laburu - Slashdot User

Bitterness To Be Classified As a Mental Illness 511

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @04:36PM from the that-should-fix-everything dept.

Some psychiatrists are trying to get excessive bitterness identified as a mental illness named post-traumatic embitterment disorder. Of course this has some people who live perfect little lives, and always get what they want, questioning the new classification. The so called "disorder" is modeled after post-traumatic stress disorder because it too is a response to a trauma that endures. "They feel the world has treated them unfairly. It's one step more complex than anger. They're angry plus helpless," says Dr. Michael Linden, the psychiatrist who put a name to how the world works.

Submission + - Pulsar Signals Could Be Used For Interstellar GPS (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by

KentuckyFC

on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @09:03AM

KentuckyFC writes: "We're all familiar with GPS. It consists of a network of satellites that each broadcast a time signal. A receiver on Earth can then work out its position in three-dimensional space by comparing the arrival times of the signals from at least three satellites. That's handy but it only works on Earth. Now astronomers say that the millisecond signals from a network of pulsars could allow GPS-style navigation on a galactic scale. They propose using four pulsars that form a rough tetrahedron with the Solar System at its centre, and a co-ordinate system with its origin at 00:00 on 1 January 2001 at the focal point of the Interplanetary Scintillation Array, the radio telescope near Cambridge in the UK that first observed pulsars. The additional complexity of sending signals over these distances is that relativity has to be taken into account (which is why the origin is defined as a point in space-time rather than just space). The pulsar GPS system should allow users to determine their position in space-time anywhere in the galaxy to within a few nanoseconds, which corresponds to an accuracy of about a metre."

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.""

Submission + - Paint the World White to Fight Global Warming 2

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @08:58PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Dr. Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white and said at the opening of the St James's Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium that by lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the color of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world's cars off the roads for 11 years. Pale surfaces reflect up to 80 per cent of the sunlight that falls on them, compared with about 20 per cent for dark ones, which is why roofs and walls in hot countries are often whitewashed. An increase in pale surfaces would help to contain climate change both by reflecting more solar radiation into space and by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings cool by air-conditioning. Since 2005 California has required all flat roofs on commercial buildings to be white and Georgia and Florida give incentives to owners who install white or light-colored roofs. Put another way, boosting how much urban rooftops reflect would be a one-time carbon-offset equivalent to preventing 44 billion tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. For the first time, we're equating the value of reflective roof surfaces and CO2 reduction," says Dr. Hashem Akbari. "This does not make the problem of global warming go away. But we can buy ourselves some time.""

Submission + - Maintaining/Optimizing Inherited C/C++/Java Code

Submitted by mrise on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @07:07PM

mrise writes: Hi, on more and more projects, I end up needing to port, integrate, maintain, and optimize other people's code I've never seen before. I work mainly in C/C++ with some Java, mainly in embedded applications, fairly low-level, performance-challenged, and mostly on Linux.

I use basic profiling tools, but I often get bogged down reading through code trying to understand what's what. I often end up rewriting too much code just trying to get it working well. Do good tools and/or methodologies exist which can help me- some sort of super profiler/debugger that helps me with understanding data structures and code flow? Even just cross-referencing the variables and identifying what is global/static... would help.

Optimization often involves refactoring code- things like loop optimizations, recoding to leverage SIMD effectively, redoing data layouts for cache optimization, restructuring exception handling, etc. Nasty stuff, like endian issues really frustrate me. Are there any analysis tools that identify these things and help guide optimizations? Any favorite references to all the code optimizations I should be considering?

Beyond this, I'm increasingly migrating sequential code to parallel threaded code- pthreads and OpenMP. Any additional pointers?

I appreciate any and all suggestions. Thanks.

Church of Scientology On Trial In France 890

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @06:54PM from the speaking-truth-to-fraud dept.

An anonymous reader sends word that a trial has opened in Paris that could shut down Scientology in France. The organization stands accused of targeting vulnerable people for commercial gain. Scientology does not have the status of a religion there, as it does in the US, and anti-cult groups have pursued it vigorously over more than 30 years. The current case is based on complaints filed by two women in December 1998 and July 1999. Three other former members who had initially joined the complaint have withdrawn after "reaching a financial arrangement with church officials." If convicted, the seven top Scientologists in France face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of €1M. The Church of Scientology-Celebrity Centre and its Scientology Freedom Space bookshop not only face a much larger fine but also run the risk of being shut down completely.

Submission + - Phony TCP Retransmissions Can Hide Secret Messages 2

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @03:50PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "New Scientist reports that a team of steganographers at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland have figured out how to send hidden messages using the internet's transmission control protocol (TCP) using a method that might help people in totalitarian regimes avoid censorship. Web, file transfer, email and peer-to-peer networks all use TCP, which ensures that data packets are received securely by making the sender wait until the receiver returns a "got it" message. If no such acknowledgement arrives (on average 1 in 1000 packets gets lost or corrupted), the sender's computer sends the packet again in a system known as TCP's retransmission mechanism. The new steganographic system, dubbed retransmission steganography (RSTEG), relies on the sender and receiver using software that deliberately asks for retransmission even when email data packets are received successfully. "The receiver intentionally signals that a loss has occurred," says Wojciech Mazurczyk. "The sender then retransmits the packet but with some secret data inserted in it." Could a careful eavesdropper spot that RSTEG is being used because the first sent packet is different from the one containing the secret message? As long as the system is not over-used, apparently not, because if a packet is corrupted the original packet and the retransmitted one will differ from each other anyway, masking the use of RSTEG."

