romit_icarus - Slashdot User

Submission + - Foreign Workers Move In, US Workers Move Out (phys.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06, 2012 @01:44PM

An anonymous reader writes: A new academic study indicates that when highly skilled immigrants move to a region, native born individuals with similar skillsets move away. Xenophobia? Or unwillingness to be subject to H1b visa wage suppression? I would guess the latter, as the effect is most noted in smaller cities.

Submission + - Zeolite thermal storage retains heat indefinitely, absorbs four times more heat (extremetech.com) 2

Submitted by

MrSeb

on Wednesday June 06, 2012 @01:10PM

MrSeb writes: "Hold onto your hat/life partner/gonads: Scientists in Germany have created small, zeolite pellets that can store up to four times more heat than water, loss-free for “lengthy periods of time.” In theory, you can store heat in these pellets, and then extract exactly the same amount of heat after an indeterminate amount of time. Zeolites (literally “boil stones”) aren’t exactly new: The term was coined in 1756 by Axel Cronstedt, a Swedish mineralogist who noted that some minerals, upon being heated, release large amounts of steam from water that had been previously adsorbed. For the last 250 years, scientists have tried to shoehorn this process in a heat storage system — and now, the Fraunhofer Institute, working with industrial partners, has worked out how to do it."

Submission + - Dept. of Homeland Security to build better cyber workforce (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Wednesday June 06, 2012 @12:19PM

coondoggie writes: "Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today said the agency will form a cybersecurity workforce task group that will consider strategies such as expanding DHS involvement in cyber competitions and university programs, enhancing public-private security partnerships and working with other government agencies to develop a more agile cyber workforce across the federal government. The new task force will be co-chaired by hacking expert Jeff Moss who now works for the Homeland Security Advisory Council and Alan Paller is director of research at the SANS Institute."

Submission + - World's Largest Biometric Database (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06, 2012 @12:05PM

An anonymous reader writes: In the last two years, over 200 million Indian nationals have had their fingerprints and photographs taken and irises scanned, and given a unique 12-digit number that should identify them everywhere and to everyone. This is only the beginning, and the goal is to do the same with the entire population (1.2 billion), so that poorer Indians can finally prove their existence and identity when needed for getting documents, getting help from the government, and opening bank and other accounts. This immense task needs a database that can contain over 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs, and 2.4 billion iris scans, can be queried from diverse devices connected to the Internet, and can return accurate results in an extremely short time.

Comment Gravity and breasts (Score 5, Funny) 378

by romit_icarus on Saturday April 14, 2012 @11:47PM (#39690665) Attached to: The Laws of Physics Trump Traffic Laws

Nothing new, I say. I've often seen traffic laws being trumped by nothing less than a generous show of cleavage, which always seemed to defy at least one of the physics laws, namely gravity.

Submission + - Bing Search Overtakes Yahoo (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by SharkLaser on Wednesday January 11, 2012 @03:28PM

SharkLaser writes: Microsoft's Bing search engine has overtaken Yahoo for the first time. While both Bing, Yahoo and a bunch of meta-search engines like the privacy-oriented DuckDuckGo use Bing's back-end, it clearly shows Yahoo's declining market share. comScore has also released its search data for 2011 — overally, Bing gained 3.1% of market share while Yahoo lost 1.5% and Google lost 0.7%. Yahoo's new CEO Scott Thompson has lots to work with.

Comment Why is this significant? (Score 2, Interesting) 229

by romit_icarus on Tuesday September 15, 2009 @05:28AM (#29423793) Attached to: Most Detailed Photos of an Atom Yet

The ability to directly measure electron density is quite an old technique. STMs and AFMs have been doing this since the very beginning.. I agree with the researcher's quote in the article that it's good to develop a complementary technique(FEEM) abd at best that's its contribution. I'd be happy to hear what else it contributes. though I don't quite agree with his or the editors spelling! ;) "it's always good to have complimentary approaches,"

Journal Journal: hi

Journal by romit_icarus on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @03:43PM

I'm a ho

Comment marketing gimmick (Score 3, Insightful) 88

by romit_icarus on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @12:48AM (#27398043) Attached to: Early Look At the New <em>Wolfenstein</em> Game

Pluck an epic game from the past, slap on a 'feature' = cheap marketing and product development = low-risk/decent return game product.

