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Submission + - Dell to Acquire SecureWorks (dell.com)

Submitted by adriccom
adriccom writes: From the Dell PR:

Dell today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SecureWorks® Inc., a globally recognized provider of information-security services. SecureWorks’ industry leading Security-as-a-Service solutions include Managed-Security Services, Security and Risk Consulting Services and Threat Intelligence. The acquisition expands Dell’s global IT-as-a-Service offerings and information security expertise.

Comment AC asks how to learn testing? (Score 1) 312

by adriccom (#34747214) Attached to: How Do You Prove Software Testing Saves Money?

Software testing is an entire profession including having its own graduate programs, but there are lots of resources to help you get started from books and online, just poke around.

There are books just about testing (TCS), books about integrating testing into a development methodology(Agile and Scrum include testing), and plenty of books on specific testing technologies (JUnit, Cucumber, ...). Most modern languages/toolkits include at least some support for basic software testing (unit or functional) such as Perl, Python, Ruby or have it readily available such as JUnit for Java, NUnit for C#. For testing web applications go look at Selenium, a great package of tools for web testing that includes browser plugins.

And *plug* I've had great experiences with the online resources including low-cost online classes available from the AST, at http://www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org/ The BBST courses are very informative and quite challenging. */plug*

hth,
adric
Medicine

Browsing the Body 107

Posted by Soulskill from the not-porn dept.
ColdWetDog writes "Google Labs has an interesting new line of business — human anatomy. The Google Body Browser is a 3D representation of the major parts of the human body. Based on the well known and very expensive Zygote 3D artwork, you can zoom in, rotate, view the various organ systems (bone, internal organs, nerves) in various states of transparency. Very much like Google Earth in both execution and concept. Written with HTML5, it requires WebGL to work. The Firefox 4 beta seems to work fine. Google, of course, recommends Chrome."
Programming

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill from the take-your-pick dept.
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

Comment Might Prove A Vinge novel correct? (Score 3, Interesting) 418

by adriccom (#29737779) Attached to: The Ultimate Limit of Moore's Law

about the nature of computation and lightspeed and the like as explored in the wonderful novel A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought)

in which the universe has depth and the depth determines how fast things can go including neural tissue, computation, and intergalactic travel. I have long suspected that Earth is towards the shallow end ...
Biotech

Gene Therapy Causes Blind Woman To Grow New Fovea 86

Posted by timothy from the way-beyond-lasik dept.
Al writes "A woman with a rare, inherited form of blindness is now able to read, thanks to a gene therapy that caused a new fovea — the part of the retina that is most densely populated with photoreceptors — to grow in her eye. The patient suffers from Leber congenital amaurosis, meaning an abnormal protein makes her photoreceptors have a severely impaired sensitivity to light. She received the experimental treatment twelve months ago when physicians injected a gene encoding a functional copy of the protein into a small part of one eye — about eight-to-nine millimeters in diameter. Along with two other patients receiving the same treatment, her eyesight improved after just a few weeks. Now the physicians report that this patient seems to have developed a new fovea, exactly where she received the injection. Because the woman has been effectively blind since birth, the results suggest that the brain is able to adapt to new visual stimuli remarkably quickly."

Comment Re:Anyone who got a techinal description of sugar (Score 1) 268

by adriccom (#28761301) Attached to: Negroponte Sees Sugar As OLPC's Biggest Mistake

You have it right, variously. Sugar's origins led to this state, but it's being rectified.

The OLPC XO software distribution included Sugar. Or was Sugar then, back then before Sugar left the building, and made it into Ubuntu. Now the XO distribution is a "spin" of Fedora that has Sugar installed and configured as default (or it will).

cf: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/F11_for_1.5

Comment Actually, not bad for Prof. N (Score 1) 268

by adriccom (#28760885) Attached to: Negroponte Sees Sugar As OLPC's Biggest Mistake

Seriously, as public statements and press coverage go that is about the best interview of Prof N about OLPC I have ever seen. It was sneaky that the bit the FA is named after is in a pullout outside the main article.

The OLPC XO effort was fantastic and developed some great technology AND a really neat little computer with the most open specifications ever. Sugar's software architecture is still not portable enough and that is a problem, but it is one that could be solved with programmer hours. You buy those with money, and SugarLabs is a charity. So, go code or donate, eh? I'll throw in on a bounty to increase Sugar portability. Get it to build and run natively (not X Window, mind ... there's some native GTK stuff) on Mac OS X 10.3 or newer and I've got $100 USD for you. I expect some other folks will chip in for a similar offer for a version that runs natively on Win32/64 (also no X Window, native GTK exists).

Now, where the heck is My TouchBook! On that note, how does Sugar work on armel, hmm?
Programming

The "Doctor Who" Model of Open Source 116

Posted by kdawson from the chemistry-in-a-phone-booth dept.
Glyn Moody writes "Open source projects are generally fine when there's a long-term leader like Linus; but what happens when nobody is able or willing to run things for extended periods? Peter Murray-Rust explains how the open chemistry group known as the Blue Obelisk has evolved what he calls the 'Doctor Who Model of Open Source': 'You'll recall that every few years something fatal happens to the Doctor and you think he is going to die and there will never be another series. Then he regenerates. The new Doctor has a different personality, a different philosophy (though always on the side of good). It is never clear how long any Doctor will remain unregenerated or who will come after him. And this is a common theme in the Blue Obelisk.' Could other open source projects learn from this experience as long-term leaders start to move on?"

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