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Comment Re:Tolls? (Score 1) 837

by Gazzonyx (#49749231) Attached to: Oregon Testing Pay-Per-Mile Driving Fee To Replace Gas Tax

As a data point to back you up, here in the Twin Cities (West Saint Paul, at least, I haven't checked in Minneapolis - if I'm going into the office I'm taking my car) there are some bus routes to the shopping district that are free but have a 'suggested donation' amount of $1 or something. They're already mostly paid for, but if you can spare some cash they appreciate it.

Even if you've got the cash and a car, it's a cheap designated driver or as a good way to beat the traffic from the hockey arena after a game (buses have semi-dedicated lanes during congestion). If you want to go intra-city there's also the light rail that goes between Saint Paul and Minneapolis; it also has a station in the Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport which is convenient for many reasons.

Submission + - Samba user survey results - Improve the documentation ! (samba.org)

Submitted by Jeremy Allison - Sam
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes: Mark Muehlfeld of the Samba Team recently surveyed our user base and recently reported the results at the SambaXP conference in Germany.

They make fascinating reading, and include all the comments on Samba made by our users. Short answer — we must improve our documentation. Here are the full results:

https://www.samba.org/~mmuehlf...

Cheers,

                Jeremy Allison,
                Samba Team.

Submission + - How Java Changed Programming Forever

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: With Java hitting its 20th anniversary this week, Elliotte Rusty Harold discusses how the language changed the art and business of programming, turning on a generation of coders. 'Java’s core strength was that it was built to be a practical tool for getting work done. It popularized good ideas from earlier languages by repackaging them in a format that was familiar to the average C coder, though (unlike C++ and Objective-C) Java was not a strict superset of C. Indeed it was precisely this willingness to not only add but also remove features that made Java so much simpler and easier to learn than other object-oriented C descendants.'

Submission + - Cox HSI ends unlimited internet, introduces cap system

Submitted by Junior J. Junior III
Junior J. Junior III writes: Today, Cox High Speed Internet customers received the following communication:

Dear [Cox HSI Customer],

We spend more time online today than ever before, streaming movies and TV shows, downloading music, sharing photographs and staying connected to friends and family. As Internet and data consumption grows, Cox continues to improve our network to ensure a quality experience for all our customers.

To better support our customers' expanding online activity, we recently increased the amount of data included in all of our Cox High Speed Internet packages. About 95% of customers are now on a data plan that is well-suited for their household. In the event you use more data than is included in your plan, beginning with bill cycles that start on June 15th, we will automatically provide additional data for $10 per 50 Gigabyte (GB) block for that usage period. Based on your last 3 months of data usage and our increased data plans, it is unlikely you will need additional data blocks unless your usage increases.

What this means for you

To help our customers get accustomed to this change, we are providing a grace period for 3 consecutive billing cycles. During this period, customers will not pay for additional data blocks for data used above their data plan. Customers who exceed their data plan will see charges and a matching credit on their bill statement. Beginning with bills dated October 15th and later, grace period credits will no longer be applied, and customers will be charged for usage above their data plan.

Understanding and managing your data usage

You are currently subscribed to the Preferred package which includes a data plan of 350 GB (Gigabytes) per month. To help you stay informed about data usage, Cox will begin to notify you via email and browser alert if you use 85% of your monthly data plan and again if you use 100% of your monthly data plan. Additional blocks of data will only be provided if you exceed your data plan. This will not change your Internet package and there will be NO change to the speed or quality of your service for data usage above your plan. To better understand your household's historical and current data usage, you will find your household's data usage meter and other helpful tools and information here.

Thank you for choosing Cox.

Sincerely,

Cox High Speed Internet Team

In the wake of FCC's ruling reaffirming Network Neutrality, is this what ISPs will be doing to squeeze more money out of its customers?

Submission + - Choosing an IDE That's Right for You (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Today’s software development often requires working with multiple tools in a variety of languages. The complexity can give even the most skilled developer a nasty headache, which is why many try to rely on Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) to accomplish most of the work; in addition to source-code editors and automation, some even feature intelligent code completion. With so much choice out there, it’s hard to settle on an IDE, so Dice interviewed several developers, who collectively offered up a list of useful questions to ask when evaluating a particular IDE for use. But do developers even need an IDE at all? When you go to smaller, newer developer shops, you’re seeing a lot more standalone editors and command-line tools; depending on what you do, you might just need a good editor, and to master the command-line tools for the languages you use.

