Comment Liability? (Score 1) 241
If Volkswagen is then going to assume all liability and I don’t have to pay insurance anymore, I may consider it, but that is never going to happen.
Comment Industry standard in the Mainframe Business (Score 1) 384
I work in the mainframe software area and standard there is 1 year of support included in the price, then maintenance deals are also written are usually between 3 and 7 years for usually 15% of the price of the software. Though those deals are high convoluted now since you dont sell individual programs to customers any more but rather a packaged deal.
In terms of legacy support, that isnt really done either. Usually 3 major versions of a software are supported, meaning fixes are created for them regularly. That usually means a 5 year life cycle for a release. Fixes for problems once a version leaves support are special maintenance deals that usually cost more.
Though we have sold code as is. Meaning that the client is then responsible for maintaining the program because he has ownership of the code and a full license to do with it what he will. Though there is usually a 3 months period where we work out the bugs with them, but after that the code is theirs and they can fix it.
Submission + - Child Receives Trachea Grown From Own Stem Cells (singularityhub.com)
kkleiner writes: Doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) along with colleagues at the University College London, the Royal Free Hospital, and Careggi University Hospital in Florence have successfully transplanted a trachea into a 10 year old boy using his own stem cells. A donor trachea was taken, stripped of its cells into a collagen-like scaffold, and then infused with the boy’s stem cells. The trachea was surgically placed into the boy and allowed to develop in place. Because his own cells were used, there was little to no risk of rejection. This was the first time a child had received such a stem cell augmented transplant and the first time that a complete trachea had been used.
Submission + - Lawmakers set sights on P2P programs
An anonymous reader writes: Lawmakers are considering a bill that would prohibit peer-to-peer file sharing programs from being installed onto computers without consent. The P2P Cyber Protection and Information User Act will also require software developers to inform people when their files are made available to others via peer-to-peer networks.
Authority would be given to the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the act.
Authority would be given to the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the act.
Submission + - Key Letter by Descartes, Lost for 170 Years, Found (chronicle.com)
Schiphol writes: A long-lost letter by René Descartes has come to light at Haverford College, where it had lain buried in the archives for more than a century, and the discovery could revolutionize our view of one of the 17th-century French philosopher's major works.
Submission + - YouTube to kill IE6 support on March 13
Joel writes: Over six months ago, Google announced it would start phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 on Orkut and YouTube, and started pushing its users to modern browsers. The search giant has now given a specific kill date for old browser support on the video website: "Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won't work in older browsers."
YouTube will have an interstitial appear when users on older browser try to watch a video on YouTube. Google says the interstitial will show up indefinitely every two weeks until the user upgrades to the most recent version of their browser. Google deems anything below IE7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0, and Safari 3.0 as an "older browser."Users on these browsers will still be able to watch YouTube videos, but additional features that Google plans to roll out may not be supported in these older browsers.
YouTube will have an interstitial appear when users on older browser try to watch a video on YouTube. Google says the interstitial will show up indefinitely every two weeks until the user upgrades to the most recent version of their browser. Google deems anything below IE7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0, and Safari 3.0 as an "older browser."Users on these browsers will still be able to watch YouTube videos, but additional features that Google plans to roll out may not be supported in these older browsers.
Submission + - Microsoft, Amazon Ink Kindle and Linux Patent Deal
theodp writes: Microsoft says it has reached a wide-ranging IP agreement with Amazon in which each company has granted the other a license to its patent portfolio. Microsoft says the agreement covers technologies in products including Amazon's Kindle — including open-source and proprietary technologies used in the e-reader — in addition to the use of Linux-based servers. Microsoft issued a news release celebrating the accord, while Amazon declined to comment. 'We are pleased to have entered into this patent license agreement with Amazon.com,' said Microsoft's deputy general counsel.. 'Microsoft's patent portfolio is the largest and strongest in the software industry, and this agreement demonstrates our mutual respect for intellectual property as well as our ability to reach pragmatic solutions to IP issues regardless of whether proprietary or open source software is involved.' A Microsoft representative declined to say which of its products are covered by the deal.
Comment Give good books, not age specific books (Score 1) 6
I believe it is better to give a good book rather then one that is age specific, though both can go together such as the Harry Potter books. Hugo and Nebula Award winners are a great place to look and get a feel for authors who write quality fiction that should be read by any science fiction / fantasy fan. Naturally, not every taste is equal, but in my quick review of the past winners, I had some names jump out at me. Books like Ender's Game, and Starship Troopers, Neuromancer, Dune, The Diamond Age, Hyperion, To Say Nothing Of The Dog, Red/Green/Blue Mars should be read.
Some books are more adult then others naturally, though with your 17 year old niece, I would think that she should be allowed to read anything. I had full access to my parents scifi library at 14 though, so I cant really say that anything would be considered equal to rated "R".
Other more casual book recommendations from me:
The Honor Harrington Series by David Weber. A Series with a strong female lead. You can get the first 2 books free at http://www.baen.com/library/
Anne McCaffery Pern Books are very good reading for young adults.
