Someone on TECHWR-L posted a link to this paper (under the paradoxical title "The Cupertino Effect"), which is about how Excel's autocorrect feature can corrupt statistical analysis of genetic data if/when Excel "makes the wrong assumption" about an entry based on how it looks:

When processing microarray data sets, we recently noticed that some gene names were being changed inadvertently to non-gene names. A little detective work traced the problem to default date format conversions and floating-point format conversions in the very useful Excel program package. The date conversions affect at least 30 gene names; the floating-point conversions affect at least 2,000 if Riken identifiers are included. These conversions are irreversible; the original gene names cannot be recovered.

As the author points out, this can cause gene names to come back in analyses as "unknown," because "[a] default date conversion feature in Excel ... was altering gene names that it considered to look like dates. For example, the tumor suppressor DEC1 ... was being converted to '1-DEC.'"

The authors also note that there is a problem with "RIKEN [4] clone identifiers of the form nnnnnnnEnn" being converted to a floating-point number.

The paper also gives some idea of the devastating scale of the problem and its significance for people doing these sorts of analyses: "A non-expert user might well fail to notice that approximately 3% of the identifiers on a microarray with tens of thousands of genes had been converted to an incorrect form, yet the potential for 2,000 identifiers to be transmogrified without notice is a considerable concern."

As far as I know personally and can glean from the paper, the autocorrect and/or conversion feature is nearly impossible to disable completely, and can only be worked around, possibly unsuccessfully 100% of the time. This suggests that perhaps Excel is not the tool of choice for doing these sorts of analyses. (Does the spreadsheet application in OpenOffice work differently?)

A BIOS update distributed over HP Update is murdering HP laptop wireless cards. HP refuses to admit responsibility or to correct the error in any way. The only solution is to replace the motherboard, which HP will not cover under their warranty. This has been going on for months but I saw another dozen HP laptops with deceased wireless cards this week so I figured I'd mention it again.

Have a nice December 25th, everybody. Especially those of you who are stuck working today. :^)

I work for a small computer store. We give away utility CDs to our customers (or anyone else who wants one) packed with free-to-use or preferably open-source software to go with their Vista computers. (...I know...) Previously, I used CD Interface Studio, but it looks like the suck in Vista and is no longer updated. I tried poking the source code with a stick, but that didn't help.

Does anyone have any recommendations for free-to-use or open-source catalog/utility CD software that would fill the gap? I realize I could just make an html file with links to the installers, but I was hoping for something a little more pro than that.

For the curious, the list of included software: (All of which are free to use, or the free version of that program, or straight up open-source.)

7-Zip, Acrobat (reader), Ad-aware, A-squared, AVG, CCleaner, CDBurnerXP, CDI-Studio, DirectX, DVD Utilities (absolutely does NOT contain DVD Shrink or DVD Fab HD Decrypter, nope not at all), Filezilla, Firefox, foobar2000, Free Download Manager, GNUCash, the hosts file from mvps.org, Irfanview, ISOBuster, iTunes, K-Lite codec pack, a bunch of MS Powertoys (yay tweakui!), Notepad++, OpenOffice, Opera, Par utilities (testing), a folder with some free/open source RPG utilities, Speedfan (regretting this, one nub already borked his computer with it, apparently he thought my "Expert Users Only" warning didn't apply to him), Spybot, TCPView, Thunderbird, Trillian, links to the Tweak Guides, utorrent+installer, VLC, Waste, Winamp, and XNView. Whew. Ohyeah and the tiny windows-based installers for Ubuntu. (8.04 and the new one)

Suggestions for additional software to include on the CD are welcome, too. Just keep in mind it's a CD so it won't be holding full DVDs of Linux any time soon. Other tiny windows-based Linux installers may find their way on there though. ;)

Pudge made a cool change in discussions- if you link to a comment deep inside a thread and click 'More' the sytem is much more intelligent about crawling down and retrieving children, and then parents and grandparents and so forth up the ancestry. So odds are you'll get more related comments sooner.

We now abbreviate journals in the firehose... so they are more like slashdot stories with a Read More link to the full text.

The big user facing change this week was structural: historically we had 2 different "skeletons" on Slashdot, but with this refresh we unified to a single one. This change simplifies maintenance for us quite a bit (maintaining the idle section and the firehose views of the same data was a royal pain).

You also will see some changes to the firehose.pl layout. We're playing with the tab layout a bit, moving some menus around and better integrating the core functions into the site chrome. It's a bit buggy atm, so feel free to email me if you see something wonky. We're extinguishing a few minor brush fires but there's no forest fires that we're aware of.

I recently bought a used notebook. It runs well, but is a little slow, and only has 512mb of RAM. I decided to buy more.

After some googling, I found a good deal on 1 GB DDR stick for notebooks. Here's the site: MemorySuppliers.com The price was right, and shipping was free.

In addition, after ordering, I received an offer for a $15 refund for posting a short message to my blog or personal page. This is the closest I have to a blog, so here it is. If this goes through, I may go get myself another stick, since the notebook maxes at 2 GB.

