mindriot - Slashdot User

Submission + - Wallstreet Quant Funds Fail (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @12:08PM

eldavojohn writes: "You may remember the article covering AI on Wallstreet but there's an interesting problem that came with the recent 387 point drop in the Dow Jones — too many quant funds were trying to take the same exit door at the wrong time. From the article, "Last week, Goldman Sachs said its Global Alpha quant fund had lost 27 percent of its value this year because its computers failed to anticipate what the firm called '25 percent standard deviation moves' or events so rare Goldman had seen them only twice before in the firm's history." Quant funds normally thrive on tiny deviations in the market for short term trades but evidently this past deviation was not only too much but unforeseen. Is this a case of something that's too good to be true (30% return) becoming so big that everyone's doing it and it is too good to be true?"

Submission + - Fark/Fox Followup

Submitted by

Rick Romero

on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @11:59AM

Rick Romero writes: "Slashdot discussed how Fox hacked Fark last week. Valleywag now has a followup with detailed log data that strongly implicates Darrell Phillips (new media manager at WHBQ Fox13, a News Corp.-owned TV station in Memphis, Tenn.) as the perp/cracker — his blog has gone dark.

Why this was done is still puzzling — stealing the Fark source code doesn't make any logical sense. Was he tring to figure out some way to generate more traffic to his new blog ... or maybe he was "just a pure idiot" as theorized by Fark?

Regardless, as a forensic sysadmin, I'm getting a kick out of all this discussion on this topic from people who don't know what they are talking about — what does Slashdot think?"

Submission + - Five Stupidest Startups of the Summer

Submitted by

theodp

on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @11:56AM

theodp writes: "Get paid fifty cents to use our social network! Put speech bubbles on photos! Over at Valleywag, Nick Douglas shares his picks for the dumbest dot-com startups of the summer. Got any other contenders?"

Submission + - Paramount CTO discusses why they dumped Blu-Ray (pcworld.com)

Submitted by angus_rg on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @11:55AM

angus_rg writes: Alan Bell, executive vice president and chief technology officer for Paramount Pictures, discusses the reasons behind backing HD-DVD, none of which revolve around being paid to choose a side.

Submission + - Voyager 2 30 years (nasa.gov)

Submitted by

Mick Ohrberg

on Monday August 20, 2007 @02:48PM

Mick Ohrberg writes: "The Voyager 2 spacecraft (part of the ongoing Voyager Mission) today celebrates 30 years of faithful service, by far surpassing the 4 years that was its inteded lifespan. Voyager 2 is today 7.8 billion miles from the sun, placing it almost as far out as the heliopause. At the speed of light that's about 12 hours away, and it's clocking about 1 million miles per day. Voyager 1, launched a couple of weeks after Voyager 2, is at 9.7 billion miles from the sun the farthest man-made object. So when are we going to get around to sending up Voyager 6?"

Submission + - Frozen Smoke (AreoGel) New Miricle Substance (timesonline.co.uk) 1

Submitted by thejuggler on Monday August 20, 2007 @02:33PM

thejuggler writes: Scientists hail 'frozen smoke' as material that will change world. A MIRACLE material for the 21st century could protect your home against bomb blasts, mop up oil spillages and even help man to fly to Mars. Aerogel, one of the world's lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.

I had to keep checking to make sure I wasn't reading The Onion. It seems that this AeroGel can save "The World" by stopping global warming, saving whales and polar bears, eliminating our need for oil. Never has so much been said about something that isn't even there (or at least 99%) of isn't there.

Submission + - Microsoft delays release of Office for Mac 2008

Submitted by Chelsea on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @02:21AM

Chelsea writes: Mac users must wait until next year for fresh versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint: Microsoft has moved its intended launch of Office for Mac 2008 to January from the second half of this year. "We had hoped to hit the Christmas selling season, but now we hope to target Macworld" in January, said Craig Eisler, who became general manager of the Mac business unit at Microsoft six weeks ago. "We, as a group, were not satisfied with product quality."

Submission + - DRM Scorecard: Hackers 1000, Industry Zero 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @09:00AM

An anonymous reader writes: InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe put together a scorecard which makes the obvious but interesting point that, when you list every major DRM technology implemented to "protect" music and video, they've all been cracked. This includes Apple's FairPlay, Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, the old-style Content Scrambling System (CSS) used on early DVDs and the new AACS for high-definition DVDs. And of course there was the Sony Rootkit disaster of 2005. Can anyone think of a DRM technology which hasn't been cracked, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't the industry just give up and go DRM-free?

