Journal Journal: The Wetware Crisis: the Dead Sea effect in the IT workplace
An old hand writes about the current state of affairs in hiring in IT
Submission + - Boeing Dreamliner Turns Into Nightmareliner (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: It's not that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner wondercraft may be unsafe or vulnerable to hacker attacks. At this point, it seems everyone would be happy for it to arrive in any state. The 787's carbon-fiber construction and next-generation technology have pushed back their delivery schedule once again, this time requiring a redesign of the plane's wingbox. Airlines will have to wait 18 more months to get it delivered, which is an extremely serious blow to the credibility of the company and their financial standing, as they would have to pay penalties to the buyers of more than 850 of these planes. And we thought Airbus had problems.
Submission + - LUG Radio Live USA Starts today in San Francisco
An anonymous reader writes: LugRadio Live USA 2008 starts today at the Metreon in San Francisco. The event brings this unique atmosphere to the USA, with around 30 speakers, over 20 exhibitors, an eclectic range of BOF sessions, and plenty of additional sessions such as our debate discussion panel, a showcase of five minute talks, tech demos, and of course a live recording of LugRadio in front of an audience. Drop by the Metreon on April 12th and !3th to see presentations by: Miguel de Icaza (Mono / Novell), Aza Raskin (mozilla, Robert Love (Google), Jeremy Allison (Samba), Dan Kegel (Wine), and more!
Submission + - Yuri's Night parties
call-me-kenneth writes: It's Yuri's Night once more, time to celebrate the first human in orbit, the first flight of the shuttle, and manned and unmanned spaceflight past present and future. At a time when NASA's Science Mission Directorate is adjusting after the abrupt resignation of Alan Stern after the fiasco over withdrawn funding cuts that threatened the MER Mars rovers, it's good to celebrate the amazing achievements of the last decade, and look forward to some forthcoming spectaculars. It's the best excuse for a beer until Phoenix landing night — six weeks and counting!
Submission + - ISO Takes Control Of OOXML
mikkl666 writes: "Alex Brown, head of the ISO work group responsible for OOXML, has posted a summary of their latest meeting, and he also comments on the resolutions discussed there. The basic message is that ISO now has 'full responsibility for the standard', and that several workgroups will be established to work on OOXML. An interesting point here is that 'setting up a maintance procedure for ODF, and then working on cross-standard initiatives' is one of the explicit goals. On a side note, they also reacted to the very emotional discussion on OOXML by posting an open letter: 'We the undersigned participants [...] wish to make it clear that we deplore the personal attacks that have been made [...] in recent months. We believe standards debate should always be carried out with respect for all parties, even when they strongly disagree.' As he correctly points out, 'this content speaks for itself'."
Submission + - Ecuador Decrees Government Must Use Free Software (blogspot.com)
Glyn Moody writes: "Ecuador has made free software the default option for government systems: "The President of the Republic, Rafael Correa, by decree [Spanish PDF] no. 1014 of April 10, 2008, establishes as public policy for institutions of the central administration the use of free software in their computer systems and equipment." There are only three circumstances in which proprietary programs can be used: when there is no suitable open source solution, when national security is "at risk", or when a computer project is at a "point of no return"."
Submission + - Internet Sites Biased Towards Supporting Suicide (arstechnica.com) 1
Believe It Or Not, I Care About You writes: "According to a new study in the British Medical Journal which examined the search results for various suicide-related search terms, the most common results supported or encouraged suicide. Perhaps not surprisingly, Wikipedia was one of the most prevalent sources of information, particularly on suicide methods, although the Wikimedia Foundation itself does not encourage suicide. This might be just another study if not for the mention that other studies have proven that media coverage has an effect on suicide, particularly with respect to influencing the methods chosen. That notion, in turn, has lead some countries to use or consider censorship as part of their approach, even though it has not been proven to be effective. Interestingly, this study notes that suicide rates actually decreased with increased web usage in England, perhaps because support is readily available to anyone who wants it."
Submission + - Shrine to the Laser Gods (wired.com)
ArgyleSocks writes: In the laboratory of Zhan Chen, a professor at the University of Michigan, some students built a shrine to the lasers they depend upon — hoping that some benevolent deity would grant them enough data to eventually graduate. According to Andy Boughton, a sign under the St. Jude Figurine says, "Danger! Bright ray in use." In Klingon.
Submission + - Last.fm's Full-song Streaming Boosts CD Sales (washingtonpost.com)
drwxrxrx writes: In the Washington Post, music site Last.fm reports that since implementing full-track music streams three months ago, CD sales through their partnership with Amazon have gone up over 100%.
Submission + - Large Hadron Collider gears up for Huge Data Flows 1
Hugh Pickens writes: "Live Science has an interesting story on the flood of information that will pour from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's next-generation particle accelerator, an underground ring 27 kilometers around located at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, starting in mid-2008. Detectors stationed around the LHC ring will produce 15 trillion gigabytes of data every year, data that will be farmed out to computing centers worldwide. In the LHC computing model, data from the experiments will flow through tiers. The Tier 0 center at CERN takes the data directly from the experiments, stores a copy and sends it to Tier 1 sites. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment has seven Tier 1 sites in seven nations, and each site partitions its portion of the data based on the types of particles detected and sends these sub-samples off to one of the 30 CMS Tier 2 sites where researchers and students finally get their hands on the data. "We are really good at moving data from Fermilab to our Tier 2 center," says physicist Ken Bloom at the University of Nebaska where scientists have achieved the fastest rates for any Tier 1-to-Tier 2 connection worldwide. "We can manage a terabyte an hour easily, and a terabyte in half an hour is possible.""
Submission + - Where Did All the Girl Geeks Go? (eweek.com)
eweekhickins writes: "Fewer women are working in IT in 2008 than in 2000. Why is that? Does it have to do with the bug juice they're doling out in elementary school cafeterias? How will the U.S. IT industry keep pace with the rest of the world if it's half the employment pool is out doing something else?"
Submission + - Do Fruit Flies have Free Will? (brembs.net)
matt4077 writes: Researchers at the Free University of Berlin are modeling the behaviour of fruit flies. As it turns out, their flying patterns are not completely random, nor deterministic. Quote: "I would have never guessed that simple flies who keep bouncing off the same window otherwise have the capacity for nonrandom spontaneity if given the chance." There's also a video of Drosophila in the flight simulator.
Submission + - Iceland woos data centres as power costs soar
call-me-kenneth writes: Business Week covers the soaring demand for power and cooling capacity in data centres — electricty consumption for US data centres more than doubled between 2000 and 2006. Among the other stats: for every $1 spent on computing equipment in data centers, an additional 50 cents is spent each year to power and cool them; and half the electricity used goes on cooling. Iceland, with it's cool climate and cheap power galore, is courting big users like Google and Microsoft as a future DC location. (Can't help thinking they're gonna need a bigger cable first, though...)
Feed New Scientist: Lab animal carers suffer in silence (pheedo.com)
Submission + - Cell Phones to be Allowed on Planes 1
Matty the Monkey writes: "The use of mobiles on planes flying in European airspace has been given approval by UK regulator Ofcom.
It has issued plans that will allow airlines to offer mobile services on UK-registered aircraft.
The decision means that mobiles could be used once a plane has reached an altitude of 3,000m or more.
But airlines keen to offer the services must still satisfy other regulators about how the hardware will be used.
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7314362.stm"
