Comment Re:Greedy (Score 1) 199
Well, it's $5 a month. Lots of people spend about that at Starbucks every *day* of the week, so I don't it's really a show-stopper price...
Rails 3.0 Released 110
An anonymous reader writes "After two years of gestation, 4 betas, 2 release candidates and thousands of commits by 1600+ contributors, the result of the succesful merge of the Merb and Rails frameworks (and teams) is now out and ready to transport your web applications on all new shiny tracks."
Persistent Home Videoconferencing Solution? 253
An anonymous reader writes "I'm moving very soon for work, and will be several hundred miles away from my young family for six to nine months. Obviously I'll travel back as often as possible, and there's always Skype and XBLA video, but the whole 'now it's time to talk to dad' thing seems ... a little weak. I was wondering the Slashdot community could help me come up with a more persistent solution. Ideally what I want is an always-on connection between a pc/monitor/camera/speakers in my old kitchen and my new kitchen, so if we're in the kitchens, we can see each other and interact semi-normally. (We're a kitchen-focused family.) Most solutions I can find time out pretty quick, or require some knowledge on the part of the users, and the tech-savvy people are only going to be in one kitchen, to put it politely!" (Read on for a few more details.)
Many Hackers Accidentally Send Their Code To Microsoft 220
joshgnosis writes "When hackers crash Windows in the course of developing malware, they'll often accidentally agree to send the virus code straight to Microsoft, according to senior security architect Rocky Heckman. 'It's amazing how much stuff we get.' Heckman also said Microsoft was a common target for people testing their attacks. 'The first thing [script kiddies] do is fire off all these attacks at Microsoft.com. On average we get attacked between 7000 and 9000 times per second.'"
Drunken Employee Shoots Server
309
Target Practice writes "A drunken mortgage worker at RANLife Home Loans decided for unknown reasons to take out the company's $100,000 server with a .45-caliber automatic, blaming the damage on an imagined assailant who: mugged him, assaulted him with his own weapon, drugged him, and then broke into his office to shoot said server. According to acquaintances, he had threatened earlier that day to shoot the server and maybe himself."
Comment Re:Confusing symbols (Score 4, Informative) 1268
No, we use 'x' over here, too.
Comment teachers (Score 3, Insightful) 1268
Well, no one was born knowing what the equals sign represents. In fact, it's been around only for 500 years. My personal opinion is that until we start forcing graduates of US Education programs to take at least a little math beyond passing out of algebra, the cycle is doomed to repeat.
FTFA, 'Parents and teachers can help the students. The two researchers suggest using mathematics manipulatives and encourage teachers "to read professional journals, become informed about the problem and modify their instruction."'
Uh huh, see point 1 = 1 + 0 above.
Comment Re:less / fewer (Score 1) 416
The Lund's grocer I shop at in Northeast Minneapolis does it just this way. Another reason I feel justified spending 20% more for my food
The fact that they bag your groceries is another reason. It's common in MN to have to do it yourself.
Comment less / fewer (Score 2, Interesting) 416
I hope they went to every store with an "express lane for less than 10 items". Shudder.
Comment Re:Stickers & Insurance (Score 1) 825
Surely there must be some studies that have randomly assigned security vs. no security to properties in neighborhoods, and then tracked theft?
Comment Re:Terminal Degree and Biostat's (Score 1) 150
I can second this. I did a Master's in Biostatistics, and have a computing background from undergrad. It sounds like this would be a good fit for you, since you're working in a related field already. In the five years I've been working at universities since my Master's, I've had a lot of different experiences, ranging from large clinical trials to military projects. Your computing background will make you a very valuable asset to almost any group you work in, as a lot of stats people are entering from a math background and have little formal programming experience. It's a really good fit for me, because it allows me to balance my time between consulting, designing studies, and programming to analyze them. R and SAS are the two big programs that people in biostat tend to use. I'd look into it if I were you.
Wine 1.2 Released 427
David Gerard writes "Stuck with that one Windows app you can't get rid of? Rejoice — Wine 1.2 is officially released! Apart from running pretty much any Windows application on Unix better than 1.0 (from 2008), major new features include 64-bit support, bi-directional text, and translation into thirty languages. And, of course, DirectX 9 is well-supported and DirectX 10 is getting better. Packages should hit the distros over the weekend, or you can get the source now."
Google Acquires Metaweb 63
eldavojohn writes "A startup called Metaweb (looks like an ontological, entity-based approach to Web 2.0 tagging) has been acquired by Google. You can find out what they're about from a super marketing fluff video they put together. The neat thing about Metaweb is that the database of entities it has is free. Will Google be able to make Metaweb work on their omniscient scale, or was this just Google making sure a startup doesn't become yet another player in search?"
BP Claims Gulf Well Has Been Stopped 601
An anonymous reader writes with word that BP has announced the Gulf oil spill has been stopped.
Another reader adds more detail: "The last valve on the new cap has been closed, and the flow of oil and gas into the sea has stopped. That doesn't mean it's over. It is unclear whether the steel casing deep in the well can contain the pressure. The risk is that it could burst, which would eventually cause a rupture on the sea floor that would make things much messier to deal with. However, they're monitoring the pressure buildup carefully and if the pressure holds over the next 48 hours (indicating there is no leak below the sea floor), they'll assess what to do next. If it doesn't hold at the expected readings, then they'll re-attach the pipe used for producing to the surface and start collecting again. Regardless of what happens the relief well still has to be completed to permanently plug the well with cement, which could take a couple more weeks."
Proximity Sensor Presents Latest iPhone 4 Issue 446
tekgoblin sends news of the latest iPhone 4 glitch being reported in user forums and elsewhere: the phone's proximity sensor seems not to be detecting nearby faces, as it is designed to do, in order to deactivate the screen during a call. The result is often unintended input. "On the iPhone 3GS, the proximity sensor was located to the left of the earpiece speaker. But that space on iPhone 4 is now occupied by the front-facing camera, and the proximity sensor is above the earpiece. What's not clear is whether the iPhone 4 screen's misbehavior is due to the new location of the sensor, or it's because Apple tweaked the sensor's responses in [some] way."