Submission + - AMD Details High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) DRAM, Pushes Over 100GB/s Per Stack (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Recently, a few details of AMD's next-generation Radeon 300-series graphics cards have trickled out. Today, AMD has publicly disclosed new info regarding their High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) technology that will be used on some Radeon 300-series and APU products. Currently, a relatively large number of GDDR5 chips are necessary to offer sufficient capacity and bandwidth for modern GPUs, which means significant PCB real estate is consumed. On-chip integration is not ideal for DRAM because it is not size or cost effective with a logic-optimized GPU or CPU manufacturing process. HBM, however, brings the DRAM as close to possible to the logic die (GPU) as possible. AMD partnered with Hynix and a number of companies to help define the HBM specification and design a new type of memory chip with low power consumption and an ultra-wide bus width, which was eventually adopted by JEDEC 2013. They also develop a DRAM interconnect called an "interposer," along with ASE, Amkor, and UMC. The interposer allows DRAM to be brought into close proximity with the GPU and simplifies communication and clocking. HBM DRAM chips are stacked vertically, and "through-silicon vias" (TSVs) and "bumps" are used to connect one DRAM chip to the next, and then to a logic interface die, and ultimately the interposer. The end result is a single package on which the GPU/SoC and High Bandwidth Memory both reside. 1GB of GDDR5 memory (four 256MB chips), requires roughly 672mm2. Because HBM is vertically stacked, that same 1GB requires only about 35mm2. The bus width on an HBM chip is 1024-bits wide, versus 32-bits on a GDDR5 chip. As a result, the High Bandwidth Memory interface can be clocked much lower but still offer more than 100GB/s for HBM versus 25GB/s with GDDR5. HBM also requires significantly less voltage, which equates to lower power consumption.

Submission + - Advice for a College Dropout? 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "I dropped out of college today," begins the touching inaugural post on Life of a Dropout, which will strike a chord with anyone who's done or contemplated doing the same. "Life had gotten messed up to such extent that suicide seemed to be a much much better option. So when I woke up today I got a third person view of my life, and felt like I had to get out of this situation and prevent myself from doing any harm to myself. I have been in this college for 3 years now, and the only good it did to me was that it allowed me to meet awesome people and as a result I developed as a software developer." So, any words of advice or encouraging anecdotes for a dropout/developer who's trying to start things afresh?

Submission + - Linux Dev's Purported 4096 bit RSA Key Factored 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A PGP subkey for Kernel developer Peter Anvin from a public Sks Keyserver was discovered to be divisible by 3. The weak key was discovered by a web service which calls itself the Phuctor which has since factored two other keys as a chews on an sks keyserver dump. Whether the key was generated weak or if it was strong before becoming corrupted on a keyserver it is extremely troubling that such a weak key representing such an important Linux developer could be served.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot best way to solve a unique networking issue

Submitted by petro-tech
petro-tech writes: I work as a service technician, maintaining and repairing gas pumps and POS equipment.

In my day to day activities, one that consumes a ton of time and is relatively regular is the process of upgrading the software on pumps.
This is done by connecting to the pump via direct ethernet from my laptop, then running a manufacturer provided program that connects to the device and pushes the new software.

Some sites have 8+ pumps with 2 devices in each, and at 20-30 minutes apiece this can be quite time consuming.

Unfortunately the devices are not actually on a network, and as such cannot be updated remotely, also since they are not on a network, they are all configured with the same IP address. Additionally the software doesn't allow you to specify the adapter to use.

I would like to be able to get to a site, connect a cable to each pump, and load them all at the same time.

The only way I can figure to accomplish this with the software we've been provided is to do this:

Get a 16 port powered usb hub, with a usb-ethernet adaptor in each port. Set up 16 VM's with extremely stripped down XP running on each, with only one usb-ethernet adaptor assigned to each VM. Set xp to boot the application for loading software as its shell. and load each device that way at the same time.

Is there a better way to accomplish this?

