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Hardware

Submission + - USB 3.0: Everything You Need to Know

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "After a lengthy gestation period, the third generation of the Universal Serial Bus is making its way to the market. USB 3.0, also known as SuperSpeed USB, has throughput of up to 5 gigabits per second. That's even faster than the 3Gb/sec of SATA hard drives and 1Gb/sec. of high-end networking in the home, and USB 3.0: Everything You Need to Know goes into plenty of the techie details. But is it already obsolete — will LightPeak make USB 3.0 irrelevant?"
Education

'Retro Programming' Teaches Using 1980s Machines 426

Posted by samzenpus from the old-timey-processing dept.
Death Metal Maniac writes "A few lucky British students are taking a computing class at the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) at Bletchley Park using 30-year-old or older machines. From the article: '"The computing A-level is about how computers work and if you ask anyone how it works they will not be able to tell you," said Doug Abrams, an ICT teacher from Ousedale School in Newport Pagnell, who was one of the first to use the machines in lessons. For Mr Abrams the old machines have two cardinal virtues; their sluggishness and the direct connection they have with the user. "Modern computers go too fast," said Mr Abrams. "You can see the instructions happening for real with these machines. They need to have that understanding for the A-level."'"
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Why GNU Grep Is Fast As Comapre To BSD Version

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There is some flamage currently going on regarding BSD grep vs GNU grep performance. Mike Haertel, the original author of GNU grep added some interesting information regarding its performance — "#1 trick: GNU grep is fast because it AVOIDS LOOKING AT EVERY INPUT BYTE. #2 trick: GNU grep is fast because it EXECUTES VERY FEW INSTRUCTIONS FOR EACH BYTE that it *does* look at. Moreover, GNU grep AVOIDS BREAKING THE INPUT INTO LINES. Looking for newlines would slow grep down by a factor of several times, because to find the newlines it would have to look at every byte!
Space

Look For AI, Not Aliens 452

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'd-rather-a-good-reuben dept.
krou writes "Writing in Acta Astronautica, Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that we should be looking for 'sentient machines' rather than biological life. In an interview with the BBC, he said, 'If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you. But within a few hundred years of inventing radio — at least if we're any example — you invent thinking machines; we're probably going to do that in this century. So you've invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you... a "biological" intelligence.' As a result, he says 'we could spend at least a few percent of our time... looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out.'"
IT

Submission + - Hacking Your Web Browser in 7 Easy Steps (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner provides a deeper look at browser plug-ins — mechanisms by which users can customize their Web experience and tweak the performance of their browser of choice. 'All the major browsers make such customizations easy, though each employs a different mechanism,' Wayner writes. 'What's great about these additional blocks of code and images is that they're usually packaged for easy installation. In most cases, one click starts the process. And there's little reason to worry about the mechanism itself. The process works smoothly — most of the time.' From face-lifts, to tailoring to the browser to suit your surfing habits, to bringing the outside world in, customizing your browser to the perfect balance of features and speed has never been easier."
Security

Submission + - Disposable Virtual Machines: Deliberately Expndabl (rlgs.com)

Submitted by RLGSC
RLGSC writes: Virtual machines can be used to increase the security of person workstations in business and personal environments by encapsulating untrusted software within an otherwise expendable environment.

Disposable Virtual Machines can be used to simplify several challenges to keeping a workstation secure in a sea of conflicting requirements, some of which are imposed from the outside and non-negotiable.
Government

Philly Requiring Bloggers To Pay $300 456

Posted by CmdrTaco from the blood-from-blogger dept.
Kurofuneparry writes "Pennsylvania generally and Philadelphia specifically have had a number of budget issues and some bloggers are seeing the results. From the article: '... yes, cash-strapped cities can't very well ignore potential sources of income. But at the same time, there must be some room for discretion and common sense.'"
Image

