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Supercomputing

Submission + - Open Source Solution Breaks World Sorting Records

allenw writes: In a recent blog post, Yahoo!'s grid computing team announced that Apache Hadoop was used to break the current world records in the annual GraySort contest in the Gray and Minute sorts in the general purpose (Daytona) category. Apache Hadoop is the only open source software to ever win the competition. Apache Hadoop also won the Terasort competition last year.

Comment Re:I think you can pretty clearly define hate spee (Score 1) 452

Interesting point, though I wouldn't say that censorship engenders violence; in the same way, you point out that hate speech doesn't necessarily result in violence. Both create the conditions for the possibility of violent acts: censorship enables a violent state, hate speech incites a mob. That was more pithy, but were I to attempt to be more accurate in the cases we're discussing: hate speech incites individuals, whose symbolic violence is appropriated and exploited by a mob.

More to the point, I don't think genocide is what we're primarily concerned with. I have no statistics- so I forward this tentatively- but I wouldn't describe the Southern US as laden in "large scale acts of violence" during the early 20th century. To my knowledge, there was nothing that could properly be termed genocide. What *did* exist was a culture that used violence against individuals to imply a threat against a group. Organizations also staged demonstrations to ensure that such threats were clearly understood and broadened beyond that incident.

I expect we find the same thing objectionable, but I seem less confident in my solutions. In its effect, hate speech censors the group it targets. Both censorship and hate speech, ironically, appropriate power from the vulnerable, exploiting the society in a pretty cynical way. Censorship takes the responsibility to protect the citizenry- and uses it to weaken it- while hate speech takes the society's openness- and uses it to silence others.

I don't know what is to be done.

Feed Boeing, iRobot team to develop PackBot replacement, the SUGV Early (engadget.com)

Filed under: Robots


We spotted the SUGV peeking out behind the curtain last year as iRobot introduced the Warrior, and now we've got the lowdown, as Boeing and iRobot this week announced a partnership bringing together iRobot's non-vacuum skills and Boeing's penchant for sci-fi warfare. The two companies are collaborating on the replacement for iRobot's extremely successful Packbot, which has performed thousands of dangerous missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like the PackBot, the 30-pound SUGV Early can be deployed by a single soldier and features a video camera, infrared sensors, and enough smarts to navigate most obstacles semi-autonomously. Naturally, iRobot will be in charge of most of the design work, while Boeing is being tapped for its vast experience with systems integration, mass production, and global marketing. As a result of this partnership, the SUGV should be rolling out in 2008, with full-scale deployment in 2010. No plans are being made to weaponize these 'bots (yet), but what we really want to know is when iRobot is just going to to go all the way and start cranking out Johnny Five clones.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!


Education

Encouraging Students to Drop Mathematics 618

Coryoth writes "The BBC is reporting that students in the UK are being encouraged to drop math at the senior levels. It seems that schools are seeking to boost their standing on league tables by encouraging students not to take 'hard' subjects like mathematics, in favor of easier subjects in which they are assured good grades. The result is Universities being forced to provide remedial math classes for science students who haven't done math for two years. The BBC provides a comparison between Chinese and UK university entrance tests — a comparison that makes the UK look woefully behind."
Security

Submission + - Virus Writers Target Google's Sponsored Links

An anonymous reader writes: It looks like the bad guys are gaming Google's sponsored links to spread their junk to people who click on the ads with unpatched versions of Internet Explorer. Attackers apparently bought the rights to several high profile search terms, including searches that would return results for the Better Business Bureau, among others. The story notes this was bound to happen, given the way Google structures sponsored links: "The bad guys behind the attack appeared to capitalize on an odd feature of Google's sponsored links. Normally, when a viewer hovers over a hyperlink, the name of the site that the computer user is about to access appears in the bottom left corner of the browser window. But hovering over Google's sponsored links shows nothing in that area. That blank space potentially gives bad guys another way to hide where visitors will be taken first."
Role Playing (Games)

Dragon Quest IX Battle System Revealed 39

1up is reporting on the combat system for the upcoming Dragon Quest IX . Rumoured to be a departure from the classic turn-based style, the DS title is now confirmed to be much more like previous iterations of the game than initially thought. "Enemies will be visible on the field, and players will enter into battle once in contact with them. Like Dragon Quest VIII, the battle will be presented in 3D with players selecting commands for attacking enemies, casting spells and others. In the case of multiplayer, each of the players will select commands for their characters shown at the bottom part of the screen. Dragon Quest IX will also be the first time players can customize their appearance including physical features such as your height, weight, face, hair as well as your costume. It is not yet known whether the costumes will be dependent on the class you have selected."
The Internet

Submission + - Are ComScore Web Ratings Dangerous To Sites?

Freshly Exhumed writes: For website publishers, a poor web rating can be disastrous. Bad television ratings mean television shows get canceled, bad web ratings mean websites go out of business. For advertisers, accurate web ratings are critical to optimize spending. Inaccurate ratings data means advertisers will overspend on poorly performing sites or not advertise on smaller sites whose numbers are really much higher than reported. In the case of Canadian web site Digital Home, already hit with an advertising boycott by Bell Canada over the site's pro-consumer editorial content, the site's owner is now in danger of ending operations, apparently due to the inaccuracies of ComScore rankings. For example, Google Analytics reported Digital Home served up over 2.7 million page views in January to almost 250,000 unique visitors. A web buyer at one of Canada's largest advertising agencies confirmed that ComScore reported just 32,000 visitors. Added to this is ComScore's secretly-installed spyware troubles.

Feed New Materials For Making 'Spintronic' Devices (sciencedaily.com)

Scientists have devised methods to make a new class of electronic devices based on a property of electrons known as "spin," rather than merely their electric charge. This approach, dubbed spintronics, could open the way to increasing dramatically the productivity of electronic devices operating at the nanoscale -- on the order of billionths of a meter.
Google

Google Releases MySQL Enhancements 208

An anonymous reader noted that "Google has released its internally developed enhancements to MySQL to the open source community this week. Changes include improvements in replication, high availability configuration, and performance." It'll be interesting to see if the changes they made are of interest to other places using MySQL.

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