hweimer - Slashdot User

Submission + - Listen to a Quantum Computer (quantenblog.net)

Submitted by hweimer on Tuesday April 13, 2010 @04:03PM

hweimer writes: If you ever wanted to know what a quantum computer sounds like, here's your chance! I have created two musical pieces that contain musical representations of Grover's search and Shor's factorization algorithms, using nothing but my Perl skills and an open source quantum computer simulator.

Submission + - New bounds on the Higgs boson mass (aps.org)

Submitted by hweimer on Monday February 15, 2010 @05:12AM

hweimer writes: Three new papers in Physical Review Letters present the latest results for the Higgs boson mass coming from Fermilab's Tevatron. The new data mandates that the Higgs boson mass within the standard model lies between 115 and 150 GeV.

Submission + - OpenOffice tops 20% market share in Germany (quantenblog.net)

Submitted by hweimer on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @02:56AM

hweimer writes: A novel study analyzes the install base of various office packages among German users. While Microsoft Office comes out top (72%), open source rival OpenOffice is already installed on 21.5% of all PCs and growing. The authors use a clever method to determine the installed office suites of millions of web users: they look for the availability of characteristic fonts being shipped with the various suites. What surprised me the most is that they found hardly any difference in the numbers for home and business users.

Submission + - Microsoft to Get Malware Bailout in Germany (quantenblog.net)

Submitted by hweimer on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @03:57PM

hweimer writes: Germany is getting a call center to help Windows users with malware infections. I think this has the effect of being a malware bailout for Microsoft, discouraging them and other software companies from writing better code and giving users little incentives to switch to more secure alternatives. How much government money is needed to run the call center is also not revealed.

Submission + - Exotic Molecule Observed (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

hweimer

on Friday April 24, 2009 @06:24AM

hweimer writes: "Researchers at the University of Stuttgart in Germany have observed a molecule based on a completely novel binding mechanism. As reported in Nature (preprint), the binding occurs because one of the two atoms in the molecule has an electron in a Rydberg state, very far from its nucleus. These molecules can only be seen at ultracold temperatures and high atomic densities, and their observation reaffirms fundamental statements of quantum theory."

Submission + - F-Secure: Ditch Adobe Reader, use Free Software (cnet.com)

Submitted by

hweimer

on Wednesday April 22, 2009 @04:41AM

hweimer writes: "Yesterday at RSA security conference, F-Secure's chief research officer recommended to drop Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files due to the huge amount of targeted attacks against it. Instead, he pointed to PDFreaders.org, a website maintaining a list of free and open source PDF viewers."

Submission + - Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 ("Lenny") released (debian.org)

Submitted by

hweimer

on Sunday February 15, 2009 @05:58AM

hweimer writes: "After 22 months of development, Debian GNU/Linux version 5.0 (codenamed "Lenny") has been released. New features include a port to ARM's EABI architecture, a free-as-in-speech Java implementation based on OpenJDK, and lots of updated software packages. The release is dedicated to the memory of Thiemo Seufer, who died in a tragic car accident last December."

Submission + - Journals Resolve Copyright Conflict over Wikipedia (quantenblog.net)

Submitted by

hweimer

on Monday October 06, 2008 @02:59PM

hweimer writes: "The American Physical Society (of Physical Review Letters fame) is one of the most important publishers in physics. Recently, they took some heat when they refused to give permission to authors to create derivative works of their publications for open content sites such as Wikipedia. They have now changed their copyright policy, allowing authors to include up to 50% of the published content in derivative works."

Submission + - Few Banks Use Extended Validation Certificates (quantenblog.net)

Submitted by

hweimer

on Monday August 04, 2008 @03:11AM

hweimer writes: "The latest thing against phishing are extended validation (EV) certificates. Supported by Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7, these certificates promise that the site has gone through a more extensive validation of its owner than ordinary SSL certificates. Being a proponent of EV certificates, I conducted a test on how many banks already use them. The surprising result: only thirty percent."

Submission + - Liberation Fonts Increase Interoperability (quantenblog.net) 1

Submitted by

hweimer

on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @03:26AM

hweimer writes: "Most problems when opening Word documents under GNU/Linux are due to missing fonts. Therefore, Red Hat published a set of fonts metric-compatible with the Windows core fonts last year. However, there were some concerns regarding the licensing that prevented many other distros to ship them. We finally managed to settle these problems, leading to better document interoperability for all GNU/Linux users."

Submission + - Major PC Vendors Push for Open Source Drivers

Submitted by

hweimer

on Tuesday April 29, 2008 @07:44AM

hweimer writes: "Remember the heat the Linux Foundation took for allegedly not giving enough attention to Desktop Linux? However, the latest events on the foundation's annual summit draw a different picture. Industry heavyweights like Dell, HP and Lenovo 'announced on stage that they will now include wording in their hardware procurement processes to "strongly encourage" the delivery of open source drivers'. The move specifically targets desktop and mobile products."

Submission + - Monitoring internet censorship with Tor (quantenblog.net)

Submitted by

hweimer

on Saturday April 12, 2008 @12:09PM

hweimer writes: "Playing around with Tor, I figured that you cannot just use it to evade censorship, but also turn the tables and monitor internet censorship in various parts of the world. Not only that, you can use Tor to visit websites pretending you come from almost any country."

Submission + - MS launching a Patent Ambush on Free Software?

Submitted by

hweimer

on Thursday March 27, 2008 @04:46AM

hweimer writes: "Yesterday, Microsoft and Milan-based Sourcesense announced they collaborate to contribute code to Apache POI, a Java library for manipulating Microsoft Office files. I think this collaboration has two possible consequences: either it will turn POI into the greatest patent laundry of all time, or it will help Microsoft to launch a patent ambush on the project. Feel free to decide which one is more likely."

Submission + - Version Control for Scientific Writing?

Submitted by

hweimer

on Monday November 19, 2007 @12:56PM

hweimer writes: "After having written a few papers with several co-authors each I have learned to enjoy the benefits of a version control system. Personally, I prefer Subversion for the job, however there are still annoyances like merging various BibTeX files with incompatible index styles. What are your solutions for making life easier? Do you use any custom code like hook scripts in Subversion?"

Submission + - Disney Forces Cancellation of Metal Concerts (roadrunnerrecords.com)

Submitted by

hweimer

on Monday October 01, 2007 @03:09PM

hweimer writes: "Several heavy metal concerts scheduled to take place in clubs located on Disney park property in Anaheim and Orlando have been cancelled due to pressure from the entertainment giant. With only a few days notice, some concerts could be moved to other venues, while some had to be nixed completely. Maybe someone should have told them that metal isn't just for stupid morons."

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