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Science

Submission + - The world's most powerful superconducting camera p (techradar.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The world's most powerful submillimeter camera, made with 10,000 superconducting detectors, is now operational on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii. This new camera can map the sky in the submillimeter hundreds of times faster than previous instruments, providing an enormous leap in the ability to study planet, star, and galaxy formation from dust and gases. And it uses 10,000 advanced superconducting detectors operating at just a tenth of a degree Kelvin above absolute zero. That's cold.
IBM

Submission + - IBM Watson to battle patent trolls (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "IBM’s Watson is made of many parts: speech recognition, natural language processing, machine learning, and data mining. All of these factors were perfectly combined to beat Ken Jennings in Jeopardy, and now each of these components are slowly finding their way into other applications. Health plan company WellPoint, for example, is using Watson to investigate patient records to improve diagnosis, and in a self-referential, possibly universe-destroying twist, IBM itself is using Watson to help sell Watson (and other IBM products) to other companies. Now, using Watson’s data mining and natural language talents, IBM has created the Strategic IP Insight Platform, or SIIP, a tool that has already scanned millions of medical patents and journals for the sake of improving drug discovery — and in the future, it's easy to see how the same tool could be used to battle patent trolling, too."
Programming

Submission + - Java apps have most flaws, Cobol least (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: An analysis of 745 applications for violations of good architectural and coding practices, found that Java applications had the most problems and Cobol-built systems, the least. Some 365 million lines of code were analyzed by Cast Software, which makes tools for this, to assess “technical debt,” or the cost to fix the violations. Java was calculated at $5.42 per line of code, while Cobol did best at $1.26. Cobol code had the least number of violations because programmers “have been beating on it for 30 years,” said Cast. As far as Java goes, “there are many people going into Java now that really don’t have strong computer science backgrounds,” said its chief scientist, Bill Curtis.
Google

Submission + - Researchers Expanding Diff, Grep Unix Tools (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "At the Usenix Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference, being held this week in Boston, two Dartmouth computer scientists presented variants of the grep and diff Unix command line utilities that can handle more complex types of data. The new programs, called Context-Free Grep and Hierarchical Diff, will provide the ability to parse blocks of data rather than single lines. The research has been funded in part by Google and the U.S. Energy Department."

Submission + - Why must you spend money on PC Cleaning? (letsconvo.com)

Submitted by craibzcvir
craibzcvir writes: What exactly is PC cleaning? The majority of people may believe that clearing your PC entails tidying redundant or unused objects off the hard drive of a processor. However, that is just not the case. Dirt and fragments could carry out actual destruction to PC appliances and other electronics. Computer systems possess fans that pull air in to cool down the motherboard and CPU
Red Hat Software

Submission + - How can I justify using Red Hat when CentOS exists (centos.org) 7

Submitted by Bocaj
Bocaj writes: I recently spec'd out a large project for our company that included software from Red Hat. It came back from the CIO with everything approved except I have to use CentOS. Why? Because "it's free Red Hat." Personally I really like the CentOS project because it puts enterprise class software in the hands of people who might not otherwise afford it. We are not those people. We have money. In fact I questioned the decision by asking why the CIO was willing to spend money on another very similar project and not this one. The answer was "because there is no free alternative." I know this has come up before and I don't want to beat a dead horse, but this is still a very persistent issue. Our CIO is convinced that technical support for any product is worthless. He's will to spend money on "one-time" software purchases, but nothing that is an annual subscription. There is data to support that the Red Hat subscription is cheaper that many other up-front paid software products but not CentOS. The only thing it lacks is support, which the CIO doesn't want. Help?

Submission + - Droughts linked to global warming (wired.com)

Submitted by Layzej
Layzej writes: Two new papers indicate that we are likely already seeing some of the predicted impacts of global warming, The first used Monte Carlo simulations to analyze how many new record events you expect to see in a time series with a trend. They applied the technique to the unprecedented Russian heat wave of July 2010, which killed 700 people and contributed to soaring wheat prices. According to the analysis, there’s an 80 percent chance that climate change was responsible. The authors describe the methods and how they improved on previous studies here. The second studied Wintertime droughts in the Mediterranean region. They found that 'the magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone. This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region’s climate to normal.'