Comment Race and speciation in human populations (Score 1) 497

by laburu on Monday May 25, 2009 @11:14PM (#28090751) Attached to: Should We Just Call Dog Breeds a Different Species?

> I always thought the difference between race and species was species can't interbreed and produce viable offspring. So while small dogs and large dogs may be able to be divided, the line gets a lot fuzzier after that.

Never mind size. Consider biochemistry. Miscarriages and fetal diseases can result from basic physiological incompatibility between the mother and the fetus -- even when copulation and conception are successful.

Some human populations are especially vulnerable to such problems.

The western Basque, for example, have a very high incidence of O-negative blood-type. When a Basque woman decides to bear a Spaniard's children, she isn't just being open-minded -- she may be endangering the well-being of their second-born children and literally risking her own life, too.

(You can read about erythroblastosis fetalis if you are interested in the details.)

"OMG! Does this mean the Basque and other affine peoples of ancient stock are teetering on the brink of speciation or... extinction?"

I want to say "no" -- but I realize this depends a lot on how we deal with the aforementioned reproductive challenges. I would bet on interbreeding (with a little help from the medical sciences) as the Basques' best hope.; unfortunately, there people who think of humans the way they think of dogs (as if distinct races and speciation were legitimate goals), so... who knows?

I'll leave you with this parting thought:

Anybody advocating racial separation is ultimately advocating eventual speciation. I try not to let this offend me; after all, the fossil record shows that, for our distant evolutionary relatives, speciation meant extinction. :>

The Great Ethanol Scam 894

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 25, 2009 @07:50PM from the don't-even-think-about-switch-grass dept.

theodp writes "Over at BusinessWeek, Ed Wallace is creating quite a stir, reporting that not only is ethanol proving to be a dud as a fuel substitute, but there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers. Before lobbyists convince the government to increase the allowable amount of ethanol in fuel to 15%, Wallace suggests it's time to look at ethanol's effect on smog, fuel efficiency, global warming emissions, and food prices. Wallace concedes there will be some winners if the government moves the ethanol mandate to 15% — auto mechanics, for whom he says it will be the dawn of a new golden age."

Red Hat Challenges Swiss Government Over Microsoft Monopoly 245

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 25, 2009 @04:27PM from the fighting-ignorance-with-lawsuits dept.

An anonymous reader writes "'Linux vendor Red Hat, and 17 other vendors, have protested a Swiss government contract given to Microsoft without any public bidding. The move exposes a wider Microsoft monopoly that European governments accept, despite their lip service for open source, according to commentators. The Red Hat group has asked a Swiss federal court to overturn a three-year contract issued to Microsoft by the Swiss Federal Bureau for Building and Logistics, to provide Windows desktops and applications, with support and maintenance, for 14M Swiss francs (£8M; $15M) each year. The contract, for 'standardized workstations,' was issued with no public bidding process, Red Hat's legal team reports in a blog — because the Swiss agency asserted there was no sufficient alternative to Microsoft products.'"

Submission + - Documenting a network

Submitted by

Philip

on Monday May 25, 2009 @03:22PM

Philip writes: "I was appointed as a network manager to a barely functioning MS-based network three years ago. Since then, I've managed to get it up and running — even thriving — but have been guilty of being too busy with the "getting things done" side of networking to document the changes and systems that are put in place. Now I look back, I realise that there is a lot of stuff that I've done and if I get hit by a bus or throw in the towel for any reason I'm leaving behind a network that requires some significant expertise to run and I am worried that I'm the only one that will ever know how it works. Ultimately, this won't be a good reference for me if they are forever trying to work out technical details for years to come. It's likely that I would be replaced with someone with less technical expertise (read "cheaper") and so the document needs to have all sorts of details that outside consultants could understand too (no, I don't want to be the outside consultant either...).

Are there any good templates out there for documenting networks? Has anyone done it before and have some experiences to share? What did you wish your predecessor had written down about a network that you inherited?

Thanks!"

Submission + - The Great Ethanol Scam?

Submitted by

theodp

on Monday May 25, 2009 @03:05PM

theodp writes: "Over at BusinessWeek, Ed Wallace is creating quite a stir, reporting that not only is ethanol proving to be a dud as a fuel substitute, but there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers. Before lobbyists convince the government to increase the allowable amount of ethanol in fuel to 15%, Wallace suggests it's also time to look at ethanol's effect on smog, fuel efficiency, global warming emissions, and food prices. Wallace concedes there will be some winners if the government moves the ethanol mandate to 15% — auto mechanics, for whom he says it will be the dawn of a new golden age."

Submission + - Gordon Graff's Towering Toronto Skyfarm (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by

Mike

on Monday May 25, 2009 @01:21PM

Mike writes: "Gordon Graff's towering Skyfarm is a self-sustaining building that seeks to meet the needs of a tightly packed planet in the face of a limited food supply. The vertical farm produces bio-gas from its own waste, contains an extensive network of hydroponic growing chambers, and stands to remove dependence on the food transportation via energy-intensive and emission-heavy methods."

World's "Fastest" Small Web Server Released, Based On LISP 502

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 25, 2009 @01:21PM from the more-tools-in-the-tool-belt dept.

Cougem writes "John Fremlin has released what he believes to be the worlds fastest webserver for small dynamic content, teepeedee2. It is written entirely in LISP, the world's second oldest high-level programming language. He gave a talk at the Tokyo Linux Users Group last year, with benchmarks, which he says demonstrate that 'functional programming languages can beat C.' Imagine a small alternative to Ruby on rails, supporting the development of any web application, but much faster."

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