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Google Caffeine Drops MapReduce, Adds "Colossus" 65

An anonymous reader writes "With its new Caffeine search indexing system, Google has moved away from its MapReduce distributed number crunching platform in favor of a setup that mirrors database programming. The index is stored in Google's BigTable distributed database, and Caffeine allows for incremental changes to the database itself. The system also uses an update to the Google File System codenamed 'Colossus.'"

Comment Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Score 1) 630

For more fiction, how about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, which Publisher's Weekly summarized as "Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched." It has math problems scattered throughout.

Comment Do what I did: take a summer off (Score 1) 386

Do what I did and take a summer off.

Actually, I did a co-op (for which I received somewhat useless credit from my university) which sent me to Europe and Africa to do some computer work. They were specifically looking for a single person to do this, and it wasn't a common opportunity in my experience, but I jumped at the chance.

The following summer, I took part of the summer off from my required courses. For some courses, our short summer semester was divided in two, and in the first 6 weeks I took an outstanding gen-ed course, and in the second 6 weeks I went on a study abroad trip to Italy and studied Italian and Renaissance art, neither of which I had studied before or had a prior interest in. We studied at an Italian University from Monday to Friday (sometimes Thursday) and traveled around on the weekends, and then the last week was spent traveling full time.

That was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life, and the irrelevant-to-my-degree but relevant-to-my-travels courses served as a nice break from my beloved 1's and 0's and greatly enriched the experience.

In short, I highly recommend finding a way to study abroad, even if it delays your graduation briefly.

Comment Signal-to-noise ratio (Score 1) 345

You will need to do some tuning with a tool like Gimpel's PC-Lint, so it's best to use it from the get-go rather than try to start linting part way through or at the end of your project. Then you do some initial setup and make minor tweaks as you go, so the tuning process is not at all painful. Many tools, like PC-Lint, also integrate into IDEs like Visual Studio, and some have free add-on programs like ALOA (http://pera-software.com/htm/english/aloa.htm) which analyzes the output of PC-Lint to generate some metrics for the quality of the code.

I have found such tools to be invaluable. I had code like this:
class Lock {/*...*/};
void Foo( Mutex& m )
{
Lock(m);
// ...
}

This is valid syntax, but I intended to use that lock instance for the duration of the function, so the first line should have read "Lock lock(m);". Multithreading is tricky enough, and I looked at the real code for a long while, reading right over this bug. PC-Lint found it for me right away (thankfully, it was already tuned, and I should have been using it before running my code).

But even though PC-Lint is pretty good, it ain't perfect. I have found that it has some trouble with advanced C++ templates (e.g., policy-based design). I have submitted bug reports for many of these problems, and they do seem responsive in working them in to the patches.

Finally, here's an article from 2006 discussing the available static analysis available tools for C, C++, and Java and describing how and why to integrate it into your development process.

Media

Submission + - Panasonic unveils thinnest Blu-ray Disc drive (computerworld.com)

Lucas123 writes: "Panasonic plans to unveil the thinnest Blu-ray Disc drive at the upcoming CES show. The drive is 9.5mm high, which allows it to fit into standard laptop form factors instead of requiring manufacturers to redesign systems to fit high-def DVD players as they've been doing. "Panasonic has already begun offering samples of the drives to laptop makers with the hope that the companies will build it into new PCs.""
Math

Submission + - Mathematicians solve the mystery of traffic jams (physorg.com)

mlimber writes: Do you ever find yourself in a traffic jam, thinking, "Man, there must be a bad accident up ahead," but as you plod along, you see no evidence of any crash? Some mathematicians have solved the mystery by developing a mathematical model that shows how one driver hitting the brakes a little too hard can cascade into a backup miles behind. The mathematicians' future research will investigate how automatic braking systems may alleviate the problem.
Space

Submission + - Cosmic explosion detonates in empty space (newscientist.com)

mlimber writes: According to an article in NewScientist, "Astronomers are puzzling over a powerful cosmic explosion that seems to have detonated in a region of empty space, far away from any nearby galaxy." The leading theory is that the explosion was a star exploding in the gas trail that is yanked out of a galaxy when it passes or begins merging with another. Said the lead author of the study, "Even if the galaxies have stopped forming stars, in the tidal tails you can trigger new episodes of star formation [not to mention detonation]," and indeed the authors have identified two candidate galaxies that give weight to their theory.
Music

