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Submission + - Lego gun at brings in the SWAT team (nationalpost.com)

Submitted by srussia
srussia writes: A partner at a downtown Toronto user-experience design firm, had ordered the gun from the online retailer BrickGun, which sells realistic Lego replicas of firearms. Just how realistic, Jeremy would soon find out in an encounter with the friendly neighbourhood SWAT team, thanks to a tip from an alert neighbor.
The Media

Submission + - It's The Headline That Kills You

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: When a handler told Jimmy Carter that an interview didn’t go so badly, the media-savvy Carter reportedly replied, "It's the editing that kills you". Jim Davis of software vendor SAS found that the attention grabbing headline can kill you too, after being surprised by an otherwise-balanced NY Times story on SAS that carried the headline At a Software Powerhouse, the Good Life is Under Siege, referring to IBM's deep-pocketed efforts to move from pretender into contender in the high-end analytics and data mining space occupied by SAS.

Submission + - Is Web 2.0 a curse on marriages?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Inquisitr claims that Web 2.0 kills happy marriages. "For years I’ve seen people I’ve known in the broader internet/ web 2.0 space ending up getting divorced. Without naming names, some include people I’d regard as my friends, others include those I’ve gotten to know or worked beside." And "Simply: those who start startups share mostly similar traits: an obsession to succeed, long hours (often at the behest of family,) sometimes difficult financial situations (where the startup isn’t making money) and a broader lack of understandingor passion in the partner for what is trying to be achieved." Have you seen the same?
Software

Submission + - When did code become a dirty word? 1

Submitted by CexpTretical
CexpTretical writes: SOA has be heralded as a panacea. Why? So we can avoid changing code or the need to write code?

In SOAs, using the service interface pattern to achieve loose coupling merely moves the logic for determining which implementation of a service or component of code is used during any given invocation of such interfaces from code to system configurations, contracts, protocol definitions, UDDI registries, standards definitions, metadata dictionaries, etc, etc. not to mention compliance and monitoring because at some point in a system, logic must be exercised to determine the routing of method calls to concrete implementations. SOA is supposed to make it so that implementations can be changed by manipulating these SOA elements without changing code.

If code became a dirty word because it was decided that changing code is too expensive and/or time consuming then why would you replace it with something that is even more complex, expensive and time consuming such as aforementioned SOA elements?
Also, the last time I checked the specialties needed as far as personnel in SOA systems like SO Architects, system architects, etc. and those needed to maintain monitoring and compliance are much more expensive than software engineers.

If all of the time and money that has been spent on SOA were to have been spent on concrete components and systems such as AspectJ that allow instrumentation at the code level and other capabilities that serve as glue or connectors at the code level or technologies that allow easy linking of applications across computer language boundaries, then software and systems engineering would be in a far better state.

Even though the links in a system really do define it, as is often the case, they are either completely ignored or not even recognized as entities in and of themselves. Links are instead seen as constraints or guides but not as essential parts themselves. In steel fabrication the links in the system are the welds. They are treated as special entities that require special attention to the point of using x-rays when the welds must be without defect to some high tolerance. In the area of search, Google has recognized the significance of links as a part of their page ranking system and treated them with special attention. It is time for software and system engineering to stop "defining" the links between applications and start building the links as efficient hard technologies not abstract protocols and frameworks. These technologies are of necessity built anyway but it is done in such a way as to create a concrete representation of protocols or frameworks instead of with an eye toward efficiency and optimization to the task at hand. Or else they are created as part of a vendor's application or SOA stack that is only optimized in the context of the rest of said vendor's stack. In the end, if you want to change the behavior of a system you must change something in the system or in its environment. When changing the environment becomes more complex and expensive than just changing the system, then just change the system, just change the code.
Math

Submission + - Watering Down Science and Mathematics? 2

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I may be in a position to teach high school Physics next year in the state of Texas. In preparing for this, I was reviewing the "Texas Essential Knowledge Skills" appropriate for Physics, which represent the minimum requirements for instruction in the course. I was saddened to find out that the minimum requirements are, to me, rather low. Furthermore, there are no science or mathematics pre-requisite courses for Physics any longer. There is merely a suggestion of having the first year of Algebra as a pre-requisite or co-requisite.

I believe we are now setting the bar even lower than I thought we were. A viewing of the TEKS for Physics http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter112/ch112c.html (section 112.39) will show how watered down this course has become, especially compared to the old requirements listed in the same document, section 112.47. The suggested pre-requisite or co-requisite can be found in http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter111/ch111c.html (section 111.32).

To be fair, these are the minimum requirements for instruction in the course, and some teaches will undoubtedly do a good job of giving additional instruction. However, we do know that in any field, there will be those who take the easy way out an do the bare minimum.

Given that I may receive some of the students who have had just the bare minimum in their suggested pre-requisite (or not had it at all), I would like to know what Slashdot readers would suggest for me once I hit the classroom. I want to give a good quality of Physics instruction and cover more concepts, or at least in more depth, than the minimum requirements, but I am unsure how I might accomplish this if my students don't have the necessary background for it. What would you do?

Submission + - Polycasso v1.0.0 released (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by SF:dbrosius
SF:dbrosius writes: Polycasso is a image generation program that uses randomly placed semi-transparent polygons to draw cubism-style artwork. It attempts to produce increasingly realistic work through a training feedback method and hillclimbing. A webstart link is available at http://polycasso.sf.net./ Version 1.0.0 has been released and is available at http://www.sf.net/projects/polycasso.

