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Television

Submission + - Does 1080p Truly Matter?

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: If you ever wondered whether most people can really tell the difference between a 1080p and 720p, you won't be shocked to find out that they can. However, according to a test consisting of 64 participants and two very similar 42-inch LCD TVs, a LG 42LH20 with 720p display and a LG 42LH30 with a 1080p display, I was surprised to find out that 25% of the people actually preferred 720p. Moreover a considerable percentage of people weren't even able to tell the difference. The real question that rises from this test is that if it is really worth spending the extra money on 1080p HDTV when a large number of people can't even tell the difference or actually prefer 720p.
Book Reviews

Submission + - Human Factors in the Design and Evaluation

Submitted by brothke
brothke writes: In aviation today, technically advanced airplanes present a unique paradox. Technically advanced airplanes, in theory, have more available safety, and the outcome should be that there are less accidents. But without proper training for their pilots, they could be less safe than airplanes with less available safety. The FAA found that without proper training for the pilots who fly them, technically advanced airplanes don’t advance safety at all. The reason is that technically advanced airplanes present challenges that under-prepared pilots might not be equipped to handle.

In the IT world, staff members are often expected to install, configure, maintain and support technically advanced software. Companies often buy huge infrastructure software, such as CRM, ERP, PKI, identify management, intrusion detection and more, without first understanding how to make them work in their complex environment. Management often is oblivious to the fact that just because they can buy and install the software; that it will work on its own. The reason why so many large software deployments fail miserable is that the IT staff often doesn’t have the proper training, support and assistance that they need.

Human Factors in the Design and Evaluation of Central Control Room Operations is a fantastic book that shows what it takes to ensure support staff work and operate together, in a formal and efficient manner. The book integrates the topics of human factors and ergonomics to create an incredibly valuable tome. The book details the interactions between people and their working environment, and shows in depth how the work environment can and must be designed to reduce errors, improve performance, improve the quality of work, and increase the work satisfaction of the workers themselves.

While the book was written primarily for control room settings, it is relevant for those in IT if they have any involvement remote support, security operation centers (SOC) and network operation centers (NOC).

While the book is of value to anyone involved in operation, those who will find the most value are those charged with the management and operations or large groups or operations. If they have management support to deploy the formal methods detailed in the book, they will find that they can create significantly higher levels of customer and end-user satisfaction.

The authors note that all SOC and NOC’s have a common feature in that the people operating them are often remote from the processes that they are monitoring and controlling, and the operations function on a 24/7 basis. The many demands of remote and continuous operation place special considerations on the design of the SOC and NOC. The output of the book is that it can be used to effectively to design these operating centers.

The books presents a comprehensive and all-inclusive on the topic of human factors on the following 14 topics: competencies, training, procedures, communications, workload, automation, supervision, shift patterns, control room layout, SCADA interfaces, alarms, control room environment, human error, and safety culture. Each chapter includes extensive diagrams and flowcharts to show how the processes develop.

The book also provides a highly analytical approach to each topic. It details the required processes and procedures necessary to make each subject area work. The book is not only based on the four author’s expertise; they quote heavily from other experts and their research.

Chapter 2 opens with the observation that the safe and efficient operation of operating centers and control rooms is dependant upon the competence of the operators working within them. It details how to create competence assessments to ensure that staff is capable of carrying out their tasks safely and efficiently by assessing their skills and knowledge. The authors stress that it is not acceptable for organizations to assume that their staff are competent based on only their exposure to training and experience. They suggest that organizations create a program to determine those competence levels.

Chapter 3 goes into detail about how to create effective training programs to ensure worker competence. The benefit of a trained worked is that they can yield higher productivity and provide better service. Well-trained workers often have better morale and produce less errors. The chapter details the importance of a training needs analysis to properly determine what needs to be in the curriculum.

Chapter 4 is on procedures and is particularly important to those working in a SOC or NOC. If consistent and repeatable procedures are created, staff can provide much a more effective and dependable levels of service. Even with the benefits of well crafted procedures, its development process is a complex one involving the identification of all of the tasks that require procedures, a judgment on the level of assistance required, identification of the type or format of procedure required, writing and reviewing the procedures, and obtaining approval for them.

The importance of procedures is underscored when the book notes research that 70% of accidents and incidents within the nuclear power companies occurred when workers failed to properly follow procedures. In the petrochemical industry, 27% of incidents were caused by situations for which there were inadequate or no procedures available.