Submission + - Next for Apple: Lossless iTunes Store (cnet.co.uk)

DrJenny writes: C|net has an interesting piece running at the moment about why Apple developed their own lossless codec, and more importantly that iTunes will become a download store for lossless audio, potentially from all the major labels. This would be a massively positive move for people who spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on hi-fi gear, but refuse to give money to stores that only offer compressed music. It's a big FLAC, DRM, ALAC and GB discussion, but it's a very exciting perspective, and surely one that'll pan out meaning audiophiles will finally be able to take advantage of legal digital downloads.
Math

Submission + - Laws of Nature, Source Unknown (nytimes.com)

mlimber writes: In the New York Times science section, there is an interesting article discussing the nature of the scientific laws. It comes partly in reply to physicist Paul Davies, whose recent op-ed in same paper lit up the blogosphere and solicited flurry of reader responses to the editorial page. It asks, "Are [laws of nature] merely fancy bookkeeping, a way of organizing facts about the world? Do they govern nature or just describe it? And does it matter that we don't know and that most scientists don't seem to know or care where they come from?" And then it proceeds to survey different views on the matter.
Biotech

Submission + - Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Fo (washingtonpost.com) 1

mlimber writes: The Washington Post has a story about the future of biotech: "The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between biological and artificial — and forcing a rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive.... Some experts are worried that a few maverick companies are already gaining monopoly control over the core 'operating system' for artificial life and are poised to become the Microsofts of synthetic biology. That could stifle competition, they say, and place enormous power in a few people's hands."
Programming

Submission + - Faster Chips Are Leaving Programmers in Their Dust (nytimes.com)

mlimber writes: The New York Times is running a story about multicore computing and the efforts of Microsoft et al. to try to switch to the new paradigm: "The challenges [of parallel programming] have not dented the enthusiasm for the potential of the new parallel chips at Microsoft, where executives are betting that the arrival of manycore chips — processors with more than eight cores, possible as soon as 2010 — will transform the world of personal computing.... Engineers and computer scientists acknowledge that despite advances in recent decades, the computer industry is still lagging in its ability to write parallel programs."

It mirrors what C++ guru and now Microsoft architect Herb Sutter has been saying in articles such as his "The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software." Sutter is part of the C++ standards committee that is working hard to make multithreading standard in C++.

The Military

Submission + - Flying Humans (nytimes.com)

mlimber writes: The NYTimes is running a story about flying humans who jump from planes or other high locations wearing a wing suits akin to flying squirrels. Their efforts have potential military and X-treme sports applications. They have some good pictures and a video at the site, and here's an excerpt:

Modern suit design features tightly woven nylon sewn between the legs and between the arms and torso, creating wings that fill with air and create lift, allowing for forward motion and aerial maneuvers while slowing descent. As the suits, which cost about $1,000, have become more sophisticated, so have the pilots. The best fliers, and there are not many, can trace the horizontal contours of cliffs, ridges and mountainsides.
YouTube also has some video along these lines, one with a flier "skimming six feet above skiers in the Swiss Alps."

Space

Submission + - New Nuclear Powered Spaceship Design Revealed (tfot.info)

Iddo Genuth writes: "A U.S. based company introduced an innovative propulsion system that could significantly shorten round trips from Earth to Mars (from two years to only six months) and enable future spaceships to reach Jupiter after one year of space traveling. The system, which may dramatically affect interplanetary space travel is called the Miniature Magnetic Orion (Mini-Mag Orion for short), and is an optimization of the 1958 Orion interplanetary propulsion concept."
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Digital 'smiley face' turns 25 :-) (msn.com) 1

klubar writes: "Another milestone of online communications has been reached. The smiley turns 25 according Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman who says he was the first to use three keystrokes :-). It's sad that emotional icons, known as emoticons have replaced clear writing to communicate. Soon, we'll all go back to cave paintings (but they will be digital and in high resolution).

The inventor said "But it's always possible that someone else had the same idea — it's a simple and obvious idea, after all.", but at least he didn't try to patent the concept as one would do now."

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