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Comment my opinion (Score 1) 913

by MrShmee (#36569160) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: CS Degree Without Gen-Ed Requirements?
note: I haven't read anyone else's comments, so Im sorry if this sounds like a repeat. When I was CS, they asked us a question. (ask yourself). In this business, what is the most important language for you know? The answer is English. You need to know how to talk to people to make it in this business; ESPECIALLY if you plan on becoming a start-up. That is where the other non-cs courses come in handy. They make you a more-rounded individual. As your going through your years at school, chances are your chosen goal may change. You may finish your CS degree still, but you may choose to go on and get a masters... in business for example. Taking only cs classes gives you a narrow focus and you kinda restrict yourself in what you can do later on. Take a wide birth of classes also give you another opportunity - the option to do multiple degrees at the same time. At my institution, most of the classes (eng, phil, art hist, etc). are required by most entry-level degrees. Only the 3rd/4th year core classes were degree specific. And while you may not THINK you want to take them, I for one can say, I ended up taking Photography as my art elective and LOVED it. I ended up taking 2 more classes in it - and it was a great way to relieve my brain of CS-related stress (and there will be lots of CS-related stress, trust me). Long story short, If you know 100% that you want to go program computers for the rest of your life, then great. I know I don't.
News

Rocket Thrusters Used To Treat Sewage 73

Posted by CmdrTaco from the burn-baby-burn dept.
Zothecula writes "Rocket engines are generally not thought of as being environmentally-friendly, but thanks to a newly-developed process, we may someday see them neutralizing the emissions from wastewater treatment plants. The same process would also see those plants generating their own power, thus meaning they would be both energy-neutral and emissions-free. Developed by two engineers at Stanford University, the system starts with the formation of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane gas — something that treatment plants traditionally try to avoid."
Image

First 3-D IMAX Porn Movie Made In Hong Kong 201

Posted by samzenpus from the ducking-the-money-shot dept.
tekgoblin writes "Christopher Sun of Hong Kong is directing a new porn movie that will actually be in 3-D. The movie is being called 3-D Sex & Zen: Extreme Ecstasy and will be the first 3-D IMAX porn movie. From the article: 'First out of the gates, the soft porn Hong Kong film comes as the stricken industry, hit hard by free Internet porn in recent years, turns to 3-D as a potential money-spinner, following on from the success of Hollywood blockbusters such as James Cameron's Avatar.'"
The Almighty Buck

Blizzard Sues Private Server Company, Awarded $88M 356

Posted by Soulskill from the not-such-a-good-business-model dept.
Cali Thalen writes "A private server company, Scapegaming (aka Alyson Reeves), was ordered to pay Blizzard Entertainment over $88 million in damages after losing a lawsuit that was concluded last week. Scapegaming was operating unauthorized World of Warcraft servers and using a micropayment system to collect money from the servers' user base, which according to the lawsuit amounted to just over $3 million. $85 million of that settlement was for statutory damages, and surprisingly only $63,000 in attorney's fees."
Mars

When On the Moon and Mars, Move Underground 294

Posted by CmdrTaco from the habitat-for-humanity dept.
astroengine writes "Recent observations of the lunar and martian surface are turning up multiple discoveries of 'skylights' — collapsed roofs of hollow rilles or lava tubes. These holes into ready-made underground bunkers could provide ideal shelter for future manned bases on the two worlds. Firstly, they would provide shelter from the barrage of micrometeorites, solar x-rays and deep space cosmic rays. Secondly, they'd help protect our burgeoning colonists from the extreme swings in surface temperature (on the moon, temperatures vary by 500 degrees F, but inside these lava tubes, the environment remains at a fairly constant -35 degrees). Thirdly, the sci-fi notion of underground space cities could become a reality."
Power

DARPA To Turn Humans Into Batteries 183

Posted by samzenpus from the electric-personality dept.
DARPA is working on a project that will convert energy from the human body to power a variety of military gadgets. From the article: "Obviously, our bodies generate heat — thermal energy. They also produce vibrations when we move — kinetic energy. Both forms of energy can be converted into electricity. Anantha Chandrakasan, an MIT electrical engineering professor, who is working on the problem with a former student named Yogesh Ramadass, says the challenge is to harvest adequate amounts of power from the body and then efficiently direct it to the device that needs it." If I remember the movie correctly, this didn't turn out so well for the humans.
Iphone

Apple To Hold iPhone 4 Press Conference 324

Posted by CmdrTaco from the get-in-front-of-it dept.
teh31337one noted an Engadget report that Apple has announced an iPhone 4 Press Conference for Friday at 10am PT where presumably they will address all this wacky antenna stuff that has been happening.
NASA

