Mydron - Slashdot User

+ - Wikipedia founder attacks educators 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07, 2007 @01:17PM

An anonymous reader writes "In the BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7130325.stm
"Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said teachers who refuse students access to the site are 'bad educators'." and
"He said he now thinks that students should be able to cite the online encyclopedia in their work."

which is ironic because rejecting Wikipedia as a valid source is his idea

"In 2005, at the height of the controversy over the site's accuracy, Mr Wales told the BBC that students who copied information from Wikipedia 'deserved to get an F grade', and that the site should really be used as a 'stepping stone' to more authoritative information.""

+ - Jury finds Vonage infringed on Verizon patents

Submitted by LabRat on Thursday March 08, 2007 @04:54PM

LabRat writes "Today, a jury found that Vonage violated 3 key patents held by Verizon. Vonage is ordered to pay $58 million in past damages and a 5.5% royalty on future sales revenue. While much smaller than what Verizon was seeking ($5/customer/month)...it's still quite a substantial financial blow to a company that continues to hemorrhage cash as it seeks to buy it's way to market share through a marketing blitz campaign. It's unclear at this point if this victory will embolden Verizon to pursue blackmail, erm, settlements from other VoIP providers..though it seems highly unlikely that Verizon would pass up the opportunity to generate cash flow from its IP holdings. No word yet if Vonage plans to appeal."

+ - US faces skill crunch, to review H1B visa

Submitted by prasansk on Thursday March 01, 2007 @04:44PM

prasansk writes "Making a case for increasing the number of H1B visas, the US Commerce Secretary has said high-tech businesses are facing shortages in filling up positions and lamented that students from India and China cannot stay in US and apply their skills. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Guttierrez made the point in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee that was having Comprehensive Immigration reform as its topic of hearings when the issue of the H1B visas came up for a brief discussion."

+ - Bacteria to protect against quakes

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Sunday February 25, 2007 @12:41PM

Roland Piquepaille writes "If you live near the sea, chances are high that your home is built over sandy soil. And if an earthquake strikes, deep and sandy soils can turn to liquid, with some disastrous consequences for the buildings sitting on them. But now, U.S. researchers have found a way to use bacteria to steady buildings against earthquakes by turning these sandy soils into rocks. Today, it is possible to inject chemicals in the ground to reinforce it, but this can have toxic effects on soil and water. On the contrary, this use of common bacteria to 'cement' sands has no harmful effects on the environment. But so far, this method is limited to labs and the researchers are working on scaling their technique. Here are more references and a picture showing how unstable ground can aggravate the consequences of an earthquake."

+ - Next Generation Source Code Search Engine

Submitted by on Friday February 02, 2007 @12:06AM

An anonymous reader writes "Newsforge has an article on a new source code search engine, All The Code which has just launched a public alpha. According to the article, unlike previous generations of source code search engines (such as koders and google codesearch) this new engine "looks at how code is used" to help determine the relevance. The idea being that if a library is used more frequently in a certain context, it is probably more relevant than a less popular library. Unfortunately only supports Java for the time being, but the faq indicates they will be adding more languages once the alpha is completed. I wonder if the other players will adopt this method?"