tmcb - Slashdot User

Submission + - Breakthrough in drawing complex Venn diagrams (wordpress.com)

Submitted by 00_NOP on Sunday August 12, 2012 @07:43AM

00_NOP writes: Venn diagrams are all the rage in this election year, but drawing comprehensible diagrams for anything more than 3 sets has proved to be very difficult. Until the breakthough just announced by Khalegh Mamakani and Frank Ruskey of the University of Victoria in Canada, nobody had managed to draw a simple (no more than two lines crossing), symmetric Venn diagram for more than 7 sets (only primes will work). Now they have pushed that on to 11. And it's pretty too.

Submission + - What Happens to Google Employees When They Die? 2

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Sunday August 12, 2012 @01:28AM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Forbes Magazine reports that employee benefits of Google are among the best in the land—free haircuts, gourmet food, on-site doctors and high-tech “cleansing” toilets are among the most talked-about but the latest perk for Googlers extends into the afterlife. “This might sound ridiculous,” says Google's Chief People Officer Laszlo Bock, “But we’ve announced death benefits at Google.” Should a US Googler pass away while under the employ of the 14-year old search giant, their surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive a check for 50% of their salary every year for the next decade. Even more surprising, a Google spokesperson confirms that there’s “no tenure requirement” for this benefit, meaning most of their 34 thousand Google employees qualify. "One of the things we realized recently was that one of the harshest but most reliable facts of life is that at some point most of us will be confronted with the death of our partners,” says Bock. “And it’s a horrible, difficult time no matter what, and every time we went through this as a company we tried to find ways to help the surviving spouse of the Googler who’d passed away.” Google gets a lot of press for its perks but Bock says it’s not about the money. "It turns out that the reason we’re doing these things for employees is not because it’s important to the business, but simply because it’s the right thing to do. When it comes down to it, it’s better to work for a company who cares about you than a company who doesn’t. And from a company standpoint, that makes it better to care than not to care.”"

Comment Re:Most people don't care (Score 2) 161

by tmcb on Saturday August 11, 2012 @06:30AM (#40955809) Attached to: In Brazil, All Vehicles Must Have Radio IDs By 2014

Oh, of course they can't do that in any way! It would be a crime!

Comment Most people don't care (Score 5, Informative) 161

by tmcb on Saturday August 11, 2012 @06:14AM (#40955753) Attached to: In Brazil, All Vehicles Must Have Radio IDs By 2014

Well, car thefts are quite frequent in some Brazilian cities, so it's not surprise that most people won't see anything wrong on that apart from paying 5 bucks for the thing themselves. Some people will even see this as a good thing; well, it's an extremely cheap car tracking service!

There were really few contrary opinions to the resolution. Mr. Raul Jungmann, national representative, filed a request for its suspension, alluding to privacy concerns, but no final solution was given to the matter since 2007. It had no big repercussion on media, too. That's how things work in Brazil: these stuff get approved with enough antecedence, but become news just over the deadline. I can't say if it's intentional, but it really seems so.

Submission + - IE 10 will have DO NOT TRACK by default angering Google and others (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Billly Gates on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @06:06PM

Billly Gates writes: Slashdotters and webmasters alike favorite browser (sarcasm intended) will have DO NOT TRACK settings enabled by by default in IE 10. IE 10 comes with Windows 8 and will go release candidate for Windows 7 very soon according to Anne Kohn in a comment in IE's blog. IE 10 already has a score of 319 in html5test.com, while MS is trying to position IE as a great browser again. Will this pressure other browsers such as Firefox and Opera to do the same?

Submission + - university sues student for graduating early (thelocal.de)

Submitted by pointbeing on Friday July 06, 2012 @10:04AM

pointbeing writes: A private German economics and business university is suing one of its students for lost income after he finished his Bachelors and Masters degrees in about a quarter of the normal time.

Marcel Pohl completed 60 examinations in 20 months, gaining a grade of 2.3, and was officially ex-matriculated in August 2011. Such a course usually takes 11 semesters, but he only needed three.

Now the Essen-based School of Economics and Management (FOM) want the 22-year-old to pay his fees up the end of 2011 — an extra €3,000.

Submission + - Dreaming of Digital Glory at Hacker Hostels (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 06, 2012 @08:47AM

An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times has a story about a small chain of managed residences that has sprung up in the Bay Area to provide a cheap place where programmers, designers, and scientists can live and work. These 'hacker hostels' are a place for aspiring entrepreneurs to gather, share, and refine ideas. 'Hackers ... have long crammed into odd or tiny spaces and worked together to solve problems. In the 1960s, researchers at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory slept in the attic and, while waiting for their turn on the shared mainframe computer, sweated in the basement sauna. When told about the hacker hostels, Ethan Mollick, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who studies entrepreneurship, said they reminded him of his days in the last decade studying at M.I.T., where graduate students would have bunk beds inside their small offices.'

