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Submission + - Labor Department Offers Cash Prizes to Geeks (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
carolsim
carolsim writes: "The Labor Department is getting into the contest business, announcing $70,000 in prizes for software developers who can help get its often-arcane but important data to consumers.

The awards will go to the developers whose applications best connect unemployed workers with jobs and best inform workers and consumers about hotels, stores and restaurants that may have bad safety records"
Google

Submission + - Google+ Uses Google Wave and jQuery (hornsby.ws)

Submitted by
thekaleb
thekaleb writes: "Google Wave may not be fully deceased. It looks as if it is being used as the backbone for Google+. Another weird twist is that Google is using the jQuery JavaScript library to run the site. Note, I am the author of the article."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Banks' Big Upgrade: Meet Real-Time Processing (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "It has been years since the banking industry made any large investments in core IT systems, but some of the largest financial services firms in the U.S. are now in the midst of rolling out multi-million dollar projects, say industry experts. About a decade ago, they began replacing decades-old Cobol-based core systems, with open, Web-enabled apps. Now, they are spending more than $100,000,000 to replace aging systems converting to real-time mobile applications for retail services such as savings and checking accounts and lending systems. The idea behind going real-time: Grab more business — and money — from customers. 'Five of the top 20 banks are engaged in some sort of core banking replacement and we expect to see another three or four in next 12 months,' said Fiaz Sindhu, who leads Accenture's North American core banking practice. 'They're looking at those upgrades as a path to growth.'"

Submission + - Defendant Says Righthaven Should Pay Legal Fees

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Steve Green writes that on June 20 District Court Judge Philip Pro found that Kentucky resident Wayne Hoehn was protected by fair use in posting a Las Vegas Review-Journal column on a sports website; and that Righthaven didn’t have standing to sue over the post. Now Hoehn’s attorneys have submitted a $34,000 bill to Pro and asked that Judge Pro require Righthaven to pay it. "At this point, the court must consider whether to grant Hoehn his attorneys’ fees as a `prevailing party,’” his attorneys wrote of the Vietnam War veteran. "If the court fails to do so, a terrible injustice will be done, and the moral of Mr. Hoehn’s story will be that standing up for what is right will bankrupt you – so better to give your money to any bully with a summons in hand. The fact is, when Mr. Hoehn stood up for fair use, he stood up for all of us. His contribution to the public good should not be met with indifference." The $34,000 could be just the tip of the iceberg for Righthaven, should the Democratic Underground prevail in what likely will be a far larger fee demand. At least three other defendants whose cases were dropped or dismissed – Brian Hill, Michael Leon and Denise Nichols – are also demanding their fees be paid."
NASA

Submission + - STS-135 ET to Transmit Video During Re-Entry

Submitted by k6mfw
k6mfw writes: STS-135 External Tank to Transmit Video During Re-Entry

http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?303039-Space-Shuttle-s-ET138-Video-downlink
M0ODV on QRZ.com writes:
âNASA engineers have installed a camera on the external fuel tank (ET) which will transmit live pictures of its destructive burn up on re-entry. The live FM transmitted signal will be on 2272.5 MHz at 10 watts. The camera captures images at (NTSC) frame rate of 30 frames per second and will burn up over the Pacifc Ocean over the east coast of New Zealand, entry interface (EI) will begin at 400,000 ft over southern Australia and can be seen with the naked eye.”

STS-135: External Tank death camera ready
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/06/sts-135-atlantis-tcdt-external-tank-death-camera-ready/

“We have not yet been able to analytically confirm if a plasma blackout condition will present a TV reception problem prior to breakup.”