Submission + - Beyond "KDE vs. GNOME" (earthweb.com) 1

Submitted by

jammag

on Sunday March 29, 2009 @04:32PM

jammag writes: "Setting aside the now tired debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the "better" Linux desktop, Bruce Byfield compares their contrasting development approaches and concludes that KDE is moving far ahead. "In the short term, GNOME's gradualism seems sensible. But, in the long-term, it could very well mean continuing to be dragged down by support for legacy sub-systems. It means being reduced to an imitator rather than innovator." In contrast, "you could say that KDE has done what's necessary and ripped the bandage off the scab. In the short term, the result has been a lot of screaming, but, in the long-term, it has done what was necessary to thrive." If the phrase 'no pain, no gain,' applies to development, KDE is leaving the staid GNOME in the dust."

Submission + - Graphic Artists Condemn UK Ban on Erotic Comics

Submitted by mdwh2 on Saturday March 28, 2009 @12:43PM

mdwh2 writes: Graphic artists, publishers and MPs have condemned the UK's Coroners and Justice Bill, which will criminalise possession of sexual depictions that appear to show someone under 18 (the age of consent is 16 in the UK), as well as adults where the "predominant impression conveyed" is of someone under 18, and even if they are merely drawn as being present whilst sexual activity took place between adults. The definitions could include Lost Girls, Watchmen, and South Park. The Comic Book Alliance has launched a Petition against the law.

Submission + - UN Attacks Free Speech (newsblaze.com) 1

Submitted by

newsblaze

on Saturday March 28, 2009 @01:56AM

newsblaze writes: "The UN Human Rights Council Assaulted Free Expression today, in a 23-11 vote that urges member states to adopt laws outlawing criticism of religions. The proposal came to the UN from Pakistan, on behalf of the Organization for the Islamic Conference. There were 13 abstensions. South Korea, Japan, India, Mexico and Brazil, all strong democracies, allowed this to pass by abrogating their responsibility. While the resolution doesn't mention the online world, where does this subject get mentioned most, if not online."

Submission + - Google Voice fixes security flaw, almost (voxilla.com)

Submitted by

gardel

on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @12:41AM

gardel writes: "Google appears to have fixed a significant security hole in its two-week-old Voice calling service though some vulnerabilities remain. Until about 7pm PDT Tuesday, an unauthorized party could use a SIP device to spoof a phone number attached to a Google Voice account to call the Google Voice number, giviing the spoofer access to greetings and voicemail, and the ability to make outbound calls, including expensive international calls. Though spoofing via SIP is no longer possible, continued existence of some vulnerability was still apparent Tuesday night. Voxilla was able to set the caller ID of a PBX extension to a mobile number attached to Google Voice account and call in, using a business VoIP trunk, to gain access. (Note: posted by a Voxilla editor)"

Submission + - Last.fm to start charging international users (mashable.com) 2

Submitted by

tdobson

on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @03:44PM

tdobson writes: "The popular online radio service, Last.fm, has announced that users outside of the UK, USA and Germany will need to start paying 3.00 (about $4.40 USD/£2.80 GBP) per month to continue streaming music on their service.

Last.fm doesn't offer much of a reason as to the change, other than writing on their blog that "There will be a 30 track free trial, and we hope this will convince people to subscribe and keep listening to the radio"

Already, there appears to be quite a backlash in responses so far, amongst subscribers and non-subscribers of all nationalities — has this killed Last.fm's appeal, globally?"

Submission + - In India, MS losing out on xbox 360 profits

Submitted by

romit_icarus

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @11:36AM

romit_icarus writes: "In India, the duty for imported xbox 360s is set at a high 54%. So what did the Indians do? They waited until a supply route of hacked xbox 360s was set up from China. The result: xbox360s at real prices and pirated game DVDs for little over USD 3!

Read the story here: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Xbox_360_sales _on_the_rise/articleshow/1697086.cms"

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