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Comment Re:Not impressed so far (Score 1) 649

by eggstone (#24366571) Attached to: New Search Engine Cuil Takes Aim At Google
Agree, the layout looks nice, but the problem is with their search result. For example, I'm a Duke student, and I want to find the login page for my Duke webmail. I searched "duke email" and "duke mail" in Cuil, cannot find what I want in their first page. Similarly, for MS live search, "duke mail" shows the correct result in the first page, but "duke email" failed too. (Maybe the real address is mail.duke.edu confuses the word "email"). However, a google search for both queries gives have the correct link in their first result. UI is very important, but after you get the contents right.
United States

CS Programs Changing to Attract Women Students 596

Posted by Zonk from the too-much-y-already dept.
Magnifico writes "The New York times is running an article about a push by American universities to actively recruit women into Computer Science courses. The story, 'Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold', explains that the number of women in CS is shrinking: 'Women received about 38 percent of the computer science bachelor's degrees awarded in the United States in 1985, the peak year, but in 2003, the figure was only about 28 percent, according to the National Science Foundation.' One of the largest barriers to recruiting women to the field is the nerd factor. To attract women students to the CS field, 'Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science.' Changes at CMU increased women students in the CS program from 8 percent to nearly 40 percent."

Feed Conservation Efforts For The Yangtze River (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Deforestation, soil erosion, floods, and pollution are clogging up the Yangtze River's arteries, while increasing human pressure has upset the river's delicate ecological balance. Delegates from over 20 countries are meeting in China to explore solutions to environmental problems affecting the Yangtze River.
Communications

Submission + - Vonage admits they have no workaround

Submitted by drachenfyre
drachenfyre writes: It looks like Vonage has no workaround for their recent patent infringements . This means if a permanent stay isn't granted it is likely that it will be the end of the line for Vonage. What will happen in millions of phone customers suddenly loose their service as Vonage goes under. Their own filing to the court stated "While Vonage has studied methods for designing around the patents, removal of the allegedly infringing technology, if even feasible, could take many months to fully study and implement.".
The Courts

Daylight Savings Time Puts Kid in Jail for 12 Days 881

Posted by Zonk from the yeah-that's-a-woops dept.
Jherek Carnelian writes "Cody Webb was jailed for calling in a bomb threat to his Hempstead Area high school (near Pittsburgh). He spent 12 days in lockup until the authorities realized that their caller-id log was off an hour because of the new Daylight Savings Time rules and that Cody had only called one hour prior to the actual bomb threat. Perhaps it took so long because of the principal's Catch-22 attitude about Cody's guilt — she said, 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'"

Feed BT forgets to bill for internet access (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
Thousands get bumper bill six months later

BT has admitted that a glitch in its systems meant thousands of punters weren't billed for dial-up internet access and indirect international calls for three months last year.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Cell Phone Interference on planes - legitimate?

Journal by rockhome

For a long time I have been convinced that there wouldn't be a real problem with people using their mobile phones in airplanes. Figuring that wiring ought to properly insulated and frequencies not necessarily interfering between plane and ground communications, I'd have figured we were safe. A discovery that I made yesterday made me not so sure.

Feed Rotavirus Can Spread Beyond The Intestine (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
A new study in PLoS Medicine has shown that children who have rotavirus, a very common cause of diarrhea in children, and who have antigens (protein fragments from the surface of the virus) in their blood, also have infectious virus in their blood.
Bug

Customers Treated as Culprits in Support Calls? 245

Posted by Cliff from the computers-aren't-infallible-tho dept.
ApolloX asks: "I've worked in the software industry for a number of years and I understand how volatile large computer and database systems can be. Most of the time, I'm only called in when something breaks. I know first hand that issues such as a lack of concurrency control, or just a bad database optimization, can lead to corrupted or even lost data. What I don't know is, why most customer support representatives, in the event there is a data error, will treat the customer as if they are liars or are trying to scam them. I can recall many similar support calls to other companies over the years in which the phrase 'our computer system is never wrong' was repeatedly used as justification for an issue the representative knew little about. Since when did computers become so infallible such that the customer is always wrong? Why does it take multiple escalations of support calls before anyone starts believing that maybe the computer made a mistake?"
Patents

Wireless Email Patents Vs. Innovation 44

Posted by kdawson from the invented-here dept.
Exactly a year ago Slashdot discussed Geoff Goodfellow's early contributions to wireless email and how they were conspicuously absent from the NTP vs. RIM patent fight. Techdirt points us to another early wireless email innovator, Nicholas Fodor, who recently came to the notice of the NY Times. Techdirt uses Fodor's story to highlight the problems with the US patent system that are by now so obvious to this community.

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