Comment Re:Well... (Score 1) 371
> You can't judge all vegetarians by your friends
> any more than I can judge all meat-eaters by the
> 400 lb guy in the scooter at McDonalds.
His name is CowboyNeal, you insensitive clod!
Comment Re:LibreOffice is painful to pronounce. (Score 0, Troll) 500
This may seem shallow or even trollish, but it's true: It won't see much adoption by offices in the U.S because of the association of "Libre" with third-world revolutionaries like Che and their hippie American fanclubs. Think like a management suit for a minute: is a name derived from dirty Marxist anarchist scum a name you want your clients to see your office using? Nope. They'd rather pay the Microsoft tax or stick with an old version of OpenOffice or find a third solution, than risk dropping the jaws of conservative clients.
Submission + - The New Difficulties in Making a 3D Game (msn.com)
eldavojohn writes: MSNBC spoke with the senior producer of a new stereoscopic 3D game called "Killzone 3" and highlighted problems they are trying to solve with being one of the first FPS 3D games for the PS3. The team ran into serious design problems like where to put the cross hairs for the players (do they constantly hover in front of your vision?) and what to do with any of the heads up display components. Aside from the obvious marketing thrown in at the end of the article (in a very familiar way), there is an interesting point raised concerning normalized conventions in all video games and how one ports that to the new stereoscopic 3D model--the same way directors continue to grapple with getting 3D right. Will 3D games be just as gimmicky as most 3D movies? If they are, at least Guerrilla Games is at least making it possible for the player to easily and quickly switch in and out of stereoscopic 3-D while playing.
Submission + - The Last of the Punch Card Programmers (bbc.co.uk)
Peter Cus writes: English lacemaking manufacturer, to compete on quality, has reverted to 19th-Century Leavers machines. These machines use Jacquard punch cards. Ian Elm, thought to be the last of the card punchers, says young people don't want factory work.
Submission + - Ideas for a Great Control Room 1
lewko writes: Our company is about to build a central monitoring facility. It will be manned 24x7 and operators will be monitoring a variety of systems including security, network, fire, video and more. These will be observed via local multi-monitor workstations and a common videowall. This is going to be a massively expensive exercise and we only get one chance to get it right. The facility is in a secure windowless bunker and staff will generally be in there for many hours at a time. So we have to implement design elements which make it a 'happy' place. At the same time, it has to be ergonomically sound. Lastly, we will be showing it to our clients, so without undoing the above objectives, it would be nice if it was 'cool' (yet functional). Whilst Television doesn't transfer to real life always, think 'MTAC' or 'CTU'.
Submission + - Hands-on with the iPad alternatives (pcpro.co.uk)
Barence writes: This week's IFA show has seen a flurry of Android-based alternatives to the iPad emerge from leading manufacturers. The Samsung Galaxy Tab made a strong first impression on PC Pro's reviewer. The 7in tablet's TFT screen "beams forth with rich, saturated colours and wide, wide viewing angles", the device is capable of Full HD playback and the TouchWiz UI is "clearly intended to draw customers away from the iFamily". Elsewhere, ViewSonic has launched a pair of 7in and 10in tablets, the larger of which dual boots into either Android or Windows 7. "Our first moments with Windows 7 were surprisingly painless, too: we expected the Atom processor and 1GB of memory to be horrendously sluggish, but it wasn’t the case," PC Pro reports. Finally, Toshiba's 10.1in Folio 100 marries Android 2.2 with Nvidia's Tegra 2 platform to deliver "mighty graphics crunching power". The build quality left a little to desire, though. "The 14mm thick chassis feels lightweight, and even relatively gentle twisting motions left the Folio’s plastic body creaking under the stress."
Submission + - UN Tech Group Finds Most Expensive Broadband (bbc.co.uk)
destinyland writes: In the Central African Republic, broadband internet service costs 3891% of the average monthly income. "Put another way, a month’s broadband service costs more than three years’ average wages in the country," notes one technology blog, "compared with less than two hours’ earnings in Macau." A United Nations' technology group released the figures in a new report in advance of a September 19 summit on the digital divide in developing countries. ("We are trying to avoid a broadband divide,” said Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the secretary general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union.) Their agency noted that the rate for broadband penetration is below 1% in many poor countries, with monthly costs higher than the average monthly income. "By contrast," notes the BBC, "in the world's most developed economies, around 30% of people have access to broadband at a cost of less than 1% of their income." And the report also estimates that there are 5 billion cellphones in the world — though some people may own more than one.
