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Software

R 3.0.0 Released 75

Posted by samzenpus from the brand-new dept.
DaBombDotCom writes "R, a popular software environment for statistical computing and graphics, version 3.0.0 codename "Masked Marvel" was released. From the announcement: 'Major R releases have not previously marked great landslides in terms of new features. Rather, they represent that the codebase has developed to a new level of maturity. This is not going to be an exception to the rule. Version 3.0.0, as of this writing, contains only [one] really major new feature: The inclusion of long vectors (containing more than 2^31-1 elements!). More changes are likely to make it into the final release, but the main reason for having it as a new major release is that R over the last 8.5 years has reached a new level: we now have 64 bit support on all platforms, support for parallel processing, the Matrix package, and much more.'"
Communications

Solar Eruption Triggers Strongest Radiation Storm 62

Posted by timothy from the your-reception-is-terrible dept.
ForgedArtificer writes "A recent eruption on the sun will be exposing Earth to the strongest radiation storm seen since 2005. [The storm] will potentially disrupt communications and put high-flyers at risk of radiation exposure." Says Spaceweather.com: "On the NOAA scale of radiation storms, this one ranks S3, which means it could, e.g., cause isolated reboots of computers onboard Earth-orbiting satellites and interfere with polar radio communications." According to the Christian Science Monitor, "NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a geomagnetic storm watch, and the agency's deputy, Kathy Sullivan, said that polar flights are expected to be re-routed."

Comment Re:wii is an awesome netflix appliance (Score 4, Informative) 255

by thedohman (#38404260) Attached to: Aging Consoles Find New Life As Video Streamers
Speaking of using the Konami code in netflix... A slightly modified version can be to deactivate the account, so you can reactivate it. In theory you could use trial accounts, and just keep deactivating it to start a new trial account. I wouldn't be surprised if they tracked this and disabled Wiis that do it too much, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they didn't bother. (Got this from their tech support when we had a phantom account issue. Re-activating with the same account fixed our issue, but cleared our instant queue, recently watched, etc.).
Slightly modified: U U D D L R L R U U U U

Oh, and I'd say for now we use the Wii for Netflix and the homebrew WiiMC ( http://www.wiimc.org/ ) (for shoutcast 'radio', mostly) for about 80% of the Wii usage, and about 50% of total tv use. There is a 360 wrapped and under the tree, so those numbers will go down very soon.

Comment Re:how is this a sign of potential problems? (Score 5, Insightful) 145

by thedohman (#32357746) Attached to: Lifelock Worries After Employee Data Leaked To Web
You are absolutely correct! They are doing exactly as I would expect the service to do. She got her info on a police report. The police department gave a media outlet the report in such a way that her personal information was exposed. LifeLock called the media outlet and asked to remove her data. There is no way anybody could have prevented the info from getting there in the first place... except maybe not giving the police department your SSN when reporting a crime happening to someone else.

If I was a customer of theirs, and a police department did the same to me, then LifeLock is doing exactly as I would expect them to do, if they wanted to continue getting my monthly fee.

However, Tamika is one of their own, and the police report was published in an article about them. I don't think they would even notice if it had happened to a regular customer and/or if it had not been an article concerning LifeLock.

Comment Re:Stock market analysis? (Score 1) 509

by thedohman (#27896817) Attached to: New Pattern Found In Prime Numbers

Where is the interaction between prime numbers and the praxeology of buying and selling securities?

Primes don't have anything to do with Stock Market analysis.

From the article (ha! I didn't read it, I just skimmed it, but it's not think with maths), what the researchers found, using primes, is a generalization of Benford's Law. It's this Generalized Benford's Law that can be used in Analysis.

In addition, many applications that have been developed for Benford's law could eventually be generalized to the wider context of the Generalized Benford's law. One such application is fraud detection: while naturally generated data obey Benford's law, randomly guessed (fraudulent) data do not, in general.

(OK, so the article doesn't mention stock market except for the part that is quoted in the summary, but better fraud detection would play a part in stock market analysis, yes?)

Comment Re:Ask not... (Score 1) 198

by thedohman (#25429431) Attached to: Tax Write-Offs For Free (As In Speech) Work?
They do have chapters. But IRC sections are unique across all chapters. There is only one Section 12, so chapter is irrelevent in your parent's citation. (If you wanted to be nit-picky, there is no "IRS Code", it's simply IRC or "Internal Revenue Code") IRC is US Code Title 26. There are also subtitles and subchapters, which you failed to mention, and THEN parts.

