Comment Re:Obvious answer? (Score 1) 736
Argh. I read your post and looked for the "Like" button. I am screwed.
Comment Refereeing? Multisport? (Score 1) 778
When I'm refereeing a game of football (soccer to you American types
My wristwatches need to be:
a) robust
b) waterproof/mudproof
c) convenient to use without needing to reach anywhere with my hands (ever tried taking something out of your pocket cycling up/downhill?
Also, in the case of refereeing, I run two watches for redundancy purposes: taking two cellphones on the field sounds plain silly.
Comment Re:And now..... (Score 1) 298
Ah, I was playing Scrabble at a local pub with a young lady and I managed to put LARCH on the board. She couldn't understand why I was so amused/excited/constantly saying "The larch"...
Comment Simulation? (Score 1) 105
Gives a Matlab Simulation a whole new meaning.
(I'm guessing mainly the referees here will get that one...
Comment Re:Just windows and linux? (Score 1) 626
Actually, you should get a perm.
Comment Re:Anal? Anal! Anal!! (Score 1) 96
He's writing a
Comment Re:This is like the Last APLfighter (Score 1) 222
Matlab?
I use APL, you insensitive clod. Much, much more fun for code cracking/number crunching!
Comment (1) "Don't fuck up", (2) mentor, (3) balance (Score 2, Insightful) 662
- This is infamous amongst football [soccer] referees as a debrief to the assistants before the game that is to be avoided.
Same could go for software development.
- I guess you also mean what you need to do to make your career more prosperous? The best thing that I did was locate a mentor. Ask older guys who helped them the most, look to family friends. It doesn't have to be a technological mentor, just someone who can help you over the usual stumbling blocks anyone encounters in a new job.
- I would also recommend getting your life balance right sooner rather than later. I've known a few guys who worked excessively long hours and ended up hating their jobs and walking away from software development. Don't be like that! Again, a mentor can be useful in this regard.
The Rules of the Swarm 166
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers are starting to discover the simple rules that allow swarms of thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism. To get a sense of swarms, Dr. Iain Couzin, a mathematical biologist at the Collective Animal Behaviour Laboratory at Princeton University, builds computer models of virtual swarms with thousands of individual agents that he can program to follow a few simple rules. Among the findings are that swarm behavior has patterns common to many different species, that just as liquid water can suddenly begin to boil, swarm behavior can also change abruptly in character, and that just a few leaders can guide a swarm effectively by creating a bias in the swarm's movement that steers it in a particular direction. The rules of the swarm may also apply to the cells inside our bodies and researchers are working with cancer biologists to discover the rules by which cancer cells work together to build tumors or migrate through tissues. Even brain cells may follow the same rules for collective behavior seen in locusts or fish. "How does your brain take this information and come to a collective decision about what you're seeing?" Dr. Couzin says. The answer, he suspects, may lie in our inner swarm."
Submission + - E-mail gets fourth amendment protection
An anonymous reader writes: People concerned about e-mail security got a whole new reason to worry last year with revelations of secret government monitoring. Earlier this month, though, a U.S. Appeals Court told the government where to knock it off, at least when dealing with people in the Southern District of Ohio.
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007/070207 bradner.html
Submission + - Sun to build 62,976 core Opteron SuperComputer (wired.com)
mytrip writes: "Sun Microsystems announced today that its hardware will power the largest supercomputer ever built, weighing in with 62,976 CPU cores, 125 terabytes of memory, 1.7 terabytes of disk space, and 504 teraflops of performance.
The computer, which has been dubbed "Ranger," will be hosted at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas, Austin. It is due to go online on January 1, 2008.
Ranger costs $30 million in hardware alone, and an additional $29 million for staffing and maintenance — and is being entirely funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Under the hood, Ranger's brain will be built from 16,744 quad-core AMD Opteron processors. The machine's production timeline is dependent on how fast AMD can crank out the as-yet-unreleased chips, Bechtolsheim said."
The computer, which has been dubbed "Ranger," will be hosted at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas, Austin. It is due to go online on January 1, 2008.
Ranger costs $30 million in hardware alone, and an additional $29 million for staffing and maintenance — and is being entirely funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Under the hood, Ranger's brain will be built from 16,744 quad-core AMD Opteron processors. The machine's production timeline is dependent on how fast AMD can crank out the as-yet-unreleased chips, Bechtolsheim said."
Submission + - Transparent transistors promise bright future (pressesc.com)
amigoro writes: "Researchers have created transparent transistors and circuits using nanotechnology opening up the potential for a broad range of applications, from e-paper and flexible color screens for consumer electronics to "smart cards" and "heads-up" displays in auto windshields, according to findings published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology."
Submission + - CIA Papers from 1970's Released (yahoo.com)
jellie writes: "The Associated Press reports that the CIA has released 693 pages of internal documents, nicknamed the "Family Jewels", about events that led to a scandal in the 1970's. From the article:
The documents detail assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, the testing of mind- and behavior-altering drugs like LSD on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China, break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others.
"
Submission + - Window Film Provides Tin-Foil Hat For Your House
Kozar_The_Malignant writes: Scientific American is reporting on newly declassified window film that 'promises to block hackers' access to your wireless transmissions — and protect against EMP attacks and explosions, to boot.' The film shields against electromagnetic transmission in either direction from 10 hertz through the near infrared just shy of visible light. Although it is now available to the general public, it's not going to be at Home Depot anytime soon. You'll need to be rich as well as paranoid for this.
Submission + - Peer review of patents (peertopatent.org)
zurtle writes: "The IEEE Spectrum has an interview with the founder of Peer-to-Patent Beth Noveck. She encourages all software developers to review USPTO patent applications and submit prior art. So get in there and start reading those patents, eh?"
