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Data Storage

Building a Searchable Literature Archive With Keywords? 211

Posted by timothy from the must-be-in-here-somewhere dept.
Sooner Boomer writes "I'm trying to help drag a professor I work with into the 20th century. Although he is involved in cutting-edge research (nanotechnology), his method of literature search is to begin with digging through the hundreds of 3-ring binders that contain articles (usually from PDFs) that he has printed out. Even though the binders are labeled, the articles can only go under one 'heading' and there's no way to do a keyword search on subject, methods, materials, etc. Yeah, google is pretty good for finding stuff, as are other on-line literature services, but they only work for articles that are already on-line. His literature also includes articles copied from books, professional correspondence, and other sources. Is there a FOSS database or archive method (preferably with a web interface) where he could archive the PDFs and scanned documents and be able to search by keywords? It would also be nice to categorize them under multiple subject headings if possible. I know this has been covered ad nauseum with things like photos and the like, but I'm not looking at storage as such: instead I'm trying to find what's stored."
Programming

Web-based IDEs Edge Closer To the Mainstream 244

Posted by timothy from the hope-your-connection-is-reliable dept.
snitch writes "Last week Mozilla released Bespin, their web-based framework for code editing, and only a few days later Boris Bokowski and Simon Kaegi implemented an Eclipse-based Bespin server using headless Eclipse plug-ins. With the presentation of the web-based Eclipse workbench at EclipseCon and the release of products like Heroku, a web-based IDE and hosting environment for RoR apps, it seems that web-based IDEs might soon become mainstream."
United States

National Debt Clock Overflowed, Extended By a Digit 696

Posted by timothy from the but-don't-worry-balanced-budget's-a-crazy-idea dept.
hackingbear writes "The National Debt Counter, erected in 1989 when the US debt was 'merely' a tiny $2.7 trillion, has been moving so much that it recently ran out of digits to display the ballooning figure: $10,150,603,734,720, or roughly $10.2 trillion, as of Saturday afternoon. To accommodate the extra '1,' the clock was hacked: the '1' from "$10.2" has been moved left to the LCD square once occupied solely by the digital dollar sign. A non-digital, improvised dollar sign has been pasted next to the '1.' It will be replaced in 2009 with a new clock able to track debt up to a quadrillion dollars, which is a '1' followed by 15 zeros. That should be good enough for a few more months at least, I believe." Adds reader MarkusQ, "I know Dick Cheney has assured us that 'Deficits don't matter' but I can't help wondering if we should be fixing the problem rather than the sign."
Privacy

Submission + - Google Street View raises privacy concerns

Submitted by
Pcol
Pcol writes: "The New York Times is running a story about a woman who says her cat is clearly visible through the living room window of her second-floor apartment using Street View and that she has contacted Google asking that the photo be removed. "The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people's lives," Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview. "The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged." Wired has started a contest on the most interesting photos found using the new Google Tool that now includes sunbathing coeds, alleged drug deals, and the google van itself. "I think that this product illustrates a tension between our First Amendment right to document public spaces around us, and the privacy interests people have as they go about their day," says Kevin Bankston, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone, and may each of you fry in hell forever.""
Patents

Submission + - Would you fight your own software patent?

Submitted by ingo23
ingo23 writes: Everybody knows that the Slashdot crowd just loves the software patents. If not the patents, what would you rant about? Now imagine this — at work you are developing a piece of some cool software. And one day your employer decides to file a patent for it naming you as an inventor. Would you gladly accept the honor or would you get on a soap box and stir up a little revolt against software patents?

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