Moonchen - Slashdot User

2008 Turing Award Winners Announced 66

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 04, 2008 @06:30PM from the nobel-of-computing-awards dept.

The Association for Computing Machinery has announced the 2008 Turing Award Winners. Edmund M. Clarke, Allen Emerson, and Joseph Sifakis received the award for their work on an automated method for finding design errors in computer hardware and software. "Model Checking is a type of "formal verification" that analyzes the logic underlying a design, much as a mathematician uses a proof to determine that a theorem is correct. Far from hit or miss, Model Checking considers every possible state of a hardware or software design and determines if it is consistent with the designer's specifications. Clarke and Emerson originated the idea of Model Checking at Harvard in 1981. They developed a theoretical technique for determining whether an abstract model of a hardware or software design satisfies a formal specification, given as a formula in Temporal Logic, a notation for describing possible sequences of events. Moreover, when the system fails the specification, it could identify a counterexample to show the source of the problem. Numerous model checking systems have been implemented, such as Spin at Bell Labs."

Submission + - iPhone Now Hacks Itself (iphonefaq.org) 2

Submitted by

hackshack

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @04:09AM

hackshack writes: "Unlocking an iPhone to add third party apps and themes used to be a tedious, risky process. A team of hackers have released a utility called AppSnapp, which makes it simple enough for Grandma to use. Simply visit the AppSnapp homepage on your iPhone- the software automatically "jailbreaks" the phone and installs the Installer.app package manager, in about a minute. It even patches the iPhone TIFF vulnerability while it's at it."

Submission + - 86% of users ignore internet banners (useit.com)

Submitted by

Christopher Blanc

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @03:06PM

Christopher Blanc writes: "Users tend to ignore heavily formatted areas because they look like advertisements. People looking for a number that was formatted in bold, bright red text scanned that area, but didn't actually read the number. Only 14% of them were able to read it enough to find the answer.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/fancy-formatting.htm l"

Submission + - An encyclopedia of comparisons and differences (diffen.com)

Submitted by

sufijazz

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @02:56PM

sufijazz writes: "Diffen is a recently-launched encyclopedia of differences and comparisons. What is the difference between Pentium Dual Core and Core 2 Duo? Between calloc and malloc? What is the difference between Shia and Sunni? Between LCD and Plasma TV? GPL v2 and GPL v3? Copyright and Copyleft? How does the iPhone compare with the BlackBerry? Diffen is aimed at answering all these questions. And then some.

Diffen is a wiki (which means a lot of content is not there yet — only 100-odd esoteric articles exist today) and the content is distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License. While obviously inspired by Wikipedia (it even runs on MediaWiki — the same software that powers Wikipedia), Diffen is different from Wikipedia.

PS — I hope this submission is not too self-serving. CmdrTaco had posted a similar but different story last September."

Submission + - Creative Labs' Vista driver team feeling stressed? (creativelabs.com) 2

Submitted by

regular_gonzalez

on Monday September 03, 2007 @07:32PM

regular_gonzalez writes: "While the X-Fi's issues under Vista have been widely reported, that doesn't prevent a flood of complaints pouring into the Creative Labs website, posted for all to see. What is more surprising is the employees' responses. A sampling:

# The drivers will be released when we are good and ready and happy with them
# Bitching like a 5 year old won't magically solve all our problems on the drivers.
# Call us hopeless and whatever else all you like, noone else is going to fix these drivers but us, demoralizing us won't bring it faster
# There are already reasonably working drivers supplied with the card, legally our responsibility stops there, think yourselves lucky we even bother updating the drivers at all.
# Anymore of these derogatory posts and we might well just flush the whole XFi/Vista64 saga to the toilet and move on.
Is Creative Labs obliged to treat even the most obnoxious of whiners with a certain level of respect, or is it refreshing to have a company actually state opinions that normally would be kept to themselves?"

Submission + - Google to stick it to telcos, bid on 700MHz (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Seppanen Style on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @12:13PM

Seppanen Style writes: The 700MHz spectrum auction looks like it's going to be heated. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has all but confirmed that Google will make a play for the spectrum that will be on offer next January. 'In effect, this could give Google control of the entire pipe between customers and Google servers, a move that could be very good for business strategy, even if the wireless network is not a major profit center. Companies never like to be at the mercy of other companies, and Google is no exception.' If Google ends up with a chunk of prime spectrum, the telcos could be the ones to blame. 'After former SBC chief Ed Whitacre announced that Google shouldn't be able to "use my pipes free," Google saw a potential threat to its existence from the network operators that lay between it and consumers. Whitacre's remarks are sometimes credited with igniting the public debate over network neutrality. Ironically for the telcos who can't be thrilled at the possibility of a bidding war with a cash factory like Google, one of their own may be to thank for the current situation.'

Submission + - Sony unveils PlayTV for PS3 (play.tm)

Submitted by

jasoncart

on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @12:12PM

jasoncart writes: "In a hefty press conference at the Games Convention 2007 in Leipzig, today, Sony Computer Entertainment revealed the first details on PlayTV, a new service that promises to turn the PS3 into a personal video recorderThe Japanese giant also announced a deal to syndicate TV content directly onto the PSP on-demand, along with a GPS add-on."

Submission + - Inkless printer embedded in digital camera coming (zink.com)

Submitted by david-wall on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @12:08PM

david-wall writes: Ink-less paper from Zink seems like a cool idea, but the limitations in the short-term may be the buzz killer. It remains to be seen. With all of the buzz about green technology, it seems strange that the first product to come out will be an ink-less digital camera (slated for fall 2007) printing on 2x3 paper. Why not an office printer so I can stop blowing through ink cartridges as I print my pictures as 8x10s? Bummer.

Too bad this demo video is so pixelated. Consumers on YouTube are producing higher quality videos. Regardless, this company has shown the potential of the technology. Five years from now, the printing scene could be entirely different.

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