Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment It's a matter of organization (Score 1) 189

by countach44 (#45750585) Attached to: Scientific Data Disappears At Alarming Rate, 80% Lost In Two Decades
For one example, for one project let's say I have roughly 300GB of simulation data. Of out that data, how much will be used to generate a figures for publication? Maybe 1%? The rest of it is from testing, fine tuning, and exploring the parameter space. The real problem isn't where to save it all, but that there is exteremely little incetive to to go through the trouble of sifting through and archiving the important stuff. 80% is proably a lower bound, IMHO. Futhermore, let's say you save that im portant precious data. Good luck future scientist in figuring out what is in those files and how to analyze it.
I realize that not all science is like this, but I think I'm speaking about the majority, not the minority.

Comment It's business (Score 1) 385

by countach44 (#45412591) Attached to: How Blockbuster Could Have Owned Netflix
"Your age probably determines whether you think of Blockbuster Video as a fond memory or a dinosaur predestined for extinction."

How about neither? When they came into town, the locally owned ma & pop video rental that had been around since the dawn of home video rentals closed almost immediately.

Submission + - GIMP Abandons SourceForge. Distributes via FTP Instead (gimp.org)

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds
Dangerous_Minds writes: GIMP, a free and open source altenernative to image manipulation software like Photoshop, recently announced that it will no longer be distributing their program through SourceForge. Citing some of the ads as reasons, they say that the tipping point was "the introduction of their own SourceForge Installer software, which bundles third-party offers with Free Software packages. We do not want to support this kind of behavior, and have thus decided to abandon SourceForge." The policy changes were reported back in August by Gluster. GIMP is now distributing their software via their own FTP page instead. Is Sourceforge becoming the next CNET?

Submission + - Drones to deliver parcels in Australia (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by angry tapir
angry tapir writes: Australian startup Flirtey from March next year will offer parcel delivery for Australian businesses using automated aerial drones. From March, a partnership with a textook rental company will see drones delivering books to students.It will be the first use of fully automated commercial drones in the world, the companies said. Delivery by drone will be free for the receiver and will send parcels directly to an outdoor location of the user’s choice, with the drone’s GPS coordinates provided to the user through a smartphone app.

Submission + - DOJ: If we can track one American, we can track all Americans (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Seven months after his conviction, Basaaly Moalin’s defense attorney moved for a new trial (PDF), arguing that evidence collected about him under the government’s recently disclosed dragnet telephone surveillance program violated his constitutional and statutory rights. Moalin’s is the only thwarted "terrorist plot" against America that the government says also "critically" relied on the National Security Agency phone surveillance program, conducted under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The government’s response (PDF), filed on September 30th, is a heavily redacted opposition arguing that when law enforcement can monitor one person’s information without a warrant, it can monitor everyone’s information, “regardless of the collection’s expanse.” Notably, the government is also arguing that no one other than the company that provided the information—including the defendant in this case—has the right to challenge this disclosure in court.

Submission + - Asian Giant Hornets Kill 42 People in China, Injure over 1,500

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Madison Park and Dayu Zhang report on CNN that swarms of aggressive hornets are inflicting a deadly toll in a central China killing 42 people and injuring 1,675 people in three cities in Shaanxi province since July. Government authorities say these attacks are from a particularly venomous species, the world's largest hornet, known as the Asian giant hornet or vespa mandarinia. The giant hornet extends about 3.5 to 3.9 centimeters in length, roughly the size of a human thumb and has an orange head with a black tooth used for burrowing. The Asian giant hornet is intensely predatory; it hunts medium- to large-sized insects, such as bees, other hornet species, and mantises. The pain of the Asian Giant Hornet is described as a hot nail piercing the skin and lasts about 4 hours with instant swelling. One victim told local media earlier this month that "the more you run, the more they want to chase you." Some victims described being chased about 200 meters (656 feet) by a swarm. Local authorities have deployed thousands of police officers and locals to destroy about 710 hives but ""It's very difficult to prevent the attacks because hornet nests are usually in hidden sites," says Shunichi Makino, director general of the Hokkaido Research Center for Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute. Makino, who specializes in entomology, warned that the sting from an Asian giant hornet was severe compared with those of other insects. "The venom of an Asian giant hornet is very special compared with other hornets or yellow jackets," says Makino. "The neurotoxin — especially to mammals including humans — it's a special brand of venom." Asian Giant Hornets have been spotted in the United States.

Submission + - Major Data Brokers hacked by ID Theft Service

Submitted by gewalker
gewalker writes: Have we reached the point where it is time to admit that the ID thieves are winning and will continue to win as long as their incentives are sufficient to make it lucrative for them? According to Krebs On Security a breach in 25 data brokers has been identified including the heavyweights Dun and Bradstreet and LexusNexus. The truly telling quote is

“We could well be witnessing the death of knowledge-based authentication, and it’s as it should be,” Litan said. “The problem is that right now there are no good alternatives that are as easy to implement. There isn’t a good software-based alternative. Everybody in the industry knows that KBA is nearing its end of usefulness, but it’s not like you can instantly roll out biometric identifiers to the entire US population. We’re just not there yet. It’s years away. If ever.”

Submission + - Linus Torvalds No Longer Ranked in the Top 100 Linux Kernel developers (eweek.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: The Linux Foundation's Who Writes Linux report is now out and after 22 yrs leading Linux, Linux creator Linus Torvalds this year has fallen out of the list of top 100 developers in terms of code contributions.

Torvalds currently ranks 101st on the latest "Who Writes Linux" report for number of patches generated from the Linux 3.3 to the Linux 3.10 kernel releases. Topping the list is Linux kernel developer H Hartley Sweeten with 2.3 percent of changes. Sweeten is followed by kernel developer Mark Brown, who contributed 1.5 percent of changes.

Submission + - Vietnamese Father and Son Found Living in a Treehouse for 40 Years (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: A father and son who fled their village during the Vietnam War 40 years ago have apparently been discovered living in a treehouse deep in the jungle. They wore loincloths made of bark and used a homemade axe to chop down trees for firewood. They fed on corn that they had grown, plus fruits and cassava roots from the jungle. Inside their treehouse home, five metres in the air, the pair kept a stash of arrows for hunting and knives for killing animals. After they were returned back to rest of civilization by travelers, they had almost completely lost the ability to speak a language. The Vietnamese district authorities have confirmed that the father Ho Van Thanh once lived a normal life with his family in the commune’s Tra Kem hamlet. They suggested that he was probably driven by shock when he took his young son and ran into the jungle after the mine explosion wiped out the rest of their family.

Comment Re:Compiled Windows Binaries (Score 2) 176

by countach44 (#44818885) Attached to: How To Turn Your Pile of Code Into an Open Source Project
That platform might not be so special, which is one of the main reasons to provide the binaries. (relative) Homogeneity is one of the strengths of that particular platform. Compiling software isn't a part of most Window's users workflow - if you truly are win-compatible (and know because someone has actually compiled it), providing the binaries will give your project visibility you wouldn't have otherwise. It is a sacrifice that you can make to really contribute your software to a large group of people.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together."

Close