Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Businesses

Taco Bell Programming 394

theodp writes "Think outside the box? Nah, think outside the bun. Ted Dziuba argues there's a programming lesson to be learned from observing how Taco Bell manages to pull down $1.9 billion by mixing-and-matching roughly eight ingredients: 'The more I write code and design systems, the more I understand that many times, you can achieve the desired functionality simply with clever reconfigurations of the basic Unix tool set. After all, functionality is an asset, but code is a liability. This is the opposite of a trend of nonsense called DevOps, where system administrators start writing unit tests and other things to help the developers warm up to them — Taco Bell Programming is about developers knowing enough about Ops (and Unix in general) so that they don't overthink things, and arrive at simple, scalable solutions.'"
Hardware Hacking

Grad Student Invents Cheap Laser Cutter 137

An anonymous reader writes "Peter Jansen, a PhD student and member of the RepRap community, has constructed a working prototype of an inexpensive table-top laser cutter built out of old CD/DVD drives as an offshoot of his efforts to design an under $200 open-source Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) 3D printer. Where traditional laser cutters use powerful, fixed-focus beams, this new technique dynamically adjusts the focal point of the laser using a reciprocating motion similar to a reciprocating saw, allowing a far less powerful and inexpensive laser diode to be used. The technique is currently limited to cutting black materials to a depth of only a few millimeters, but should still be useful and enabling for Makers and other crafters. The end-goal is to create a hybrid inexpensive 3D printer that can be easily reconfigured for 2D laser cutting, providing powerful making tools to the desktop."

Submission + - NuCaptcha video's are harder for bots, not humans (mashable.com) 1

ZigiSamblak writes: NuCaptcha’s technology substitutes a brief video display of characters for the usual smash or squiggle of letters. It’s definitely easier on the human eye, and its creators say it’s also much more secure. Moreover, if humans find NuCaptcha as legible as machines find it illegible, it should help increase signups while decreasing spambots for web services and applications.

The article isn't much more informative but they do have an effective example of this new technology which was easier on my eyes than the captcha for this submission.

Data Storage

The Limits To Perpendicular Recording 222

peterkern writes "Samsung has a new hard drive and says it can now store 667 GB on one disk, which comes out to be about 739 Gb/sq. in. That is more than five times the density when perpendicular recording was introduced back in 2006, and it is getting close to the generally expected soft limit of 1 Tb/sq. in. It's great that we can now store 2 TB on one hard drive and that 3-TB hard drives are already feasible. But how far can it go? It appears that the hard drive industry may start talking about heat-assisted magnetic recording again, soon."

Comment Re:Be warned, the community is noxious (Score 1) 118

I fully support watching the tutorial and reading strategy guides online (the ones from DOTA might apply as well , however as it stands the "match making" system still requires tweaking and can cause much angst. I'd recommend playing the low level public games if you don't know what you're doing and wait until they fix the quirks in match making, as it stands public games work perfectly but MM games have issues with leavers.
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Heroes of Newerth Open Beta About To Start 118

You may recall last summer when we discussed Heroes of Newerth, a title from S2 Games that's based on the popular Defense of the Ancients mod from Warcraft III. We passed out some closed beta keys, and there seemed to be a ton of interest, in part due to the fact that they have a Linux client. Well, if any of you missed it or want to see how the game has progressed since then, now is your chance — the open beta begins tonight (March 31). There's a countdown on the sign-up page that shows when you can register.
The Media

Popular Science Frees Its 137-Year Archives 135

DesScorp writes "Popular Science magazine has scanned every issue they've ever produced, and posted the archives at their website, at no charge. 'We've partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It's an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology's incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.'" First search: the history of the flying car.
Apple

Submission + - Is iPhone the New Internet Explorer 6 (quirksmode.org)

brajesh writes: "In a long blog post, Quirksmode blog argues that the iPhone is the Internet Explorer 6 once again. FTFA — "The iPhone has become an obsession. If we don't pay attention, we'll have a mobile web that only works on the iPhone. And then we'll have the real mobile web that wasn't made by us and doesn't give a shit about web standards and best practices." and "We have come full-circle back to developing for only one browser. Worse, we are congratulating ourselves on that bit of cleverness. Christ, do we really have to go through the whole standards movement once again?""
Science

Why Time Flies By As You Get Older 252

Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.

Submission + - Crazy Firewall Log Activity by Country and Hour (youtube.com) 1

arkowitz writes: I happened to have access to five days worth of firewall logs from a US state government agency. I wrote a parser to grab unique ip's out, and sent several million of them to a company called Quova, who gave me back full location info on every 40th one. I then used Green Phosphor's Glasshouse visualization tool to have a look at the count of inbound packets, grouped by country of origin and hour. And it's freaking crazy looking. So I made this video of it and I'm asking the Slashdot community: What the frak is going on?
Science

Slime Mold Could Lead To Better Tech 179

FiReaNGeL writes to tell us that recent observation of slime mold could eventually lead the way to improved tech like better computer and communications networks. "This revelation comes after a team of Japanese and British researchers observed that the slime mold connected itself to scattered food sources in a design that was nearly identical to Tokyo's rail system. Atsushi Tero from Hokkaido University in Japan, along with colleagues elsewhere in Japan and the United Kingdom, placed oat flakes on a wet surface in locations that corresponded to the cities surrounding Tokyo, and allowed the Physarum polycephalum mold to grow outwards from the center. They watched the slime mold self-organize, spread out, and form a network that was comparable in efficiency, reliability, and cost to the real-world infrastructure of Tokyo's train network."
Google

Submission + - Google Patents MapReduce

theodp writes: Two years ago, David DeWitt and Michael Stonebraker deemed MapReduce a major step backwards (original paper, defense of paper) that 'represents a specific implementation of well known techniques developed nearly 25 years ago.' A year later, the pair teamed up with other academics and eBay to slam MapReduce again. But the very public complaints didn't stop Google from demanding a patent for MapReduce. Nor did it stop the USPTO from granting Google's request (after four rejections). On Tuesday, the USPTO issued U.S. Patent No. 7,650,331 to Google for inventing Efficient Large-Scale Data Processing.
Apple

Submission + - Apple Tablet To Be Alan Kay's 1968 Dynabook?

macs4all writes: Alan Kay was a researcher with Xerox PARC, and later one of the conceptual contributors to Steve Jobs on the first Mac design. In 1968, he envisioned a precursor to the laptop and tablet computers (in one). Called the Dynabook.

The Dynabook was quite an interesting concept, and some of the capabilites, such as the learning capabilities, still have not been adequately addressed in any existing product.

It is worth noting that Kay and Jobs originally conceived of the Macintosh as a tablet, and in fact, the Dynabook made, er, flesh.

So, is the upcoming tablet to be the final realization of what the Mac was truly intended to be? I think so, and so does this blogger

Discuss..

Submission + - Open-Source Javascript Flash Player (HTML5/SVG) (paulirish.com) 1

gbutler69 writes: Wow! Someone has gone and done it. Created a Flash Player written in Javascript targetting SVG/HTML5 capable browsers. It's not a complete implementation yet, but, it shows some real promise. Of course, there is the ever-famous vector "Hello World!" called Tiger. This really has promise. How long before HTML5/SVG next-generation browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Epiphany, and other Web-Kit based browsers completely supplant Flash and Silverlight/Moonlight?

Slashdot Top Deals

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. -- Frank Hubbard

Working...