Submission + - Anonymous takes on a Mexican drug cartel (chron.com) 1

Submitted by NarcoTraficante
NarcoTraficante writes: After one of their members was kidnapped in Veracruz, Mexico by the Zetas drug cartel, Mexican Anonymous members have issued an ultimatum to the Zetas in a recently posted YouTube video (Spanish). The video demands release of the kidnapped member and threatens to publish information of cartel members and affiliates in Veracruz if the victim is not released by November 5. The Houston Chronicle article warns that there will be bloodshed if Anonymous publishes information on the Zeta's operations, either perpetrated by rival cartels or reprisal attacks by the Zetas themselves.
Facebook

Submission + - Google+ loses 60% of active users (theinquirer.net) 2

Submitted by tech4
tech4 writes: Despite users curiosity around Google+, it seems like most Google+ users just wanted to see the platform and then returned to Facebook. 'Google has lost over 60 per cent of its active users on its social network Google+, according to a report by Chitika Insights, raising questions about how well it is doing against its rival, Facebook. Despite the clear interest in an alternative to Facebook, it does not appear that the people joining are staying around and actively using the web site. Google's problem is not getting users in the first place, it seems, but rather keeping them after they have arrived. For now it appears that a lot of users are merely curious about Google+, but return to the tried and tested format of Facebook when the lustre fades. The problem is that Facebook is not going to rest on its laurels while Google attempts to get the advantage. Already it has added features inspired by Google+, particularly in terms of improving the transparency of its privacy options.'
Iphone

Submission + - Why iPhone 4S IS a big deal (malenkebarnhart.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The iPhone 4S has been universally panned since its announcement, but it offers a collection of new features that more than make up for the lack of a new form factor.
Java

Submission + - Lots of Java Roadmap News Coming out of JavaOne (adtmag.com)

Submitted by msmoriarty
msmoriarty writes: According to this article, here's what Oracle has announced at this year's JavaOne so far: "the availability of an early access version of JDK 7 for the Mac OS, plans to 'bridge the gap' between Java ME and Java SE, an approach to modularizing Java SE 8 that will rely on the Jigsaw platform, a new project that aims to use HTML5 to bring Java to Apple's iOS platform, the availability of JavaFX 2.0, a pending proposal to open source that technology, gearing up Java EE for the cloud, and a delay in the release of Java 8."
Businesses

Submission + - Kinda Anti-Competitive (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by mr crypto
mr crypto writes: When Google created Places it had an eminently sensible type of crowd-sourcing in mind. The site contains millions of listings, and when owners close without updating their profile, the job falls to customers to keep information current. But like any open system, this one can be abused. Search engine consultants say that closing a business on Google has become an increasingly common tactic among unscrupulous competitors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/technology/closed-in-error-on-google-places-merchants-seek-fixes.html?_r=1&hp
Python

Submission + - MSFT wants your feedback on its new Python IDE (codeplex.com) 1

Submitted by phoolishcyrus
phoolishcyrus writes: Dear /. — would you kindly take a look at our little project: PTVS — Python Tools for Visual Studio? It helps you develop Python (using any interpreter, not just IronPython) & comes with a few other goodies. Spare no punches.
Security

Submission + - There's Been a Leak at WikiLeaks 2

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: German paper Der Freitag claims it has uncovered a batch of online unredacted diplomatic cables that came from WikiLeaks. Editor Steffen Kraft said he found a "password protected csv file" that contained a 1.73GB cache of diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks. Its pages contained "named or otherwise identifiable 'informers' and 'suspected intelligence agents' from Israel, Jordan, Iran, and Afghanistan.
China

Submission + - Turning Chinese Piracy Into Revenue (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Weak penalties and a lack of enforcement have made China a hotspot for software piracy, but it is possible to turn some pirated software into sales, says Vic DeMarines, vice president of products for V.i. Labs, a company that helps makers of engineering and design software track the unlicensed use of their products. Forty of V.i. Labs' clients use code to track when an installed application shows signs its a pirated copy. The data collected makes a record of what organizations in China are using unlicensed copies across how many different PCs. They can then use the data to reach out to those organizations, who might not be aware they are using unlicensed software. 'We think that's a better way to reduce piracy overall,' says DeMarines. 'You need to target the organizations that should have the ability to pay license versus going after individual users or the people who crack the software.'"

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