Submission + - Rust 1.0 released (rust-lang.org)

Submitted by TopSpin
TopSpin writes: Rust 1.0 has appeared and release parties in Paris, LA and San Francisco are taking place today. From the Rust Programming Language blog; `Today we are very proud to announce the 1.0 release of Rust, a new programming language aiming to make it easier to build reliable, efficient systems. Rust combines low-level control over performance with high-level convenience and safety guarantees. Better yet, it achieves these goals without requiring a garbage collector or runtime, making it possible to use Rust libraries as a “drop-in replacement” for C.'

Submission + - Galaxies Die by Slow 'Strangulation'

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: BBC reports that results of a study of the spectrum of light emitted by 23,000 red, passive galaxies and 4,000 blue, star-forming ones shows that when galaxies stop making stars, their death is usually a slow process that chokes them of the necessary cool gases over about four billion years. Astronomers surveyed thousands of galaxies, living and dead, to assess whether the transition is rapid or slow. In the dead galaxies they detected high levels of metals, which build up during star formation and point to a slow strangulation process. "Metals are a powerful tracer of the history of star formation: the more stars that are formed by a galaxy, the more metal content you'll see," says Dr Yingjie Peng. "So looking at levels of metals in dead galaxies should be able to tell us how they died."

Astronomer Andrea Cattaneo from the Observatoire de Paris compares this tell-tale evidence to the high levels of carbon dioxide seen in a strangled human body. "During [strangulation], the victim uses up oxygen in the lungs but keeps producing carbon dioxide, which remains trapped in the body," wrote Dr Cattaneo. "Instead of building up CO2, the strangled galaxies accumulate metals — elements heavier than helium — produced by massive stars." On average, living, star-forming galaxies were four billion years younger than the dead ones. This matches the amount of time that the astronomers calculate would be needed for the galaxies to burn up their remaining gas supply during the strangulation. "This is the first conclusive evidence that galaxies are being strangled to death," says Peng. "What's next though, is figuring out what's causing it. In essence, we know the cause of death, but we don't yet know who the murderer is, although there are a few suspects."

Submission + - Node.js And io.js Will Officially Merge Under Node.js Foundation

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: The Node.js and io.js forks of the open-source JavaScript V8 runtime platform have announced official plans http://sdtimes.com/node-js-and... to merge development under the Node.js Foundation.The merger was put to a vote on GitHub by io.js developer Mikeal Rogers, who initially proposed the merger in February, and the io.js technical committee voted to approve the merger yesterday https://github.com/iojs/io.js/.... According to Rogers, the team will continue releasing io.js versions while the convergence takes place. The move comes shortly after Node.js project lead TJ Fontaine announced http://blog.nodejs.org/2015/05... he is stepping down from the project, which will now be openly governed by the foundation.

Submission + - Astronomers spot one-in-10-million phenomenon in early universe (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Find one quasar—a rare, superbright galaxy core in deep space—and you’d think yourself pretty lucky. So a team of astronomers is wondering how it managed to find four closely spaced quasars all at once, a lucky break they calculate is a one-in-10-million chance. The quartet and its environs, snapped some 10 billion years ago, look like a galaxy cluster—a huge conglomeration of galaxies seen in the present-day universe—during its formative years. But current numerical simulations of how galaxy clusters form suggest they should be in areas with much hotter and less dense gas. So is this a cosmic fluke, or is it time to rewrite our theories of how the universe’s largest structures form?

Submission + - Are We Entering A "Golden Age Of Quantum Computing Research"? (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Lashdots
Lashdots writes: Last month, an elite team at IBM Research team announced an advance in quantum computing: it had built a four-qubit square lattice of superconducting qubits, roughly one-quarter-inch square, that was capable of detecting and measuring the two types of quantum computing errors (bit-flip and phase-flip). Previously, it was only possible to address one type of quantum error or the other. The next step is to correct quantum errors.

In a blog post, Mark Ritter, who oversees scientists and engineers at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Laboratory, wrote: "I believe we’re entering what will come to be seen as the golden age of quantum computing research." His team, he said, is "on the forefront of efforts to create the first true quantum computer." But what would that mean, and what other big next steps are there?

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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