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The Military

Submission + - Ukrainian Attack Dolphins Are on the Loose

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Ukrainian Navy has a small problem on their hands as the Atlantic reports that after rebooting the Soviet Union's marine mammal program last year with the goal of teaching dolphins to find underwater mines and kill enemy divers, three of the Ukrainian military's new recruits have gone AWOL. Apparently they swam away from their trainers ostensibly in search of a "mate" out in open waters. It might not be such a big deal except that these dolphins have been trained to "attack enemy combat swimmers using special knives or pistols fixed to their heads." Dolphins were trained at Sevastopol for the Soviet Navy as far back as 1973 to find military equipment such as sea mines on the seabed as well as attacking divers and even carrying explosives on their heads to plant on enemy ships. The US has its own dolphin program in San Diego with 40 trained dolphins and sea lions and another 50 in training. US Navy dolphins were deployed in Bahrain in 1987 during a period when Iran was laying down mines in the Persian Gulf to disrupt oil shipments. No word yet on whether "sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached” have been added to the US arsenal."
Virtualization

Submission + - VMware Abandons VRAM-based Pricing Model (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: VMware has announced a new pricing structure abandoning the VRAM based pricing model completely thus giving its customers the much needed relief. About a year ago, VMware came up with a pricing scheme under which it started charging customers based on the virtual infrastructure instead of physical infrastructure. The virtualization leader asked its customer to pay based on the VRAM thus, in a way, penalizing them for deploying more virtual machines on comparatively less physical servers. Today, VMware’s CEO Pat Gelsinger announced at VMworld conference that they are going to do away with the VRAM-based pricing model. “Today I am happy to say we are striking this word from the vocabulary,” he said. Pricing hasn't been announced yet but a file [PDF] present on VMware's site does give an indication about the new pricing.

Submission + - How Apple killed the Linux desktop (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Klint Finley discusses Miguel de Icaza's idea of how OSX killed Linux on the desktop due to splintered GUI programs on Linux, including the lack of backward compatibility. It also relates the lack of graphical toolkits available on Linux causing developers to use OSX as a desktop for server programming and because "development was shifting to the web"

Article also on cnn.com http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/27/tech/web/apple-linux-desktop/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
Programming

Submission + - The Programmers Go Coding Two-by-Two, Hurrah? 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The Wall Street Journal reports that pair programming is all the rage at tech darlings Facebook and Square. Its advocates speak in glowing terms of the power of pair programming, saying paired coders can catch costly software errors and are less likely to waste time surfing the Web. 'The communication becomes so deep that you don't even use behind anymore,' says Facebook programmer Kent Beck. 'You just grunt and point.' Such reverent tones prompted Atlassian to poke a little fun at the practice with Spooning, an instructional video in which a burly engineer sits on a colleague's lap, wraps his arms around his partner's waist and types along with him hand over hand.

Submission + - UK license-plate cameras have "gaps in coverage" (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Aguazul2
Aguazul2 writes: UK police are sad that despite having the most comprehensive driver surveillance system of any developed country, there are still gaps in their coverage. From the article: The cameras automatically record plate/time/location information and send it to a central data store, which has complete nationwide records for 6 years. Also interesting is that a unspecified "particular driving style" can be used to evade detection by the cameras. It appears, however, that criminals are well aware of the cameras and take other routes. Big Brother technology, coming soon to a country near you!

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