DrHeasley - Slashdot User

The Maths-formula that lead to the financial crash-> 1

Submitted by

jools33

on Saturday April 28, @02:40AM

jools33 writes "This is a fascinating story from the bbc of how a mathematical formula revolutionised the world of finance — which ultimately could have been responsible for its downfall. The Black-Scholes mathematical model, introduced in the 70s, opened up the world of options / futures / derivatives trading in a way that nothing before or since has accomplished, its phenominal success and widespread adoption lead to the discoverer winning a nobel prize in economics and yet it could ultimately have been responsible for the financial crisis of the past few years. Its interesting to ponder how algorithms and formulas that we work on today could fundamentally influence humanity's future."
Link to Original Source

Tiny crystal 'revolutionises computer'-> 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27, @04:36PM

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have made a tiny crystal which they claim will take quantum computing to the next level, creating one of the world's most powerful computers ever developed.

"Computing technology has taken a huge leap forward using a crystal with just 300 atoms suspended in space," said Michael Biercuk at the University of Sydney, who led an international team.
He added: "The system we have developed has the potential to perform calculations that would require a supercomputer larger than the size of the known universe — and it does it all in a diameter of less than a millimetre."
Link to Original Source

Asteroid mining company?-> 0

Submitted by

DrHeasley

on Friday April 20, @05:10PM

DrHeasley writes "Virtually all of the gold, platinum and other precious metals present in the earth's crust are the results of meteor impacts. According to a press release today, Ross Perot, Google Founders Larry Paige and Eric Schmidt and “visionary” Peter H. Diamandis are forming a new company to explore and harvest asteroid resources."
Link to Original Source

New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmiss-> 0

Submitted by

danielsmith1214

on Sunday February 12, @01:27PM

danielsmith1214 writes "In the next issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Gregory Wornell, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, Uri Erez at Tel Aviv University in Israel and Mitchell Trott at Google describe a new coding scheme that guarantees the fastest possible delivery of data over fluctuating wireless connections without requiring prior knowledge of noise levels. The scheme works by creating one long codeword for each message, but successively longer chunks of the codeword are themselves good codewords."
Link to Original Source

Google Public Dns Alternative 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 12, @12:08PM

An anonymous reader writes "Now that google is coming up with a new privacy policy, and many people being uncertain about their intentions, I too am trying to reduce my reliance on google services. I have been using google dns resolver for a while and am quite satisfied with it. But since dns is so intrinsically related to almost everything internet related, i would like to find a safer alternative to google dns.

Which public dns servers does the slashdot community use and love?"

101 Reasons Why Evolution is True-> 0

Submitted by

ideonexus

on Sunday February 12, @10:44AM

ideonexus writes "Today is Darwin Day. With states continuing to introduce bills to teach creationism alongside the established science, like Indiana did at the beginning of this month, it's important to remember the overwhelming evidence supporting the Theory of Macroevolution through Natural Selection. Here are 101 Facts supporting Darwin's theory, in a creative commons licensed post with 101 accompanying photos."
Link to Original Source

DHS reading your Tweets and Facebook postings.-> 1

Submitted by BitterOak on Sunday February 12, @12:12AM

BitterOak writes "Apparently, the DHS is reading your Tweets and looking at your Facebook wall. This may seem reasonable if they're trying to prevent a terrorist attack, but apparently, they're more interested in whether or not you are criticizing them!"
Link to Original Source

Travel Light to China 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Saturday February 11, @11:26PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes "What may once have sounded like the behavior of a raving paranoid is now considered standard operating procedure for officials at American government agencies, research groups and companies as the NY Times reports how businesses sending representatives to China give them a loaner laptop and cellphone that they wipe clean before they leave and wipe again when they return. “If a company has significant intellectual property that the Chinese and Russians are interested in, and you go over there with mobile devices, your devices will get penetrated,” says Joel F. Brenner, formerly the top counterintelligence official in the office of the director of national intelligence. The scope of the problem is illustrated by an incident at the United States Chamber of Commerce in 2010 when the chamber learned that servers in China were stealing information from four of its Asia policy experts who frequently visited China. After their trips, even the office printer and a thermostat in one of the chamber's corporate offices were communicating with an internet address in China. The chamber did not disclose how hackers had infiltrated its systems, but its first step after the attack was to bar employees from taking devices with them “to certain countries,” notably China. "Everybody knows that if you are doing business in China, in the 21st century, you don’t bring anything with you," says Jacob Olcott, a cybersecurity expert at Good Harbor Consulting. "That’s ‘Business 101’ — at least it should be.”"

Brit jailed for downloading explosives recipes-> 0

Submitted by DrHeasley on Friday January 27, @06:04PM

DrHeasley writes "Asim Kauser, aged 25, of Bardon Close, Halliwell, Bolton, pleaded guilty to four offences under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and was sentenced to two years and three months in prison for downloading files containing recipes for ricin and explosives. Kauser's father gave police a thumb drive containing the files while they were investigating a burglary at his home."
Link to Original Source

BT Corn: insects rapidly becoming resistant-> 0

Submitted by DrHeasley on Wednesday December 28, @09:20PM

DrHeasley writes "BT corn, which contains the DNA for Bacillus thuringensis toxin, was once hailed as the final solution for insect predators on this valuable crop. Now it turns out that insects, and evolution, are smarter than we thought, and the corn that contains the built in pesticide is no longer reliably protected."
Link to Original Source