe in a YouTube demonstration video.

Submission + - A Pound of Ants and the Capabilities of Intelligen (blogontheuniverse.org)

Submitted by

drewroman

on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @12:13AM

drewroman writes: "http://blogontheuniverse.org/2009/05/26/a-pound-of-ants-and-the-capabilities-of-intelligent-biomass/ Kids ask some interesting questions, Dr. Jeff explores one of his son's in this week's weekly challenge. Thought provoking stuff..."

Submission + - Gumblar Virus Mutation Makes Google-Search Toxic (startupearth.com)

Submitted by on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @11:56PM

An anonymous reader writes: A massive number of popular websites are being infected with a virus which uses vulnerabilities in Adobe's PDF Reader and Flash Player to inject malware into otherwise trusted links, which infect visitors silently, and re-direct Google searches to malware sites.

http://startupearth.com/2009/05/27/gumblar-virus-mutation-makes-google-search-toxic/

Build an $800 Gaming PC 296

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @11:52PM from the fast-as-you-like dept.

ThinSkin writes "Building a computer that can handle today's games doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. In fact, you can build one for less than $800, especially given that many hardware manufacturers have cut costs considerably. Loyd Case over at ExtremeTech shows gamers how to build an $800 gaming PC, one that features an overclockable Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 and a graphics-crunching EVGA 260 GTX Core 216. The computer exceeded expectations in gaming and synthetic tests, and was even overclocked well over spec at 3.01GHz."

Submission + - Intel Unveils Nehalem-EX 8-Core Server Processors (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

Ninjakicks

on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @11:30PM

Ninjakicks writes: "Intel took the wraps off its next-generation server processor, code-named Nehalem-EX today. As its name suggests, Nehalem-EX is based on the Nehalem microarchitecture which was introduced with Intel's Core i7 and Xeon 5500 series chips. However, Nehalem-EX will be decidedly more high-end in terms of specifications and performance. Nehalem-EX series will be outfitted with up to eight execution cores per chip with support for up to 16 threads and 24MB of on-chip cache. In addition, the Nehalem-EX series will also support certain features carried over from Intel's Itanium line, like Machine Check Architecture (MCA) recovery and error correction algorithms. Nehalem-EX architectures can also be scaled up from 2 to 32 socket systems with an 8 socket implementation offering 64 execution cores and 128-threads of processing throughput."

Submission + - H1-Bs Outnumbering Unemployed IT Workers (computerworld.com)

Submitted by SirLurksAlot on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @11:21PM

SirLurksAlot writes: According to an article on Computerworld the US government is beginning to raise questions concerning H1-Bs and visa fraud in relation to IT workers. These questions were raised as part of a court filing against an IT firm known as Visions Systems Group in New Jersey. The firm has been indicted on charges of visa fraud, and the government has stated that those involved were "displacing qualified American workers." The government also issued a brief in which it stated that "In January of 2009, the total number of workers employed in the information technology occupation under the H-1B program substantially exceeded the 241,000 unemployed U.S. citizen workers within the same occupation," though it did not provide data to back up that assertion. Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security is arguing that extending the duration of an H1-B visa from one year to 29 months is necessary to remain competitive.

Submission + - IT in 2109: A Prediction of the next 100 Years (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

hiouridah

on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @10:29PM

hiouridah writes: "What will the Information Technology world look like in a hundred years? Here are three predictions for the state of data transport, storage, computer processing, and brain wave input devices in the year 2109. Each prediction is soundly based on our current scientific theories. Topics include: Fiber to every home in the developed world, Computers with living DNA, literally!, Extinction of viruses, worms, and malware, Brain waves and bio-chips replace the keyboard and mouse, and photon data storage "drives"."

Submission + - Cisco Voted onto Elite PCI Board of Advisors (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

hiouridah

on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @10:17PM

hiouridah writes: "Cisco Systems has been voted onto the twenty-one member PCI Security Standards Council (SSC) Board of Advisors. The Board of Advisors is elected every two years, with the last election being in 2007. This small advisor board is responsible for maintaining and updating the PCI security standards."

Submission + - Telecommunication Harassment from the Workplace

Submitted by

One whose Warnings should be heeded...

on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @09:44PM

One whose Warnings should be heeded... writes: "An ad was posted on Craigslist Casual Encounter section, M4M...giving details of the sexual services I would be providing at my shop all day and night. In the ad, my company name was used and the number to the phone that sits on my desk at my 3 week old business... At first I didn't know anything about the ad, but I finally put 2 and 2 together and got CL to remove the ad, and send me details of the poster. I know who this is, and I have already filed the necessary paperwork with the authorities...but I found out he was doing all of this from his employer's IP address. My question is: Is his employer involved in culpability in this matter? I would imagine if he was an Independant Contractor, they could get out from under it, but I think they can also be held responsible for him being able to post such harassment from their facility and equipment. The ad was only up for 10 hours a week ago, but I am still getting calls."

Submission + - Asus slaps Linux in the face (techgeist.net) 2

Submitted by

vigmeister

on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @09:33PM

vigmeister writes: "Techgeist has an article about an 'It's better with Windows' website from Asus and MS. I think the article should've been title 'Asus stabs Linux in the back'. "Linux just got a major slap in the face today from Asus. One of the highlights of Linux going mainstream was the wildly popular Asus Eee PC preinstalled with a customized Linux distro geared towards web applications. While I personally never got what the big deal was, I was still happy for all the Linux people out there waiting for this day, but it looks like the cause for celebration won't be lasting much longer. Asus and Microsoft have teamed up and have made a site called It's Better With Windows. The page touts how easy it is to get up and ready with Windows on an Asus Eee PC, while slyly stating that you won't have to deal with an "unfamiliar environment" and "major compatibility issues." While it is silly to state such a thing since Asus built the Linux distribution specifically for the Eee PC, I give Microsoft two points for snarky comments.""

Submission + - Stair Climbing Wheelchair Discontinued

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @09:29PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Johnson & Johnson quietly sold the last iBOT, ending the manufacture of the revolutionary stair climbing wheelchair whose wheels rotated up and over one another to go up and down steps using gyroscopes that sense and adjust to a person's center of gravity — but which failed to sell more than a few hundred a year. Now iBOT users who fear their chairs wearing out are joining high-profile inventor Dean Kamen, best known for his Segways, in lobbying Congress for reimbursement changes that they hope could revive a technology that left the market with a $22,000 price tag but that Medicare deemed worth about $6,000. "If I ever had to get out of this chair, I really don't know if I'd want to live anymore, to be honest with you," says Alan T. Brown who is mostly paralyzed from the chest down and on his second iBOT. "Guys in these chairs ... we might be disabled now, but then we'd really become disabled." The iBOT episode also sends a cautionary signal about pricey innovation. Today's emphasis is to expand access to health care rather than provide pricier improvements, says University of Michigan business professor Erik Gordon. "To a certain extent, there are breakthroughs we just can't afford.""

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