National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity 635

Posted by samzenpus from the you-got-yourself-into-this-mess-now-get-yourself-out dept.
theodp writes "The National Park Service is finding technology to be a double-edged sword. While new technologies can and do save lives, the NPS is also finding that unseasoned hikers and campers are now boldly going where they never would have gone before, counting on cellphones, GPS, and SPOT devices to bail them out if they get into trouble. Last fall, a group of hikers in the Grand Canyon called in rescue helicopters three times by pressing the emergency button on their satellite location device. When rangers arrived the second time, the hikers complained that their water supply tasted salty. 'Because of having that electronic device, people have an expectation that they can do something stupid and be rescued,' said a spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park. 'Every once in a while we get a call from someone who has gone to the top of a peak, the weather has turned and they are confused about how to get down and they want someone to personally escort them. The answer is that you are up there for the night.'"
Space

Non-Profit Space Rocket Launching In a Week 127

Posted by samzenpus from the diy-to-the-stars dept.
Plammox writes "A non-profit suborbital space endeavor lead by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen is trying to put a man in space. The first test of the boosters and space craft in combination with the sea launch platform will take place this week. The catch? All of this is a non-profit project based on voluntary labor and sponsors. How will they get the launch platform out in the middle of the Baltic sea to perform the test? With the founder's home-built submarine pushing it, of course."
Government

Germany To Grant Privacy At the Workplace 450

Posted by samzenpus from the snooping-on-your-lunch-break dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The German government is proposing a bill declaring that employees have an expectation of privacy at the workplace (translated article). Among other provisions, the bill would ban employers from surveilling their employees by cameras or logging and reading their emails. Also, potential employers would not be allowed to view an applicant's profile at Facebook or any other social network that hasn't actually been made for this purpose."
Censorship

North Korea Looking For Friends On Facebook 183

Posted by samzenpus from the mandatory-friend-list dept.
crimeandpunishment writes "North Korea has apparently decided this social networking thing is worth doing. Just days after launching Twitter and YouTube accounts, it appears to have added Facebook to the list. It probably won't get too many friends in South Korea, which has already blocked access to the North Korean Twitter account for containing 'illegal information' under its security laws...and says the Facebook page could suffer the same fate."
Wireless Networking

The Many Faces of 3G 122

Posted by Soulskill from the propaganda-of-the-ether dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Did you ever notice how each new generation of cell-phone tech gets branded '3G,' and the previous thing is retroactively downgraded to some lesser number of Gs? An MIT engineer explains why in this brilliant essay about '3G' over the last 10 years, showing how the cell carriers have kept offering it and swiping it away to sell more stuff. He cites numerous Cingular/AT&T and Sprint press releases showing how the companies have made '3G' into a brand name ideally suited for amnesiac consumers. Meanwhile, no cell carrier is foolish enough to sell you bottom-line throughput like an ISP in 1996 — you could actually hold them to that (PDF)."
Programming

Sorting Algorithms — Boring Until You Add Sound 118

Posted by Soulskill from the bloop-bleep-bloop dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Anyone who's ever taken a programming course or tried to learn how to code out of a book will have come across sorting algorithms. Bubble, heap, merge — there's a long list of methods for sorting data. The subject matter is fairly dry. Thankfully, someone has found a way to not only make sorting more interesting, but easier to remember and understand, too."
Moon

The Moon Is Shrinking Like a Wrinkled Apple 116

Posted by Soulskill from the that's-no-apple dept.
astroengine writes "New observations by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have uncovered a number of previously unknown, recently formed 'lobate scarps' — raised cliffs about 9 meters high and several kilometers long — over the lunar surface. These scarps form along thrust faults where compression forces the moon's crust to rise. Up until now it was thought these lobate scarps only occurred around the lunar equator, but the high resolution LRO imagery suggests they are ubiquitous, regardless of latitude. As the moon is geologically inactive, what could be creating these features? It would appear the moon's surface is acting like the skin of an apple surrounding the shrinking, dehydrated flesh of the fruit; the lunar crust (skin) is wrinkling as the body of the moon (the flesh) shrinks due to cooling contraction inside the moon's core."

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