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Networking

An Operating System For Cities 216

Posted by Soulskill from the can't-wait-for-those-citywide-blue-screens dept.
CProgrammer98 writes "BBC News reports that cities may soon get their own operating system. From the article: 'The Urban OS works just like a PC operating system but keeps buildings, traffic and services running smoothly. The software takes in data from sensors dotted around the city to keep an eye on what is happening. In the event of a fire, the Urban OS might manage traffic lights so fire trucks can reach the blaze swiftly. The sensors monitor everything from large scale events such as traffic flows across the entire city down to more local phenomena such as temperature sensors inside individual rooms. The OS completely bypasses humans to manage communication between sensors and devices such as traffic lights, air conditioning or water pumps that influence the quality of city life."

Comment Re:4096 processors not enough? (Score 1) 631

by alexandreracine (#31562884) Attached to: Multicore Requires OS Rework, Windows Expert Says
Well, you'll probably see something along this: PID user .... CPU% MEM% xxx user1 ... 100% 0.1 xxx user2 ... 100% 0.1 xxx user4 ... 100% 0.1 about 3000 times... I was working for a research center for genomes and chromozones, and I created a high performance cluster with 3 high end servers with SGE. Nothing HUGE, but with tweking of those batch files and memory usage, they where getting results from 10% to 600% faster.
Businesses

Microsoft's Lost Decade 603

Posted by kdawson from the no-skill-at-herding-cats dept.
theodp writes "Newsweek's Daniel Lyons (that's Fake Steve to you) explains why Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates, arguing that what most hurt Microsoft was BillG's decision to step down as CEO in January 2000: 'Gates was a software geek. He understood technology. Ballmer is a business guy.' And the problem with putting non-techies in charge of tech companies, concludes Lyons, is that they have blind spots. So while Microsoft's revenues nearly tripled from $23B to $58B on Ballmer's watch, says Lyons, the company became bureaucratic and lumbering, slowing down while the rest of the world — including Google, Apple and Amazon — sped up."
Politics

Sequoia Voting Systems Source Code Released 406

Posted by kdawson from the redaction-fail dept.
Mokurai sends a heads-up about Sequoia Voting Systems, which seems to have inadvertently released the SQL code for its voting databases. The existence of such code appears to violate Federal voting law: "Sequoia blew it on a public records response. ... They appear... to have just vandalized the data as valid databases by stripping the MS-SQL header data off, assuming that would stop us cold. They were wrong. The Linux 'strings' command was able to peel it apart. Nedit was able to digest 800-MB text files. What was revealed was thousands of lines of MS-SQL source code that appears to control or at least influence the logical flow of the election, in violation of a bunch of clauses in the FEC voting system rulebook banning interpreted code, machine modified code and mandating hash checks of voting system code." The code is all available for study or download, "the first time the innards of a US voting system can be downloaded and discussed publicly with no NDAs or court-ordered secrecy," notes Jim March of the Election Defense Alliance. Dig in and analyze.

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