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Submission + - History of Interrupts in Computers (virtualirfan.com)

Submitted by qwertycsguy
qwertycsguy writes: The use of interrupts goes back to the early days of computers and is a fascinating story. We take them for granted today but the famous computer scientist Edsgar Djikstra said: "Bram [J. Loopstra] and Carel [S. Scholten] confronted me with the idea of the interrupt, and I remember that I panicked, being used to machines with reproducible behaviour."

Submission + - The Raspberry Pi celebrates 2 years with open source graphics driver competition (techienews.co.uk)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: The Raspberry Pi, which was first put up for sale on February 29, 2012, has completed two years and has sold over 2.5 million units during the period. Announcing the milestone and commemorating the two years, Founder and former trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Eben Upton announced a $10,000 competition wherein developers will be required to demonstrate a satisfactory Quake III gameplay at a playable framerate on the credit card sized computer using open source drivers.

Comment Re:First time? (Score 1) 205

by jdschulteis (#46369399) Attached to: Water Filtration With a Tree Branch

Thou with SODIS use glass if you can do to the endocrine disruptors BPA and BPS being in most plastic bottles.

The very Wikipedia article you linked to says to use PTE bottles, because some glass bottles will absorb the UV before it gets to the water, and that the leaching of material from plastic bottles into the water has been studied and found not to be of concern.

Submission + - Exosuit lets divers go 1,000 feet deep (cnet.com)

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: A new type of diving suit allows divers to go to 1,000 feet deep (at 30 times atmospheric pressure). A picture gallery at CNET has some neat pictures of the so-called Exosuit. According to the blog for the suit: "The first scientific exploration mission utilizing the Exosuit ADS is taking place this summer (2014), approximately 100 miles off of the Rhode Island Coast at a location called the Canyons, while working in the mesopelagic environment (depths of 200 to 1000 feet) ... The expedition's mission is to evaluate methods for improved human presence and scientific interaction at the edge of the mesopelagic realm as applied to the discovery, collection, and imaging of bioluminescent and biofluorescent organisms ..."

Submission + - Chevy Made A Flying Camaro... Sorta

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: We've read about flying cars, and sure, maybe they'll come to fruition someday. But we aren't in the era where we fly around like the Jetsons, yet. Though, Chevrolet actually has something called Flying Car Mode in the new 2014 Camaro Z/28. It's part of the Performance Traction Management system and it's clear the marketing team went nuts when it came to naming the mode. Regardless, the function allows the Z/28 to leave the ground occasionally--such as while hauling ass down the Nürburgring--and have the traction control system recognize when this occurs. Instead of the car touching back down and the power being cut, the traction control system will shut itself off so the driver has full power at their disposal upon landing. And thus, Chevy has given birth to the first production flying car.

Submission + - London's Victorian sewers used for broadband in capital (v3.co.uk)

Submitted by DW100
DW100 writes: An ISP in the UK has come up with an innovative way to deliver broadband around London: its Victorian sewer network. Geo Networks runs the cables along the roof of the sewers, avoiding any 'waste' issues and providing fast, low-latency, high-fibre services to business and other providers.

Submission + - Bruce Schneier, others ask:Are Apple iOS, OS X flaws really backdoors for spies? (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Two recently-discovered flaws in Apple iOS and Mac OS X have security experts openly asking whether the software vulnerabilities represent backdoors inserted for purposes of cyber-espionage. “One line of code—was it an accident or enemy action? I don’t know, but it’s the kind of bug I’d put in,” remarked Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at Co3 Systems, about the flaw in Apple OS X SSL encryption that was revealed last week. Schneier, a cryptography expert, alluded to the Apple SSL flaw during his presentation on government surveillance this week at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. The point, he says, is that the U.S. National Security Agency as well as other governments involved in aggressive mass surveillance are going to take any means necessary, including finding ways to put backdoors into commercial products, such as by code tampering. A FireEye researcher posed similar questions about the recently revealed iOS flaw.

Submission + - The Science of Solitary Confinement

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Joseph Stromberg writes in Smithsonian Magazine that although the practice of solitary confinement has been largely discontinued in most countries, it's become increasingly routine over the past few decades within the American prison system and now it's estimated that between 80,000 and 81,000 prisoners are in some form of solitary confinement nationwide. Once employed largely as a short-term punishment, it's now regularly used as way of disciplining prisoners indefinitely, isolating them during ongoing investigations, coercing them into cooperating with interrogations and even separating them from perceived threats within the prison population at their request. "We really are the only country that resorts regularly, and on a long-term basis, to this form of punitive confinement," says Craig Haney. "Ironically, we spend very little time analyzing the effects of it." Most prisoners in solitary confinement spend at least 23 hours per day restricted to cells of 80 square feet, not much larger than a king-size bed, devoid of stimuli (some are allowed in a yard or indoor area for an hour or less daily), and are denied physical contact on visits from friends and family, so they may go years or decades without touching another human, apart from when they're placed in physical restraints by guards. A majority of those surveyed experienced symptoms such as dizziness, heart palpitations, chronic depression, while 41 percent reported hallucinations, and 27 percent had suicidal thoughts and one study found that isolated inmates are seven times more likely to hurt or kill themselves than inmates at large. But the real problem is that solitary confinement is ineffective as a rehabilitation technique and indelibly harmful to the mental health of those detained achieving the opposite of the supposed goal of rehabilitating them for re-entry into society. "We are all social beings, and people who are in environments that deny the opportunity to interact in meaningful ways with others begin to lose a sense of self, of their own identity," says Haney. "They begin to withdraw from the little amount of social contact that they are allowed to have, because social stimulation, over time, becomes anxiety-arousing." Rick Raemisch, the new director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, voluntarily spent twenty hours in solitary confinement in one of his prisons and wrote an op-ed about his experience in The New York Times. "If we can’t eliminate solitary confinement, at least we can strive to greatly reduce its use," wrote Raemisch. "Knowing that 97 percent of inmates are ultimately returned to their communities, doing anything less would be both counterproductive and inhumane."

