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Submission + - Inside the massive 2014 Winter Olympics WiFi network (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Engineers are putting the final touches on a network capable of handling up to 54Tbps of traffic when the Winter Olympics opens on Feb. 7 in the Russian city of Sochi. The two locations where the Olympics will take place — the Olympic village in Sochi and a tight cluster of Alpine venues in the nearby Krasnaya Polyana Mountains — are completely new construction, so this project represents a greenfield environment for Avaya, the company heading up the project. In addition to investing in a telecom infrastructure, Russia is spending billions of dollars to upgrade Sochi’s electric power grid, its transportation system and even its sewage treatment facilities.

Submission + - Next-Gen Windshield Wipers to be Based on Jet Fighter 'Forcefield' Tech

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: It looks like the old-school windshield wiper is about to be replaced by new technology — but not until 2015. British car-maker McLaren is apparently developing a new window cleaning system that is modeled from fighter jet tech. The company isn't revealing exactly how it will work, but the idea comes from the chief designer simply asking a military source why you don't see wipers on jets as they land. Experts expect McClaren to use constantly active, high-frequency sound waves outside the range of human hearing that will effectively create a force field across a car's windshield to repel water, ice insects and other debris. Similar sound waves are used by dentists to remove plaque from teeth. Windshield wipers were originally invented by Mary Anderson, who received a patent in 1903. She envisioned the design after seeing drivers open the windows of their cars in order to see out of them in the rain, solving the problem with a simple swinging arm device with a rubber blade.

Submission + - Google Autocomplete Ruins Man's Life (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Google's autocomplete function turned a mild-mannered man into a terror suspect and four years of sustained harassment by various US government investigators, according to a lawsuit filed today. Jeffery Kantor says that Google's autocomplete changed ""How do I build a radio controlled airplane?" to "How do I build a radio controlled bomb?" triggering a sequence of events which saw him lose his job. He is seeking $58million in damages.

Comment Re:I'm surprised this didn't catch on sooner. (Score 2) 102

by anybody_out_there (#45096485) Attached to: A Teletherapy Startup Removes Barriers To Mental Health Care
There's a huge difference between seeing the doctor (psychiatrist) and therapy (with a psychologist or LISW). The doctor does the drug prescribing thing, the therapist helps work through other issues by helping develop 'coping skills' and the like, perhaps suggesting exercises to reinforce the process. It used to be that the doctors also did talk therapy, but that hasn't really been true for some time. Some good doctors will take the time to talk, but they still won't try to address 'therapy issues'. For example, I've got issues and stress (who doesn't?). Doctor says, if you didn't have the stress, would you still have mood swings? If yes, that's where the the medication (tries to) come in. As for dealing with the issues and stressors, doctor doesn't care, talk to the therapist. Now, don't get me started on the meds...... I do agree that a large part of therapy is what you do OUTSIDE the office.

Submission + - 2013 Ig Nobel Prize Winners Announced (improbable.com)

Submitted by devjoe
devjoe writes: The 2013 Ig Nobel Prize Winners include research confirming that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive, a study that dung beetles navigate using the Milky Way, and two men who swallowed whole boiled dead shrews without chewing to see which bones would dissolve in the human digestive system and which would not.

Submission + - When is it ok to not give notice? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Here in the U.S., "being professional" means giving at least two week's notice when leaving a job. Is this an outmoded notion? We've all heard stories about (or perhaps experienced) a quick escort to the parking lot upon giving the normal notice, and I've never heard of a company giving a two week notice to an employee that's being laid off or fired.
A generation ago, providing a lengthy notice was required to get a glowing reference, but these days does a reference hold water any more?
Once you're reached the point where you know it's time to leave, under what circumstances would you just up and walk out or give only a short notice?