Submission + - Transition Metal Catalysts : Key to Origin of Life
An anonymous reader writes: One of the big, unsolved problems in explaining how life arose on Earth is a chicken-and-egg paradox: How could the basic biochemicals—such as amino acids and nucleotides—have arisen before the biological catalysts (proteins or ribozymes) existed to carry out their formation? In a paper appearing in the current issue of The Biological Bulletin, scientists propose that a third type of catalyst could have jumpstarted metabolism and life itself, deep in hydrothermal ocean vents.
Submission + - Fidel Castro Loves the World Wide Web (latimes.com)
pickens writes: The LA Times reports that 84-year-old Cuban ex-President Fidel Castro consumes 200 to 300 news items a day on the World Wide Web and in a recent interview called web communication "the most powerful weapon that has existed" and extolled its power to break a stranglehold on the media by "the empire" and "ambitious private groups that have abused it" adding that the Internet "has put an end to secrets.... We are seeing a high level of investigative journalism, as the New York Times calls it, that is within reach of the whole world." Well, not the whole world. Cuba has the lowest level of Internet penetration in the Western Hemisphere (lower than Haiti), plus severe government restrictions and censorship affecting those who do have access. In addition Cuban law bans using the Internet to spread information that is against what the government considers to be the social interest, norms of good behavior, the integrity of the people or national security. Most Cubans who do have computers have access only to a Cuban intranet, a national e-mail system with approved websites and journals while on the World Wide Web, Cubans encounter filters and blocks on any information coming or going that might be construed as unfriendly to the Cuban government.
Submission + - Charged with frauding a robot (www.dn.no)
Kanel writes: Most of the transactions in stockmarkets today, are handled by automatic or semi-automatic algorithms, so-called "stock market robots". The norwegian daytraders Larsen and Veiby successfully carried out a form of social engineering against one of these stock market robots and could now face up to six years in jail.
The two daytraders, who worked independently, placed a number of sell and buy orders onto the Oslo Stock Exchange. For many of these orders, a deal was never completed. The police claim that Larsen and Veiby placed these orders to manipulate the stock exchange and fool a robot owned by US trading house Timber Hill. The police is quoted in the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv saying that the 2200 buy and sell orders carried out from november 2007 to march 2008 changed the robots' impression of the price of certain stocks, something that Larsen and Veiby took advantage of this.
It should be mentioned here that while the stock exchange announce an "official" price on stocks, many stock market robots analyze buy and sell orders in real-time, to predict the next official update from the stock exchange and gamble against this.
Larsen and Veiby claim that they did not manipulate the robot or the stock exchange in an unlawful manner. Nor were their buy and sell orders "fake". The daytraders took an economic risk as anyone could have taken them up on their buy and sell offers.
In this man versus machine lawsuit, commentators rally in support of the two daytraders, who got the paltry sum of 67 000 USD out of their social engineering scheme. The main argument in their defence is that the stock market robots are gaming each other in the same manner all the time. Is something legal when an algorithm performs it at lightning speed and illegal when a human plays by the same strategy? The robots of Goldman Sachs earned the company a hundred million dollars by a similar trading on small margins and got away with it, but when two humans bested a robot at its own game, they were sued.
Several commenters see the lawsuit as part of an ongoing fight to keep small players out of the stock market. Large actors on the stock market move their computers closer to the stock exchange, with direct connections to it, so that their algorithms get a millisecond headstart against other traders when a buy or sell order is announced. While this high-tech is the norm, it appears infeasible, according to commenters, to let everyone in on robot trading. There is no way for say a student or an independent trader to design and connect a robot trading algorithm to the stock exchange and play the same field as the big robots. In Germany alone, 200 000 people is reported to have left the trading arena because of the robots and the preferential treatment they get at the stock exchanges.
The two daytraders, who worked independently, placed a number of sell and buy orders onto the Oslo Stock Exchange. For many of these orders, a deal was never completed. The police claim that Larsen and Veiby placed these orders to manipulate the stock exchange and fool a robot owned by US trading house Timber Hill. The police is quoted in the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv saying that the 2200 buy and sell orders carried out from november 2007 to march 2008 changed the robots' impression of the price of certain stocks, something that Larsen and Veiby took advantage of this.