Submission + - Kepler's Alien World Count Skyrockets (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: The number planets beyond the solar system took a giant leap thanks to a new technique that verifies candidate planets found by NASA’s Kepler space telescope in batches rather than one-by-one. The new method adds 715 planets to Kepler’s list of confirmed planets, which previously totaled 246, scientists said Wednesday. Combined with other telescopes’ finds, the overall exoplanet headcount now reaches nearly 1,700. "By moving ... to statistical studies in a 'big data' fashion, Kepler has showcased the diversity and types of planets present in our galaxy," astronomer Sara Seager, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in an email to Discovery News.

Submission + - Boeing Black: Patent Filed for James Bond-Style Dual-Sim Spy Smartphone (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: The patent documents listed on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) website describe a phone that looks like it came straight out of Q's laboratory in a James Bond film.

The Boeing Black (H8V-BLK1) is a dual-SIM smartphone that supports GSM, WCDMA and LTE frequencies (i.e. 2G, 3G and 4G) using micro SIM cards. The handset also supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and comes with USB and HDMI ports.

Submission + - NYC Teacher: Standardized tests are a critical thinker's dream (wsj.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Many educators and commentators believe that standardized testing is a soul-sapping exercise in rote learning that devalues critical thinking and favors students of higher-income parents who can afford test-prep classes or private tutors.

Not so, according to James Samuelson. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Mr. Samuelson explains that testing is actually good for the intellectual health of students. (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304104504579374651890320212) Testing is also an excellent way for teachers to better understand the particular academic challenges their students face.

Students acquire test-taking skills through discipline, through routine. They also learn how to reason by following a progression of ideas in connected, logical order. But the need for discipline, for routine, would require teachers to cut down on the practice of flitting about from one unconnected topic to another.

Mr. Samuelson teaches at Queens Vocational & Technical High School in Sunnyside, Queens, N.Y.

Submission + - The Emerging Radioshack/Netflix Debacle (examiner.com)

Submitted by DigitalParc
DigitalParc writes: Radioshack recently launched a promotion for 6 months of free Netflix service with the purchase of a laptop, tablet, or phone. This ended up being a fantastic deal, until the shoddy redemption site they were using for the Netflix code redemption was hacked and many of the codes were stolen. Plenty of blame can be placed between Radioshack using such a terrible delivery system, the delivery system being so terrible to begin with, and the enterprising thieves who decided to help themselves to thousands of dollars worth of a service.

Submission + - Mantle no more? GDC sessions point to DirectX, OpenGL responses (techreport.com)

Submitted by Dr. Damage
Dr. Damage writes: AMD introduced it Mantle API for graphics in order to reduce CPU overhead and to create a means of programming that better maps to modern GPU hardware. Now, it appears Microsoft and the industry forces that collaboratively drive OpenGL may be moving to offer similar capabilities. Several GDC session listings suggest that a new version of Direct3D and "zero driver overhead" OpenGL will be introduced at the Game Developer's Conference next month. The "future improvements in Direct3D" promise "an unprecedented level of hardware control and reduced CPU rendering overhead."

Submission + - Industry claims "6 strikes" piracy warning system is working (thehill.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: A national effort to crack down on Internet piracy through a "six strikes" system is seeing success, according to the program’s director.

Privacy advocates and online free speech groups expressed concerns at the February 2013 launch of theCopyright Alert System, a voluntary agreement between the entertainment industry and major Internet providers that aims to reduce online piracy through peer-to-peer networks by sending warnings to users.

The goal of the system, Lesser said, is simply to educate subscribers when copyright infringement is happening.

“It’s a non-punitive system” that is “intended to be education-based,” Lesser told The Hill in an interview.

Through the system, participating Internet providers — AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon — send notices to subscribers who share copyrighted content through peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent.

The notices escalate if infringement continues up to six notices; the first notice alerts the subscriber that infringement is happening while the fifth and sixth come with “mitigation measures,” such as temporarily slowed Internet speeds.

While it has been dubbed the “six strikes” system, the Copyright Alert System stops interacting with users, even if their accounts continue to share infringing material, after the sixth notice.

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