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Programming

Time to Get Good At Functional Programming? 620

Posted by Soulskill from the dysfunctional-programming-on-the-way-out dept.
prone2tech writes "From an article at Dr. Dobb's: Chipmakers have essentially said that the job of enforcing Moore's Law is now a software problem. They will concentrate on putting more and more cores on a die, and it's up to the software industry to recraft software to take advantage of the parallel-processing capabilities of the new chips. As is argued in this article, this means becoming proficient in parallel functional programming. The bad news? Getting good at functional programming is hard, harder than moving from iterative Pascal or Basic or C coding to object-oriented development. It's an exaggeration but a useful one: When you move to FP, all your algorithms break.'"
The Internet

New .tel TLD Now In Use 175

Posted by timothy from the pay-at-the-tel-booth dept.
rockwood reports that the .tel top level domain has been deployed, "in a first attempt at pushing the recently approved .tel... The top-level domain .tel was approved by ICANN as a sponsored TLD launching on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 to trademark owners of national effect and on February 3, 2009 to anyone who wishes to apply. Its main purpose is as a single management and publishing point for 'internet communication' services, providing a global contacts directory service by housing all types of contact information directly in the DNS."

Comment I have to agree (Score 4, Insightful) 166

by a302b (#25908275) Attached to: Fujitsu Offers Free Laptop Upgrades For Life
From TFA:

This offer is far from comprehensive, though, as it excludes case cracks, small numbers of dead pixels, broken keys, smashed screens, software issues, virus infections or failed batteries that are older than one year.

Basically, the normal wear and tear of a laptop is excluded. This seems particularly negligent regarding failed batteries, as I've noticed that most laptops become almost unusable after a few years. Even with a RAM upgrade after 3 years, it is unlikely to last much longer than that, especially if broken keys and worn out batteries aren't included. (Are batteries even designed to last that long?

Comment annoying "feature" (Score 5, Interesting) 161

by a302b (#25863869) Attached to: Google Turns On User-Tweakable Search Wiki
This seems to just be a way to refine search results and collect more specified data. This is great for Google's aims of collecting all the data in the universe, but an annoying "feature" for me.

I really dislike the "refined" searches, especially as Google's memory lasts for a long time. If I am doing a project on something, or am really interested in a topic (lets say travelling to Timbuktu), I will search it to death. However, a week later, when I am trying to search for something else (say used cars), I have to slog through a bunch of pages about car sales in Timbuktu!

Sigh.

Comment a "privacy" app for Facebook etc? (Score 1) 419

by a302b (#25674553) Attached to: UK Outlines Plan For Internet Black Boxes
I've often thought about this, especially as most of my friends seem to use Facebook and I am certain Facebook would hand over any private data to any government agency that asked.

Instead of joining in the normal way, I would design a "$myname" app for Facebook for my friends who want to stay in touch. That app would have the functionality my profile would normally have, but would be encrypted and all the data would be off Facebook's servers.

Just a thought I've been mulling over recently, especially with the data mining of so many countries lately.
Security

Report Says China Will Demand Source Code 305

Posted by kdawson from the said-the-spider-to-the-fly dept.
An anonymous reader alerts us to a two-week-old story that hasn't gotten much traction in the press to date. A Japanese newspaper and the AP report that China plans to demand source code from hardware manufacturers, and ban the sale of products from companies that don't comply. China is calling this an "obligatory accreditation system for IT security products." The plan is to go into effect next May, according to sources. "Products expected to be subject to the system are those equipped with secret coding, such as [a] contactless smart card system developed by Sony Corp., digital copiers, and computer servers. The Chinese government said it needs the source code to prevent computer viruses taking advantage of software vulnerabilities and to shut out hackers. However, this explanation is unlikely to satisfy concerns that disclosed information might be handed from the Chinese government to Chinese companies. There also are fears that Chinese intelligence services could exploit such confidential information by making it easier to break codes used in... digital devices."
The Internet

How To Clean Up Incorrect Geolocation Information? 392

Posted by samzenpus from the 123-fake-street dept.
zorro6 writes "I thought this might be an interesting question/topic and it would sure help me to get some kind of answer. I recently got internet service from a small, local wireless ISP in my area (south central Colorado, USA). The strange thing is that many, many web sites think I am in Quebec, Canada when I use the service. Evidently some geolocation service thinks my IP address indicates I am in Canada. I have checked the obvious. The WHOIS information for my IP correctly indicates a location of Durango, CO. So the bad info is coming from some more sophisticated geolocation service. My ISP is at a loss as to how to fix this but it is causing me a lot of grief. Many of the ads I get shown on Yahoo! for instance are in French! Certain sites won't sell me goods or services because they don't do business in Canada. So far I know that Yahoo! (or their ad provider), Nvidia, Movielink, etc. all think I am in Canada. I would sure appreciate any help/info on how to get this corrected."
Security