It should be mentioned here that while the stock exchange announce an "official" price on stocks, many stock market robots analyze buy and sell orders in real-time, to predict the next official update from the stock exchange and gamble against this.
Larsen and Veiby claim that they did not manipulate the robot or the stock exchange in an unlawful manner. Nor were their buy and sell orders "fake". The daytraders took an economic risk as anyone could have taken them up on their buy and sell offers.
In this man versus machine lawsuit, commentators rally in support of the two daytraders, who got the paltry sum of 67 000 USD out of their social engineering scheme. The main argument in their defence is that the stock market robots are gaming each other in the same manner all the time. Is something legal when an algorithm performs it at lightning speed and illegal when a human plays by the same strategy? The robots of Goldman Sachs earned the company a hundred million dollars by a similar trading on small margins and got away with it, but when two humans bested a robot at its own game, they were sued.
Several commenters see the lawsuit as part of an ongoing fight to keep small players out of the stock market. Large actors on the stock market move their computers closer to the stock exchange, with direct connections to it, so that their algorithms get a millisecond headstart against other traders when a buy or sell order is announced. While this high-tech is the norm, it appears infeasible, according to commenters, to let everyone in on robot trading. There is no way for say a student or an independent trader to design and connect a robot trading algorithm to the stock exchange and play the same field as the big robots. In Germany alone, 200 000 people is reported to have left the trading arena because of the robots and the preferential treatment they get at the stock exchanges.
Submission + - Open Source 3D Printed Jewelry (kickstarter.com)
An anonymous reader writes: I am currently running a Kickstarter project to try to fund the release of several of my 3D printed jewelry designs under a Creative Commons license for others to modify, mashup, or print out at cost. With this, I'm testing out a business model where product designers can make a living off their work while swiftly adding their designs to the public pool without the need to retain them as trade secrets or to lock them down by copyright.
Submission + - Google Opposes Government-Mandated Sorting 2
theodp writes: Q. How are a 2-year-old and Google alike? A. Both throw public tantrums when they don't get their way. Google has accused California of rigging the bidding process for a $60MM e-mail contract in Microsoft's favor. Google unsuccessfully asked state officials to level the playing field by changing or removing 142 of the state's contract requirements, many of which involved functions that Gmail isn't designed to perform. Among other things, Google complained about having to duplicate Microsoft Outlook's ability to sort e-mails alphabetically, insisting that government workers would be 'more effective' if they instead searched for specific messages. So, do the 'the smartest people in the industry' have a valid point, or is this another case of when you've got a (search) hammer, everything looks like a nail?
Submission + - Restaurant uses social media to exclude patrons (gothamist.com)
RevWaldo writes: From Gothamist: Five former employees of Bowlmor Lanes in New York have filed a lawsuit against Strike Holdings CEO Tom Shannon, claiming he used social media outlets to keep minorities from making reservations at "one of the city’s hottest and most compelling nightlife venues." The suit claims Shannon met with top executives after "incidents" at Bowlmor's restaurant, Carnival, "to discuss possible ways to exclude certain people...such as African-Americans, Asians and Latinos."...The suit claims the workers were asked to look up prospective patrons on Facebook and MySpace to see how they looked and dressed and where they lived. If they didn't fit the Bowlmor customer ideal, they didn't get a reservation.
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Can tech help fight these criminals? (bbc.co.uk)
claudiux writes: A large criminal gang in Monterrey, Mexico, a city with 4M inhabitants, has members all over the city. For several months now, whenever they suffer a setback, they will block traffic in up to 40 busy intersections at a time using cars stolen at gunpoint from passersby. They will leave the cars in place and run away with the keys. The city is then choked, and removal of the blockades takes long hours because tow trucks cannot get to them. They don't block the same intersections each time. Criminals use their cellphones to coordinate these attacks. How could technology be used to counteract them?
The link goes to a news article about the latest blockade.
The link goes to a news article about the latest blockade.
Submission + - Against Commercial Cannabis - National - The Atlan (theatlantic.com)
jamie writes: "by Mark KleimanTwo items on my list of drug-policy reforms drew the most flak in comments:"
