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Obsolete Technical Skills 603

Posted by kdawson from the morse-code-will-never-die-oh-wait dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Robert Scoble had an interesting post on his blog a few days ago on obsolete technical skills — 'things we used to know that no longer are very useful to us.' Scoble's initial list included dialing a rotary phone, using carbon paper to make copies, and changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor. The list has now been expanded into a wiki with a much larger list of these obsolete skills that includes resolving IRQ conflicts on a mother board, assembly language programming, and stacking a quarter on an arcade game to indicate you have next. We're invited to contribute more."
Cellphones

iPhones Produced in China Smuggled Right Back in 159

Posted by samzenpus from the the-iphone-cycle dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Factories in China produce iPhones that are exported to the United States and Europe and then smuggled right back in helping explain why Apple says it sold about 3.7 million iPhones last year while only 2.3 million are actually registered in the United States and Europe. For Apple, the booming overseas market for iPhones is a sign of its marketing prowess but also a blow to Apple's business model, costing the company as much as $1 billion over the next three years, according to some analysts. Since negotiations between Apple and China Mobile, the world's biggest mobile-phone service operator with more than 350 million subscribers, broke down last month, the official release of the iPhone in China has been stalled producing a thriving gray market. Copycat models are another possible threat to Apple in China. Not long after the iPhone was released, research and development teams in China were taking it apart, trying to copy or steal the design and software for use in iPhone knockoffs, or iClones and some people who have used the clones say they are sophisticated and have many functions that mimic the iPhone. "A lot of people here want to get an iPhone," says Shanghai lawyer Conlyn Chan."
Science

Building a Silicon Brain 236

Posted by kdawson from the million-neuromimes dept.
prostoalex tips us to an article in MIT's Technology Review on a Stanford scientist's plan to replicate the processes inside the human brain with silicon. Quoting: "Kwabena Boahen, a neuroengineer at Stanford University, is planning the most ambitious neuromorphic project to date: creating a silicon model of the cortex. The first-generation design will be composed of a circuit board with 16 chips, each containing a 256-by-256 array of silicon neurons. Groups of neurons can be set to have different electrical properties, mimicking different types of cells in the cortex. Engineers can also program specific connections between the cells to model the architecture in different parts of the cortex."
Businesses

Creating a Business in the US on an H1-B Visa? 103

Posted by Cliff from the building-the-american-dream dept.
GnaGnaGna asks: "I've lived in the US for almost a year now and have a full time position with a major American company under an H1-B visa (work visa for foreigners). Besides this job, I also run an increasingly popular website generating AdSense revenues. I am not sure if I am allowed to create a US company (most likely an LLC), under my legal status, and transfer the Adsense profits to my personal bank account or a business bank account. Have my fellow readers faced a similar legal situation or know anything about it?"
Biotech

Journal Journal: Alzheimer's and Vasectomies Linked? New Research 2

Journal by cogno64
Northwestern University researchers have discovered men with an unusual form of dementia have a higher rate of vasectomy than men the same age who are cognitively normal. Certain organs including the testes and the brain exist in what is the equivalent of a gated community in the body. Tiny tubes within the testes (in which sperm are produced) are protected by a physical barrier of Sertoli cells. The tight
Security

Submission + - When malware attacks malware

Submitted by
PetManimal
PetManimal writes: "Researchers say that the Storm Trojan/Peacomm worm has been tweaked to spread via IM programs and attack rival malware. Symantec sounded the alarm, and says that the exploit launches in AOL, Google Talk, and Yahoo Messenger windows that are already open, making it appear to be a legitimate message from a known user, according to the article. The worm has modified the code from last year's Nuwar worm, and when activated, enables a distributed denial of service attack against any site, including antispam services and servers supporting rival malware:

Systems hijacked by Peacomm have also conducted DDoS attacks against at least five domains used by the creators of the noted Warezov (or Stration) worm. After a busy September and October, Warezov was credited by some analysts as the genesis of 2006's massive fourth-quarter spike in spam volume.
"
News

Experiences with Replacing Desktops w/ VMs? 442

Posted by Cliff from the a-novel-idea dept.
A user asks: "After years of dealing with broken machines, HAL incompatibility, and other Windows frustrations, I'd like to investigate moving to an entirely VM-based solution. Essentially, when an employee comes in in the morning, have them log-in, and automatically download their VM from the server. This gives the benefits of network computing, in that they can sit anywhere, if their machine breaks, we can instantly replace it, etc, and the hope is that the VM will run at near-native speeds. We have gigabit to all of the desktops, so I'm not too worried about network bandwidth, if we keep the images small. Has anyone ever tried this on a large scale? How did it work out for you? What complications did you run of that I probably haven't thought of?"

Why Oracle Isn't Part of the OSDL 193

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the breaking-it-down dept.
darthcamaro writes "Some may wonder why OSDL, the self-proclaimed center of gravity for the Linux Universe and employer of Linus Torvalds, does not include Oracle as a member. Well, in a recent interview Wim Coekaerts, Director of Linux Engineering at Oracle has spelled it out in no uncertain terms. From the article: 'The thing that was really kind of revolting is that OSDL goes out and basically says that they represent the Linux community while there is no direct feedback line back to the community.'"

Ticketmaster to Start Online Ticket Auction 390

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the getting-scalped-from-your-couch dept.
Jason1729 writes "According to the NY Times, ticketmaster is going to begin auctioning off the best tickets to events online. They claim it's to eliminate scalping, but in truth it guarantees every seat will be scalped for the highest price with all the money going to ticketmaster. It also eliminates the possibility of getting a decent seat by waiting in line or being lucky."

MPlayer Developers Interviewed 220

Posted by CmdrTaco from the people-who-do-stuff dept.
cruocitae writes "Three of the MPlayer developers just gave an interview, talking about the "mysterious" versioning system of their software and shared a few secrets about the upcoming releases, for example some words about the long-awaited Windows GUI, and of course, DVD menus. Project integrity also was a subject.."

McNealy Created Millions of Jobs? 363

Posted by CowboyNeal from the not-the-steve-variety dept.
cahiha writes "In his blog, Jonathan Schwartz argues that Scott McNealy is single-handedly responsible for making network computing a reality. His timeline is something like that in 1992, the industry was focused on 'Chicago' (Windows 95), while McNealy bravely went his own way-- 'the network is the computer.' He goes on to claim that 'There is no single individual who has created more jobs around the world than [Scott McNealy]. [...] I'm not talking hundreds or thousands of jobs, I'm talking millions.' I have trouble following his argument: client/server computing and distributed computing were already widely available and widely used in the early 1990s. The defining applications of the emerging Internet were, not Java, but Apache, Netscape, and Perl. Sun's biggest response to Chicago was to attempt to establish Java as the predominant desktop application delivery platform, something they have not succeeded at so far. So, what do you think: is Schwartz right in giving credit to McNealy for creating 'millions' of jobs? Or has Sun been a company on the decline since the mid-1990s, only temporarily buoyed by the Internet bubble?"

Latest Linux Standards Base Gets Vendor Support 96

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the friendlier-tux dept.
Neopallium writes to tell us that in a recent announcement at the Desktop Linux Summit the Free Standards Group reports fourteen of the leading Linux vendors have pledged support for the newest release of the Linux Standards Base. From the article: "'The Release of LSB 3.1 is another milestone achieved by the industry and the Open Source Community that delivers ever increasing value to customers,' said Reza Rooholamini, director of enterprise solutions engineering at Dell. 'It enables further uniformity and standardization across applications and distributions that allows quicker deployment of Linux solutions with higher levels of quality.'"

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