Submission + - Fairy Rings Explained By Computer? (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Yes, fairies have nothing much to do with fairy rings. A new computer model explains them away and suggests that circles may be a common property of some types of complex system. The simulation postulates that vegetation moves into a region and there is a boundary between colonized an otherwise barren ground. As the barren region shrinks plants move closer together than their roots interact in an attempt to extract limited resources water etc. As the roots keep the plants apart the result is that a circle provides the best packing around a boundary — hence fairy circles. Of course, the fact that the model produces similar structures isn't proof that this is the cause of fairy rings. It has been suggested that termites have something to do with the matter, for example. What it has done it raise the question of what it means to "find an explanation" for a biological phenomena where controlled experiments are difficult

Comment Re:Slashdot (Score 1) 166

by anybody_out_there (#44022999) Attached to: To replace Google Reader, I favor ...

However, I understand that one can write either "23" or "twenty three" in text, so I guess the other AC is just trolling.

No you can't. If it's under 100 you spell it out. 100 or over, you can use the digits. Therefore, only twenty-three is correct. At least for "formal" writing. Hmm... maybe I'm just trolling now.

Submission + - Do-it-yourself brain stimulation has scientists worried (nationalpost.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Dave Siever always fancied himself as something of a musician, but also realized he did not necessarily sing or play in perfect key. Then he strapped on the electrodes of a device made by his Edmonton company, and zapped his brain’s auditory cortex with a mild dose of electricity. The result, he claims, was a dramatic improvement in his ability to hear pitch, including the sour notes he produced himself. “Now I tune everything and I practise my singing over and over and over again, because I’m more sensitive to it.” Mr. Siever was not under the supervision of a doctor or psychologist, and nor is he one himself. He is part of an extraordinary trend that has amateur enthusiasts excited, and some scientists deeply nervous: do-it-yourself brain stimulation.The device he used delivers transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a technology that researchers worldwide have used to produce a flood of intriguing, if preliminary, studies in recent years. They suggest tDCS can both treat diseases like depression and make healthy people’s minds work better. The devices are also simple, cheap to make and relatively safe, helping drive a burgeoning DIY movement.

Submission + - Icom America sponsors ham radio study website (icomamerica.com)

Submitted by Taxilian
Taxilian writes: Icom America, one of the largest manufacturers of Amateur Radio equipment in the world, has just announced that it will be sponsoring the relatively new ham radio study website HamStudy.org. This is interesting given the close ties that Icom has with many other study websites and companies that deal with amateur radio license exam preparation and that the other websites are extremely entrenched and well connected. HamStudy aims to provide free and modern (HTML5) tools to people trying to get involved with Ham Radio.

Comment OO support (Score 5, Informative) 276

by anybody_out_there (#43781025) Attached to: Goodbye, Lotus 1-2-3
Now if (Open|Libre)Office would just do a decent job of not mangling Lotus 1-2-3 worksheets! I have some stuff I've been maintaining for over 20 years in Lotus 1-2-3 (starting back in the DOS days, but eventually moving to '97). I'd love to convert/upgrade it, but there are some things in there that just don't seem to be supported in Excel or *Office.

Submission + - JavaScript Is Eating the World (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Sandeep Bhanot, a developer evangelist at Salesforce.com, argues that JavaScript is eating the world. "There are several trends and technologies that are coalescing at the same time to make Jeff Atwood’s famous 'law'—any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript—more true than ever," he writes. In the following column, he digs into everything from JavaScript's increasing maturity to its use in ultra-responsive UIs. "Love it or hate it, the one thing a modern developer cannot do is ignore JavaScript," he concludes. "It is slowly but surely eating your world." Do you agree?

Submission + - Sun Microsystems' stars: Where are they now? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Sun was founded Andy Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Bill Joy in 1982. The company went public in 1986 and was raking in $1 billion in annual sales by 1988. One of the brightest lights in Silicon Valley for more than two decades, Sun’s bread and butter was high-performance workstations and servers running Sun’s SPARC chips and Sun’s Solaris operating system. The company was also a staunch open source supporter. The recession that began in late 2007 pummeled the financial industry, which accounted for about a third of Sun revenues. The company never recovered and was sold to Oracle in 2009 for $7.4 billion. While Sun is gone, memories linger for former employees. Sun exec Mike Dillon says, "Although it has been three years since the sale to Oracle, not a week goes by that I don’t speak to some former employee or Sun partner. Most of the people have significant jobs and careers, but when describing those other jobs, they always stare wistfully away and say something along the lines of: 'but, it’s not like Sun.'”

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