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For me, GMail equals unprofessional. It equals Mom and Pop.

It means you can't even afford to run your own mail server or have someone do it for you.

It means not knowing if the person I'm dealing with is really associated with the domain or the business in question.

It means that my communications are being scanned by a third party, and that I should self-censor accordingly.

It just doesn't reflect well on a person to use GMail for business, in my opinion, and would make me seriously question the credibility of the business.

explosivejared writes "The Economist has a write up on the coming boom in undersea cable infrastructure. Firms are expected to spend at least $7 billion over the next three years on new cables. These new investments are the first major expansions since the dot-com bust left telecoms with a load of fancy new fiber but no deluge of traffic to glean profits from. Even though three quarters of undersea fiber is still dark, the article says that along with the forecast for drastic increases in traffic, insuring redundancy is also important to those investing in new cables."
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11413254

explosivejared writes "The Economist is running an article that challenges what it calls the "myth" of increased access to broadband access leading to increased productivity across an economy. The article is frank when it says that, "'bigger is better broadband' is orthodoxy, not economics." The reason cited in the article is that so far only media and entertainment deliverers have effectively harnessed the power of high bandwidth on a large scale. Other than that, nobody in the rest of the business world has quite figured out how to use broadband to make a real change in productivity.

So, other than for the infamous Linux .iso's that everyone shares 24 hours a day, maybe Gates only need adjust his immortal 640k comment a little, to say 1.5 mb maybe? I joke, but the article does raise an interesting point."

explosivejared writes "Reason Magazine online is running an article on the "The Failure of Centralized Scientific Planning." The article is a review of a book, Sex, Science and Profits: How People Evolved to Make Money , on the subject of publicly funded research. The author of the article reinforces the main point of the book that public research has hindered scientific innovation. It makes some very imaginative historical links about private research yielding greater results than public research, going so far as to say that the Dark Ages brought about more innovation than the age of the Romans.

All in all, the article is a provocative read, if not an outright polemic. I personally rejected most of the article's claims in my comment on the article's discussion page. Despite my rejection, the article still incites interesting debate about the fundamental questions regarding the value of public research. We are in a tightening economy and an election year, a recipe for great change in the amount of and commitment to public funding. So, where should we be headed with regards to publicly funded science?"

explosivejared writes "British lawmakers will debate Monday a bill which would allow scientists to use animal-human hybrid embryos in research after Prime Minister Gordon Brown passionately defended the controversial plan.

Brown reportedly takes a personal interest in the issue because his youngest son Fraser, aged nearly two, has cystic fibrosis, which could one day benefit from embryo research. But the Catholic Church and some opposition lawmakers are opposed to the bill, with one senior churchman warning it may lead to "Frankenstein" style experiments.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill would give scientists a legal framework to create hybrid embryos, yielding stem cells which could be used in research into treating conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

The bill also backs the idea of "saviour sibling" children, who are created as a close genetic match for a chronically ill brother or sister, meaning their genetic material can help treat them."
http://www.physorg.com/news130388625.html

explosivejared writes "From the article: According to official NPD data, which tracks North American console sales, the Xbox 360 took 30 months to reach the 10 million units sold milestone, 20 percent faster than the original Xbox, which didn't achieve the same mark until month 36.

So, is this a sign of success for the 360 or has the market changed so completely, voiding the comparison?"
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,146026-c,gameconsoles/article.html

explosivejared writes "From the article:
Designer labels have a lot of cachet — a principle that's equally true in fashion and physics. The future of nuclear physics is in designer isotopes — the relatively new power scientists have to make specific rare isotopes to solve scientific problems and open doors to new technologies, according to Bradley Sherrill, a University Distinguished Professor of physics and associate director for research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University.

The chemical changes that brought about the formation of the elements in the bellies of stars are being recreated in laboratories such as MSU's NSCL. Advances in basic nuclear science already have given way to technologies such as PET scans — medical procedures that use special isotopes to target specific types of tumors. "
http://physorg.com/news129485311.html

explosivejared writes "NASA has tapped the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to develop the ambitious Solar Probe mission, which will study the streams of charged particles the sun hurls into space from a vantage point within the sun's corona — its outer atmosphere — where the processes that heat the corona and produce solar wind occur. At closest approach Solar Probe would zip past the sun at 125 miles per second, protected by a carbon-composite heat shield that must withstand up to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit and survive blasts of radiation and energized dust at levels not experienced by any previous"

penguin-geek writes "Researchers at Northwestern University have discovered a way to ease the tension between ISPs and P2P users. As we all know, there's been a growing tension between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and their customers' P2P file-sharing services, and this has driven service providers to forcefully reduce P2P traffic at the expense of unhappy subscribers and the risk of government investigations. Recently, some ISPs have tried to fix the problem through partnerships with certain P2P applications. The Ono project represents an alternative solution: a software service that allows P2P clients to efficiently identify nearby peers, without requiring any kind of cozy relationship between ISPs and P2P users. Using results collected from over 150,000 users, they have found that their system locates peers along paths that have two orders of magnitude lower latency and 30% lower loss rates than those picked at random by BitTorrent, and that these high-quality paths can lead to significant improvements in transfer rates. In challenged settings where peers are overloaded in terms of available bandwidth, Ono provides a 31% average download-rate improvement; in environments with large available bandwidth, Ono increases download rates by 207% on average (and improves median rates by 883%). Ono is available as a plugin for the Azureus BitTorrent client, an open tracker and an standalone service you can integrate into any P2P system."

