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Networking

Submission + - Three-strike "Hadopi" law thrown out in Fr

pruneau writes: "Breaking new on the French legal scene: the french constitutional council just throw the three-strike "Hadopi" law out. The gist of the rejection of the law is that having an administrative entity (the infamous HADOPI council) making legal decision, like banning someone from using the internet, is unconstitutional in France. The french official opposition is of course gloating about the big setback this represents for the French president, whose team has been pushing hard to get this law through."

Comment Re:radio in the computer case: the music of... (Score 1) 731

I did this with my first "programming" love, a Texas Instrument Ti-57.

Since I was doing "undercover" programming (i.e. programming at night when I was supposed to sleep ;-), I discovered pretty quickly that the beast was making noise, a lot of different ones. I quickly learned the sound of a running program, the noise of an error, and the sound of a few number being displayed as well.

I then kept this habit since, learning the sound of a properly running computer, and being able to tell when the beast is trashing, and so on.

Of course, with all those new-fangled virtual hosts, I'm missing a lot of cue about the system I'm working with. This is sad, my friend, really sad.

Google

Submission + - Who needs Google, when you have 'Knowledge In' (iht.com)

pruneau writes: ""No matter how powerful Google's search engine may be, it doesn't have enough Korean-language data to trawl to satisfy South Korean customers," said Wayne Lee, an analyst at Woori Investment and Securities.

Naver's success surprised many. When NHN, an online gaming company, set up the search portal in 1999, the site looked like a grocery store where most of the shelves were empty. Like Google, Naver found that with few people other than Koreans using the language, there simply was not enough Korean text in cyberspace to make a Korean search engine a viable business.

"So we began creating Korean-language text," said Lee Kyung Ryul, an NHN spokesman. "At Google, users basically look for data that already exists on the Internet. In South Korea, if you want to be a search engine, you have to create your own database.""

IBM

Submission + - Big Blue set to go Big Green

coondoggie writes: "Looks like Big Blue wants to be Big Green. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that IBM tomorrow will launch a major push to help customers cut their data center energy bills and redesign their data centers to be more environmentally friendly. IBM is calling its plan "project Big Green," and is comparing it to the commitment it made 10 years ago to embrace the Internet and later Linux free software, both for its own use and as a service business for corporate and government customers, the WSJ says. The service will be manned by 1,000 services experts from its Global Service division. According to the WSJ, IBM will says it expects to be able to double the current computing capacity of its own data centers by 2010 without using additional energy. It said that would avoid about $500 million in electricity costs it would otherwise have endured. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1500 3"
Communications

Submission + - PCMCIA WiMax Card Finally?

livnah writes: "In a press release last week (http://www.clearwire.com/company/news/05_01_07.ph p), Clearwire announced that they'd be offering their customers WiMax connectivity via a new Motorola Type-II PCMCIA card at some date later this year. From the release:

The FCC's approval of our laptop card is a significant milestone in bringing to market a 'true broadband' wireless service with a device that facilitates even greater portability than our existing modem permits," said Perry Satterlee, Clearwire president and chief operating officer. "We expect the new laptop card to broaden our potential customer base with more opportunities for customers to access and experience our fast, simple, portable, reliable and affordable wireless broadband services."
Businesses

Submission + - Work is work, right?

livnah writes: "In a recent AskSlashdot posting (http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/09/1 728252), Pikoro asked what to do or where to go when he hits the top of the IT food-chain and finds that his work is "more work than play". Is it possible that in today's world we're overlooking that work is ... work? Granted, work should be as enjoyable as possible — when you enjoy your work your productivity increases — but are we expecting too much these days? Do we need to re-evaluate our requirement for a high joy-factor while in the workplace?"
Intel

Submission + - Eight-core computing

Alan writes: FiringSquad just posted a review of the Intel V8 Platform, a dual quad-core Xeon system. With 8 total CPU cores, this system has more computational horsepower than most of the supercomputers on the original Top 100 List from 1993! What was surprising is that more and more applications are taking advantage of multicore processors — Excel 2007 is multicore aware and it makes good use of the additional processing power. However, even embarassingly parallel problems failed to scale well on 8 cores when memory bandwidth is limited.
Programming

Submission + - Shredded secret police files being reassembled

An anonymous reader writes: German researchers at the Frauenhofer Institute said Wednesday that they were launching an attempt to reassemble millions of shredded East German secret police files using complicated computerized algorithms. The files were shredded as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and it became clear that the East German regime was finished. Panicking officials of the Stasi secret police attempted to destroy the vast volumes of material they had kept on everyone from their own citizens to foreign leaders.
Security

Submission + - WaterCap - new approach to text CAPTCHA

Pavel Simakov writes: "This is a story about WaterCap — new, simple and strong CAPTCHA image generator that is specifically designed to withstand CAPTCHA-breaking software. WaterCap generates text CAPTCHA images using negative spaces and shadows."
Robotics

Submission + - Soliders Bond With Bots, Take Them Fishing

HarryCaul writes: Soldiers are finding themselves becoming more and more attached to their robotic helpers. During one test of a mine clearing robot, "every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield." The man in charge halted the test, though- "He just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg. This test, he charged, was inhumane." Sometimes the soldiers even take their metallic companions fishing. Is there more sympathy for Robot Rights than previously suspected?
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Light Sabers Explained

An anonymous reader writes: The popular science learning site HowStuffWorks.com has recently shed light upon the elusive details of light sabers. For those of us laymen without the force, we get an article explaining their history, their basic mechanics, and proper usage for everyday activities.

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