The percentage of failed IT projects and large software rollout catastrophes is both staggering and appalling. No other sector but IT would tolerate such failures. A book like as Human Factors in the Design and Evaluation of Central Control Room Operations goes a long way to stop that. The book is a rare one in that it both provides all of the factors involved in the problem at hand, and then provides all of the details needed to obviate those problems.

Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0072262826?ie=UTF8&tag=benrothkswebp-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0072262826
Medicine

Submission + - Man HIV Free 2 Years After Stem Cell Treatment (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: According to a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine, a stem cell transplant performed in Germany has unexpectedly removed all signs of HIV from a 42 year old American patient. The unnamed white male was treated two years ago for Leukemia with a dose of donor stem cells and his HIV RNA count has dropped to zero and remained there since. While the treatment was for Leukemia, Dr. Gero Hutter and colleagues at the Charite Universitatsmedizen in Berlin had selected the stem cell donor for his HIV resistant genes. While there are still many questions unanswered, this is the first such case of stem cells treating HIV that has been reported in a NEJM-caliber publication.

Comment Re:I'm guessing the letter was: "é " (Score 2, Funny) 165

by BlueTrin (#31285600) Attached to: Key Letter By Descartes Found After 170 Years
And this is only one letter, just wait that we find the thousand letters missing, I guess they will not teach anymore alphabet at Kindergarten ...

Logitech will showcase the new 1105 keys keyboard and legendary threads will pop up in slashdot such as "1105 keys ? Ok, but does it come in DVORAK."
Cellphones

Submission + - Five GPS games to play with your smartphone (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: If your handset doesn’t get you out and about, tramping through mud, climbing over styles and hunting for hidden treasure, then something needs an upgrade. Your phone, your life, or maybe both. The iPhone, Blackberry’s Storm and Bold lines, and many Symbian and Android handsets now sport GPS, which makes your smartphone the ticket to join a global movement of outdoor games. These are outbound challenges that pit teams and solo players against themselves and each other in the search for hidden treasure, undiscovered landmarks and hidden spots all over the world. This feature delves into five of the best smartphone-friendly real-world games, each of which is a bridge between the online and offline worlds.

Comment Maybe, you answered your own question (Score 2, Insightful) 490

by BlueTrin (#31284822) Attached to: The Sad History and (Possibly) Bright Future of TiVo
gjt writes

For the couch-potato geek, one name typically comes to mind: TiVo.

To become a success for the masses, a product has to appeal to the masses. The reason the iPod and iPhone were successful was not that they were the first or the most powerful phones, but because they were well marketed and are usable and appeal to your average non-geek.

The corporate history is full of the graves of the people who did not understand this. One example which comes to my mind is home automation, ten/twenty years ago people were hyped about this and promised that your home would be fully automated by AI and computers. Now we are in 2010 and your average home only has the basics of home automation, just because it is fairly expensive and does not appeal to the masses (I do not wake up in the morning and wonder how cool it would be to pay 20k to have my heating fulling automated). It may come in the future but when it will come, it will have been re-thought to appeal to a viable customer base (like Apple with the iPod has beaten the crap out of the Archos and other MP3 players).

Now you may argue that Archos was there before Apple, but the fact is that Apple understood how to market their iPod.
Games

Submission + - Working StarCraft 2 Crack Claimed (teknogods.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A group named TeknoGods has announced on IRC that it has developed a working Battle.net emulator for StarCraft II. Announcing the following:
"Current Progress:
* Deobfuscator+relocator done. Battle.net.dll is no longer a problem.
* Anti-Debug is not a problem anymore.
* Test mode enabled in StarCraft2 to run game alone, build units, load saved games etc.
* Auth process documented for server emulator"
As well as providing a video demonstrating a single player offline game here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jK3FzrGXJg. Blizzard's protection is incredibly clever and they managed to work around it, with some hints that it may have been thanks to the latest patch.

Comment Re:The case of Gears of War (Score 1) 398

by BlueTrin (#31283866) Attached to: When PC Ports of Console Games Go Wrong
I bought it when it was just released and I can confirm what he said, it was released a long time after the XBox version, it had many problems which were fixed by a patch.
It was a nightmare to register onto LIVE to play on the multiplayer (at this time LIVE for PC was very buggy)
Someone blogged his issues
After the patch, everything was ok, but it felt like Epic did not really test the game before to release it. They (CliffyB) as well made comments about how the PC market was plagued by pirates and was quite patronizing to the PC gamers. It did not help that soon after messing up this PC release he claimed that Epic will never do another GoW port because of piracy, ... etc instead of realizing that GoW1 PC did not sell because he waited almost a year before to port it.

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