Comment Re:Teachers are not underpaid (Score 1) 888
How about a teacher with 20yrs experience vs an accountant with 20 yrs?
Submission + - New material can selectively capture CO2 (www.cbc.ca)
Socguy writes: "Scientists have created metal-organic crystals capable of soaking up carbon dioxide gas like a sponge, which could be used to keep industrial emissions of the gas out of the atmosphere.
The team of Chemists, from University of California Los Angeles, created 25 ZIF crystal structures in a laboratory, three of which showed a particular affinity for capturing carbon dioxide. The highly porous crystals also had what the researchers called "extraordinary capacity for storing CO2": one litre of the crystals could store about 83 litres of CO2.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/02/15/tech-carbon-capture.html"
The team of Chemists, from University of California Los Angeles, created 25 ZIF crystal structures in a laboratory, three of which showed a particular affinity for capturing carbon dioxide. The highly porous crystals also had what the researchers called "extraordinary capacity for storing CO2": one litre of the crystals could store about 83 litres of CO2.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/02/15/tech-carbon-capture.html"
Rat-eating Plant Discovered in Australia 133
Megaport writes "Finally, the news that every slashdot-meme poster have been waiting for. A rat-eating vine called "Tenax" has been discovered in the rainforests of the Cape York region in Queensland, Australia"
Feed Science Daily: First Evidence Of Under-ice Volcanic Eruption In Antarctica (sciencedaily.com) 4
The first evidence of a volcanic eruption from beneath Antarctica's most rapidly changing ice sheet has been discovered. The volcano on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet erupted 2,000 years ago and remains active. Using airborne ice-sounding radar, scientists discovered a layer of ash produced by a 'subglacial' volcano. It extends across an area larger than Wales.
Submission + - Collapsed UK bank attempts to censor Wikileaks (wikileaks.org)
James Hardine writes: Wikileaks has released a couple of hilarious legal demands over a confidential briefing memo entitled Project Wing — Northern Rock Executive Summary. Northern Rock Bank (UK) collapsed spectacularly late last year on the back of the sub-prime lending crisis and was re-floated by the Bank of England at a cost of over £24bn. The memo was used by the Financial Times, the Telegraph and others. It attracted a number of censorship injunctions, as reported by the Guardian, which only Wikileaks continues to withstand. In their legal demand to Wikileaks, Northern Rock's well-known media lawyers, Schillings, invoke the DMCA & WIPO, claim it'll be 10 years in prison for Wikileaks operators for not following the UK injunction, but then, incredibly, refuse to hand over a copy of the order unless Wikileaks' London lawyers promise not to give it to Wikileaks. Finally they claim copyright and more — on their demands! The letters raise a serious issue about the climate of censorship in the UK, where one can apparently easily obtain a censorship order — a judge made law — that everyone is meant to obey, but no one is meant to know.
Submission + - AOL adopting XMPP aka Jabber (florianjensen.com) 5
sander writes: "Proprietary protocols are things from yesterday. Today, Opensource technologies are taking over the world! AOL / ICQ has just launched a test server using XMPP, an open technology. This means that you'll soon be able to talk to your ICQ / AIM contacts via Jabber. Google has already started using it. So who's next? MSN!
More here: http://florianjensen.com/2008/01/17/aol-adopting-xmpp-aka-jabber/"
Submission + - Some DNS requests ruled illegal in North Dakota (circleid.com) 1
jgreco writes: "A judge in North Dakota has just ruled that requesting a zone transfer from a public DNS server is criminal activity within the meaning of the North Dakota Computer Crimes Law. A zone transfer is a simple request that a DNS server hand over information in bulk, and a DNS server may be configured to allow or deny such requests. That the owner of a DNS server would configure the server to allow such requests, and then claim such requests were unauthorized, is simply stunning.
http://www.circleid.com/posts/811611_david_ritz_court_spam/"
http://www.circleid.com/posts/811611_david_ritz_court_spam/"
Submission + - New Chip for Square Kilometre Radio Telescope (zdnet.com.au)
An anonymous reader writes: ZDNet Aus reported on a new low noise chip which could help to building the 1.8 billion dollar Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the world's largest radio telescope. Wikipedia claims the telescope will be 50 times as sensitive as current instruments. It will have a resolution of able to detect every active galactic nucleus (AGN) out to a redshift of 6, when the universe was less than 1 billion years old and way crazy. It will have the sensitivity to detect Earth-like radio leakage at a distance of several hundred to a few thousand light years, which will help greatly with the search for extraterrestrial life.
Quoting the Story:
Prof. Jack Singh who designed the chip said: 'The big challenge [was] to overcome the inherent noise in an integrated circuit, and to produce an amplifier with the lowest noise possible, with broad frequency band and high gain.' He also commented on the chip's ability to help with Quantum Computer research, due to its ability to operate at millikelvin temperatures, necessary to prevent quantum decoherence.
Quoting the Story:
Prof. Jack Singh who designed the chip said: 'The big challenge [was] to overcome the inherent noise in an integrated circuit, and to produce an amplifier with the lowest noise possible, with broad frequency band and high gain.' He also commented on the chip's ability to help with Quantum Computer research, due to its ability to operate at millikelvin temperatures, necessary to prevent quantum decoherence.
