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Comment Re:The conclusions are bogus. (Score 2) 210

by SpuriousLogic (#48871729) Attached to: Tracking Down How Many (Or How Few) People Actively Use Google+
I totally agree. They are using an very incomplete set of data. Their methods and conclusions appear totally bogus. It's kind of like looking at a house from the outside. They can only see what people do outside of it, and somehow they are extrapolating that to explain what people do inside of it.

Comment Re:Huh? *Scratches head* (Score 4, Insightful) 210

by SpuriousLogic (#48871689) Attached to: Tracking Down How Many (Or How Few) People Actively Use Google+
Same here. I almost never post publicly on G+. Why? Circles are why. Circles allow me to share my posts with ONLY the people I want. G+ has a HUGE RPG/Gaming community, which I am quite active in. I have never seen anything like it anywhere else. But - almost none of it is public. This is why I don't put much into the "Google + is dead" stories. On G+, you don't need to post publicly, and very few people do.

Comment Just skip college and make it big in the NFL (Score 2) 716

by SpuriousLogic (#42168511) Attached to: Just Say No To College
or NBA, or music, etc, etc, etc The VAST majority of people who skip college will never achieve anywhere near the financial level they could have achieved by going to school. Skipping college and becoming a billionaire is akin to being the lead point scorer in the NBA without ever playing in college. Yes, it happens, to one person out of millions that play basketball.

Comment We are in the middle of this transition (Score 1) 182

by SpuriousLogic (#41621595) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Often Do You Push To Production?
The company I work for is right smack in the middle of this transition. We had something akin to a SaaS model, before SaaS was a "thing". We have 40+ applications, some are desktop thick net .Net clients, others are web based, all of which interact with one another to varying degrees. Myself and one other person were instrumental in getting the company to a point where it is possible to release in a semi-automated fashion. Our challenges were similar to what you described - manual work with lots of process wrapped around it to ensure some modicum of governance, which often failed. Our number one task was getting our software dependencies under control and automating building. We settled on Maven/Hudson/Nexus as the tools of choice. We have a corporate POM that defines many of our baselines that each of the software projects inherit from. We use Hudson both for automated builds as well as one touch deploys (some are even totally automated) to environments, including production (which is not automatic - it requires a human to initiate). We then spent over a year "cleaning" our old ant build structures and refactoring into Maven. It cost a lot of money. A whole lot. Maven found numerous cyclical dependencies that Ant hid. We defined all the core libraries, versioned and released them, then built the apps outward from there. Today, 99% of our software builds are totally automated (a few stragglers of low priority products have not yet been converted to Maven). We have total control of our dependency structure. We have a totally automated release process. We have a totally automated deployment process. It took a lot of work, and a lot of money. The other side of the coin is our runtime environments. This has been a disaster. The teams that run these systems don't have the concepts of automating anything unless it comes shrinkwrapped form a vendor. Plus there was a management structure in place that encouraged manual work with large numbers of employees. Firefighting was highly rewarded (both in cash and prestige). Eventually, the balance has shifted. The management on this side has either been terminated or left when they saw the writing on the wall. Slowly this side is embracing virtualization and a move toward generic environments whose buildouts are automated. There is a long way left to go here. The goal eventually is that we can automatically provision a VM for a product and deploy to it as we need (think a mini-AMI model). It is hard. Really hard. A lot of companies won't have the energy to go through with this, and it has a lot of ways to go wrong. We have gone through multiple executive level people during this as well as countless mid-level managers. This type of change is not just technical, itis a massive cultural change for a company. But today, we have a totally automated process for code release all the way from the developers desktop through to production. Depending on the interactions of a piece of software (if it is an edge or core piece), it can moved daily or monthly. The technology itself can allow multiple production moves a day if people so wanted , but for customer reasons we usually limit this to once a day.
Japan

Submission + - Mt Fuji may be close to erupting (wired.co.uk)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: The pressure in Mount Fuji's magma chamber is now higher than it was in 1707, the last time the nearly 4,000-metre-high Japanese volcano erupted, causing volcanologists to speculate that a disaster is imminent.

The new readings, taken by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, reveal that the pressure is at 1.6 megapascals, nearly 16 times the 0.1 megapascals it takes to trigger an eruption.

This, lead volcanologist on the case Eisuke Fujita told Kyodo News, is "not a small figure".

