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Submission + - Method to increase oil production 30% in old wells (cnn.com)

Submitted by
Bob the Super Hamste
Bob the Super Hamste writes: "CNN is reporting that the Glori Energy company claims it has a method that could boost oil production from old wells by up to 30%. The method involves adding bacteria to the well that will change the oil viscosity making it easier to pump to the surface in addition to changing the droplet size which also helps bring more oil to the surface. Their method works best with well that use water to increase the pressure. The process also involves injecting nutrients in with the bacteria and water mixture. The company claims that the process doesn't affect the quality of the water being injected and "may" actually produce cleaner water. The new technology was initially developed by the Indian National Oil Company in the 1990's."
Google

Submission + - Google+ goes crowdsourcing (blog.tape.io)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nobody knows where Google+ will lead us. But if you're a startup and looking for professional help in any direction, you may try the "magic of circles" to reach out for help.
IT

Submission + - 10 Hard Truths IT Must Learn To Accept (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan takes a look at the 10 hard truths today's IT organizations must learn to live with. From the proliferation of unsanctioned devices, to compromised networks, to inevitable downtime, to non-self-supporting users, 'the gap between your dreams and cold hard reality just gets wider every day. That doesn't mean you should give up, but it does mean you need to get real about what you can change and what you must accept.'"
Science

Submission + - Becoming a Scientist Over and Over Again (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by purkinje
purkinje writes: Erez Leiberman does physics, yes, but also linguistics, engineering, and molecular biology. He's a scientist, but rather than honing in on one area, he tackles questions that interest him--whatever field they fall in. He's mathematically analyzed the half-lives of verbs, determined how strands of DNA up in a cell's nucleus, and invented a special insole that helps the elderly improve their balance.

Submission + - Dutch to enforce netneutrality by law (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Big news out of the Netherlands this week, where a government minister announced plans to guarantee network neutrality by law. If Parliament approves the amendment to Dutch telecommunications law, and it expected to do so, it would become one of the first countries in the world to legislate against Internet providers who want to charge more for using particular applications or services.

Submission + - Netherlands to introduce net neutrality (tweakers.net)

Submitted by
sheean.nl
sheean.nl writes: "Dutch tech news site Tweakers.net reports that the Netherlands will get a legal guarantee on net neutrality, as far as the minister of economics Verhagen (CDA, Christian Democrats) is concerned. Verhagen will almost fully accept a motion of the opposition parties, although the coalition members are not yet fully convinced.

If accepted, the Netherlands would become the second country after Chili to guarantee net neutrality."

Submission + - Kino.to Raided In Massive Police Operation, Admins (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by freedumb2000
freedumb2000 writes: Europe just witnessed one of the largest piracy-related busts in history with the raid of the popular movie streaming portal Kino.to. More than a dozen people connected to the site were arrested after police officers in Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands raided several residential addresses and data centers. Kino.to hosted no illicit content itself, but indexed material stored on file-hosters and other streaming services.
Security

Submission + - Many Stuxnet Bugs Still Unpatched by Siemens (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The media storm over the Stuxnet worm may have passed, but many of the software holes that were used by the worm remain unpatched and leave Siemens customers open to a wide range of potentially damaging cyber attacks, according to industrial control system expert Ralph Langner.
Langner said that the media paid too much attention to the four, zero day Windows vulnerabilities that enabled the Stuxnet worm, but overlooked the other security holes used by the worm. Unlike the Windows vulnerabilities, which Microsoft quickly fixed, many of the holes in Siemens' products remain unpatched, he contends.

Langner enumerates three types of exploits used by Stuxnet — only one category of which (Windows operating system exploits) have been closed. The other two are Windows applications exploits aimed at Siemens Siemens Simatic Manager and the Siemens WinCC SCADA application, and controller exploits aimed at Siemens S70-300 and 400 series controllers.
Security

Submission + - Most Vulns Used by Stuxnet Worm Remain Unpatched (threatpost.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: The media storm over the Stuxnet worm may have passed, but many of the software holes that were used by the worm remain unpatched and leave Siemens customers open to a wide range of potentially damaging cyber attacks, according to industrial control system expert Ralph Langner.
Writing on his personal blog, Langner said that critical vulnerabilities remain in Windows-based management applications and software used to directly manage industrial controllers by Siemens Inc., whose products were targeted by the Stuxnet worm, Threatpost reports.
Security

Submission + - Sex, Lies and Cyber-crime Surveys (microsoft.com)

Submitted by isoloisti
isoloisti writes: In surveys men claim to have had more female sex partners than women claim male partners, which is impossible. The reason? A few self-described Don Juans who tell whoppers pull the average way up, and errors don't cancel. Cyber-crime estimates are hopelessly exaggerated for exactly the same reason according to a new study to appear at the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security. The authors write: “‘You should never trust user input’ says one standard text on writing secure code. It is ironic then that our cyber-crime survey estimates rely almost exclusively on unverified user input. A practice that is regarded as unacceptable in writing code is ubiquitous in forming the estimates that drive policy." In many cases 75% of the estimate comes from the unverified self-reported answers of one or two people.
Space

Submission + - Earth to be Hit by Biggest Solar Flare in Years

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The sun emitted an unusual solar flare, a small radiation storm and a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME) from a sunspot complex on the solar surface, on Tuesday. The flare peaked at 1:41 a.m. ET, according to NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The US National Weather Service (NWS) said in a statement that the solar flare released radiation not witnessed since 2006, with the present one measured by NASA as M-2 or medium sized solar flare that carries "a substantial coronal mass ejection (CME) ... and is visually spectacular."

Comment Re:"Googling" is a skill now?!? (Score 1) 283

by JoeDuncan (#36369838) Attached to: How To Succeed In IT Without Really Trying

Lol, that's pretty funny! I guess I touched a nerve there eh, because now you're insulting my Googling "skill"!

Look, you're talking about two different things. Points a) and b) above are basically just good research analysis and critical thinking skills - this is not the same thing as:

really damn good with google

Sure, if you have good research analysis and critical thinking skills it can very well make you more effective at using *any* kind of search engine, data index etc...

But that's not what you said. You made a claim about being skilled at using a specific tool, namely Google's search engine. This doesn't necessarily imply being good at research and critical thinking. The only concrete implication a reader can make from a statement of that type is that you consider yourself familiar with how to use tool X.

For example, if I said "I am really damn good at MarioKart", I am making a specific statement about my abilities in a certain video game - it cannot be said that I am making a statement about my general video game, hand-eye coordination or reaction time abilities.

Sure, those things may very well make me more effective at any video game, but you can't draw that conclusion from that statement because it's not a necessary implication. I could be crappy at every other video game and have poor hand-eye coordination and reaction time, but yet have played 10,000 hours of MarioKart and memorized every level, thus still making me "really damn good at MarioKart".

If you simply mistyped and wrote that you were "really damn good with google" when what you actually meant was that you were "really damn good at research and critical thinking" that's fine, everyone makes mistakes. It was simply a mis-communication on your part. But don't pretend that the two are one and the same and then jump down my throat because I said that "Googling" doesn't qualify as a skill!

The difference between how you use google and how I use google is the difference between a teenager on facebook and a research librarian

This last bit is the funniest!!! You have absolutely *zero* evidence on which to make this statement. You know precisely nothing about me - for all you know I am a research librarian!

I certainly hope you did not make it a habit of making such unqualified and baseless assertions while you were on the job - it shows poor critical thinking skills...

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