Specifically, IRC Section 12 is in subtitle A, Chapter 1, subchapter A, Part II. Unfortunately for Ottair, there is no Paragraph 14. There is no other (US) IRC Section 12. And no, I am not a CPA, enrolled agent, or a lawyer (though I play one on TV...), so my citation is probably not written properly, but I can still provide a reference:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode26/usc_sec_26_00000012----000-.html

That is the site to which the IRS links when you look for Internal Revenue Code. Funny how even the IRS doesn't want anything to do with the code.

Cyber-Goggles Record and Identify Every Object You See 108

Posted by Zonk from the partially-sapient-ai-additional-charge dept.
RemyBR writes "Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a smart video goggle system that records everything the wearer looks at, recognizes and assigns names to objects that appear in the video. Advanced programs then go back and create an easily searchable database of the recorded footage. Designed to function as a high-tech memory aid, these 'Cyber Goggles' promise to make the act of losing your keys a thing of the past, according to head researcher professor Tatsuya Harada. 'In a demonstration at the University of Tokyo last week, 60 everyday items -- including a potted begonia, CD, hammer and cellphone -- were programmed into the Cyber Goggle memory. As the demonstrator walked around the room viewing and recording the various objects, the names of the items appeared on the goggle screen. The demonstrator was then able to do a search for the various items and retrieve the corresponding video.'" Add in facial recognition technology and this would make for a great aid at conferences and family reunions.
Power

Energy From Raindrops 144

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the don't-stop-the-rain dept.
conlaw writes to share that according to Discovery.com scientists have found a way to extract energy from rain. A new technique could utilize piezoelectric principles of a special kind of plastic to generate power from falling water in rainstorms or even commercial air conditioners. "The method relies on a plastic called PVDF (for polyvinylidene difluoride), which is used in a range of products from pipes, films, and wire insulators to high-end paints for metal. PVDF has the unusual property of piezoelectricity, which means it can produce a charge when it's mechanically deformed."

Feed Science Daily: Move Over, Silicon: Advances Pave Way For Powerful Carbon-based Electronics (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Bypassing decades-old conventions in making computer chips, engineers developed a novel way to replace silicon with carbon on large surfaces, clearing the way for new generations of faster, more powerful cell phones, computers and other electronics. The new practical technique shows great promise with the carbon material called graphene.
United States

U.S. House Says the Internet is Terrorist Threat 457

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-is-my-chilli dept.
GayBliss writes "The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill (H.R. 1955) last month, by a vote of 404 to 6, that says the Internet is a terrorist tool and that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat it."
Biotech

HP Skin Patch May Replace Needles 190

Posted by kdawson from the you-may-feel-a-slight-pinch dept.
Iddo Genuth writes "HP and Crospon have developed a skin patch employing microneedles that barely penetrate the skin. The microneedles can replace conventional injections and deliver drugs through the skin without causing any pain. The skin patch technology also enables delivery of several drugs by one patch and the control of dosage and of administration time for each drug. It has the potential to be safer and more efficient than injections."
Privacy

Interpol Unscrambles Doctored Photo In Manhunt 370

Posted by kdawson from the blur-schmlur dept.
jackpot777 writes in with an AP story out of Paris reporting that Interpol has distributed photos of a man suspected of sexually exploiting children. The images were recovered from pictures taken off the Internet in which the man's face had been blurred using something like Photoshop's Filter > Distort > Twirl tool. German police were able to recover recognizable images of the man, whose identity and nationality are not known. Interpol would not discuss the techniques used to recover the images. jackpot777 writes: "It does show one interesting facet of internet privacy that has also been noted with topics ranging from reading blurred check numbers in images to Google's plan to blur out license plate and face data for Street View. And that is: blurring is not the same as completely obscuring. As computers become more adept at extrapolating data of different types, your identity isn't safe unless you completely cover all those identifying features."
Programming

Submission + - GCC Compiler will finally gets replace by BSD PCC. (undeadly.org)

Submitted by
Sunnz
Sunnz writes: "A leaner, lighter, faster, and most importantly, BSD Licensed Compiler PCC has been imported into OpenBSD's CVS and NetBSD's pkgsrc.

The compiler is based on the original Portable C Compiler by S. C. Johnson, written in the late 70's. Even though much of the compiler has been rewritten, some of the basics still remain.

It is currently not bug-free, but it compiles on x86 platform, and works being done on it to take on GCC's job."
Programming

Submission + - Want to be a computer scientist? Forget maths (itwire.com.au)

Submitted by
Coryoth
Coryoth writes: "A new book is trying to claim that computer science is better off without maths. The author claims that early computing pioneers such as Von Neumann and Alan Turing imposed their pure mathematics background on the field, and that this has hobbled computer science ever since. He rejects the idea of algorithms as a good way to think about software. Can you really do computer science well without mathematics? And would you want to?"

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Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell #pragma is for.

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