Researchers have speculated for some time that the volcano, located on Honshu Island 100km southwest of Tokyo, is overdue an eruption. In 2000 and 2001 a series of low-frequency earthquakes were recorded beneath the volcano, leading to widespread predictions of an imminent blow. Since the March 2011 tsunami and the 6.4 magnitude earthquake that followed four days later, Japan has been on tenterhooks, and in May 2012 a professor from Ryukyu University warned that a massive eruption within three years would be likely because of several major factors: steam and gases are being emitted from the crater, water eruptions are occurring nearby, massive holes emitting hot natural gases are appearing in the vicinity and finally, the warning sign that pushed the professor to make the announcement, a 34km-long fault was found underneath the volcano. The fault, experts suggested, could indicate a total collapse of the mountainside if there is another significant shift, and it would probably cause a collapse in the event of an eruption, leading to huge mud and landslides.

The new readings prove that the localised tectonic shifts of 2011 have indeed put immense pressure on the magma chamber, but the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention has qualified its warning by noting that pressure is just one contributory factor to an eruption. The 1707 quake, however, was itself caused by a recent earthquake that amped up the pressure in its magma chamber.

"It's possible for Mount Fuji to erupt even several years after the March 2011 earthquake, therefore we need to be careful about the development," a representative said.

A 2004 government report originally estimated that an eruption would cost the country £19.6 billion. However, new studies are underway by Honshu Island's Shizuoka prefectural government. The study is focussing on the potential damage that would be caused by a series of simultaneous earthquakes in the Tokai, Tonankai and Nankai regions located along the Nankai Trough, where it is feared another earthquake will soon take place. The most recent models have revealed that, in the worst-case scenario, 323,000 people would die and the tremors could trigger an eruption at Mount Fuji.

Regions that would be affected, including Kanagawa, Yamanashi and Shizuoka, plan to hold a test run of an evacuation by 2014, with a meeting of local governments covering progress of the plans and of shelter preparations slated for April 2013.
Transportation

Submission + - Boeing's X--51 WaveRider Jet Crashes in Mach 6 Attempt (boeing.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Boeing's experimental hypersonic X--51 WaveRider aircraft crashed today while attempting to hit Mach 6 while traveling over the Pacific Ocean. The cause of the crash was a faulty control fin, which compromised the test before the Scramjet engine could be lit. A vehicle traveling at Mach 6 (six times the speed of sound) would be able to travel from New York to London in just one hour.

Submission + - Ray Bradbury has died (io9.com)

Submitted by dsinc
dsinc writes: Ray Bradbury — author of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked this Way Comes, and many more literary classics — died this morning in Los Angeles, at the age of 91
Google

Submission + - Jury Rules Google Violated Java Copyright, Google Moves for Mistrial (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Details are thin but the long covered Oracle Vs Google trial has at least partially been decided in favor of Oracle against Google violating copyrights in Android when when it used Java APIs to design the system. Google moved for a mistrial after hearing the incomplete decision. The patent infringement accusations have yet to be ruled upon.
Apple

Submission + - Apple overturns Motorola's German iPad and iPhone sales bans (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: Apple has been granted a temporary suspension of a sales ban imposed on some of its products in Germany.

Motorola Mobility had forced Apple to remove several iPad and iPhone models from its online store earlier today after enforcing a patent infringement court ruling delivered in December.

An appeals court lifted the ban after Apple made a new licence payment offer.

However, Germany-based users may still face the loss of their push email iCloud service after a separate ruling.

Patent consultant Florian Mueller, who attended the review, said that the suspension may only last a few days or weeks — but that Apple's revised proposal had been enough to allow it to restart sales.

"The Karlsruhe higher regional court believes that Apple's new offer needs to be evaluated before this injunction can enter into force again," he wrote on his blog.

"A suspension like this is available only against a bond, but Apple is almost drowning in cash and obviously won't have had a problem with obtaining and posting a bond."

He said that the bond amount was likely to have been about 120m euros ($158m, £100m).

Unresolved
A statement from Apple said: "All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple's online store in Germany shortly.

"Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago."

However, Motorola signalled that it would try to restore the ban.

"We are pleased that the Mannheim court has recognized the importance of our intellectual property and granted an enforceable injunction in Germany against Apple Sales International," a statement said.

"Although the enforcement of the injunction has been temporarily suspended, Motorola Mobility will continue to pursue its claims against Apple."

Pulled products
The sales ban relates to Motorola's patent for a "method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system".

Motorola licenses the patent to other companies on Frand (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms.

Frand-type patents involve technologies that are deemed to be part of an industry standard. In this case Motorola's innovation is deemed crucial to the GPRS data transmission standard used by GSM cellular networks across the world.

Companies must offer Frand-type patents for a reasonable fee to anyone willing to pay.