KrispyFees writes "Allowing eBay users to pay with any method other than PayPal would be like allowing them to buy heroin, said eBay's Australian chief in a disastrous public meeting today. The meeting was held in Melbourne, Australia (the first of several around the country) to explain why eBay must ban all payment methods except PayPal. Members of the public hurled abuse at the eBay management team during the meeting, with the crowd unanimously opposed to eBay's new restrictions. eBay has denied that the move is designed to raise more revenue through PayPal fees, arguing it is to provide better safety in online transactions, however, the global company has admitted it is looking at introducing the same restrictions around the world."
http://apcmag.com/ebay_boss_not_offering_paypal_is_like_buying_heroin.htm

Now, I must admit, I've twice before gotten 10 moderator points at a time. At which time, I had gone looking to find out if this was indeed a /. bug or some new moderation code. I did come across another slashdot user journal at that point (which I can't seem to find again now unfortunately) that mentioned that they too received 10 points as well as a few comments to the same effect. However, no one seemed to know where the additional points that we were seeing came from.

That was a few months back now... today I logged in /. and lo and behold: You have 15 Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em!

For those who might not believe my tale: http://img44.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc1170&image=95259_slashdot_15_moderator_points_122_1170lo.jpg

My pet theory is that since users get chosen to moderate based on such a convoluted and complex algorithm (good karma, average reader, verteran reader, etc.,. according to the FAQ) and getting chosen for the 2 days of moderation is so infrequent there isn't a check to see if the newly chosen moderator is currently moderating. Thus, depending on how "lucky" you get, you can get chosen to moderate any number of times up to the limit of moderators chosen for that time period. A rare few may get chosen twice and see the elusive 10 points and if the cards fall right once in a long, long, long while, almost improbably you can be chosen three times in the same period and amass the magical 15 moderator points. I refuse to acknowledge anyone could actually reach 20 though, as that would mean them being more special than me.

I really don't know if I should feel honored and required to use ALL of those points in a moderating marathon or to not use any and leave the 15 points there next to my uid for as long as they last and just soak in the improbability of it all? Now, if only slashdot were the mega-millions lotto and I was so lucky. Hey, Editors, how about you change the code to give anyone with > 10 moderator points editor credentials for the day? I'd really like to try out for a position at slashdot, apparently I have some real mad moderation skillz or at least the hardware and slashcode thinks so.

Doug Donohoe writes "With most open source projects, new contributers don't get immediate commit access to the main source control system (typically subversion or CVS) until they prove themselves competent and worthy. However, if you are working on bug fixes, enhancements or totally new features, it is desirable to be able to keep track of those local changes via source control. Given it is unlikely that the project will allocate you a branch for your changes, you will need to track these changes locally.

If the open source project uses subversion or CVS and you use the same tool locally, what is the easiest way to update from the project repository and apply the changes locally while dealing with different ".svn" or "CVS" configuration sub-directories in each directory?

My question is: Are there best practices or tools that developers use to manage the complexities of a source tree that lives in two source control systems?"

explosivejared writes "Utilities are now testing pricing schemes for power that vary with demand. These new pricing schemes are made possible by the ability that utilities now have to gather data about power usage in real time, from so-called 'smart' meters. The article showcases one man, Darrell Brubaker, who effectively used the new program from his utility and adjusted his power usage accordingly to save money. Some of the measures he took include running major appliances at night and cooking on the grill.

The article posits that these new real-time capabilities are already poised to revolutionize the grid. However, there are some that oppose the shift from the now conventional regimented monthly billing plans. Consumer advocacy groups warn that it would be a financial mistake for many to switch to a real-time rate."

explosivejared writes "Researchers from Stanford have devised a way to test the neutrality of the charge of an atom, and even a neutron, down to an extremely small fraction of elementary charge. The team of researchers likened the impressive accuracy of the test to "measuring the distance between the earth and the sun to an accuracy better than the size of a nucleus." The test is designed explore areas of the Standard Model concerning charge quantization, where there are considerable gaps in understanding. The researchers say that a new way of thinking about charge quantization is going to be required.

The instrument used to attain this impressive accuracy is a type of atom interferometer, which uses the properties of a particle's wavefunction to detect differences in atoms. The setup at Stanford, while involving complex physics, is comprised basically of a 10m cylinder, where rubidium atoms are streamed up through while being subjected to a series of laser pulses that induce measurable changes in the wavefuntions of the atoms."

It sounds farcical when you first hear it, but NBC has teamed up with an ad agency to produce actual feature programs that are centered around promoting the products of the network's sponsors. The network has already began production on one sci-fi program entitled "Gemini Division", which will act as a platform for products from Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco. The programming will be broadcast via the network's "digital properties", eg the NBC web site. I guess it was only a matter of time for something like this to come along after product placement became the norm.
http://www.physorg.com/news127734694.html