Slashdot Mirror

First time accepted submitter yuriyg_ua writes "[The] semantic line interface may combine features of both command line and graphical interface, which would allow even more complex applications than we have seen before." The idea is that the layer underlying user interfaces should define the semantic relations between data enabling the UI to provide better contextual information. Kind of a modern version of the CLIM presentation system.

rhartness writes "I am a long time Software Engineer, however, almost all of my work has been developing server-side, intranet applications or applications for the Windows desktop environment. With that said, I have recently come up with an idea for a new website which would require extremely high levels of security (i.e. I need to be sure that my servers are as 100% rock-solid, unhackable as possible.) I am an experienced developer, and I have a general understanding of web security; however, I am clueless of what is requires to create a web server that is as secure as, say, a banking account management system. Can the Slashdot community recommend good websites, books, or any other resources that thoroughly discuss the topic of setting up a small web server or network for hosting a site that is as absolutely secure as possible?"

turing0 writes "As a former bioinformatics researcher and CTO I have some sad news to start 2012 with. Though I am sure not a surprise to the Slashdot crowd, it appears we — or our demographic — made up more than 75% of the Google Health userbase. Today marks the end of Google Health. (Also see this post for the official Google announcement and lame excuse for the reasoning behind this myopic decision.) The decision of Google to end this excellent service is a fantastic example of what can represent the downside of cloud services for individuals and enterprises. The cloud is great when and while your desired application is present — assuming it's secure and robust — but you are at the mercy of the provider for longevity." (Read more, below.) turing0 continues: "I am surprised to see Google abandoning Google Health just when we can see the benefit to personal health when micro sensors such as the Nike Plus and Jawbone's UP bracelet are entering the market. Greater amounts of personal health data can be gathered now via smartphone and then turned into valuable preventative as well as useful diagnostic medical information.

Shuttering Google Health is a surprising and short-sighted decision on Google's behalf, IMHO. Perhaps closing the Google Health service is not 'Evil' per se — but given the immense magnitude of financial resources at Google I cannot believe Google Health will make a decimal place of impact on Google's operating costs. Services like Google Health are a fantastic public relations tool as well as an amazing potential source of raw scientific data if nothing else.

In closing, it's very funny to note Google suggests Google Health users migrate GH data to the Microsoft Health Vault. Hopefully some Web service other than Health Vault will rise from the ashes of Google Health. The real benefit in terms of Google being a custodian of my health and wellness records via Google Health was that Google as a corporation is considered a trustworthy intermediary by most users and health care professionals. Now I am not so sure; perhaps it's time to re-claim my email ..."

Reader jampola points out that Wikimedia's Jimmy Wales last week said clearly what was only hinted at earlier in the month; now "It's not only imgur (among many others) who are giving GoDaddy the flick; it also appears Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikimedia, will be making the change. While unsure to what effect Wikimedia utilizes the services of GoDaddy, I imagine this could very well be another public blow for GoDaddy in the wrong direction over their decision to support SOPA."

redletterdave writes "The HP TouchPad Go, which is a smaller version of the company's signature TouchPad, may go on sale for $99 like its predecessor. The tablet features a 1023 x 768 resolution display, runs on webOS, and also has a removable cover with soft-touch coating to minimize fingerprints on the 7-inch screen. HP's new tablet also comes with a removable battery, 32GB of storage, a 3G radio, a five-megapixel camera and LED flash. HP designed the TouchPad Go around the same time as the larger model, but it failed to reach production stages when the company decided to kill off all devices running on the doomed webOS. If the tablet indeed sells for $99, it would be the cheapest tablet in the world besides the Aakash tablet, which was released by the Indian government for $35."

ghostoftiber writes "The original Galaxy S was the redheaded step child of the Samsung device line. ... Samsung announced over Christmas that the original Galaxy S was done, leaving its faithful fans in a position of having another year on their contracts with no upgrade path. Users were predictably incensed, and it looks like Samsung changed their minds. There's also the Samsung Vibrant development forum if you want Ice Cream Sandwich running on your Vibrant right now." The original source is bit iffy and implies that the release will not be fully featured (probably due to hardware constraints). Business Insider contacted Samsung directly and an official response is expected today.

