MBaldelli - Slashdot User

Submission + - Frequent Tornadoes due to Jet Stream Cha (discovery.com)

Submitted by puddingebola on Friday June 03, 2011 @12:35AM

puddingebola writes: A geography professor at Kansas State University is theorizing that the recent outbreak of tornadoes is due to significant changes in the jet stream.
From the article:
"We have these good historical precedents for specific synoptic [large-scale] events, but they're starting to come more frequently together. That's what is very interesting, is that this weather system seems to be getting more variable," Harrington said.

Submission + - Operation Cupcak (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03, 2011 @12:16AM

An anonymous reader writes: MI6 replaces bomb making instructions with a recipe for cupcakes.

Comment Re:Finally... (Score 1) 410

by daeley on Friday May 27, 2011 @11:30AM (#36263576) Attached to: Steve Ballmer's Head On the Block?

I'd say Vogon.

Comment Re:Not-a-concept (Score 1) 662

by daeley on Thursday May 26, 2011 @12:29PM (#36252138) Attached to: Computer De-Evolution: Awesome Features We've Lost

They tell us that we lost our tails, evolving up from little snails.
I say it's all just wind in sails. Are we not men?

Submission + - US agents illegally operating in Sweden (thelocal.se)

Submitted by metacell on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @07:58AM

metacell writes: Sweden's intelligence service Säpo discovered in 2009 that two Americans were conducting illegal, under-cover investigations in Sweden., the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) daily reported.

The two men were discovered when Säpo noticed them tracking people who it was also investigating for suspected ties to terrorist groups, the paper said, quoting several unnamed sources close to Säpo.

Washington had not informed Swedish authorities of the agents' activities in the country, and soon after their activities were discovered, the two US citizens left the country, the paper added.

Submission + - Traditional Web Search Going The Way Of The Dodo (stormdriver.com)

Submitted by

StormDriver

on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @07:08AM

StormDriver writes: "So far search engines outputted thousands of pages of raw data. That’s the old way of doing things – and it stopped working long time ago, unless you’re a journalist, researcher or any other data mining individual. But if you’re a regular user, just think about it: how many pages you visit often did you find thanks to googling? Did you start to use Facebook after you typed “social network” into your search query? Did you find Gmail while looking for “free e-mail provider” on Yahoo! search? Did you start to play World of Warcraft after searching for “massively addicting electronic crack”?

Of course not.

In all three cases, more powerful engine was at work – the engine of human-based recommendations. You’ve heard this and that from your friends, you’ve seen some snippets of information in the media, until you finally clicked “sign up”."

Submission + - T-Mobile Puts the Asterisk Data Plans (hotenews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @07:01AM

An anonymous reader writes: T-Mobile today announced new smartphone contract rate plans that increase in price based on the number of voice minutes and the amount of 4G mobile broadband data a customer wants in a given month. Customers can go over their 4G broadband limit, but the carrier will then deliver data at slower speeds for the remainder of the month.

Submission + - The Bitcoin Economy (p2plendingnews.com)

Submitted by

aliishaa

on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:57AM

aliishaa writes: "Learn about the world's first digital, peer-to-peer crypto-currency. Learn how the technology works and whether or not Bitcoin has a future in the global economy."

Submission + - Rage of Storms Has Officially Begun! (bbgsite.com)

Submitted by bbgsite on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:46AM

bbgsite writes: The German developer worldwidegames GmbH announced that Rage of Storms has been officially begun, players can enjoy this game freely.

Submission + - Fukushima meltdowns: 1,2,3 (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by symbolset on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:23AM

symbolset writes: Many sources are now reporting that in the days after the earthquake and tsunami, all three active reactors at Fukushima Daiichi experienced fuel "melting". In related news, the tanks for storing radioactive water at the site are nearly full, and new tanks to hold the overflow from cooling efforts are weeks away.

Submission + - Large Scale 24/7 Solar Power Plant to be Built (cleantechnica.com)

Submitted by

RayTomes

on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:00AM

RayTomes writes: "The Obama administration provided a loan guarantee of $737 million to SolarReserve on Thursday to construct the first large-scale solar power plant that stores energy and provides electricity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The solar power project will be constructed in Nevada.

Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/12tl3)"

Submission + - Yahoo makes new mail available to all users (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @05:44AM

alphadogg writes: Yahoo is rolling out the newest version of its e-mail service and inviting all of its 284 million users to upgrade. The company unveiled a test version of the new service in October last year. It was designed to help encourage people to spend more time on Yahoo properties. The redesigned service integrates a number of social media offerings including Facebook and Twitter into Yahoo's e-mail service. For instance, people will be able to post messages to Facebook from within e-mail. They can view and share notifications and updates from Twitter, Facebook and Zynga from a new Updates tab.

Submission + - Is scalability important for startups?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @05:24AM

An anonymous reader writes: The technologies used in implementing scalable software solutions (NoSQL, sharding, cloud storage, etc.) are pretty cool for a techie and his dreams of grandeur, and certainly useful when a system really must support millions of users (or whatever other measure of scale applies). However, many of these technologies require more time, resources and expertise to design and implement than a simpler, non-scalable solution. It seems many well-known and successful companies managed to add scalability to their systems as they grew (some smoothly, some not so much), some even rewriting their systems from scratch as they proved to be successful, the system functionality and requirements became clearer, and more resources came through — but are there any examples of companies who failed to do so in time and never got a second chance? Are there cases where a startup should really spend the extra resources up-front to build a scalable solution from day one? Or is it safe to assume that there will be time and resources to upgrade the system at a later stage when it is clear that it will really be needed? If you put aside the geek (hype?) factor, what is the better business decision under the constraints of a startup?

Submission + - Game pulled amid child porn accusations (stuff.co.nz)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @04:57AM

An anonymous reader writes: Dead or Alive: Dimensions for the Nintendo 3DS has been pulled in Sweden amid accusations that it violates that country's child pornography laws.

The game's Swedish distributor, Bergsala, cancelled the game's local release without fighting the charges.

In a joint statement, Nintendo Europe and Bergsala told Eurogamer Sweden, "Nintendo of Europe have decided not to release the game in Sweden, for various reasons. However, they do not want to list any details regarding their decision.

Submission + - Windows 8 is coming in 2012 (cio.com.au)

Submitted by swandives on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @04:15AM

swandives writes: Microsoft's next version of the Windows operating system, dubbed Windows 8, will debut in 2012, company CEO Steve Ballmer told an audience of software developers in Tokyo.

Lots of people have pegged 2012 as the year for the next Windows release, but it is the first time that the company has officially confirmed the 2012 date. Ballmers said: "As we look forward to the next generation of Windows systems, which will come out next year, there's a whole lot more coming," according to a transcript of his speech posted to Microsoft's website.

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