Submission + - DARPA Network Challenge lasts all of 9 hours (darpa.mil)

Submitted by stillnotelf
stillnotelf writes: A team based at MIT has won the DARPA Network Challenge. DARPA notes:

“The Challenge has captured the imagination of people around the world, is rich with scientific intrigue, and, we hope, is part of a growing 'renaissance of wonder' throughout the nation," said DARPA director, Dr. Regina E. Dugan. “DARPA salutes the MIT team for successfully completing this complex task less than 9 hours after balloon launch.”

PDF with (scant) details at https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/darpanetworkchallengewinner2009.pdf. Hit the subject link for a map with the locations. How many did your team find?
Google

Submission + - Personalized search from google now Opt-Out (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cnet reports that Google now intends to deliver customized search results even to those searching its site without having signed into a Google account."

This may be what finally drives me to seriously experiment with cookie-free browsing. I consider non-personalized search results to be a value. They quasi-subconsciously give me a better perspective of the full range of information and ideas on the net. That, and I'm also a bit paranoid about a coming world with pushbutton infrastructure for personalized mis/disinformation.
NASA

Submission + - Defining Useful Coding Practices (omninerd.com)

Submitted by markmcb
markmcb writes: A NASA engineer wrote about his disappointment that despite having well-documented coding practices, 'clever' solutions still made the code he now has to maintain hard to follow. This got me thinking about the overhead spent at my own company regarding our code. We too have best practices that are documented, but most seem to focus on the basics, e.g., comments, modularity, etc. While those things are good, they don't directly ensure quality, maintainable code is written. As the author points out, an elegant one-liner coupled with a comment from a few revisions ago makes for a good headache. I'm curious what experience others have had with this, and if you've seen manageable practices that ultimately offer a lot of value to the next programmer down the line who will have to maintain the code.
Games

Submission + - Farmville, Social Gaming, and Addiction (gamasutra.com)

Submitted by
MarkN
MarkN writes: "Facebook has been trumpeting the fact that Farmville, the most popular game on its site, has more users than Twitter, with 69 million playing over a month and 26 million playing each day. Combined with Facebook's announcement that they have hit 350 million users, that means that one out of every five people on Facebook is playing Farmville. Gamasutra has a featured post taking a critical analysis of Farmville, its deceptively slow level grind, how a number of gameplay features end up as simply decorative since they aren't balanced with the benefits of raising crops, and discussing why Farmville succeeds so well in virally spreading itself and addicting people."
Education

Submission + - It's a Man's Man's Man's World

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: James Brown sang it, but Newsweek offers proof that it is indeed a man's world. In investigating the question of whether men are smarter than women, British researcher Adrian Furnham came up with some startling results. His analysis of some 30 studies showed that men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ, but women underestimate their own intelligence while men overestimate theirs. Surprisingly, both men and women perceived men being smarter across generations — both sexes believe that their fathers are smarter than their mothers and their grandfathers are more intelligent than their grandmothers. And if there are children, both men and women think their sons are brighter than their daughters.

Comment Re:Special Treatment for Kenyan in the White House (Score 1) 783

by hjrnunes (#30264228) Attached to: Google Apologizes For "Michelle Obama" Results

To finalize and really make myself clear.

Racism exists indeed in that some people dislike other people because they are of a different race. This is clear.

The invention I am talking about is when media and politicians tag xenophobia - as in someone who is suspicious of another person because that person is different, or a stranger, or not part of the group, in other words: an alien - as racism.

I think that while commonly used interchangeably, the two concepts are different. One is stupid because I'm not even sure a concept such as race can be defined scientifically. The other is a natural reaction of almost all living beings I can remember. Mixing the two does not, in my opinion, wield good results. It only makes people confused because while they feel they're entitled to distrust strangers because they are strangers, they don't like to be labeled racists because they're not.

Racism is the by-product of pseudo-scientific victorian anthropology made by arrogant 19th century imperialists and can't really exist if people are really scientifically educated. Xenophobia is a natural defense reaction that can gradually be lowered by mutual demonstrations of trust and good intentions by both host and guest.

This is what I meant. I am sorry if I failed to present my arguments in a compelling way but I can't stop myself from thinking if the same thing I'm trying to expose - the taboo about facing both concepts and differentiate between them - isn't the very thing that was stopping you from actually getting to see my point in the first place.

As for the dolphins, it was indeed irrelevant and was meant as a personal attack which clearly failed to deliver. Serves me right for trusting what the tv says. I apologize.

Comment Re:F-Secure smells money (Score 2, Insightful) 137

by NoOneInParticular (#30247644) Attached to: Security Firms Can't Protect iPhone From Threats

No amount of AV is going to protect against a user's stupidity.

And no amount of AV is going to protect against vendor/distributor stupidity either. Here we have a program, running on a non-firewalled device, which on install, instead of being non-functional, opens up to the whole world with a default password. This is not the 1990's people! In this day and age, I expect a program to be secure by default... whatever it takes, even if it means it is non-functional at install.

I actually have a jailbroken iphone on which I installed openssh. When I logged in I immediately realized the risk I was running and changed the password. However, between the time of installing openssh on my iPhone and the moment I changed the password there was at least a period of 5 minutes in which people could have hijacked the machine. Unforgivable. This distributor should be ashamed of himself.

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