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Comment Re:another language shoved down your throat (Score 2, Insightful) 415

by tomhath (#47411063) Attached to: Python Bumps Off Java As Top Learning Language

My only gripe is the use of indentation instead of curly brackets to mark blocks

I'll never understand that criticism. Don't you indent your code? Have you ever been fooled by incorrect indentation that didn't compile the way it looked? Brackets, begin..end, and semicolons are crutches for compiler writers not programmers.

Submission + - A Box of Forgotten Smallpox Vials Was Just Found in an FDA Closet

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: The last remaining strains of smallpox are kept in highly protected government laboratories in Russia and at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. And, apparently, in a dusty cardboard box in an old storage room in Maryland.
The CDC said today that government workers had found six freeze-dried vials of the Variola virus, which causes smallpox, in a storage room at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland last week. Each test tube had a label on it that said "variola," which was a tip-off, but the agency did genetic testing to confirm that the viruses were, in fact, smallpox.

Submission + - Avast Buys 20 Used Phones, Recovers 40,000 Deleted Photos (avast.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The used smartphone market is thriving, with many people selling their old devices on eBay or craigslist when it's time to upgrade. Unfortunately, it seems most people are really bad at wiping their phone of personal data before passing it on to a stranger. Antivirus company Avast bought 20 used Android phones off eBay, and used some basic data recovery software to reconstruct deleted files. From just those 20 phones, they pulled over 40,000 photographs, including 1,500 family pictures of children and over a thousand more.. personal pictures. They also recovered hundreds of emails and text messages, over a thousand Google searches, a completed loan application, and identity information for four of the previous owners. Only one of the phones had security software installed on it, but that phone turned out to provide the most information of all: "Hackers at Avast were able to identify the previous owner, access his Facebook page, plot his previous whereabouts through GPS coordinates, and find the names and numbers of more than a dozen of his closest contacts. What’s more, the company discovered a lot about this guy’s penchant for kink and a completed copy of a Sexual Harassment course — hopefully a preventative measure."

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 302

by tomhath (#47409865) Attached to: Wireless Contraception
Because it isn't permanent sterilization, but it has essentially the same effect. Oral contraception or barrier devices don't work in many parts of the world.

Submission + - Python Bumps Off Java As Top Learning Language (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Python has surpassed Java as the top language used to introduce U.S. students to programming and computer science, according to a recent survey posted by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Eight of the top 10 computer science departments now use Python to teach coding, as well as 27 of the top 39 schools, indicating that it is the most popular language for teaching introductory computer science courses, according to Philip Guo, a computer science researcher who compiled the survey for ACM.

Submission + - CEO out for blood patents idea, starts billion dollar company (fortune.com)

Submitted by tomhath
tomhath writes: "Holmes had then just spent the summer working in a lab at the Genome Institute in Singapore, a post she had been able to fill thanks to having learned Mandarin in her spare hours as a Houston teenager. Upon returning to Palo Alto, she showed Robertson a patent application she had just written. As a freshman, Holmes had taken Robertson’s seminar on advanced drug-delivery devices–things like patches, pills, and even a contact-lens-like film that secreted glaucoma medication–but now she had invented one the likes of which Robertson had never conceived. "

Comment Re:So... (Score 1) 162

by tomhath (#47400725) Attached to: The AI Boss That Deploys Hong Kong's Subway Engineers

Back in my time, we called what they have done now "an expert system". I fail to see why that designation should be suddenly inadequate.

"Artificial Intelligence" predates "expert system", there was never a good reason to use a different term. Plus there was so much unfulfilled hype about Expert Systems and Knowledge Engineering back in their heyday that the terms have a negative connotation to many people.

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