STS-135: Tank Camera modification aimed at filming footage of ET-138’s death
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/06/sts-135-camera-modification-aimed-filming-footage-et-138s-death/

“The prospect of footage from the tank itself — as it vents and starts to disintegrate — on the final ever shuttle mission, may not be up to the high standards of the Soyuz ‘Flyabout’ footage of Endeavour and the ISS, but it would provide a potentially stunning viewpoint of the final Shuttle ET, prior to its demise.”
Music

Submission + - Does your iTunes listening follow Zipf's law? (zipf.it)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Worried about whether your iTunes listening habits follow Zipf's law? By exporting your iTunes library as an .xml file and sending it by email to zipf.it.submit@gmail.com (more details on the site), you can find out. The site creates a custom analysis page based on your listening habits.
Censorship

Submission + - Dutch ISP Hacked in Retaliation for Censorship (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds
Dangerous_Minds writes: ZeroPaid is reporting on the latest hack involving Dutch ISP Nimbuzz. Anonymous said that the hack is in retaliation for it's cooperation with the government to block certain forms of traffic. They have also threatened to release over 120GB of source code at a later time. This latest development is particularly interesting given that when LulzSec was hacking away at various entities, it, along with Anonymous' existence, scared an Australian ISP to the point of hesitating on government mandated censorship.
Cloud

Submission + - Microsoft Pays University $250K to use Office 365 (winbeta.org)

Submitted by
BogenDorpher
BogenDorpher writes: "Microsoft has offered to give the University of Nebraska $250,000 dollars to make the switch from IBM Lotus Notes to a much more feature-rich Office 365, which offers newer technology, greater flexibility, and operational savings. Microsoft did this in hopes that the University would not make the transition over to Google Apps."

Submission + - Poor data migration testing = public embarrassment (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by
sbjornda
sbjornda writes: "The project was months overdue, so they decided to cut back on testing the migrated data. The problem is, the organization is Statistics Canada, and data is their core business. The result: Messed-up calculations for 2010 economic growth indicators for many Canadian provinces. Saskatchewan was incorrectly reported as 1.4% growth; the revised calculations show 4.4%.

This goes back to the old saying: The data belongs to the organization, not to the application. Software comes and software goes, but this data will be used by researchers for decades. Get the priority straight — it's about the data, stupid!"
Google

Submission + - Google To Discontinue Blogger & Picasa Brands (digitizor.com) 1

Submitted by dkd903
dkd903 writes: Google plans to discontinue it’s Photo sharing platform Picasa and the blogging platform Blogger and will re-introduce them as Google Photos and Google Blogs. All this forms a part of the massive feature addition to Google’s new social network – Google+

Submission + - Man gets past airport security with invalid pass (msn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi cleared security at John F. Kennedy International Airport on June 24 and successfully boarded Virgin America flight 415 — even though his boarding pass was not issued in his name and was for a flight the day before...But neither Virgin America nor the Transportation Security Administration noticed that Noibi's identification — a University of Michigan student card — did not match the name on his boarding pass." — Can we PLEASE get rid of the TSA and the over the top security checks now? Please?
Facebook

Submission + - Researchers discovered Facebook spoofing attack (mayscript.com)

Submitted by
Errk
Errk writes: "Security researchers at Carnegie Mellon University recently demonstrated a spoofing attack on Facebook's login button. The demo spoofs only the Chrome popup interface on OS X, but can be extended to spoof multiple platforms. Thankfully, this type of attack has yet to appear in the wild... or has it?"

Submission + - Is there a formula for a hit song? (google.com) 1

Submitted by moveoverrover
moveoverrover writes: What happens when two Rutgers Grad students analyze 50 years of Billboard Top 10 hits with MIT offshoot Echo Nest's API and turn the data into visualizations for an assignment? Great looking visualizations for one, and a fascinating look at 50 years of Pop music at the data level. Posing the question,"Is there a formula for a hit song?" The students write,

  "What if we knew, for example, that 80% of the Billboard Hot 100 number one singles from 1960-2010 are sung in a major key with an average of 135 beats per minute, that they all follow a I-III-IV chord progression in 4/4 time signature, and that they all follow a "verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus" sequence structure?

  Using data extracted by Echo Nest on tempo, duration, time signature, musical key, as well as subjective criteria like "energy" and "danceability," the pair generated a number of visualizations with Google Motion Charts (warning: slow) and "(some) Tableau Results" for everyone to see and investigate. Curious about tempo and song duration trends in Pop music over 50 years? Correlation between record label and song tempo? They have it. Do you have your own burning question or visual relationship to investigate?? Download the core data, the Tableau reader and look at it any way you want.

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