I'll follow up in comments when I receive my memory.

Zach knows the wind now. I saw him look at the window and see the leaves rustle. He then started making blowing noises. We blow the mobile over his crib whenever we change his diaper, so he knows the blowing noises move objects. But he's translated that to leaves hundreds of feet away through a window. Now I'm not saying he's a genius, but he's pretty awesome.

I've been asked to help out my sister's boss working on their store server. This is a little mom and pop place, but they try to handle their IT intelligently. Their last computer guru moved out of town, so this may lead to some extra cash for me on a semi-regular basis. I'm looking to do a good job.
          There are several things he's looking for, but the main request right now is to upgrade the hard drives. They have a Dell Poweredge server, with two 40 GB IDE drives in a RAID 0 configuration. They're running out of space, and they've bought two 80 GB drives to upgrade with.
          I haven't worked with RAID before. I understand RAID 0 (Oops. I meant RAID 1) is simple mirroring, and I see from their computer's specs that they have a hardware RAID controller. My initial thought was to open the case, pull one of the existing drives (just as if it had gone bad) and place the new drive in the old drive's place. After a rebuild, everything should be fine. Then, same process with the remaining old drive, and a new rebuild. At the end of this process, I expect to have everything working as before, but probably still at the 40 GB capacity. From reading some Dell docs online, I think I can then go in and expand the logical drives to take the full capacity.
          First question, does this sound like it will work? Am I missing something major?
          Second question: There is some reference to adding a hot swappable backup to the RAID 0 configuration. The one concern I have with the steps outlined above is that during the rebuild we don't have a full backup available. Of course, if the rebuild fails, and we haven't made any changes to the data, then we can just pop the old drive back in (I think). Still, if there's a way to alleviate the risk, I'd like to take it. What I'm thinking is putting in a new drive on a third channel, configured as the hot swap. Let it rebuild, then shut down and pull one of the old drives. Put the other new drive in, set as the new hot swap, and wait for the rebuild again. Finally, pull the last old drive, and set the two new drives up with no hot swap. Is this better or worse than my first thought? If better, am I missing anything on this end? I assume that I'd still have to expand the drives after the process to take advantage of the larger space.
          Third question: Am I just crazy, and there's a much simpler solution I've overlooked?

        Any help appreciated

This won't significantly affect most of you, but we have been working on some meta mod changes. The most user visible change is that the UI we used to use was thrown out, and instead we are using one based on the firehose. Subscribers will see it when they go to the old metamod link although users can see it by going to this version of those hose

The first real change is that we've changed the meanings of the UI around. The old system is 'Fair' and 'Unfair' and the new system is '+' and '-'. The meanings are subtly different. You are no longer rating individual 'Insightful' or 'Troll' or whatever... you are now stating basically "Is this comment good or bad for you". Personally, since I find very few Score:5 funny comments to be actually really funny (and not just cliche memes) I '-' most of them. You are encouraged to be harsh if you don't actually think something is insightful or funny, call it such. The system encourages more of what you + and less of what you -.

You are also welcome now to do more than 10 m2 per day... however we internally have diminishing returns after 10, so you can do more, but they start to matter less and less.

There will undoubtedly be bugs so feel free to email me or vroom at slashdot if you find them. Probably next week or so we'll move this out to everyone, so your assistance is appreciated.

Well, for subscribers only this week at least. We have a half dozen minor bugs left in the TODO list, but if you are a paying subscriber you can test it out. It works best if you are using the keybindings to navigate. Pressing 'f' takes you to the next unread comment respecting thread order... so you can press that over and over again.

We also added a thing to 'collapse comments after reading' which I think I might turn of as a default setting soon. This is only usable for subscribers atm as well. But basically, as you navigate through a discussion, it collapses the comments you've read after you move on. This makes it really easy to navigate large discussions without having to scroll over 150 comments you've already read.

we're aware of a number of annoying bugs, but hopefully most of them will be squashed by Pudge for this weeks code refresh. If things are stable, we hope to roll this out for everyone rsn.

also my baby cut his first tooth yesterday. My furniture will never be ungnawed upon again.

My wife and I were excited to see that Disney was bringing back 'family movie night' on ABC this Summer. For both of us that brings back memories of youth watching a movie with (our respective) families after Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, or 60 Minutes had ended.

However, apparently families with young kids are not the target audience Disney Corp. has in mind. For Saturday June 7th, they will have Finding Nemo, which runs just 100 minutes if you watch it uninterrupted. But if you don't own the DVD and want to watch it on ABC instead, you'd better give the kids a can of cola with dinner, because the movie will start at 8 PM Eastern Time and run until 11 PM. I can only assume that the additional 80 minutes will include some cast commentaries, as well as a preview of WALL-E, but what is the point if the kids fall asleep while Marlin and Dory are still stuck in the belly of a whale? You're just going to have to try and rent it or add it to your NetFlix queue so the kids can see the rest of it.

