raxhonp - Slashdot User

Submission + - Sony Suffers Third Breach, PSN Still Down (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1 on Monday May 09, 2011 @12:17PM

Orome1 writes: Sony's troubles seem to have no end as the company confirms a third breach of their network and fails to set a date for the restoration of services. This last breach resulted in a theft of names, partial addresses and three unconfirmed email addresses belonging to some 2,500 contestants that participated in a sweepstakes the company organized back in 2001. And to add insult to injury, the attackers published all that information on a Sony web server.

Submission + - World's Servers Produce 9.57 Zettabytes of Data (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123 on Monday May 09, 2011 @11:57AM

Lucas123 writes: If all the world's business servers' data were represented as books, they would produce enough volumes to create a 5.6-billion-mile-high stack of booksstretching from Earth to Neptune and back to Earth, repeated about 20 times, according to a new study by UC San Diego.

Submission + - Apple brand value exceeds Google at $153 billion (everythingnew.net)

Submitted by

hasanabbas1987

on Monday May 09, 2011 @06:29AM

hasanabbas1987 writes: "Mirror! Mirror! on the wall!!! who is the most valued brand of them ALL ? ask that question to your mirror and it will NOT reply Google. The answer in fact will be Apple. Yes folks! Apple is now the hottest brand around you folks and all of the iPods and iPhones and iPads and Macs and MacBooks and other Apple devices have indeed earned them the most valued brand surpassing a common name of Google. How much is Apple valued at ? well they are valued a mind boggling $153.3 billion and leading a group of companies which include names like Coca-Cola, BMW, HSBC and Disney."

Submission + - ask slashdot, procedural programming to oop

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 08, 2011 @10:56AM

An anonymous reader writes: I have a question that I figured would be best to post to the slashdot community: where can i fnd a tutorial/book that breaks down the concepts behind object oriented programming for someone like me who already has a fair grasp on procedural programming? I don't write code for a living, but with the current state of the job market I wouldn't mind learning more about it in my spare time.

here's what happens: I decide I want to write a simple windows/android application and so I follow a tutorial to get the appropriate development environment up and running, then I follow a tutorial or two and they all seem to just say "then we use this code... to..." without actually saying why im creating a new object, which classes are inheriting others, how to effectively use the gui in the development environment and what code clicking on certain things creates and why.

it just seems like procedural programming is very straightforward and while I realize there are many more aspects to oop, no tutorial manages to explain the concepts in a re-usable manner. I follow a tutorial and either get frustrated that im not really learning anything or I build the application and then realize I could build the same application again but I haven't learned how to look up new classes/objects I might need for a different type of application. the tutorials all get you from point a to b, but they don't really teach you anything. why does oop feel like such a hard area to get into?

Submission + - Easily Distracted People May Have Too Much Brain (gizmodo.com) 1

Submitted by

fysdt

on Sunday May 08, 2011 @10:15AM

fysdt writes: "Those who are easily distracted from the task in hand may have "too much brain".

So says Ryota Kanai and his colleagues at University College London, who found larger than average volumes of grey matter in certain brain regions in those whose attention is readily diverted.

To investigate distractibility, the team compared the brains of easy and difficult-to-distract individuals.

They assessed each person's distractibility by quizzing them about how often they fail to notice road signs, or go into a supermarket and become sidetracked to the point that they forget what they came in to buy. The most distractible individuals received the highest score."

Submission + - Mobile phones could be charged by speech (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by

fysdt

on Sunday May 08, 2011 @05:32AM

fysdt writes: "For mobile phone users, a flat battery or a lost charger are among the frustrations of modern life.
Now new research promises a way to recharge phones using nothing but the power of the human voice.

Electrical engineers have developed a new technique for turning sound into electricity, allowing a mobile to be powered up while its user holds a conversation.

The technology would also be able to harness background noise and even music to charge a phone while it is not in use.

However, there could be a downside to the innovation, if it gives people a new reason to shout into their phones as they attempt to squeeze in every extra bit of power they can."

Submission + - What It's Like to Get Chewed Out by Steve Jobs 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Sunday May 08, 2011 @01:25AM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Jay Yarow writes in the SF Chronicle that in 2008, when Apple launched MobileMe, its own advanced email system, there were syncing issues, emails were being lost, and the Wall Street Journal's legendary tech guru, Walt Mossberg, said he couldn't recommend the service because it had "too many flaws." In response to the flop, Steve Jobs assembled the team that worked on the service in the auditorium Apple uses on its campus to do demos of small products for the press and asked the team what MobileMe was supposed to do. Someone answered and Jobs said to that person and everyone else, "So why the fuck doesn't it do that?" Jobs continued, "You've tarnished Apple's reputation ... You should hate each other for having let each other down ... Mossberg, our friend, is no longer writing good things about us." And Jobs named a new executive right there to run MobileMe and disbanded most of the team that built the original service. "Is any company as closely identified with its leader quite as much as Apple is? So, how can anyone not imagine that, along the way, he'll get mad, he'll micromanage, and he'll have his idiosyncratic versions of inspiration?" writes Chris Matyszczyk. "Some of it must work, right?""

