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Comment: Re:First instance? (Score 5, Funny) 90

by cribb (#38149896) Attached to: Water Pump Destruction Not Due To SCADA Hack

They trendsourced it.

As MrEricSir once wrote: (http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1174265&cid=27321897)

Def. trendsource
-verb: to solve problems using popular buzzwords

("The water utility trendsourced the cyberhack by integrating crowdsourcing with Agile methodologies automated with a SOAP communication layer.")

Programming

Netflix Prize Comes To A Buzzer-Beater, Nailbiting->

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes "Netflix Prize Comes To A Buzzer-Beater, Nailbiting Finish

Since we reported ( http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/25/netflix-prize-leaders-one-upped-with-one-day-remaining/ ) on the contest last night, two teams in the Netflix Prize have spent the last few hours jumping back and forth on the Netflix leaderboard ( http://www.netflixprize.com//leaderboard ) as the three-year-long competition ticked into its final moments, with last minute sniping submissions coming from both sides.

Finally, the results are in: The Ensemble has managed to come from behind to upset BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos with a top submission of 10.10% — an improvement of .01% — only 4 minutes before the contest closed.

Last night, a team called The Ensemble managed to one-up team BelKor with a score of 10.09%, less than 24 hours before the close of the competition. BellKor was clearly still hard at work — it managed to tie the Ensemble with a score of 10.09% with only around 24 minutes remaining in the competition.

But they were to be foiled once more: with only four minutes left, The Ensemble struck back with a score of 10.10% to regain the top spot on the Netflix leaderboard. Soon thereafter a notice ( http://www.netflixprize.com/closed ) went up on the Netflix homepage stating that there were to be no more submissions.

Update: Yehuda Koren of BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos has posted ( http://www.netflixprize.com/community/viewtopic.php?pid=9237#p9237 ) on the contest's forums that BellKor came out with the lowest Test score, though it appears that Netflix has yet to confirm this.

Techcrunch : http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/26/the-netflix-prize-comes-to-a-buzzer-beater-nailbiting-finish/

NetflixPrize : http://www.netflixprize.com//leaderboard"
Link to Original Source
Patents

Knuth Requests Math & Algorithms Not Be Patent->

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes "Donald Knuth is reaching out to the EU Patent Office in an effort to avoid making algorithms patentable--he feels this has been a mistake in America. He recently sent the EU Patent Office Commissioner a 1994 letter he had originally sent to the United States Patent Office about patenting software. His argument is simple: (1) math cannot be patented (2) all algorithms are math (3) all software is one or more algorithms and so follows that software cannot be patentable. The USPTO replied by defining non-mathematical software to be patentable while purely mathematical software is not. Knuth sums himself up nicely: 'Basically I remain convinced that the patent policy most fair and most suitable for the world will regard mathematical ideas (such as algorithms) to be not subject to proprietary patent rights. For example, it would be terrible if somebody were to have a patent on an integer, like say 1009, so that nobody would be able to use that number "with further technical effect" without paying for a license. Although many software patents have unfortunately already been granted in the past, I hope that this practice will not continue in future. If Europe leads the way in this, I expect many Americans would want to emigrate so that they could continue to innovate in peace.' Will the EPO listen? Personally I'm more concerned about someone starting to patent software patterns like model-view-controller--boy that would make my job difficult!"
Link to Original Source
Editorial

Could a meteor have brought down Air France 447? 1

Submitted by niktemadur
niktemadur writes "In light of an Air Comet pilot's report to Air France, Airbus and the Spanish civil aviation authority that, during a Monday flight from Lima to Lisbon "Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds", the Cosmic Variance blog team on the Discover Magazine website muses on the question "What is the probability that, for all flights in history, one or more could have been downed by a meteor?". Taking into account total flight hours and the rate of meteoric activity with the requisite mass to impact on Earth (approximately 3,000 a day), some quick math suggests there may be one in twenty odds of a plane being brought down in the period from 1989 to 2009. Intriguingly, in the aftermath of TWA flight 800's crash in 1996, the New York Times published a letter by Columbia professors Charles Hailey (physics) and David Helfand (astronomy), in which they stated the odds of a meteor-airplane collision for aviation history up to that point: one in ten."
Government

Norwegian court rules: Indexing sites not legal 1

Submitted by geirendre
geirendre writes "The court of Norways capitol "Oslo Tingrett" have ruled that indexing internet sites without prior consent from the owner to be illegal. Link to original article (in Norwegian) http://www.digi.no/814900/forbudt-aa-indeksere-uten-lov The court states that "indexing a site is copying content" and thus violates copyright laws. In other words, what Google (and other search engines) does when it indexes sites, is illegal."
Media

Best MP3 player for Linux?

Submitted by Jiminy K
Jiminy K writes "My trusty iPod 5G looks like it's about to give up the ghost, so I'm in the market for something new that can do roughly the same things--hold 30GB and play MP3s and video files, basically. But as a Linux guy, I'm also fed up with booting into Windows whenever I want to put new songs or videos onto it (Amarok won't sync videos correctly), and anyone who's been reading Slashdot iPod threads knows that the newer models of iPod are even harder to get working with free software at all. So I figured I'd give you guys the opportunity to plug anyone who does get it right. Which non-Apple MP3 players on the market work best with Linux, and what software/firmware will I need? Or would sticking with Steve be less of a PITA overall?"
Data Storage

How To Verify CD-R Data Retention Over Time? 303

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the saving-boobies-for-future-generations dept.
Peter (Professor) Fo writes "I've recently had two CD-Rs reported to me as faulty which are just 3 years old. This is worrying — I suspect the failure rate for this batch could be 10%. When researching CD longevity there is old and unreliable information; pious 'how to cosset your discs so they last 100 years' blurb; and endless discussions of what sort of dye to use, don't use cheap media, burn slower (or don't), but not much by way of hard facts besides there's a lot of data loss going on. Does anyone know of a generic utility (win or *nix would suit me) that can map sector readability/error rates of CDs? I'd like to measure decay over time in my environment with my media and my other variables; and I expect others would too."

Comment: Ok, seriously... enough with the Sept. 11 crap (Score 5, Insightful) 409

by Kabuthunk (#24515859) Attached to: Large Hadron Collider Goes Live September 10th

Yes, I'll probably get modded troll or something for this, but it needs saying.

There's many comments in here about "oh, what about Sept. 11... couldn't they pick a better day?" and the like.

NEWS FLASH: The rest of the world does NOT come to a screeching halt every Sept. 11th. All points of business are NOT put on hold on that one day of the year. The rest of the world has moved on, if they even stopped to begin with. GET OVER IT!

LHC isn't even located in the USA for christ sakes.

Yes, the Sept. 11 events were sad, but seriously... stop criticizing all events taking place somewhere on earth on or around that date.

Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.