Comment Re:Don't wait for Google policy. (Score 1) 157
Sometimes it's not necessarily what you're communicating to a server that is interesting, but which servers you are communiating with!!
Comment Hotspot Wirelesses will have to change (Score 2, Interesting) 152
I happen to be typing this from a Dutch Hotel.
This particular one has free wireless, and there is no way to identify a particular system accessing the net to a room. In fact, without staying here I could still probably sit in the car park or hotel lobby and access the internet from there. There's even a PC in the lobby with anonymous access from it.
Granted it does use a "Hotspot" login page (just need to check a checkbox and click login), so I suppose that could be modified to have someone provide a room number or PIN etc...
Changing the way things work though will invariably be a pain though, especially if you need to access the Internet over the weekends and the authentication system breaks down or something else goes wrong... (as seems to be quite common with the systems in many hotels). Reception tend to look at you with rather blank faces when this happens, and it usually isn't fixed until a weekday.
Submission + - Multi-core CPUs Can Match GPU Performance
An anonymous reader writes: In this work, we evaluate performance of a real-world image processing application that uses a cross-correlation algorithm to compare a given image with a reference one. The algorithm processes individual images represented as 2-dimensional matrices of single-precision floating-point values using O(n^4) operations involving dot-products and additions. We implement this algorithm on a nVidia GTX 285 GPU using CUDA, and also parallelize it for the Intel Xeon (Nehalem) and IBM Power7 processors, using both manual and automatic techniques. Pthreads and OpenMP with SSE and VSX vector intrinsics are used for the manually parallelized version, while a state-of-the-art optimization framework based on the polyhedral model is used for automatic compiler parallelization and optimization. The performance of this algorithm on the nVidia GPU suffers from: (1) a smaller shared memory, (2) unaligned device memory access patterns, (3) expensive atomic operations, and (4) weaker single-thread performance. On commodity multi-core processors, the application dataset is small enough to fit in caches, and when parallelized using a combination of task and short-vector data parallelism (via SSE/VSX) or through fully automatic optimization from the compiler, the application matches or beats the performance of the GPU version. The primary reasons for better multi-core performance include larger and faster caches, higher clock frequency, higher on-chip memory bandwidth, and better compiler optimization and support for parallelization. The best performing versions on the Power7, Nehalem, and GTX 285 run in 1.02s, 1.82s, and 1.75s, respectively. These results conclusively demonstrate that, under certain conditions, it is possible for a FLOP-intensive structured application running on a multi-core processor to match or even beat the performance of an equivalent GPU version.
(Rajesh Bordawekar and Uday Bondhugula and Ravi Rao: Believe It or Not! Multi-core CPUs Can Match GPU Performance for FLOP-intensive Application!. Technical Report RC24982, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Apr. 2010.)
(Rajesh Bordawekar and Uday Bondhugula and Ravi Rao: Believe It or Not! Multi-core CPUs Can Match GPU Performance for FLOP-intensive Application!. Technical Report RC24982, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Apr. 2010.)
Submission + - twitter is censoring #flotilla hashtag? (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Because although the convoy has been dubbed a “flotilla” by Twitter users and a large number of people were using the #flotilla hashtag, this disappeared from after trending briefly. The only remaining related trend topic was Israil, the Turkish word for Israel.
As a result, a large number of of people are calling out Twitter for “censoring” the #flotilla hashtag.
In addition #flotilla was not appearing on Twitter’s trending list despite the fact that it is pretty prominent on Google trends. It’s causing a huge wave of controversy right now.
So what can be found out about what happened to the #flotilla hashtag?
As a result, a large number of of people are calling out Twitter for “censoring” the #flotilla hashtag.
In addition #flotilla was not appearing on Twitter’s trending list despite the fact that it is pretty prominent on Google trends. It’s causing a huge wave of controversy right now.
So what can be found out about what happened to the #flotilla hashtag?
Submission + - Quit Facebook Day is Today (quitfacebookday.com)
Kilrah_il writes: Well, some people just had enough of the privacy issues surrounding Facebook and now they have called May 31 the Leaving Facebook Day. "For a lot of people, quitting Facebook revolves around privacy. This is a legitimate concern, but we also think the privacy issue is just the symptom of a larger set of issues. The cumulative effects of what Facebook does now will not play out well in the future, and we care deeply about the future of the web as an open, safe and human place. We just can't see Facebook's current direction being aligned with any positive future for the web, so we're leaving."