Man Fired When Laptop Malware Downloaded Porn 635

Posted by samzenpus from the your-computer-wants-porn dept.
Geoffrey.landis writes "The Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents fired worker Michael Fiola and initiated procedures to prosecute him for child pornography when they determined that internet temporary files on his laptop computer contained child porn. According to Fiola, 'My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, "You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You're fired. Clean out your desk. Let's go."' Fiola said, 'They wouldn't talk to me. They said, "We've been advised by our attorney not to talk to you."' However, prosecutors dropped the case when a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files. Computer forensic analyst Tami Loehrs, who spent a month dissecting the computer for the defense, explained in a 30-page report that the laptop was running corrupted virus-protection software, and Fiola was hit by spammers and crackers bombarding its memory with images of incest and pre-teen porn not visible to the naked eye. The virus protection and software update functions on the laptop had been disabled, and apparently the laptop was 'crippled' by malware. According to Loehrs, 'When they gave him this laptop, it had belonged to another user, and they changed the user name for him, but forgot to change the SMS user name, so SMS was trying to connect to a user that no longer existed ... It was set up to do all of its security updates via the server, and none of that was happening because he was out in the field.' A malware script on the machine surfed foreign sites at a rate of up to 40 per minute whenever the machine was within range of a wireless site."
Communications

In The US, Email Is Only For Old People 383

Posted by Zonk from the late-twenties-and-older-than-dirt dept.
lxw56 writes "Two years after Slashdot discussed the theory that Korean young people were rejecting email, an article at the Slate site written by Chad Lorenz comes to the same conclusion about the United States. 'Those of us older than 25 can't imagine a life without e-mail. For the Facebook generation, it's hard to imagine a life of only e-mail, much less a life before it. I can still remember the proud moment in 1996 when I sent my first e-mail from the college computer lab. It felt like sending a postcard from the future. I was getting a glimpse of how the Internet would change everything--nothing could be faster and easier than e-mail.'"
Businesses

Submission + - BBC Abuse of license fee's (fluxradio.org)

Submitted by
therealgrumpydog
therealgrumpydog writes: "This is where your life gets tricky from a legal "standpoint" in the UK with the BBC Television License. I have been trawling through the "small print" To see what is legal and illegal. Basically we are at a crux and damned in the UK by the BBC. You no longer need to have a television for the BBC and TV licensing to fine you. All you need is a device that can view or record any television programme and you are doomed. Yes that is right, you will have to pay £135.50 for a colour license and £45.50 for a monochrome (Black and White) television or any other device. So I ask where do we go from here? This is just another stealth tax and every mobile phone you buy, ipod,television, DVD recorder, computer, the information is legally past onto http://wwww.tvlicensing.co.uk/ Basically we are being screwed over and the government is abusing the Data Protection Act! This is illegal in law but it is enforced. We cannot keep on living like this! If you have an receiving device like a radio you still have to pay the fee's to the BBC. I for one, if I do not have a television but have a computer that can stream television and radio, so what, but I am obliged by law to pay a license fee. I say fuck you BBC. The BBC used to have respect, especially the World Service. No longer does the BBC have that respect, it is just another stealth tax. Thanks to Blair and now Gordon Brown the UK is in a mess, So Just remember when you buy a new phone your details are stored on a database and you can be threatened with a fine up to £1,000 because you can receive television over it. It is an illegal offence if you do not buy a license, All your privacy has gone to pot. Solution, buying any device that is capable of streaming any media, give a foobar name and address to stop the BBC stalking you unwarranted money. Btw your warranty on your goods is still valid, keep the receipt and original packaging. Good luck, Do not feed the BBC Trolls"
Hardware Hacking

MIT Students Show How the Inca Leapt Canyons 185

Posted by Zonk
PCOL writes "When Conquistadors came to Peru from Spain in 1532, they were astonished to see Inca suspension bridges achieve clear spans of at least 150 feet at a time when the longest Roman bridge in Spain had a maximum span of 95 feet. The bridges swayed under the weight of traffic terrifying the Spanish and their horses, even though, as one Spaniard observed, they were almost as "sturdy as the street of Seville." To build the bridges, thick cables were pulled across a river with small ropes and attached to stone abutments on each side. Three of the big cables served as the floor of the bridge, two others served as handrails and pieces of wood were tied to the cable floor before the floor was strewn with branches to give firm footing for beasts of burden. Earlier this year students at MIT built a 70-foot fiber bridge in the style of the Incan Empire. The project used sisal twine from the Yucatan Peninsula and anchored it by wrapping it around massive concrete blocks. The weekend's burst of activity was preceded by 360 hours of rope-twisting as the 50 miles of sisal twine was turned into rope. Working together as a group was part of the exercise. "A third of the time was spent learning to work together," one of the students said. "But after a while, we were banging those cables out.""

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