jshahbazi - Slashdot User

Submission + - B-52 gets first full IT upgrade since '60s

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 26, 2014 @03:52PM

An anonymous reader writes: The US Air Force’s 10th Flight Test Squadron recently took delivery of the first B-52H Stratofortress to complete a refit through the Combat Network Communications Technology (CONECT) program. It's an effort to bring the Cold War era heavy bomber into the 21st century way of warfare—or at least up to the 1990s, technology-wise. While the aircraft received piecemeal upgrades over the past 50 years of flying, CONECT is the first major information technology overhaul for the Air Force’s B-52H fleet since the airplanes started entering service in 1961.

Submission + - Steve Ballmer in Talks to Buy NBA Los Angeles Clippers

Submitted by SmartAboutThings on Monday May 26, 2014 @04:03AM

SmartAboutThings writes: According to some rumors circulating in the online environment, the wife of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has reportedly met billionaire former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer on Sunday and they discussed about selling the club. Previously, it was reported that Donald Sterling had surrendered control of the Los Angeles Clippers to his wife. The rumored deal has been estimated at about $2billion, and the club’s value has is said to be around $600 million; and if it does get through, there are chances that Ballmer might want to move the club to Seattle. If Ballmer does end up buying the Clippers, this would make him the second former Microsoft top executive to own an NBA team, after Paul Allen, the owner of the Portland Trailblazers.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Major move: Sony to begin selling PS4 in China - Daily Digest (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder on Sunday May 25, 2014 @05:52PM

Daily Digest

Major move: Sony to begin selling PS4 in China
Daily Digest
Sony will finally begin selling their popular PS4 gaming platform in China – but will it be well received? By Christian de Looper, Daily Digest News Sunday, May 25, 2014. Major move: Sony to begin selling PS4 in China. With Microsoft having made headlines...
Sony's PlayStation (PS4) To Officially Enter China with OPCDThe Utah People's Post
Sony to Bring PlayStation 4 to ChinaPC Magazine
Sony Establishes Partners To Sell PS4 In ChinaCinema Blend
Ubergizmo-Game Rant-Engadget
all 15 news articles

Submission + - Is Bamboo The Next Carbon Fibre? (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25, 2014 @04:39PM

An anonymous reader writes: The BBC reports: 'Real carbon fibre, mind, is still just as wondrous as it was in the last century, even if a bit more commonplace in road cars. But it's still very expensive to make in large pieces and quantities, it requires copious energy to manufacture, can be very brittle if made poorly, is not recyclable and can impose a detrimental impact of the environment when being produced. In other words, it is ripe for disruption. Technology stands still for no one. But could nature provide carbon fibre's replacement? So argues Gary Young, a renowned manufacturer of surfboards who has spent his life pioneering alternative materials use for that industry. "With the right approach, bamboo can be used in many applications in the automotive world where its performance qualities can better carbon fibre's,” Young says. “Plus, it does not have a negative effect on the environment."'

Submission + - Backgrounds of Computer Science Professors and the Hiring Trends of Universities (jeffhuang.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25, 2014 @12:14PM

An anonymous reader writes: A Brown University project collected the background information of over 2,000 computer science professors in 51 top universities. The data shows a skew in their doctoral degrees, "Over 20% of professors received their Ph.D. from MIT or Berkeley, while more than half of professors received their Ph.D. from the 10 universities." For those professors, fewer work in theoretical computer science and there is a growing trend of recent hires in systems and applications. The original data is also publicly-editable and available to download.

Submission + - R Throwdown Challenge 1

Submitted by theodp on Saturday May 24, 2014 @03:33PM

theodp writes: "R beats Python!" screams the headline at Prof. Norm Matloff's Mad (Data) Scientist blog. "R beats Julia! Anyone else wanna challenge R?" Not that he has anything against Python, Matloff adds, but he just doesn't believe that Python or Julia will become "the new R" anytime soon, or ever. Why? "R is written by statisticians, for statisticians," explains Matloff. "It matters. An Argentinian chef, say, who wants to make Japanese sushi may get all the ingredients right, but likely it just won’t work out quite the same. Similarly, a Pythonista could certainly cook up some code for some statistical procedure by reading a statistics book, but it wouldn’t be quite same. It would likely be missing some things of interest to the practicing statistician. And R is Statistically Correct."

Submission + - SSD breakthrough means 300% speed boost, 60% less power usage.even on old drives 1

Submitted by mrspoonsi on Friday May 23, 2014 @06:57PM

mrspoonsi writes: A breakthrough has been made in SSD technology that could mean drastic performance increases due to the overcoming of one of the major issues in the memory type. Currently, data cannot be directly overwritten onto the NAND chips used in the devices. Files must be written to a clean area of the drive whilst the old area is formatted. This eventually causes fragmented data and lowers the drive's life and performance over time. However, a Japanese team at Chuo University have finally overcome the issue that is as old as the technology itself. Officially unveiled at the 2014 IEEE International Memory Workshop in Taipei, the researchers have written a brand new middleware for the drives that controls how the data is written to and stored on the device. Their new version utilizes what they call a 'logical block address scrambler' which effectively prevents data being written to a new 'page' on the device unless it is absolutely required. Instead, it is placed in a block to be erased and consolidated in the next sweep. This means significantly less behind-the-scenes file copying that results in increased performance from idle.

Comment Public Data Access (Score 3, Interesting) 53

by jshahbazi on Monday April 28, 2014 @11:57AM (#46860011) Attached to: Ask Team Trying To Return 36-Year-Old Spacecraft From Space About Their Project

If the project is successful, how do you envision the public being able to access the data from the satellite? Will it be a stream of everything, or will only selected instruments be available?

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