I had such great hopes for Disney when Steve Jobs became it's largest shareholder, I guess my trust was misplaced.

So, later this year I'm having a birthday due to a new age that ends in a zero. This seems to be a popular time for sorrow and wallowing, but I see it as a chance to have fun for a change. Having recently been through my own wedding and being a part-time wedding photographer, I'm tired of attending other people's parties.

So, this year I have asked for a Transformers party. Now, everyone to be invited will be of an adult age, but we're all still kids at heart.

The reason I am posting this is for quirky party suggestions.

Like, pin the $item on the $creature. Instead of pin the tail on the donkey, should we pin the AllSpark on the Optimus Prime? If were inviting less guys and more girls, it might be fun to play "put some clothes onto that girl from the movie" game. Pfft, like girls would willingly come to a Transformers party in the first place.

What about Transformers-themed adult beverages? Can you think of some good drinks (please include at least a basic outline of the ingredients) with a great Transformers name? Like, I'm thinking something with lemonade and calling it a Bumblebee. Should we mix the Everclear into something and make it a Megatron?

"ME GRIMLOCK, ME DRINK BEER."

I'm asking for all of the Transformers party things like plates and napkins and of course the cake, but can you think of any other items that will be needed to make the party a success?

I'm aware links such as these already:

http://transformers.awestores.com/ttc/transformers-party-supplies/cPath/10251.html

http://www.prettypartyplace.com/kid-birthday-party-supply-transformers.html

http://www.parties4kids.com/birthday_partysupplies_cat/transformers_mtv-Transformers.html

And this set available at target, seems like a perfect place for us to start from, but none of these really tell you how to have a party other than to just buy some stuff and let the party happen. Thus, I'm seeking out the nerdiest bunch I know: slashdot.

Suggestions don't have to be limited to the recent theatrical live-action Transformers, the first generation is great, too.

You've got the touch! Now, make the suggestions.

So as we've been migrating the system from the tired old D1 to the exciting and awesome new D2 a number of complaints have come up. I'm going to talk about a couple of them here because I'm really looking for feedback on THESE issues. Please only talk about these points or I will mod you offtopic or troll or something.

The issue is about the use of Flat/Threaded/Nested modes. D2 cleanly replaces both threaded and nested modes- you effectively get nested mode by bringing the 2 sliders together. And threaded mode is vastly more flexible because you can choose the level at which comments are abbreviated or displayed in full text. So users of those modes should be set (obviously there are other reasons not to use D2, I'm just talking about the layouts here tho)

What's left is flat mode, which has a number of sort options. Now flat mode is used by roughly 4% of our active population. When i think about flat mode, I think about 2 reasons you would have to use it:

1. I hate indenting and whitespace. I want a big vertical column now this isn't my bag, but I can understand it and even consider supporting it in D2. I think you sacrifice legibility, but this is a personal preference. It also would be easy to support in D2. Hell, you could probably do it in a greasemonkey script no problem.
2. It's easier to remember your place in flat mode This to me is the only reason to use flat mode- you can reload your page an hour later, find the last comment you read, and pick up where you left off.

Now I Would think that the only reason to use flat mode is #2... except that only a couple hundred Slashdot readers have the 'ignore threads' sort order enabled. So either they don't understand what they are doing, or #1 above is the real reason that they use flat mode.

So in a nutshell, the question I am asking in this journal is 'Why do you use flatmode?' Is it cosmetic? To more easily keep your place in a discussion? Something I'm just missing? We have plans to implement a read/unread state retention for discussions, so maybe would you migrate to a threaded view if that function exists? Or is it purely aesthetic... an irrational hatred of scrollbars and whitespace? :)

The reason this matters is that simply formatting the page flatly is easy. Probably a simple greasemonkey hack or maybe a few lines of CSS. But re-implementing the alternate sort is gonna take some work. And I'm ok with that... except that the logs say that nobody actually USES that sort... they ONLY are using flat mode for the cosmetic reasons.

Speak out! Stay on-topic or you WILL be moderated down.

In-Place Posting is now live for all logged in users. Hopefully there are no surprises. We've found a number of very tiny bugs, but nothing show stopping. We'll leave the link up to the 'classic' reply form for a few weeks. Next week anonymous coward will get the new posting form... hopefully there are no surprises with that.

A few new keybindings aren't documented yet... v (end) t (top) [] change upper threshold and ,. change bottom threshold. Also 'r' opens the new reply box, m opens the mod total thingee.

The only major complaint so far is that the design changes consume a lot more whitespace. I have mixed feelings on the subject, but am aiming to strike a balance. We noticed 2 very clear places where the whitespace is excessive and hopefully that will be fixed RSN. But on the other hand, making deep threads visually clear, and drawing some attention to the 'reply' buttons is beneficial to everyone, so bare with us as we work to strike some sort of balance.

Timely emails from the future. Just the thing for us procrastinators. (archive)