pruneau - Slashdot User

Submission + - Who needs Google, when you have 'Knowledge In' (iht.com)

Submitted by

pruneau

on Tuesday October 09, 2007 @01:24PM

pruneau writes: ""No matter how powerful Google's search engine may be, it doesn't have enough Korean-language data to trawl to satisfy South Korean customers," said Wayne Lee, an analyst at Woori Investment and Securities.

Naver's success surprised many. When NHN, an online gaming company, set up the search portal in 1999, the site looked like a grocery store where most of the shelves were empty. Like Google, Naver found that with few people other than Koreans using the language, there simply was not enough Korean text in cyberspace to make a Korean search engine a viable business.

"So we began creating Korean-language text," said Lee Kyung Ryul, an NHN spokesman. "At Google, users basically look for data that already exists on the Internet. In South Korea, if you want to be a search engine, you have to create your own database.""

Submission + - NetBSD 4.0 Released (netbsd.org)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday September 05, 2007 @10:18AM

eldavojohn writes: "NetBSD 4.0 has been released. Significant changes listed here."

Submission + - Big Blue set to go Big Green

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:54PM

coondoggie writes: "Looks like Big Blue wants to be Big Green. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that IBM tomorrow will launch a major push to help customers cut their data center energy bills and redesign their data centers to be more environmentally friendly. IBM is calling its plan "project Big Green," and is comparing it to the commitment it made 10 years ago to embrace the Internet and later Linux free software, both for its own use and as a service business for corporate and government customers, the WSJ says. The service will be manned by 1,000 services experts from its Global Service division. According to the WSJ, IBM will says it expects to be able to double the current computing capacity of its own data centers by 2010 without using additional energy. It said that would avoid about $500 million in electricity costs it would otherwise have endured. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1500 3"

Submission + - PCMCIA WiMax Card Finally?

Submitted by

livnah

on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:53PM

livnah writes: "In a press release last week (http://www.clearwire.com/company/news/05_01_07.ph p), Clearwire announced that they'd be offering their customers WiMax connectivity via a new Motorola Type-II PCMCIA card at some date later this year. From the release:

The FCC's approval of our laptop card is a significant milestone in bringing to market a 'true broadband' wireless service with a device that facilitates even greater portability than our existing modem permits," said Perry Satterlee, Clearwire president and chief operating officer. "We expect the new laptop card to broaden our potential customer base with more opportunities for customers to access and experience our fast, simple, portable, reliable and affordable wireless broadband services."

Submission + - Work is work, right?

Submitted by

livnah

on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:47PM

livnah writes: "In a recent AskSlashdot posting (http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/09/1 728252), Pikoro asked what to do or where to go when he hits the top of the IT food-chain and finds that his work is "more work than play". Is it possible that in today's world we're overlooking that work is ... work? Granted, work should be as enjoyable as possible — when you enjoy your work your productivity increases — but are we expecting too much these days? Do we need to re-evaluate our requirement for a high joy-factor while in the workplace?"

Submission + - Eight-core computing

Submitted by Alan on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:43PM

Alan writes: FiringSquad just posted a review of the Intel V8 Platform, a dual quad-core Xeon system. With 8 total CPU cores, this system has more computational horsepower than most of the supercomputers on the original Top 100 List from 1993! What was surprising is that more and more applications are taking advantage of multicore processors — Excel 2007 is multicore aware and it makes good use of the additional processing power. However, even embarassingly parallel problems failed to scale well on 8 cores when memory bandwidth is limited.

Submission + - Shredded secret police files being reassembled

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:17PM

An anonymous reader writes: German researchers at the Frauenhofer Institute said Wednesday that they were launching an attempt to reassemble millions of shredded East German secret police files using complicated computerized algorithms. The files were shredded as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and it became clear that the East German regime was finished. Panicking officials of the Stasi secret police attempted to destroy the vast volumes of material they had kept on everyone from their own citizens to foreign leaders.

Submission + - WaterCap - new approach to text CAPTCHA

Submitted by

Pavel Simakov

on Monday May 07, 2007 @10:10PM

Pavel Simakov writes: "This is a story about WaterCap — new, simple and strong CAPTCHA image generator that is specifically designed to withstand CAPTCHA-breaking software. WaterCap generates text CAPTCHA images using negative spaces and shadows."

Submission + - Soliders Bond With Bots, Take Them Fishing

Submitted by HarryCaul on Monday May 07, 2007 @10:04PM

HarryCaul writes: Soldiers are finding themselves becoming more and more attached to their robotic helpers. During one test of a mine clearing robot, "every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield." The man in charge halted the test, though- "He just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg. This test, he charged, was inhumane." Sometimes the soldiers even take their metallic companions fishing. Is there more sympathy for Robot Rights than previously suspected?

Submission + - Light Sabers Explained

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07, 2007 @08:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: The popular science learning site HowStuffWorks.com has recently shed light upon the elusive details of light sabers. For those of us laymen without the force, we get an article explaining their history, their basic mechanics, and proper usage for everyday activities.

Submission + - Wally Schirra, Dead at 84

Submitted by

Jivecat

on Thursday May 03, 2007 @02:52PM

Jivecat writes: "Veteran astronaut Walter M. Schirra Jr., the only man to fly in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, has died of a heart attack in a La Jolla, California, hospital. (NASA press release, AP wire) Along with commanding three spaceflights, Wally was known for his wit and levity, including having coined the term "Constellation Urion" for the glittering cloud of ice that developed around the spacecraft following on-orbit urine dumps."

Submission + - RIAA Backs Down Again in Chicago

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Thursday May 03, 2007 @02:37PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA seems to have a problem making things stick in the Windy City. It has once again backed down in BMG v. Thao, after suing a misidentified defendant. Same thing occurred last October in Elektra v. Wilke. In the Thao case, the RIAA based its case on information that the cable modem used to partake in file sharing was registered to Mr. Thao. However, it turned out that Mr. Thao was not even a subscriber (pdf) of the ISP (pdf) at the time of the alleged file-sharing, and therefore did not have possession of the suspect cable modem at that time."

Submission + - Nanotubes Improve Solar Energy Harvesting

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @10:27AM

eldavojohn writes: "Scientists are hoping that the 'coaxial cable' style nanotube they developed will resolve energy issues that come with converting sunlight to energy. The plants currently have us beat in this department but research is discovering new ways to eliminate inefficiencies in transferring photons to energy. Traditional methods involve exciting electrons to the point of jumping to a higher state which leaves 'holes.' Unfortunately, these electrons and holes remain in the same regions and therefore tend to recombine. The new nanotubes hope to route these excited electrons off in the same way a coaxial cable allows a return route for electrons. End result is fewer electrons settling back into their holes once they are elevated out of them yielding a higher return in energy."

Submission + - Microsoft OOXML lobbying tactics exposed

Submitted by

walterbyrd

on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @10:13AM

walterbyrd writes: "In his blog article, Rob Weir does an exceptional job of analyzing Microsoft's OOXML lobbying tactics. A lot of very suspicious occurrences are exposed."

Feed Everyday Life In Pompeii Revealed (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @10:13AM

Until recently archaeologists working on Pompeian artefacts have tended to concentrate on examples of art, some of it erotic, from the town that was suddenly destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in August 79 AD. Now archaeologists are gaining new understandings of everyday life in Pompeii.

Slashdot Top Deals