Elizabeth Moon's Serrano Series is also very good.
I would stay away from Vampire books unless you have actually read it because some novels like the Anita Blake series by Hamilton could almost be classified as porn. There are a number of 'heavy' romance vampire books out there as well. Urban Fantasy is also an area were it can crop up, though less there.
Man Uses Drake Equation To Explain Girlfriend Woes 538
artemis67 writes "A man studying in London has taken a mathematical equation that predicts the possibility of alien life in the universe to explain why he can't find a girlfriend. Peter Backus, a native of Seattle and PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, near London, in his paper, 'Why I don't have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation to love in the UK,' used math to estimate the number of potential girlfriends in the UK. In describing the paper on the university Web site he wrote 'the results are not encouraging. The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy.'"
Jan. 11, 1902 — Popular Mechanics Is Born 77
Today, back in 1902 Henry Haven Windsor published the first issue of Popular Mechanics, helping to empower geeks of future generations with straightforward explanations of scientific and mechanical advances. "The magazine has reported both the brilliant and ridiculous ideas of its times, depending on the writer, scientist or editor. It once published an article about a Philadelphia physician who supposedly used X-rays to turn blacks into whites: probably not a great editorial decision. Betting on blimps over planes for so long might not have been advisable, and hyping excessive consumption during the birth of the environmental movement in the 1960s also rates a demerit. But beyond those probable transgressions, Popular Mechanics paved the way for the people’s incursion into science’s once-exclusive domain. Its longevity argues that science and its sometimes inscrutable possibility have raw mass appeal — even if the subject is cars with steering wheels in the back seat or self-diagnosing appliances."
Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice 110
Arvisp writes "In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water."
Submission + - Amazing New movies of Saturns Moons (spacefellowship.com)
RobGoldsmith writes: Like sugar plum fairies in “The Nutcracker,” the moons of Saturn performed a celestial ballet before the eyes of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. New movies frame the moons’ silent dance against the majestic sweep of the planet’s rings and show as many as four moons gliding around one another. View the movies and see images here!
Submission + - Insurgent Attacks Follow Mathematical Pattern 6
Hugh Pickens writes: "Nature reports that data collected on the timing of attacks and number of casualties from more than 54,000 events across nine insurgent wars, including those fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 and in Sierra Leone between 1994 and 2003 suggests that insurgencies have a common underlying pattern that may allow the timing of attacks and the number of casualties to be predicted. By plotting the distribution of the frequency and size of events, the team found that insurgent wars follow an approximate power law, in which the frequency of attacks decreases with increasing attack size to the power of 2.5. That means that for any insurgent war, an attack with 10 casualties is 316 times more likely to occur than one with 100 casualties (316 is 10 to the power of 2.5). "We found that the way in which humans do insurgent wars — that is, the number of casualties and the timing of events — is universal," says team leader Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami in Florida. "This changes the way we think insurgency works." To explain what was driving this common pattern, the researchers created a mathematical model that assumes that insurgent groups form and fragment when they sense danger, and strike in well-timed bursts to maximize their media exposure. Johnson is now working to predict how the insurgency in Afghanistan might respond to the influx of foreign troops recently announced by US President Barack Obama. "We do observe a complicated pattern that has to do with the way humans do violence in some collective way," adds Johnson."
Comment Master of Orion/Magic (Score 2, Interesting) 1120
The Microprose Turn Based Strategy Games have always been high on my list of wanting another game. Maybe not so much a redo as just get either series started again.
GalCiv is a good game but somehow it just doesnt have the feel of MOO1 or 2. I played MOO1 for hours on end, and the sequel though not as hard as the original was also a very fun game. MOO3 was rushed and it shows.
Comment Re:Here is to.... (Score 5, Insightful) 223
The Mainframe does it job and does it well. Nothing comes close in Data Throughput Processing with the amount of reliability that a mainframe brings.
Computer 'Experts' have been saying that the mainframe is dead since the early 90s, but here we are 20 years later and I still have a job programming for it, and I don't see it going away anytime soon. Small to mid-level servers just don't have the capacity to deal with the growing about of data generated. Fedex does in the neighborhood of 2 billion transactions a day, you cant just wipe together a Beowulf Cluster and think it will do the job reliably.
Or the better question is. How much do you trust the Federal Reserve to run all its processing on Windows machines. Or Wall Street. Ever consider if a transaction there is 'lost' because a windows blue screen? Even linux machines arent as dependable as a Mainframe. The IBM Z boxes actually have their own redundant parts included in them already. Not to mention that it will phone in its own tech support request.
Mainframes are not for everyone, but they do fulfill their job well when you do need them.
There are also enough tools out there like SOA so that even Java "Kids" can write applications for them easily.
Mainframes run the world.
Slashdot Top Deals
One possible reason that things aren't going according to plan is that there never was a plan in the first place.