Submission + - Ubuntu Can't Trust FSF: Thus Dropped Grub 2 For Secure Boot (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy on Friday July 06, 2012 @08:18AM

sfcrazy writes: Free Software Foundation, FSF, recently published a white paper criticizing Ubuntu's move to drop Grub 2 in order to support Microsoft's UEFI Secure Boot. FSF also recommend that Ubuntu should reconsider their decision. Ubuntu's charismatic chief, Mark Shuttleworth, has finally responded stating the reason why they won't change their stand on dropping Grub 2 from Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth said "The SFLC advice to us was that the FSF could require key disclosure if some OEM screwed up. As nice as it is that someone at the FSF says they would not, we have to plan for a world where leaders change and institutional priorities change. The FSF wrote a licence that would give them the rights to take specific actions, and it's hard for them to argue they never would!

So, does that FSF can't be trusted?"

Submission + - Relativity for Everybody (bureau42.com)

Submitted by

fiziko

on Friday July 06, 2012 @07:33AM

fiziko writes: "Two years ago, we published a series designed to explain core concepts of quantum mechanics to everybody. This year, we are doing the same for relativity. Based on reader feedback, lessons can be downloaded either with or without the accompanying math."

Submission + - It Looks like the end for MeeGo

Submitted by

asavin

on Friday July 06, 2012 @05:24AM

asavin writes: "Although Nokia has rolled out a software update for its MeeGo-based N9 smartphone, the head of the MeeGo team and other key members have confirmed they are leaving Nokia.

In tweet, Sotiris Makrygiannis, Nokia's director of applications for MeeGo, said, "After 12 years at #Nokia is time to say goodbye. Last day but I'm going knowing that we created a legendary phone #N9 and we tried hard."

It really does look like the death-knell for the Linux-based open source platform."

Submission + - Injected proteins protect mice from lethal radiation dose (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo on Tuesday June 26, 2012 @08:49AM

ananyo writes: Two anti-clotting compounds already approved for use in humans may have a surprising role in treating radiation sickness. Last year's nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, renewed anxiety over the lack of treatments for radiation poisoning. It was long thought that the effects of exposure to high doses of radiation were instantaneous and irreversible, leading to destruction of the gut and loss of bone marrow cells, which damages blood-cell production and the immune system.
The two compounds are thrombomodulin (Solulin/Recomodulin), currently approved in Japan to prevent thrombosis, and activated protein C (Xigris). Treating mice with either drug post-exposure led to an eightfold increase in key bone marrow cells needed for the production of white blood cells, and improved the survival rates of mice receiving lethal radiation doses by 40–80% (abstract).
And yes, the lead author's name really is Geiger.

Submission + - ADA to force Netflix to provid closed captioning on content (sfgate.com) 2

Submitted by Shivetya on Tuesday June 26, 2012 @06:59AM

Shivetya writes: A judge has decided that the American Disabilities Act requires services like Netflix to provide Closed Captioning support for any video it streams on its website. The easiest means to comply would be to remove all videos which do not have a closed captioning component, the other route would require Netflix to pay to have this done to any video it wants to provide. The implications to other provides is immense as well.

Submission + - Live-Coding a complete, simple GUI game (youtube.com)

Submitted by jonastullus on Tuesday June 26, 2012 @05:34AM

jonastullus writes: It is almost impossible to look over the shoulders of a programmer to see how he develops a program from start to finish.

When video tutorial are put online, they are scripted, edited and cut.

This video shows live-coding the game of Sokoban including a GTK GUI to give an impression of the cul-de-sacs and confusion that is involved in a successful programming project ;)

Submission + - Visualizing immigration as a physics problem (yahoo.com)

Submitted by remember_clifford on Monday June 25, 2012 @04:47PM

remember_clifford writes: Michael Gastner, known for his sublime cartograms that use gas-diffusion formulas to reshape maps, has a new map on Yahoo that morphs the US-Mexico border based on immigration data, animated over time. No word on exactly what formulas he used, but looks like pretty basic pressure on maleable surface.

Submission + - 'Sexual depravity' of penguins that Antarctic scientist dared not reveal (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by dsinc on Saturday June 09, 2012 @10:47AM

dsinc writes: George Murray Levick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition, made observations about the Adelie penguins' sex life. To his horror, the penguins' sexual activity included auto-erotic behaviour, and seemingly aberrant behaviour of young unpaired males and females, including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks and homosexual behaviour. When he returned to England, he deemed this part of the study to be too shocking and removed it "to preserve decency." Today, it is unearthed at the Natural History Museum.

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