Submission + - Congress considers bill to make radio "pay to (arstechnica.com)
devjj writes: "Ars Technica is reporting that Congress is considering two bills that will remove the exemption terrestrial radio broadcasters currently enjoy that allows them to broadcast music without compensating the artists or labels for it. Songwriters are paid, but that is it. The National Association of Broadcasters is furious at the RIAA, a vocal supporter of repealing the exemptions, and has responded by agreeing that artists need better compensation. As a result, it is pointing its collective finger at the labels, asking Congress to investigate modern recording contracts.
What do you think? With the NAB up against the RIAA, what do consumers stand to gain or lose?"
What do you think? With the NAB up against the RIAA, what do consumers stand to gain or lose?"
Submission + - Intel announces Open Fibre Channel over Ethernet (open-fcoe.org)
sofar writes: "Intel has just announced and released source code for their Open-FCoE project, which creates a transport that allows native Fibre Channel frames to travel over ordinary ethernet cables to any Linux system. This is an extremely interesting development where datacenters can reduce cost and maintenance by reducing the amount of Fibre Channel equipment and cabling while still enjoying the benefits and performance of Fibre Channel equipment. The new standard for channelling fibre channel frames over ethernet is backed by Cisco, Sun, IBM, EMC, Emulex and a variety of others working in the storage field. The timing of this announce makes sense with 10 Gigabit Ethernet becoming more widespread in the datacenter."
Submission + - How to really bury a mainframe (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "Some users have gone to great lengths to dispose of their mainframe but few have gone this far. On November 21, 2007, the University of Manitoba said goodbye to its beloved 47-year-old IBM 650 mainframe Betelgeuse by holding a New Orleans style jazz funeral. In case you were wondering what an IBM 650's specifications were, according to this Columbia University site, the 650's CPU was 5ft by 3ft by 6ft and weighed 1,966 lbs, and rented for $3200 per month. The power unit was 5x3x6 and weighed 2,972 pounds. The card reader/punch weighed 1,295 pounds and rented for $550/month. The memory was a rotating magnetic drum with 2000 word (10 digits and sign) capacity and random access time of 2.496 ms. For an additional $1,500/month you could add magnetic core memory of 60 words with access time of .096ms. Big Blue sold some 2,000 of the mainframes making it one of the first successfully mass-produced computers.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23123"
Submission + - Microsoft's influence on upcoming ISO vote? (groklaw.net) 2
christian.einfeldt writes: "Microsoft has experienced some criticism for its handling of its bid to have OOXML accepted as an ISO standard, including the use of financial incentives to affect the Swedish national vote, which resulted in Swedent reversing its pro-Microsoft position; and failing to honor a promise to relinquish control of the OOXML specification if it gained ISO status. Now, Groklaw has published an article that raises questions about Microsoft's influence on the upcoming February vote, citing concerns with the limitation of discussions of patent issues, public accountability of the process, and even irregularities with choosing the size of the room so as to limit the delegates opposed to OOXML ISO status, as had been done in the past."
Submission + - Are you proud of your code? 6
An anonymous reader writes: I have a problem and I am hoping /. group therapy is the cure, so get on with the +5 comments, post haste!
I am downright embarrassed by the quality of my work; specifically, my code. It is buggy, slow, fragile, and a nightmare to maintain. Documentation, requirements, automated tests? Does not exist.
Do you feel the same way? If so, then what is holding you back from realizing your full potential? More importantly, what if anything are you planning to do about it?
This picture, which many of you have already seen, captures several project failure modes. It would be humorous if it weren't so depressingly true.
I enjoy programming and have from a young age (cut my teeth on BASIC on an Apple IIe). I have worked for companies large and small in a variety of languages and platforms. Sadly the one constant in my career is that I am assigned to projects that drift, seemingly aimlessly, from inception to a point where the client runs out of funding and the project is abandoned.
Like many young and idealistic university graduates I hoped to spend my life programming passionately, but ten years later I look in the mirror and see a whore. I'm just doing it for the money.
Have any developers here successfully lobbied their company to stop or cut back on 'cowboy coding' and adopt best practices? I'm not talking about the methodology-of-the-week, I'm referring to good old fashioned advice like keeping SQL out of the UI layer. For the big prize: has anyone convinced their superiors that the customer isn't always right and saying no once in awhile is the best course of action?
Thanks in advance for your helpful advice.
Submission + - Corporations face problems with employee e-mails (law.com) 4
TwistedOne151 writes: "Law.com has an article outlining how the casual attitude of many employees toward work e-mails has caused massive problems for coporations' in-house counsels."
Submission + - Is ISP Web Content Filtering Here? 1
unixluv writes: "An ISP is testing web content filtering and content substitution software, see http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000337.html. While it seems innocent enough, is this the wave of the future? Will your ISP censor your web experience? Now consider it in the context of The MPAA asking for ISP Content Filtering on /. this week. Is the RIAA next? Will this spawn a war of web tools to circumvent ISP tools?"
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