Submission + - Sony Hit With $1B Suit Over Data Breach (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider on Thursday May 05, 2011 @07:34AM

RedEaredSlider writes: Sony has been hit with a class action suit in Canada, seeking 1 billion Canadian dollars ($1.04 billion) in damages, in the wake of the security breaches of the PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment.

The company has already been sued in the U.S. by a resident of Alabama, who said the company was negligent in keeping his personal information safe.

Submission + - Oracle Plans To Hand Hudson To Eclipse (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruhlinger

on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @11:10AM

jfruhlinger writes: "When Oracle took over Sun, its hamhanded treatment of the open source Hudson continuous integration project, which resulted in a fork, became symbolic of the company's awkward relationship with open source projects. Now Oracle is looking to make amends, or at least get Hudson off its hands, by handing the entire project over to the Eclipse Foundation."

Submission + - Free Software Foundation organises Day Against DRM (h-online.com)

Submitted by

jrepin

on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @10:57AM

jrepin writes: "On its DefectiveByDesign.org campaign page, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced that 4 May (today) will be this year's "Day Against DRM". With this day of action, the organisation wants to focus the public's attention on the risks of what it considers to be an anti-social technology. The FSF has created a wiki page which allows users to swap campaign banners and event ideas."

Submission + - The Productivity Suites That Could Unseat Office (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @10:38AM

snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp provides an in-depth comparison of productivity suites with an eye toward uncovering the alternative best suited to unseat Office. 'How well do the alternatives shape up? And how practical is it to switch to them when you have an existing array of documents created in Microsoft Office? Those are the questions I had in mind when I sat down with both the new version of Microsoft Office and several other programs (and one cloud service) that have been positioned as low- or no-cost replacements,' Yegulalp writes in reviewing Microsoft Office 2010, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Lotus Symphony, SoftMaker Office 2010, WordPerfect Office, and Google Docs."

Submission + - DARPA building futuristic space exploration group (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @10:38AM

coondoggie writes: "What started out as an idea about how to further explore the outer reaches of space is now beginning to take more serious shape as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today issued a call for industry information on how to form such as cosmic entity.
Specifically DARPA said it issued a Request For Information intended to solicit ideas and information on structure and approach, and identify parties qualified and interested in furthering what’s known as the 100 Year Starship project."

Submission + - AMD Launches Fastest Phenom Yet, Phenom II X4 980 (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Tuesday May 03, 2011 @08:35AM

MojoKid writes: "Although much of the buzz lately has revolved around AMD's upcoming Llano and Bulldozer-based APUs, AMD isn't done pushing the envelope with their existing processor designs. Over the last few months AMD has continued to ramp up frequencies on their current bread-and-butter Phenom II processor line-up to the point where they're now flirting with the 4GHz mark. The Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition marks the release of AMD's highest clocked processor yet. The new quad-core Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition's default clock on all four of its cores is 3.7GHz. Like previous Deneb-based Phenom II processors, the X4 980 BE sports a total of 512K of L1 cache with 2MB of L2 cache, and 6MB of shared L3 cache. Performance-wise, for under $200, the processor holds up pretty well versus others in its class and it's an easy upgrade for AM2+ and AM3 socket systems."

Submission + - Seagate Unveils Hard Drive With 1TB Per Platter (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1 on Tuesday May 03, 2011 @08:11AM

Orome1 writes: Seagate unveiled the world’s first 3.5-inch hard drive featuring 1TB of storage capacity per disk platter, breaking the 1TB areal density barrier. Seagate’s GoFlex Desk products are the first to feature the new hard drive, delivering storage capacities of up to 3TB and an areal density of 625 Gigabits per square inch. Seagate is on track to ship its flagship 3.5-inch Barracuda desktop hard drive with 3TBs of storage on 3 disk platters – enough capacity to store up to 120 high-definition movies, 1,500 video games, thousands of photos or virtually countless hours of digital music.

Submission + - New Supernova looks promising (rochesterastronomy.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03, 2011 @08:08AM

An anonymous reader writes: A recently discovered extra-galactic supernova is looking promising for amateur astronomers with even small telescopes. The exploding star, called 'Supernova 2011by' lies in the relatively obscure galaxy 'NGC 3972', which sits in the constellation of Ursa Major. Discovered at the end of April, the supernova quickly brightened above 14th magnitude, and is still on the rise. Amateurs are keenly watching the supernova, which is getting brighter by the night. If you have a telescope, it is definitely worth observing. Some drawings of the supernova can be found at http://gkastro.tk/, and more images from the main URL.

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