Submission + - The death of the trackball? 2

Submitted by Loconut1389 on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @08:28AM

Loconut1389 writes: I've been an avid mouse user for years, but lately all of the wrist movements have added up and combined with a desire for some added precision when not using my tablet in photoshop, I decided to purchase a large trackball. Logitech makes a few with a small, thumb controlled ball, but it looked like you'd get a tired thumb and have no added precision. After searching around, it seems that the only large one really available is a Kensington for about $90. Only CompUSA seemed to even carry the kensington in-store (and had none in stock).

After ordering one online and using it for a few days now, I don't know how I ever lived with a mouse. The trackball has better precision, less wrist movement, and even gaming is pretty cool/easy with it (can spin it to whip around real quick, etc). All that said, it seems like trackballs have all but vanished except in medical fields (sonograms, etc) and perhaps graphic arts. I'm left insanely curious why trackballs haven't resurfaced now that optical technologies have fixed the main problems of old trackballs (and mice). Do you use a trackball? If so, are you in graphic design?

Submission + - Ubuntu Linux vs. Mac OS X (informationweek.com)

Submitted by on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @08:25AM

An anonymous reader writes: An article on InformationWeek pits an Apple user against an Ubuntu Linux user (although he talks about other distros as well) as to which OS makes a better desktop operating system. As might be expected, the conclusion seems to be "different strokes for different folks," but it's interesting to see Microsoft cut (mostly) out of the equation.

Submission + - Finally a detergentless washing machine

Submitted by

Deepa

on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @08:19AM

Deepa writes: "There is a new way of washing clothes (if that's what you call it), washing it without soap! Haier's WasH20 washing machine does not need soap. As if added fragrance, germfree, odor free and stain free washing were not enough; now we got to cope with soap free as well! The WasH20 washing machine works by breaking down water molecules into OH- and H+ ions; the stains on the linens are "attracted and retained by ions of OH-, while the clothes are sterilized by the H+ ions.""

Submission + - thinkgeek sells toy: code for it, make money. (thinkgeek.com)

Submitted by

dsmall

on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @08:03AM

dsmall writes: "ThinkGeek's latest catalog has the Neuros (see them at http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/8af5/ )... The Neuros, a media device with a twist. It arrives without all the code to make it fully work. If you submit the code to make it work, you get paid.
From Neuros: "These bounties are a community style thing that is just a modest way to put a little money back into the Neuros community as a token for our appreciation. We hope and expect for people to collaborate, split bounties and credit and share information, etc. The deliverables and rules are sketchy and the interpretation is completely subject to the whim of the selection committee"
YouTube or Google video Browser Bounty: $1000
Flickr Photo Browser Bounty: $600
Implement a wireless remote using a WiFi PDA (or PSP) as the remote. Bounty: $500
TiVo style functionality for radio. Hook up the OSD to a FM/AM or Satellite receiver and do timed recordings or FF/RW and Pause Live Radio. Bounty: $700
Voip on the OSD. Plug a USB phone into the OSD and make calls without touching any of your PCs. Bounty: $500"
Might be interesting if you have too much time on your hands and are looking to make a quick Euro."

Submission + - Skype also affected by supposed Firefox bug

Submitted by

juct

on Monday July 30, 2007 @12:44PM

juct writes: "The latest security problem associated with URL handling seems to be a Windows problem rather than one of Firefox. As heise Security found out, other applications like Skype and Miranda show the same behaviour as Firefox: if Internet Explorer 7 is installed on a Windows XP system, a click on certain URLs can launch other applications like the Windows calculator. Problematic protocols include mailto:, nntp:, news: snews: and telnet:."

Submission + - First Person Perspective Pinball Machine

Submitted by pigeontheory on Sunday July 29, 2007 @12:17PM

pigeontheory writes: The Furminator is a First Person Perspective Pinball machine based on the Terminator 2 Pinball Machine. The construction is a pinball machine housed into a large box built onto a height adjustable pole and fits on the head of the player! Unlike an ordinary pinball machine, the player's head becomes immersed into the machine with a completely different kind of view than a typical pinball player would see. Since the playing field is all the player can see, the flippers are controlled by trigger buttons on two joysticks. There are several static cameras capturing all aspects of the game for observers to see. At 50 cents a game for five balls, you will either get an overwhelming rush of pinball or a huge headache!

Submission + - Bush calls for retroactive legalization of illegal (pressesc.com)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Sunday July 29, 2007 @12:09PM

amigoro writes: "President Bush today asked for more powers to wiretap without warrants that would retroactively legalize the unlawful National Security Agency wiretapping, which the President ordered in 2005."

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