Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror

Comment: Re:good Ole Days (Score 1) 50

by AliasMarlowe (#43805967) Attached to: Ethernet Turns 40

80MB removable disk packs the diameter of LPs.

80MB in a single disk pack??? Do you know how many RL01 disk packs that would need? We used PDP-11 with DECnet (which was upgraded to thickwire ethernet years later). Mind you, the PDP-11 was already light years ahead of where we started - IBM 360 with a quarter megaword of drum storage and 300baud links...

+ - Dart Is Not the Language You Think It Is

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Seth Ladd has an excellent write-up of Dart "When Dart was originally launched, many developers mistook it for some sort of Java clone. In truth, Dart is inspired by a range of languages such as Smalltalk, Strongtalk, Erlang, C#, and JavaScript. Get past the semicolons and curly braces, and you’ll see a terse language without ceremony. ""

+ - Obama's EPA Makes A Rad Decision-> 1

Submitted by QuantumPion
QuantumPion writes "The Environmental Protection Agency released draft guidelines last month that could significantly relax radiation hazard standards in the case of a radiological event in the United States by using risk-based decisions.

“Think of it this way. The situations covered by these new guidelines are similar to someone dying of thirst who has the chance to drink fresh water having 2,000 pCi per gallon of radium in it. While the safe drinking water levels are 20 pCi/gal for Ra, 2,000 pCi/gal is of no threat, especially if you’re going to die from imminent dehydration. Of course, a bag of potato chips has 3,500 picocuries, so go figure.”"
Link to Original Source

+ - Large asteroid to pass within 4 million miles of Earth

Submitted by mmcxii
mmcxii writes "Phys.org is reporting that a large asteroid will pass close to the earth on May 31st, 2013. While no closer than some other asteroids in the past year, this one will prime target for radio imaging by the Goldstone and Arecibo observatories. These images will provide a fantastic view of the surface features of the asteroid and more detailed insights into the orbit of the object."

+ - From Google I/O to Maker Faire: Is Glass bringing people closer together?->

Submitted by occidental
occidental writes "Rachel Roumeliotis writes: "I’m going talk about how wearables, specifically Google Glass, seem to be bringing people closer together rather than farther apart. . . Frankly, I got scared for a moment as a mass of people forced inward towards me, and then thought what if someone just takes off with these?""
Link to Original Source

+ - Immigration reform may spur software robotics->

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes "The Senate's immigration bill may force the large offshore outsourcing firms to reduce their use of H-1B visa-holding staff, forcing them to hire more local workers and raising their costs. But one large Indian firm, Infosys, will try to offset cost increases with software robotics. Infosys recently announced a partnership with IPsoft, a New York-based provider of autonomic IT services. With IPsoft's tools, work that is now done by human beings, mostly Level 1 support, could be done by a software machine. Infosys says that IPsoft tools can "reduce human intervention." More colorfully, Chandrashekar Kakal, global head of Infosys's business IT services, told the Times of India, that "what robotics did for the auto assembly line, we are now doing for the IT engineering line." James Slaby, a research director of HFS Research who has been following the use of autonomics closely, wrote in a recent report that the IPsoft partnership may help Infosys "reap fatter margins by augmenting and replacing expensive, human IT support engineers with cheaper, more accurate, efficient automated processes," and by improving service delivery."
Link to Original Source

+ - Hollywood Studios Issue DMCA To Censor Pirate Bay Documentary

Submitted by Aaron B Lingwood
Aaron B Lingwood writes "As reported by TorrentFreak, Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate have all asked Google to take down links pointing to the Pirate Bay documentary 'TPB-AFK'. The film, created by Simon Klose, is available for no cost and has already been watched by millions of people. The public response to this free release model has been overwhelmingly positive, but it’s now meeting resistance from Hollywood, TPB’s arch rival.

Pirate Party Australia opines 'Hollywood is using takedown notices to censor Pirate Bay doco, is it incompetence or malice? Always hard to tell'. Whichever the answer, the system is definately broken."

+ - Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian government came a step closer to formalising its plans to make Asian language study compulsory for schools this week. It has released a draft curriculum for public consultation which reveals plans to include Indonesian, Korean and french language in the curriculum.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard publicly stated in September 2012 that in response to the “staggering growth” in the region, the government would be instigating 25 key measures to strengthen and exploit links with Asia. The plan includes the requirement that one third of civil servants and company directors have a “deep knowledge,” thousands of scholarships for Asian students, and the opportunity for every schoolchild to learn one of four “priority” languages- Chinese, Hindi, Japanese or Indonesian"
Link to Original Source

+ - Justice Department got more than phone records in journalist probe->

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes "When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

They used security-badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal emails.

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to The Associated Press. AP executives and First Amendment watchdogs have criticized the Justice Department in part for the broad scope of the phone records it secretly subpoenaed. “The latest events show an expansion of this law-enforcement technique,” said attorney Abbe Lowell, who is defending Kim on federal charges filed in 2010 that he disclosed national-defense information.

Investigators also scrutinized computer records and found that someone who had logged in with Kim’s user profile viewed the classified report “at or around” the same time two calls were placed from his desk phone to Rosen, according to the documents."
Link to Original Source

+ - Web of Tax Shelters Saved Apple Billions, Inquiry Finds->

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes "Apple relied on a “complex web of offshore entities” and U.S. tax loopholes to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes on $44 billion in offshore income over the past four years, according to excerpts from a Senate subcommittee report to be released tomorrow as Apple CEO Tim Cook testifies on the company’s overseas operations.

The maker of iPhones and iPads used at least three foreign subsidiaries that it claims are not “tax resident in any nation” to help it avoid paying billions in “otherwise taxable offshore income,” the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a statement today. "
Coverage in Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/05/20/apple-used-loopholes-to-skip-paying-44-billion-in-u-s-taxes-senate-committee-claims/
NYTimes also has coverage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/business/apple-avoided-billions-in-taxes-congressional-panel-says.html"
Link to Original Source

+ - How chilly weather weakens our defenses against colds->

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes "It's been a contentious proposition but scientists now have evidence that not wrapping up warm does indeed make it more likely you'll catch a cold. A team from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, found that cold temperatures dampen natural defenses against a rhinovirus, the leading cause of seasonal colds, in mice and in human airway cells.
Colds are more common in winter, and researchers have known for decades that many rhinoviruses prefer colder temperatures: they replicate better in the upper respiratory tract than they do in in the warmer environment of the lungs. But efforts to link the viruses’ apparent temperature preference and seasonal fluctuations in incidence have produced mixed results.
The researchers discovered that at cooler temperatures mice infected with the rhinovirus produced fewer antiviral immune signals. They also found that human airway cells grown in cold conditions were less likely to undergo programmed cell death — a defense mechanism aimed at limiting the spread of infections."
Link to Original Source

+ - Who is Avunit? The Hunt for LulzSec's Mysterious Sixth Member->

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes "LulzSec's star burnt brightly in the short period it was active, but things quickly turned sour when its core members began getting arrested. Last week three of the six core members were sentenced in the UK, but this only served to highlight the fact that one member of the group, known as Avunit, has been able to remain unidentified despite the FBI having turned the group's leader Sabu into an informant. Who is Avunit? And does he hold the purse strings of the group's Bitcoin wallet which could have up to $180,000 in it?"
Link to Original Source

+ - Contest for Guessing When Ice will Melt Has New Record in 97 Year History->

Submitted by JimboFBX
JimboFBX writes "The Nenana Ice Classic is a contest held in Alaska where a tripod is placed on the Tanana River in the winter and for the past 97 years the winner(s) is whomever is closest at guessing the exact date and time it will fall over from the ice underneath it melting in the spring. This year a new record was set as it melted on May 20th at 2:41 pm, the latest ever. The Ice Classic has been a barometer for climate change as one can see it has on average melted earlier and earlier, especially in the past decade. To put things in perspective, the last time it fell on May 8th or later was in 2001. This is the first time in the past two decades it has lasted longer than that. In 1992 it melted on May 14th and that was a freakishly strong winter. Seven of the past ten years the ice melted May 2nd or earlier. Does this start to mark the turning point for climate change, or is it more proof of the extremes that are to come as the Earth continues to heat up?"
Link to Original Source

You will be audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

Close