Apple had previously said it would be willing to pay the fee going forward, but the two firms dispute how much Apple should pay for failing to license the technology up until now. Missed payments are not covered by the "reasonable" rule, and Motorola is able to demand a more expensive price.

Apple's iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 had all been affected — but not its newer iPhone 4S. All 3G models of the iPad were involved, but not their wi-fi-only counterparts.

Email technology
The separate push email ban would only come into effect if Motorola decided to enforce a second judgement that Apple's iCloud and MobileMe infringed another of its innovations.

The patent relates to two-way communications between pagers and other devices and was granted in 2002.

If Motorola decides to enforce the judgement some iPhone users in Germany would lose the ability to automatically receive emails as soon as they have been sent. Instead they would either have to manually check their accounts or set their devices to periodically check for updates.

This patent is not deemed to be critical to an industry standard, so the firm does not have to license the technology to Apple even if the iPhone-maker offered to pay.

Apple said that it believed the patent involved was invalid, adding that it was appealing against the decision.

Although the two cases only apply to Germany they may have implications for other European lawsuits. EU rules say different countries' courts can reach different conclusions, but must explain why.

Mr Mueller Mr Mueller notes on his blog that Apple has brought patent claims of its own against Motorola in Germany, and that Motorola also faces a lawsuit filed by Microsoft which is due to be considered next Tuesday.

Submission + - Site Aims to be Google of the Underweb (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by tsu doh nimh
tsu doh nimh writes: A new service in the cyber underground aims to be the Google search of underground Web sites, connecting buyers to a vast sea of shops that offer an array of dodgy goods and services, from stolen credit card numbers to identity information and anonymity tools. From the story: "A glut of data breaches and stolen card numbers has spawned dozens of stores that sell the information. The trouble is that each shop requires users to create accounts and sign in before they can search for cards. Enter MegaSearch, which lets potential buyers discover which fraud shops hold the cards they're looking for without having to first create accounts at each store.
Idle

Submission + - Fake iPad 2s made of clay sold at Canadian stores (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: As far as I can tell, these iPads are just as useful as the real things...

"As many as 10 fake iPad 2s, all made of slabs of modeling clay, were recently sold at electronic stores in Vancouver, British Columbia. Best Buy and Future Shop have launched investigations into how the scam was pulled off.
The tablet computers, like most Apple products, are known for their sleek and simple designs. But there's no mistaking the iPad for one of the world's oldest "tablet devices." Still, most electronic products cannot be returned to stores. For the the stores and customers to be fooled by the clay replacements, the thieves must have successfully weighed out the clay portions and resealed the original Apple packaging.
Future Shop spokesman Elliott Chun told CTV that individuals bought the iPads with cash, replaced them with the model clay, then returned the packages to the stores. The returned fakes were restocked on the shelve and sold to new, unwitting customers.
"Customers don't expect to receive this kind of product from Future Shop, so it's a very serious matter and something we are addressing right away for anyone who has been impacted," Chun told CTV British Columbia. "It really saddens Future Shop that people stoop to be this opportunistic and make money in this kind of organized way."
The scam was first brought to CTV's attention by a victim of the crime, Mark Sandhu. Sandhu says after purchasing what he thought was an iPad 2 for his wife for Christmas, he tried to return the clay, only to be rebuffed. "Maybe the way I was dressed, I don't know," he said. "She made me feel like I'm trying to scam them out of $700. I was the one getting scammed."
Sandhu contacted Future Shop's head office, Apple and local police, but no one believed his story. Future Shop has since apologized and given Sandhu a full refund along with a free tablet--a real one."
Google

Submission + - US Judge rules Motorola did not infringe Apple pat (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: Motorola Mobility Inc. did not violate Apple's patented technology in making its Droid, Cliq, BackFlip and other smartphones, a judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission said in a preliminary decision issued on Friday.

The full ITC will issue a final decision in March.

Apple had filed a complaint with the ITC in October of 2010, accusing Motorola Mobility of infringing three Apple patents to make its smartphones.

Two of the patents have to do with how the devices accept manual input when users type or handwrite on them while the third relates to ways for consumers to add applications without jumping through hoops like rebooting the smartphone.

The complaint, like many patent battles focusing on smartphones, is part of a larger fight between Apple and Google Inc's fast-growing Android operating system, which Motorola uses.

The ITC is a popular venue for patent disputes because it can order devices made with infringing technology barred from importation.

Google has reached an agreement to buy Motorola Mobility, and is seeking the antitrust approval needed to close the sale.

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