cthorman - Slashdot User

New Company Seeks to Bring Semantic Context To Numbers 264

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday August 10, 2009 @02:28PM from the quick-create-another-standards-body dept.

A new company, True#, is seeking to bring extensive semantic context to numbers to give them obvious meanings just as certain words have obvious meanings to most readers. "Most of us can probably recognize 3.14159 and the conceptual baggage it carries, but how many of us would recognize 58.44? (That's a mole of sodium chloride, in grams, for the curious.) And the response that would work for words — look it up — doesn't work so conveniently for numbers. Only one of the top-10 hits in Google refers to salt, and Bing fails entirely (though it does offer 'Women's Sexy Mini Skirts by VENUS'). Clearly, we haven't figured out how to make the Web work for numbers in the same way it does for words."

US Army Will Upgrade To Windows Vista 374

Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 22, 2009 @08:14PM from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.

MojoKid writes "While many organizations are preparing for an upgrade to Windows 7, the US Army is upgrading to Windows Vista. The upgrade will include getting rid of all the Office 2003 programs and installing Office 2007 in its place, and is scheduled for a Dec. 31 completion date. Half the Army's computers (they have 744,000 desktop units) have Office 2007 so far, and 13 percent are on Vista, which was released in January 2007. Windows 7 is supposed to launch before year's end, so the Army will be fully on Vista sometime after Microsoft's next-generation OS is already launched."

Why Linux Is Not Yet Ready For the Desktop 1365

Posted by timothy on Monday May 18, 2009 @07:58AM from the choose-your-own-misadventure dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Every now and then a new- or old-media journalist tries to explain to everyone why Linux is not yet ready for the desktop. However all those men who graduated from their engineering universities years ago have only superficial knowledge about operating systems and their inner works. An unknown author from Russia has decided to draw up a list of technical reasons and limitations hampering Linux domination on the desktop." Some of the gripes listed here really resonate with me, having just moved to an early version of Ubuntu 9.10 on my main testing-stuff laptop; it's frustrating especially that while many seemingly more esoteric things work perfectly, sound now works only in part, and even that partial success took some fiddling.

Gates Foundation Funds "Altruistic Vaccine" 259

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 14, 2009 @03:46AM from the needles-with-a-heart dept.

QuantumG writes "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $100,000 grant to the University of Queensland, Australia to develop a vaccine against dengue fever, a disease spread by mosquitoes. Unlike other vaccines, the 'altruistic vaccine' doesn't specifically protect the individual being bitten, but instead protects the community by stopping the transmission of the pathogen from one susceptible individual to another. The hope is to do this by effectively making their blood poisonous to mosquitoes, either killing them or at least preventing them from feeding on other individuals. Professor Paul Young explained how his work fell outside current scientific traditions and might lead to significant advances in global health — he said he could envision the vaccine being used around the world within 10 years, and it would be designed to be cheap and easy to implement."

Phony Wikipedia Entry Used By Worldwide Press 391

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 06, 2009 @08:20PM from the check-your-sources dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "A quote attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre was posted on wikipedia shortly after his death in March and later appeared in obituaries in mainstream media. 'One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear,' Jarre was quoted as saying. However, these words were not uttered by the Oscar-winning composer but written by Shane Fitzgerald, a final-year undergraduate student, who said he wanted to show how journalists use the internet as a primary source for their stories. Fitzgerald posted the quote on Wikipedia late at night after news of Jarre's death broke. 'I saw it on breaking news and thought if I was going to do something I should do it quickly. I knew journalists wouldn't be looking at it until the morning,' The quote had no referenced sources and was therefore taken down by moderators of Wikipedia within minutes. However, Fitzgerald put it back up a few more times until it was finally left up on the site for more than 24 hours. While he was wary about the ethical implications of using someone's death as a social experiment, he had carefully generated the quote so as not to distort or taint Jarre's life, he said. 'I didn't expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised.'"

Time To Cut the Ethernet Cable? 496

Posted by kdawson on Friday May 01, 2009 @10:44AM from the restructuring-the-edge dept.

coondoggie writes in with a Network World piece that begins "A range of companies with wireless LANs are discovering that 50% to 90% or more of Ethernet ports now go unused, because Wi-Fi has become so prevalent. They look at racks of unused switches, ports, Ethernet wall jacks, the cabling that connects them all, the yearly maintenance charges for unused switches, electrical charges, and cooling costs. So why not formally drop what many end users have already discarded — the Ethernet cable? 'There's definitely a right-sizing going on,' says Michael King, research director, mobile and wireless, for Gartner. 'By 2011, 70% of all net new ports will be wireless. People are saying, "we don't need to be spending so much on a wired infrastructure if no one is using it."' ... There is debate over whether WLANs, including the high-throughput 802.11n networks, will be able to deliver enough bandwidth." Cisco, which makes both wireless and wired gear, has a spokesman quoted calling this idea of right-sizing a "shortsighted message from a wireless-only provider. It's penny-wise and pound-foolish."

Adobe Confirms PDF Zero-Day, Says Kill JavaScript 211

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 29, 2009 @03:18PM from the kpdf-has-better-panning-anyhow dept.

CWmike writes "Adobe Systems has acknowledged that all versions of its Adobe Reader, including editions for Windows, the Mac and Linux, contain at least one, and possibly two, critical vulnerabilities. 'All currently supported shipping versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat, [Versions] 9.1, 8.1.4 and 7.1.1 and earlier, are vulnerable to this issue,' said Adobe's David Lenoe said in a blog entry yesterday. He was referring to a bug in Adobe's implementation of JavaScript that went public early Tuesday. A "Bugtraq ID," or BID number has been assigned to a second JavaScript vulnerability in Adobe's Reader. Proof-of-concept attack code for both bugs has already been published on the Web. Adobe said it will patch Reader and Acrobat, but Lenoe offered no timetable for the fixes. In lieu of a patch, Lenoe recommended that users disable JavaScript in the apps. Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security, said of the suggestion in lieu of patches, 'Unfortunately, for Adobe, disabling JavaScript is a broken record, [and] similar to what we've seen in the past with Microsoft on ActiveX bugs.'"

