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Comment: "Web scale" and hand-held devices (Score 1) 484

by acooks (#40332025) Attached to: Windows 8 Pre RTM Metro UI Leaked

I think the interface is simple, because it's quicker for a vm to draw, scales better to weird screen sizes and pixel densities and compresses better on a remote desktop connection. Maybe MS is betting the farm on the cloud and want the best interactive experience when the installation count of the OS peaks in 5 years time.

Comment: Re:Salaries (Score 1) 886

by acooks (#40164339) Attached to: IT Positions Some of the Toughest Jobs To Fill In US

Don't the H.R. people hate "jack of all trades" people, too?

Yes, but I'm convinced that recruitment agents are even worse. If you don't fit their template, they butcher your carefully structured resume into something that basically says: "This guy has been working for x years, but we're not actually sure what he did in that time." If it's all just buzzword soup to these intermediaries, the connection between the type of problems that the candidate has experience in and the need that the prospective employer has gets lost.

Then there's also the fact that some industries, like banking, believe that their domain knowledge is so absolutely unique and special that nobody could possibly transfer valuable skills from a different sector.

Space

+ - LOFAR - Radio Telescope->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands formally opened LOFAR (Low Frequency Array), the world's largest radio telescope. The all-electronic 'next generation' telescope developed by ASTRON can now offer to astronomers the joint use of a network of antennae that spreads from its core region in the northeast of the Netherlands to distances of thousands of kilometers across Europe. LOFAR uses sophisticated computing and high speed internet to combine all the signals to survey the sky in great detail. The giant telescope will enable scientists to study how distant galaxies take shape, to find out when the early Universe was first lit up, to probe the properties of energetic cosmic particles, to map magnetised structures all across the sky, and to monitor the sun's activity as well as a wide range of variable and explosive celestial objects. It is a pathfinder for the development of a global telescope, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA)."
Link to Original Source
Android

+ - Replicant dev interview: Building a truly free Android->

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes "While Android is open source, it won't work on a phone without software that generally isn't open source. The Replicant project is an attempt to build a version of Android that doesn't rely on binary blobs for which the source code isn't available to end users, and the software currently works on a handful of handsets. I caught up with the project's lead developer to talk about their efforts to make a completely open source version of Android."
Link to Original Source
Australia

+ - Microsoft settles over Aussie-invented patent-> 1

Submitted by aztec1430
aztec1430 (242755) writes "The Australian inventor behind an eight-year patent battle with Microsoft has welcomed the software giant’s settlement with the Singapore company he founded.

After countless court battles in the US and several overturned judgments, Microsoft and Uniloc this week reached a “final and mutually agreeable resolution”, according to a spokesman for the company."
Link to Original Source
User Journal

Journal: Linux not suitable for defence systems according to Green Hills Software

Journal by acooks

I'm using QNX at work. It's an interesting OS, but why use it instead of Linux? Well, the argument is that QNX is suitable for safety critical systems, while Linux... maybe? While looking for vendors who offer certifiable Linux distributions, I came across these rants from Green Hills CEO, Dan O'Dowd. He makes a few supertroll statements, like "Windows and Solaris have achieved EAL 4. But to da

Comment: Re:It may be true, however... (Score 1) 144

by acooks (#39144349) Attached to: Developer's View: Real Life Inspirations Or Abstract Ideas?

The credit card companies have designed the system in such a way that they never carry the risk for fraud. It's brilliant - they're basically printing money.

The consumer was "safe" on the old card-not-present system in the sense that the merchant has to refund the payment when the consumer cries fraud to the card company. If enough consumers cry fraud, the payment processing gateway (another middle man) may decide to stop the merchant's transaction processing.

The new MasterCard SecureCode and Visa 3-D Secure mechanism is kind of like paypal in the sense that you have to supply a "go ahead" instruction to the card company, except that the merchant still has your card details. Whether a transaction requires the extra step or not is determined by the merchant, the payment gateway and the card company. This is an attempt to move the fraud risk to the consumer, though the merchant could still leak card details.

Patents

+ - European Parliament to exclude free software with FRAND

Submitted by jan.van.gent
jan.van.gent (2578677) writes "The European Parliament is on the verge to adopt a directive about reform of standards, reform which would introduce FRAND patent licensing terms (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory), an undefined term which has been a direct attack on the fundamental principles of Free and Open source software. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has been very active before the European Commission proposed the text on trying to get FRAND terms inside the text."
Biotech

+ - Russian Scientists Revive Plant From 30,000-Year-Old Seeds->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "It was an Ice Age squirrel’s treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species. The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds. ... 'The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,' said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. 'It’s a natural cryobank.'"
Link to Original Source

10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone

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