Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
The Internet

Submission + - visual search engine 1

kwarren writes: "I made this search engine that's completely visual (the is no text field to enter any sort of query). It attempts to profile a user based on how they rate certain images, and then find past searches that are most similar and gives related results. A lot of people say it reminds them of that 20q.net game; some times it's shockingly accurate, and sometimes it's unimpressive. It definitely shows improvement — some friends and I were trying to search for random topics, and it was pretty common for irrelevant results the first search, but some times as soon as the second or third search relevant results would appear withing 4 or 5 *ratings*. It checks both positive and negative relationships, and some times seems to have built a category using deductive reasoning. It's a pretty cool idea, but doesn't seem 100% accurate, so I'm putting it here for input and feedback. Thanks! -kpw"
Databases

Submission + - Data fragmentation effects in mixed load database (targeted.org)

Dmitry Dvoinikov writes: "This article discusses the effects that data fragmentation has on the database performance under a mixed load. The experiment on a PostgreSQL database that follows the theoretical part yields some numbers and graphs and shows how bad fragmentation is for I/O and shared buffer pool.

http://www.targeted.org/articles/databases/fragmen tation.html"

Databases

Submission + - SQL SERVER - Data Warehousing Interview Questions (sqlauthority.com)

pinaldave writes: "I have tried to accommodate all of them in last post in the series. I hope this series is helpful to all candidates who are seeking job as well interviewers. I have combined all the questions and answers in the one PDF which is available to download and refer at convenience. http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2007/07/29/sql-server -data-warehousing-interview-questions-and-answers- complete-list-download/"
The Internet

Submission + - What ever happened to Web engineering?

An anonymous reader writes: Web pages have become a major functional component of the daily lives of millions of people; you, the Web developer, are in a position to make that part of everyone's lives better. Does it ever occur to you that today's Web developers could learn a thing or two from traditional computer programming? What we have today is a generation of Web designers and developers who are attempting to build increasingly sophisticated Web sites without reference to the best practices of software engineering, which this article explores.
Intel

Submission + - Intel release threading library under GPL 2

littlefoo writes: Intel Software Dispatch have announced the availability of the Threading Building Blocks (TBB) template library under the GPL v2 with the run-time exception — so this previously commerical only package is now open for all the use, whether for open-source projects or commerical offerings (although they are explicitly encouraging open source use). The interface is more task-based then thread-based, but with a somewhat different view of things than, e.g. OpenMP. From the Intel release

"Intel® Threading Building Blocks (TBB) offers a rich and complete approach to expressing parallelism in a C++ program. It is a library that helps you leverage multi-core processor performance without having to be a threading expert. Threading Building Blocks is not just a threads-replacement library. It represents a higher-level, task-based parallelism that abstracts platform details and threading mechanism for performance and scalability."
Intel

Submission + - Intel open-sources multicore programming toolkit (arstechnica.com) 1

Doctor Memory writes: Intel has recently open-sourced their previously closed-source TBB 2.0 (Thread Building Blocks) C++ library. The library provides parallel algorithm templates for "task-based parallelism", emphasizing logical tasks instead of physical threads. The web site (osstbb.intel.com) hosts an FAQ, a forum link, and a download page to get the latest version of the source. Licensed under GPLv2, Intel will continue to sell a commercial version of the library which will include engineering support. There's a more in-depth overview over at Ars Technica.
Operating Systems

Submission + - VMWare Record/Replay Demo (podtech.net)

pg--az writes: "ScobleShow has a video of a Windows-Notepad-scribble being replayed by "last night's build" of VMWare Workstation 6, the impressive thing being of course that the record/replay is of the entire operating system."
Programming

Submission + - Secure Programming: the Seven Pernicious Kingdoms (earthweb.com)

jammag writes: "This chapter-length excerpt from a new book, Secure Programming With Static Analysis talks about what the authors call "The Seven Pernicious Kingdoms" (the term comes from biology). The "kingdoms" are both generic and context-specific defects in programming, ranging from API abuse to Encapsulation. The authors' thesis is summed up by a quote from Henry Petroski: "Success is foreseeing failure.""
Google

Submission + - Google Overhauls Google Docs (blogspot.com)

AccioBrain writes: The Stormin Mormon reviews the new update to Google Documents and Spreadsheets. He writes,

I do not believe that Google will ever replace MS Word. It's clearly not their goal... But for a lot of the work that is currently being done using MS Word or Excel (or even OpenOffie Writer or Calc) Google Docs and Spreadsheets is not merely a free replacement, but an actual improvement.

Announcements

Submission + - XBMC recruiting developers for Linux port

Gamester17 writes: "Help wanted: As you may or may not have heard, a few developers on Team-XBMC have begun the porting of XBMC to Linux and OpenGL using the SDL toolkit. The goal is for this to become a full port of XBMC containing all the features and functions available in the Xbox version of XBMC. This is a huge task which is the reason The XBMC Project is making this public request, seeking C/C++ programmers to volunteer in assisting Team-XBMC with this Linux porting development project. Developers who would like to volunteer should read the Linux porting development project article in the official XBMC WIKI for more detailed information.

Those unfamiliar with XBMC can get a good overview of what it offers by reading the XBMC article on wikipedia.org"
Databases

8 Reasons Not To Use MySQL (And 5 To Adopt It) 288

Esther Schindler writes "Database decisions are never easy, even — or maybe especially — when one choice is extremely popular. To highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the open-source MySQL DBMS, CIO.com asked two open-source experts to enumerate the reasons to choose MySQL and to pick something else. Tina Gasperson takes the 5 reasons to use MySQL side, and Brent Toderash discusses 8 reasons not to. Note that this isn't an 'open source vs proprietary databases' comparison; it's about MySQL's suitability in enterprise situations."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft efforts to reach young developers

rchawdry writes: "Aside from the absolutely ridiculuous marketing collateral, Microsoft at least has some efforts to reach out to young programmers. As a parent, I can see the educational value of these efforts as they can teach young minds to solve problems with computers, however, the fact that Microsoft tools are a necessary part of this seems an awful lot like indoctrination at an early age. Are there similiar efforts in the open source world?"

Slashdot Top Deals

HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!

Working...