F-Secure Suggests Ditching Adobe Reader For Free PDF Viewers 249

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 22, 2009 @06:42PM from the jane-the-sex-was-good-but-I've-had-enough-circus dept.

hweimer writes "Yesterday at RSA security conference, F-Secure's chief research officer recommended dropping Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files because of the huge amount of targeted attacks against it. Instead, he pointed to PDFreaders.org, a website maintaining a list of free and open source PDF viewers."

Visualizing Data Inside the 30-ft Allosphere 131

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @04:49PM from the bah-I've-seen-bigger dept.

TEDChris writes "The Allosphere, being created at UC Santa Barbara, is the most ambitious attempt yet at creating powerful 3d visualizations of raw scientific data, such as the structure of a crystal, or how quantum effects take place. Researchers watch from a bridge inside the 30-foot sphere, looking at data projected 360 degrees around them and listening to 3D sound. The first major public demo of the facility has just been posted at TED.com. Optimists would argue that many of the greatest scientific breakthroughs happened through a new visual way of imagining data. Penicillin and relativity come to mind. So this is either a killer new research vehicle, an incredible toy, or just an insanely expensive art project."

What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems? 237

Posted by timothy on Thursday April 09, 2009 @02:40PM from the ask-the-oracle dept.

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister believes Oracle is next in line to make a play for Sun now that IBM has withdrawn its offer. Dismissing server market arguments in favor of Cisco or Dell as suitors, McAllister suggests that MySQL, ZFS, DTrace, and Java make Sun an even better asset to Oracle than to IBM. MySQL as a complement to Oracle's existing database business would make sense, given Oracle's 2005 purchase of Innobase, and with 'the long history of Oracle databases on Solaris servers, it might actually see owning Solaris as an asset,' McAllister writes. But the 'crown jewel' of the deal would be Java. 'It's almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Java to Oracle. Java has become the backbone of Oracle's middleware strategy,' McAllister contends."

Zero-Day Excel Exploit In the Wild 117

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 24, 2009 @04:13PM from the be-careful-out-there dept.

snydeq writes "Microsoft Excel has a zero-day vulnerability that attackers are exploiting on the Internet, according to security vendor Symantec. The problem affects Excel 2007 both without and with Service Pack 1, according to an advisory on SecurityFocus, and other versions going back to Excel 2000. The program's vulnerability can be exploited if a user opens a maliciously crafted Excel file, allowing a hacker to leave a Trojan horse on the infected system."

Atlantis Seekers Given Thrill by Google Ocean 321

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday February 20, 2009 @04:47PM from the jump-to-conclusions-mat dept.

RcK writes "Numerous articles are springing up regarding a feature found using the new Google Ocean, which some claim could be the location of Atlantis. While this is obviously early, and probably has the same credibility levels as previous claims of finding the mythical city, the detected anomaly is quite convincingly linear, is apparently the size of Wales and sits near where Plato hypothesized the city to be located." Google has stated that this is an issue with the way their ocean mapping software is working, but clearly that is a cover up while Google execs try to buy the real estate. I just hope they bring back Elvis next.

Google Earth To Show Ocean Floor 181

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 02, 2009 @10:02AM from the no-running-from-big-brother-google dept.

f1vlad writes "Google is expected to announce the addition of ocean floor imagery to its Google Earth project, which will complete digital representation of our planet. 'The existing site, to which an estimated 400 million people have had access, already includes three-dimensional representations of large cities around the world and includes images from street-level and aerial photography covering thousands of miles across Britain and elsewhere. The new additions to the website are expected to include views of the ocean, and portions of the seabed. They will also provide detailed environmental data that will enhance information about the effect of climate change on the world's seas and oceans.'"

Comment What matters is what you have contributed (Score 1) 991

by cthorman on Wednesday April 16, 2008 @07:18AM (#23088000) Attached to: For CS Majors, How Important Is the "Where?"

As an engineer and a hiring manager, I am much more interested in a well-rounded person who can think, communicate, write, and spell well :-). Working well with others is important.

I don't care about class work or teaching style at the school -- but I do like to see a body of coding work. The best advice I can give is go to the liberal arts school, but

1) Take charge of your tech education yourself. You should learn as much from googling around as from your tech classes. God! if only I had had the web when I was in college!

2) These days your engineering peer groups are all virtual anyway.

3) Contribute, contribute, contribute. Begin now. Don't wait till you get to school. Learn a language like ruby (which BTW is great for learning the theoretical concepts!) Then, begin actively contributing to open-source libraries and projects. Start by helping to improve some existing libraries. Then think up your own contributions and begin contributing and actively maintaining them. Learn how those libraries are packaged, uploaded, deployed. Learn to iterate.

4) Learn how to work in teams (source control, using a bug tracking system, prioritizing the work you do to fit into limited time).

5) Get summer jobs that involve programming. Work somewhere cool that values good engineering practice and creativity. Do not work programming AT&T telephone switching equipment.

6) Try to leverage your peer group and contribution history into getting "scholarship" attendee status at open-source technical conferences, such as the OS Con (usually in July, usually in Portland).

As a manager, if I saw someone who had contributed a diversity of nice, mature, open source tools, whose code I could freely download and inspect (and unit-test :-)), and that person could talk to me cogently about experience developing those projects, I would hire them even if they had not been to college at all. Some of the very best engineers I know never graduated from college.

Good luck!

-c

Slashdot Top Deals