The site for the project has links about the reasons for leaving Facebook and tips on how to quit the "addiction" and find a replacement. Currently, 26,469 people have confirmed that they are leaving Facebook, which doesn't look like it could put much of a dent in Facebook's user statistics.
The site for the project has links about the reasons for leaving Facebook and tips on how to quit the "addiction" and find a replacement. Currently, 26,469 people have confirmed that they are leaving Facebook, which doesn't look like it could put much of a dent in Facebook's user statistics.
Submission + - Top 500 supercomputer list June 2010 released (bbc.co.uk)
chrb writes: BBC News is reporting on the release of the June 2010 top 500 supercomputer list. Notable changes include a second Chinese supercomputer in the top ten. A graphical display enables viewing of the supercomputer list by speed, operating system, application, country, processor and manufacturer.
Submission + - Pakistan lifts Facebook ban, gets apology (skunkpost.com)
crimeandpunishment writes: Facebook is back in Pakistan. The Pakistani government says it lifted its ban Monday after officials from Facebook apologized for the "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" page, and removed it from the site. The page caused outrage and protests among Pakistan's Muslim population, and led to the ban two weeks ago. A spokesman for Pakistan's office of information technology said Facebook assured the government "nothing of this sort will happen in the future".
Submission + - Self-Assembling proteins to revolutinize computing
parallel_prankster writes: EETimes reports on Clathrin, a protein found in every cell of the human body, could become a self-assembler of future information processing systems that are smaller, faster and cheaper than today's computer circuitry, according to a company investigating the technology. Boston-based ExQor Technologies has demonstrated that Clathrin Proteins can be formed into nano-sized biolasers suitable for transmitting information. It expects the technology will initially be used in medical applications. The precision of clathrin's self-assembly process , and ultra-small size also could be used to improve solar cells and batteries with nanoscale electronic and photonic properties not possible with silicon.
Submission + - "Using C++ in GCC is OK" (gnu.org)
An anonymous reader writes: CodeSourcery's Mark Mitchell wrote to the GCC mailing list yesterday reporting "...that the GCC Steering Committee and the FSF have approved the use of C++ in GCC itself. Of course, there's no reason for us to use C++ features just because we can. The goal is a better compiler for users, not a C++ code base for its own sake."
Submission + - Iran repeatedly offering aid in BP Oil Disaster (upi.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Iran offers to assist with Oil Spill, mysteriously kept out of mainstream media...they offered help almost a month ago and then recently renewed this offer. I would think, that with the repetitive failures of BP and the private sector to clean this up, that the US govt would at least be receptive to listen to Iran, what gives?
Submission + - Interview with Robby Workman a Slackware developer
Anonymous Coward writes: "Robby Workman, a Slackware developer and one of the maintainers of the SlackBuilds.org project, answers 13 questions on the occasion of the Slackware-13.1 release: http://slackworld.berlios.de/2010/robby-workman-on-slackware-13.1.html"
Submission + - Only Atheists should be allowed to teach religion, (gizmodo.com) 1
Dan541 writes: I trust Google with a lot of things, but when in doubt I always fall back on good-old common sense. Lauren Rosenberg did not. She walked onto a highway because Google told her to and got hit by a car.
Rosenberg, who apparently takes things very literally, was reading the directions on her Blackberry and thus wasn't privy to the warning that shows up when you access walking directions on a computer:
Rosenberg, who apparently takes things very literally, was reading the directions on her Blackberry and thus wasn't privy to the warning that shows up when you access walking directions on a computer:
Comment Do a "code rewrite" (Score 1) 504
Leave the university and do a "code rewrite", as long as they can't prove you copy and pasted the work that you did under their employment, they have little legal standing and unless this is a real programming gem I doubt they will send the lawyers after you... just look at what happenned to SCO.
Comment Re:Translation (Score 1) 193
Ditto
Comment Re:But are they secure? (Score 1) 394
Or maybe just one person logged onto each of the un-encrypted ones and turned on the encryption.
I remember I had some issues in my old apartment (too many wifi's around me and mine seemed to have trouble getting a channel), I logged onto each of the unprotected routers and reduced their transmit power until I couldn't find them anymore.