NASA Launches Moonbase Alpha 230

Posted by Soulskill from the to-boldly-grind dept.
Several readers have sent word that today NASA launched Moonbase Alpha, an online game with single- and multi-player capability that "allows participants to step into the role of an exploration team member in a futuristic 3-D lunar settlement." The game is available now through Steam for free. Moonbase Alpha was built as a precursor to an upcoming NASA MMO called Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond, and they hope it will be "a proof of concept to show how NASA content can be combined with a cutting-edge game engine to inspire, engage and educate students about agency technologies, job opportunities and the future of space exploration."
Privacy

Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums 833

Posted by Soulskill from the guess-that's-one-way-to-get-rid-of-trolls dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Recently, Blizzard Entertainment implemented a Real ID feature for some of its current games and all of its future Battle.net-based games. Today, Blizzard announced that it intends to require usage of the real names of Battle.net posters for its StarCraft II forums before release, and for its World of Warcraft forums shortly before the release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. From the announcement: 'The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.'"
PC Games (Games)

Civ 5 Will Let You Import and Convert Civ 4 Maps 142

Posted by Soulskill from the backward-compatibility dept.
bbretterson writes "From an interview Bitmob conducted with Civilization 5 Lead Designer Jon Shafer: 'You can import Civ 4 maps into the world builder and convert them into Civ 5 maps, including all the units and cities and stuff on it — the conversion process will just do that for you automatically. We're hoping that the first week Civ 5 is out, people will use that function and port all of the Civ 4 stuff over to Civ 5, so everything will be out there already.'"
Earth

1,400 Megapixel Pan-STARRS Telescope Comes Online 54

Posted by timothy from the don't-get-your-panstarrs-in-a-bunch dept.
ElectricSteve writes "Astronomers in Hawaii have announced they've successfully managed to boot up the Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) telescope. Working from dusk to dawn every night, Pan-STARRS is able to map one-sixth of the sky each month, allowing astronomers to track all moving objects, calculate their orbits, and identify any potential threats to Earth. There are four Pan-STARRS cameras in total, each capable of capturing around 1.4 billion pixels over a sensor measuring 40 centimeters square. The focal plane of each camera contains an almost complete 64x64 array of CCD devices, each containing approximately 600x600 pixels, for a total resolution of 1.4 gigapixels."
Data Storage

SanDisk WORM SD Card Can Store Data For 100 Years 267

Posted by timothy from the warranted-for-lifetime-of-original-purchaser dept.
CWmike writes "SanDisk has announced a 1GB Secure Digital card that can store data for 100 years, but can be written on only once. The WORM (write once, read many) card is 'tamper-proof' and data cannot be altered or deleted, SanDisk said in a statement. The card is designed for long-time preservation of crucial data like legal documents, medical files and forensic evidence, SanDisk said. SanDisk determined the media's 100-year data-retention lifespan based on internal tests conducted at normal room temperatures. The company said it is shipping the media in volume to the Japanese police force to archive images as an alternative to film. The company is working with a number of consumer electronics companies, including camera vendors, to support the media."
Cellphones

Sending Data In Bursts of SMS Messages 181

Posted by timothy from the out-of-band-and-back-again dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Canadian carrier Rogers has been experiencing some extreme loads of late, as researchers at the University of Waterloo investigate the potential for sending data spread across bursts of hundreds of text messages. They sent around 80,000 messages in the course of a project testing a new protocol able to cram 32KB into 250 messages sent from a BlackBerry, reaching a rate of 20 bytes per second. The group thinks its protocol could be useful in rural areas of the developing world where text messaging is the only affordable, reliable link."
Education

MA High School Forces All Students To Buy MacBooks 1217

Posted by Soulskill from the at-least-it's-not-ipads dept.
An anonymous reader sends in this excerpt from the Salem News: "A new program at Beverly High will equip every student with a new laptop computer to prepare kids for a high-tech future. But there's a catch. The money for the $900 Apple MacBooks will come out of parents' pockets. 'You're kidding me,' parent Jenn Parisella said when she found out she'd have to buy her sophomore daughter, Sky, a new computer. 'She has a laptop. Why would I buy her another laptop?' Sky has a Dell. Come September 2011, every student will need an Apple. They'll bring it to class and use it for homework. Superintendent James Hayes sees the technology as an essential move to prepare kids for the future. The School Committee approved the move last year, and Hayes said he's getting the news out now so families can prepare. 'We have one platform,' Hayes said. 'And that's going to be the Mac.'"
Microsoft

Mass SQL Injection Attack Hits Sites Running IIS 288

Posted by Soulskill from the oft-repeated-headlines dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "There's a large-scale attack underway that is targeting Web servers running Microsoft's IIS software, injecting the sites with a specific malicious script. The attack has compromised tens of thousands of sites already, experts say, and there's no clear indication of who's behind the campaign right now. The attack, which researchers first noticed earlier this week, already has affected a few high-profile sites, including those belonging to The Wall Street Journal and The Jerusalem Post. Some analyses of the IIS attack suggest that it is directed at a third-party ad management script found on these sites."

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