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Submission + - Worst Patent Ever? (uspto.gov) 1

Submitted by
transami
transami writes: "Worst patent ever? It would appear that spell-check, drop-down selection and bash pattern matching were patented in 2004 by Tegic Communications, Inc. Can the U.S. Patent System get any more ludicrous? Honestly, what can be done to stop this madness?"
Linux

Submission + - Fedora 16 Beta release was declared GOLD (fedoraproject.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "At the Fedora 16 Beta Go/No-Go Meeting yesterday (30 September ) , the Fedora 16 Beta
release was declared GOLD! Fedora 16 beta will be released on Tuesday,
October 4, 2011. " .
Idle

Submission + - Homesick Dog Takes Metro Home Alone (thelocal.se)

Submitted by
jones_supa
jones_supa writes: "A Swedish four year old Labrador Eira was left at her new day kennel in Stockholm but, struck with home sickness she decided take the matter in her own paws and head out for the metro station. The dog stood patiently among the morning passengers and waited in the six stops before arriving to her home station. In accordance with routine, the staff called the police and handed Eira over. "If she hadn't been detained she would probably have been waiting for me by the door," her owner Caroline said."
Idle

Submission + - Firefly poster banned (gawker.com)

Submitted by
ocean_soul
ocean_soul writes: "Probably because nothing more threatening was happening and they need to prove their usefulness the school police at University of Wisconsin-Stout decided a Firefly poster with the quote You don't know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you'll be awake. You'll be facing me. And you'll be armed. was a threat to the safety on campus. Wasn't that a quote about not killing people?"

Submission + - MapReduce vs RDBMS for scalable data processing

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I work for a small company that does vehicle tracking using rfid. All of the rfid data is sent to our servers where it is processed and we generate useful reports for our users. The company is growing and we are starting to get more and more data and as a result, our data processing engine is having trouble keeping up with the load. Currently all of the data is stored in a mysql database instance. I have identified some areas in the engine where we could make things more efficient but as we get more data, we will need to implement a solution that can scale. If you had to implement a scalable data processing solution, would you choose a MapReduce type solution, e.g. a Hadoop cluster or use an RDBMS, e.g. Oracle with parallel queries? Is there a point at which the dataset warrants a MapReduce approach vs a traditional RDBMS approach? If you chose an RDBMS approach what RDBMS would you use? What are the tradeoffs between the two approaches?
Technology

Submission + - MIT invents 'Artificial leaf' makes fuel from sunl (mit.edu)

Submitted by nfn
nfn writes: MIT has published a new paper along with a video of a working prototype of what they've describing as an 'Artificial Leaf' that separates water into oxygen and hydrogen using cheap, non-exotic materials. No word on when 'Artificial Salads' or any of their other Alchemy projects will bear artificial fruit.
Idle

Submission + - Exploding Toilet Injures Two Government Workers (discovery.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Two toilets exploded in the General Services Administration building, hospitalizing two workers (who were in separate bathrooms, evidently). The physics is sort of interesting: older water systems operate using air to force the water through at the right pressure, but if there is some problem in the system enough pressure can build to cause the commodes to crack. Plumbers: please weigh in.

Submission + - 105-page masonic initiation cipher cracked! (ciphermysteries.com)

Submitted by
nickpelling2
nickpelling2 writes: "Ever heard of the "Copiale Cipher"? (Nope, neither had I). It's a 105-page neatly-written ciphertext dated 1886, i.e. a year before the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was formed. What's neat is that three researchers have just published details of how they decrypted its homophonic cipher. However, they've only transcribed the first 16 pages: might the rest refer to the mysterious Fraulein Anna Sprengler? Cool!"

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