Comment Re:More of this please (Score 1) 201
Job creators.
Comment Listen To The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing (Score 1) 38
Submission + - One Company's Week-Long Interview Process (itworld.com)
jfruh writes: "What's the longest tech interview you've had to sit through — two hours? Eight? Ruby on Rails devs who want to work for Hashrocket need to travel to Florida and do pair-programming on real projects for a week before they can be hired. The upside is that you'll be put up in a beachfront condo for the week with your significant other; the downside is that you'll be doing real work for a week for little or no pay and no guarantee of a job slot."
Journal Journal: Where is iWork '12?
It's been some time since the latest iWork refresh. iWork '09 was released nearly three years ago, which is a long time in computer business. Several events were suggested as a reason for Apple to delay the release of the next version of their Office suite: the new iPad, Lion, and lately the release of iCloud was accused to be the reason to further work on Pages, Keynote and Numbers to work seamlessly with the service.
All those events came and went, yet a new version of iWork is still not
Submission + - China wants cyber crisis hotline (the-diplomat.com)
An anonymous reader writes: China should look at establishing a cyber crisis hotline with the United States, according to a Chinese newspaper seen as a window into official thinking. Discussions about a crisis hotline might seem an obvious first step in improving relations. But if it's a sign the Chinese government is beginning to think about how to coordinate a rapid, unified response to cyber emergencies, then it is an extremely important one.
Submission + - Smart Meters Wreaking Havoc w/ Home Electronics (securityweek.com)
wiredmikey writes: About 200 customers of the Central Maine Power Company recently noticed something odd after the utility installed smart meters in their homes: household electronics including wireless devices stopped working, or behaved erratically.
Many Smart Meters broadcast in the 2.4GHz frequency range. Unfortunately, so do many of the consumer gadgets we take for granted these days including routers, electric garage doors, fire alarms, clocks, electric pet fences, answering machines, and baby monitors--even medial devices.
The electromagnetic congestion in the home is in some ways similar to the growing electronic congestion in hospitals as they acquire more and more electronic monitors all operating within a few feet of each other. Medical equipment has been known to shut down or give erroneous results when positioned close to another piece of equipment. Such interference is not new, just getting worse--rapidly....
Many Smart Meters broadcast in the 2.4GHz frequency range. Unfortunately, so do many of the consumer gadgets we take for granted these days including routers, electric garage doors, fire alarms, clocks, electric pet fences, answering machines, and baby monitors--even medial devices.
The electromagnetic congestion in the home is in some ways similar to the growing electronic congestion in hospitals as they acquire more and more electronic monitors all operating within a few feet of each other. Medical equipment has been known to shut down or give erroneous results when positioned close to another piece of equipment. Such interference is not new, just getting worse--rapidly....
Submission + - Netflix will lose money for all of 2012 (cnn.com)
PolygamousRanchKid writes: Netflix (NFLX) warned in its last earnings report that it expects to be unprofitable "for a few quarters" starting at the beginning of 2012. The primary culprit is Netflix's pricey plan to expand its streaming video service into the United Kingdom and Ireland, but a wave of subscribers jumping ship hasn't helped.
The filing also revealed that Netflix is in the process of raising $400 million from investors to help bulk up its cash stash. While that will give Netflix more money to invest in content, secondary offerings are sometimes considered ominous signs. They can signal that expenditures have outpaced expectations and that a company needs to raise more cash.
Netflix, which had $366 million in cash on hand at the end of last quarter, is facing threats from rivals with much deeper pockets. Studios are demanding more money for their valuable content, and the playing field is getting crowded. Meanwhile, Netflix is losing some of those all-important licenses. In September, Starz ended contract renewal negotiations with Netflix and said it will pull its movies and TV shows from Netflix early next year. That loss of content leaves angry customers asking why they're paying more for less.
The filing also revealed that Netflix is in the process of raising $400 million from investors to help bulk up its cash stash. While that will give Netflix more money to invest in content, secondary offerings are sometimes considered ominous signs. They can signal that expenditures have outpaced expectations and that a company needs to raise more cash.
Netflix, which had $366 million in cash on hand at the end of last quarter, is facing threats from rivals with much deeper pockets. Studios are demanding more money for their valuable content, and the playing field is getting crowded. Meanwhile, Netflix is losing some of those all-important licenses. In September, Starz ended contract renewal negotiations with Netflix and said it will pull its movies and TV shows from Netflix early next year. That loss of content leaves angry customers asking why they're paying more for less.
Submission + - Lost Russian Mars Probe Phoned Home (discovery.com)
astroengine writes: "The Russian Mars mission Phobos-Grunt has made a surprise announcement: she's alive.
According to the European Space Agency (ESA) in the early hours of Wednesday morning, a tracking station in Perth, Australia, picked up a signal from the ailing spacecraft."
According to the European Space Agency (ESA) in the early hours of Wednesday morning, a tracking station in Perth, Australia, picked up a signal from the ailing spacecraft."
Submission + - Bulldozer's Just As Bad With Servers (arstechnica.com)
RobinEggs writes: Some reviews of Bulldozer's performance in servers have arrived, and Arstechnica has a breakdown. The results are pretty ugly. Apparently Bulldozer fares just as poorly with servers as with desktops.
