Comment Re:Has some biological properties (Score 1) 428
I meant to say "the actual paper" instead of TFA. You can't tell anything from the article linked.
Comment Has some biological properties (Score 3, Informative) 428
Reading the TFA, it looks like they went to some trouble to model some specific brain structures and synapse properties, including inter-area connectivity and learning, in the model. So it's not "Just a big neural net." However the accuracy of the simulation is limited--both by what we know about the detailed structure of the cat's brain and by the number and complexity of the structures they decided to model.
Comment Re:Get these on Verizon!!! (Score 5, Funny) 195
Unfortunately, Google's mission "Don't be evil" fundamentally conflicts with Verizon's "Be evil".
Comment Exactly like vendor lock-in (Score 0) 342
A non-standard compiler extension that is guaranteed to be supported by the vendor's compilers is pretty much the definition of vendor lock-in, even if the implementation is open-sourced.
If other compiler vendors don't pick it up (and they won't with a standards-based alternative) all code that uses it becomes tied to the vendor.
Researchers Decentralize BitTorrent 262
A Cow writes "The Tribler BitTorrent client, a project run by researchers from several European universities and Harvard, is the first to incorporate decentralized search capabilities. With Tribler, users can now find .torrent files that are hosted among other peers, instead of on a centralized site such as The Pirate Bay or Mininova.
The Tribler developers have found a way to make their client work without having to rely on BitTorrent sites. Although others have tried to come up with similar solutions, such as the Cubit plugin for Vuze, Tribler is the first to understand that with decentralized BitTorrent search, there also has to be a way to moderate these decentralized torrents in order to avoid a flood of spam."
Why RAID 5 Stops Working In 2009 803
Lally Singh recommends a ZDNet piece predicting the imminent demise of RAID 5, noting that increasing storage and non-decreasing probability of disk failure will collide in a year or so. This reader adds, "Apparently, RAID 6 isn't far behind. I'll keep the ZFS plug short. Go ZFS. There, that was it." "Disk drive capacities double every 18-24 months. We have 1 TB drives now, and in 2009 we'll have 2 TB drives. With a 7-drive RAID 5 disk failure, you'll have 6 remaining 2 TB drives. As the RAID controller is busily reading through those 6 disks to reconstruct the data from the failed drive, it is almost certain it will see an [unrecoverable read error]. So the read fails ... The message 'we can't read this RAID volume' travels up the chain of command until an error message is presented on the screen. 12 TB of your carefully protected — you thought! — data is gone. Oh, you didn't back it up to tape? Bummer!"
Comment Browse-by-Query (Score 2, Informative) 383
I'll plug my own open-source project for this:
Browse-by-Query-- it won't help with C/C++(sorry for the original questioner), but it will handle Java or C#.
It dumps the code into a database and lets you query it to find the relationships.
I'm biased, of course, but I've found it's just the thing to understand how a particular piece of functionality in an unfamiliar code base fits into the big picture.
Browse-by-Query-- it won't help with C/C++(sorry for the original questioner), but it will handle Java or C#.
It dumps the code into a database and lets you query it to find the relationships.
I'm biased, of course, but I've found it's just the thing to understand how a particular piece of functionality in an unfamiliar code base fits into the big picture.
Submission + - Affinity Propogation Slashes Computing TIme
An anonymous reader writes: Science is reporting that for enormous scientific problems involving astronomic solution spaces, a University of Toronto lab has developed an algorithm that claims to reduce computational time from 5 million years to FIVE MINUTES. http://www.psi.utoronto.ca/
Submission + - What Working at Google Microsoft and Yahoo is Like
Anonymous Coward writes: "Tastyresearch shares stories about interning and working at Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. He barbecues with Bill Gates at his house, dines at the Google cafeterias, gets stood up by Yahoo, and details his interviews. He notes that many Microsoft interns end up at other places he works (reading between the lines). A chart compares Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo from the perspective of monitor sizes and perks. Prospective applicants are advised to learn about sorting and linked lists."
Submission + - VistaDB 3.0 - Final release date announced!
VistaDB writes: "After 2 years of development and over 20,000 man hours, the final release date of VistaDB 3.0 has been set for Feb. 24th, 2007. Key features include truly embedded SQL database for .NET, Compact Framework and Mono, small 600KB footprint, 100% managed and verfiably typesafe architecture, developed in C#, SQL Server 2005 compatible data types and T-SQL syntax support and royalty free distribution.
Read more:
http://www.vistadb.net/blog/?p=18"
Read more:
http://www.vistadb.net/blog/?p=18"
