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Programming

Submission + - what is the perfect coder's chair?

Submitted by
DragonTHC
DragonTHC writes: "I am faced with sitting for long periods of time to do the majority of my work as a consultant. It seems that truly ergonomic chairs cost more than $700 these days. What kind of office chair should I get that will save my back and keep me from getting the DVTs in my legs? What chairs are out there that I can afford on my small budget up to $300? What do other coders spend their lives sitting in?"
Education

Submission + - Grad student suspended after pro-gun-rights e-mail

Submitted by fredklein
fredklein writes: A Minnesota university has suspended one of its graduate students who sent two e-mail messages to school officials supporting gun rights.
"Hamline University also said that master's student Troy Scheffler, who owns a firearm, would be barred from campus and must receive a mandatory "mental health evaluation" after he sent an e-mail message arguing that law-abiding students should be able to carry firearms on campus for self-defense."
When informed that suspending him violated the school's freedom of expression policy, the University changed their tune: Now they claim he's being suspended because of "anonymous allegations" they received, and they can't tell him (or the press) what those allegations are, or who his accusers are. With all the talk of 'Big Brother' throwing people into detention centers without knowing the charges, are we overlooking 'Little Brothers' closer to home?
Privacy

Submission + - Interpol unscrambles doctored photo in manhunt. (google.com)

Submitted by jackpot777
jackpot777 writes: From the AP story out of Paris, France:

The international police organization said German specialists had succeeded in producing identifiable images of the man, from the original pictures, where his face had been digitally blurred, but the man's identity and nationality remain unknown, prompting Interpol's public appeal.


Good for Interpol in this instance — the man in question is wanted in connection with an international investigation involving online videos and children. But it does show one interesting facet of internet privacy that has also been noted with topics ranging from reading blurred check numbers in images to Google's plan to blur out license plate and face data for Street View. And that is: blurring is not the same as completely obscuring. In the Interpol instance, the suspect would not have been identified if he had placed a single-colored shape over his head in the pictures.

Just something you might want to think about if you're planning to post photos of yourself online in the throes of embarrasing / illegal / politically noticable acts. As computers become more adept at extrapolating data of different types, your identity isn't safe unless you completely cover all those identifying features. Filter > Distort > Twirl is as good as nothing.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - MIT Student Arrested for "Bomb Art"

Submitted by Damocles the Elder
Damocles the Elder writes: Apparently Boston remains a place where you shouldn't show off your computer parts. According to a pair of local news outlets, an MIT student was arrested for wearing what's being called "fake bomb art" in a Boston airport. FTA:

Star Simpson, 19, had a computer circuit board and wiring in plain view over a black hooded sweat shirt she was wearing, said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the commanding officer at the airport. "She said that it was a piece of art and she wanted to stand out on career day," Pare said at a news conference. Simpson was "extremely lucky she followed the instructions or deadly force would have been used...[s]he's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue."
Sony

Submission + - Sony caught editing Halo 3 wikipedia page (vnunet.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Another high-profile wikipedia scandal has emerged after an edit on the Halo 3 page was revealed to come from one of Sony Entertainment's studios. The edit added no real content beyond claiming that it "would not be any better than Halo 2".
Programming

Submission + - Free "sourceforge" for closed source proje

Submitted by ButcherCH
ButcherCH writes: ETH Zurich launches a development and hosting platform called Origo for software projects similar to sourceforge but also free for closed source projects. What further differentiates this platform is that the platform itself is open source and also offers an open API that allows to integrate it into IDEs or external webpages. At the moment there are already IDE integrations for Eclipse, Visual Studio and EiffelStudio.
Privacy

Submission + - Do Not Call Registry gets wake-up call (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "If you signed up for the federal or your state's Do Not Call Registry a few years ago, you might want to thing about refreshing it. Pennsylvanians this week got a wake up call, so to speak from the state's Attorney General Tom Corbett who kicked off a public awareness campaign designed to remind people what many have forgotten or never knew — that the 2002 law set registrations to expire after five years. That is of course unless you want to start hearing from those telemarketers as you sit down to dinner. Corbett said about 2 million people signed up in the immediate aftermath of the law taking effect and those who do not act by Sept. 15 will have their numbers dropped from the registry on Nov. 1. The Pennsylvania action is a reminder that the National Do Not Call Registry has a five year life span as well. The Federal Trade Commission is set to being a nation campaign in Spring 2008 to remind all US citizens to refresh their federal Do Not Call Registry standing. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18066"
Space

Submission + - Prepare for Global Cooling! (canada.com)

Submitted by slashspot
slashspot writes: The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change — and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling.
Read it all: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/c omment/story.html?id=597d0677-2a05-47b4-b34f-b8406 8db11f4&p=4
Excertps:
"Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.
Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.
...
Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.
...
Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. "
Patents

Peer Review Starts for Software Patents 102

Posted by Zonk from the clarity-to-a-muddy-situation dept.
perbert writes "As seen in an interview in IEEE Spectrum: Qualcomm v. Broadcom. Amazon v. IBM. Apple v. seemingly everyone. The number of high-profile patent lawsuits in this country has reached a staggering level. Hoping to curtail the orgy of tech-industry litigation, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is experimenting with reforming the way patents are applied for and processed. Launched on 18 June 2007 was an Internet-based peer-review program whereby anyone (even you) can help to evaluate a number of software patent applications voluntarily submitted for public evaluation. The one-year pilot Peer-to-Patent program is a collaboration between the USPTO and New York Law School's Institute for Information Law and Policy, in New York City. The program's Web site allows users to weigh in on patent applications by researching, evaluating, submitting, and discussing prior art, which is any existing information, such as articles in technology journals and other patents, relevant to the applicant's claims."
Quickies

Submission + - Lake Disappears into Andes

Submitted by steveb3210
steveb3210 writes: It seems that what was once a 5 acre glacial lake in the Andes has mysteriously disappeared. "In March we patrolled the area and everything was normal," Juan Jose Romero from Chile's National Forestry Corporation, Conaf, said.

"We went again in May and to our surprise we found that the lake had completely disappeared. All that was left were chunks of ice and an enormous fissure."

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