From the article: 'One reason for the underwhelming performance on the desktop is that the Bulldozer architecture emphasizes multithreaded performance over single-threaded performance. For desktop applications, where single-threaded performance is still king, this is a problem. Server workloads, in contrast, typically have to handle multiple users, network connections, and virtual machines concurrently. This makes them a much better fit for processors that support lots of concurrent threads. Some commentators have even suggested that Bulldozer was, first and foremost, a server processor; relatively weak desktop performance was to be expected, but it would all come good in the server room.
Unfortunately for AMD, it looks as though the decisions that hurt Bulldozer on the desktop continue to hurt it in the server room. Although the server benchmarks don't show the same regressions as were found on the desktop, they do little to justify the design of the new architecture.'
It's probably much too early to start editorializing about the end of AMD, or even to say with certainty that Bulldozer has failed, but my untrained eye can't yet see any possible silver lining in these new processors.
From the article: 'One reason for the underwhelming performance on the desktop is that the Bulldozer architecture emphasizes multithreaded performance over single-threaded performance. For desktop applications, where single-threaded performance is still king, this is a problem. Server workloads, in contrast, typically have to handle multiple users, network connections, and virtual machines concurrently. This makes them a much better fit for processors that support lots of concurrent threads. Some commentators have even suggested that Bulldozer was, first and foremost, a server processor; relatively weak desktop performance was to be expected, but it would all come good in the server room.
Unfortunately for AMD, it looks as though the decisions that hurt Bulldozer on the desktop continue to hurt it in the server room. Although the server benchmarks don't show the same regressions as were found on the desktop, they do little to justify the design of the new architecture.'
It's probably much too early to start editorializing about the end of AMD, or even to say with certainty that Bulldozer has failed, but my untrained eye can't yet see any possible silver lining in these new processors.
Submission + - Divorcing couple ordered to share Facebook passwor (theverge.com)
PolygamousRanchKid writes: A judge recently ordered a divorcing couple to disclose their Facebook and online dating passwords, but Courtney and Stephen Gallion won't be snooping around each other's accounts: only the attorneys will get the information.
The order came after the husband found "useful" information on a shared computer and suspected more was online. It's an unusual application of a fairly standard evidentiary principle to our new ways of interacting online — and although the couple won't actually swap passwords, the Judge still ordered them not to try and impersonate each other online. New technology, same old crazy.
Submission + - High-quality HD content can't be played by Vista (hdtvinfo.eu) 2
DaMan1970 writes: "Content protection features in Windows Vista from Microsoft are preventing customers from playing high-quality HD audio/video & harming system performance.
Vista requires premium content like HD movies to be degraded in quality when it is sent to high-quality outputs, like DVI. Users will see status codes that say "graphics OPM resolution too high"
http://www.hdtvinfo.eu/news/hd-video-formats/high- quality-hd-content-cant-be-played-by-windows-vista .html
There are ways to bypass the Windows Vista protection by encoding the movies using alternative codecs like X264, or DiVX, which are in fact more effective sometimes then Windows own WMV codec. These codecs are quite common on HD video Bittorrent sites, or Newsgroups."
Vista requires premium content like HD movies to be degraded in quality when it is sent to high-quality outputs, like DVI. Users will see status codes that say "graphics OPM resolution too high"
http://www.hdtvinfo.eu/news/hd-video-formats/high
There are ways to bypass the Windows Vista protection by encoding the movies using alternative codecs like X264, or DiVX, which are in fact more effective sometimes then Windows own WMV codec. These codecs are quite common on HD video Bittorrent sites, or Newsgroups."
Submission + - Tech writers spreading FUD about GPLv3 1
Tookis writes: Tech writers are spreading FUD about GPLv3 because they fear its take up will slow the adoption of Linux, according to this open source writer. "A large number of tech writers — I wouldn't call them journalists and sully my own profession — are fearful that the licence will slow adoption of Linux in the workplace. And that would lead to a lessening of their own importance and influence." http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/13525/1090/
Submission + - Mysterious Red Cosmic Square with Perfect Symmetry
Ano_Nimass Coward writes: Space.com are running a story about a nebula with near perfect bilateral symmetry, surrounding a dying star. The nebula encloses the star like a box. The Red Square ranks among the most symmetrical objects ever observed by scientists. "If you fold things across the principle diagonal axis, you get an almost perfect reflection symmetry," said study leader Peter Tuthill from the University of Sydney in Australia.
Occam's Razor-conforming explanations by astronomers notwithstanding, Dyson Cube anyone? Especially in the light of this study which attributes the red glow to exotic space-hardened organic molecules called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH). PAHs are normally unstable but seem to occur in places like the nebula in question, in exotic nanostructured clusters that are extremely stable and radiation hardened.
Occam's Razor-conforming explanations by astronomers notwithstanding, Dyson Cube anyone? Especially in the light of this study which attributes the red glow to exotic space-hardened organic molecules called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH). PAHs are normally unstable but seem to occur in places like the nebula in question, in exotic nanostructured clusters that are extremely stable and radiation hardened.
Submission + - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. using unlicensed assets from Doom3?
segafreak writes: "ShackNews reports that S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Shadow of Chernobyl may contain unlicensed assets from other commercial games such as Doom 3 and Half Life 2. Though this has yet to be confirmed by any of the developers involved, if true this would be somewhat worrying. Maybe its time to buy the game while its still on the shelves!"
Comment Re:Eh. (Score 1) 645
Flamebait?! WTH? This should be +5 Funny. If only I had mod points this week.
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