First time accepted submitter Ethanol-fueled writes "Most of the surveillance cameras installed downtown and operated by the LAPD have not been working for two years, according to interviews and records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Many of those broke and were never repaired, and six cameras allocated to the Little Tokyo section weren't even plugged into the LAPD's monitoring bank. In one case, a 53-year-old man died after being stabbed and beaten in Skid Row — right below one of the malfunctioned cameras. It probably also didn't help that the cameras themselves were prone to being coated with pigeon droppings and the system backend being stored in a room so small that overheating was frequent. One LAPD Deputy Chief compared the situation to buying a used car without an extended warranty — 'We know the reasons it doesn't work. Now we're trying to make it work.'"

redletterdave writes "In mid-November, a hollow space ball fell from the sky and crashed into the earth in Namibia, the African nation situated above South Africa and west of Botswana and Zimbabwe. Authorities recovered the sphere in a grassy village north of Windhoek, the country's capital. The hollow ball, which appears to be made of 'two halves welded together,' has a rough surface, a 14-inch diameter and measures 43 inches around. The strange globe created a crater 13 inches deep and almost 12.5 feet wide, but was found almost 60 feet from the landing spot. Paul Ludik, the police forensics director investigating the case, says the dense ball weighs 13 pounds and is made of a 'metal alloy known to man.' NASA and the European Space Agency will both help investigate the strange occurrence."

cortex writes "XDA developers is reporting on the release of a new smart phone which runs a forked version of Google's Android operating system: 'Dell and Baidu, the Chinese search giant with over 80% marketshare in its home-country, unveiled the Streak Pro on Tuesday (via Computerworld). The device has a 4.3 AMOLED screen with 960×540 resolution and packs a 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor. Most notably, however, is the operating system it runs: a forked Android version dubbed Baidu Yi, which replaces Google's services with those of Baidu.' How will this impact Google's support for Android and open source in general?'

redletterdave writes "Website hosting company GoDaddy has officially voiced its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Bill in 2012, which is designed to thwart movie and music piracy on the Internet by empowering copyright holders to effectively shut down websites or online services found with infringing material. If passed, the U.S. government could blacklist any website it deems in violation of copyright, which could range from a few posts in a Web forum to a few links sent in an e-mail. GoDaddy supports SOPA for 'protecting the intellectual property of hard-working Americans, U.S. business and the American public from the harm that necessarily flows from the purchase of counterfeit products.' Yet, of the 142 companies that support the SOPA bill, GoDaddy is the only Internet company on the list."

New submitter yeszomgpony writes "For the first time since the Thailand flooding, hard drive prices are finally starting to decrease. The price jump was kicked off in October when drive inventory levels plummeted 90% in less than a week. From the article: 'Over the past few weeks, hard drive prices have leveled off and have begun to drop slowly, according to Dynamite's data. "For first time, less than week after Western Digital's first [fabrication plant] went back on line, drive inventory began increasing at both distributors and ecommerce sites, and index prices began coming down a little too," Kubicki said. IDC has predicted that hard disk drive supply shortages in the wake of Thailand flooding would affect consumers, computer system manufacturers and corporate IT shops into 2013.'"

Runaway1956 writes "Last month, philosopher Patrick Lin delivered this briefing about the ethics of drones at an event hosted by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture-capital arm. It's a thorough and unnerving survey of what it might mean for the intelligence service to deploy different kinds of robots. This story is very definitely not like Asimov's robotic laws! As fine a mind as Isaac Asimov had, his Robot stories seem a bit naive, in view of where we are headed with robotics."

New submitter an_orphan writes "Apparently, Oracle's 'Operating System Distributor License for Java' is expired, causing Ubuntu to not only remove sun-java from the partner repository, but from user's machines."

First time accepted submitter ilikenwf writes "You may or may not remember the Mozilla-based Songbird media player, which dropped official Linux support in April, 2010. Since then, the Nightingale community fork has waxed and waned in terms of membership and progress, but thanks to having a completely new dev team has today produced a preview build based on Songbird 1.8.1. The team promises a release of a Songbird trunk based build later this year, with fixes and an upgrade to Gecko 6. Plans to support Linux, Windows, and Mac are in the works, with the preview builds being available only for Linux and Windows at the moment. Aside from trying to pull in refugees from the Songbird community, Nightingale wants more developers to aid in fixing dropped and broken features from Songbird — and to add new ones."

redletterdave writes "Comedian Louis C.K., real name Louis Szekely, took a major risk by openly selling his latest stand-up special, 'Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon Theater,' for only $5 on his website and refusing to put any DRM restrictions on the video, which made it easily susceptible to pirating and torrenting. Four days later, Louis CK's goodwill experiment has already paid off: The 44-year-old comic now reports making a profit of about $200,000, after banking more than $500,000 in revenue from the online-only sale. The special, which has sold 110,000 copies so far, is only available on Louis CK's website."

arcite writes "After twenty years of hard work, the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction website has recently gone live. It's an online database containing thousands of entries for all things Sci-fi, and a great place to read all about your favourite authors, characters, themes, and everything else."

First time accepted submitter Virtucon writes "German physicists say they've built a heat engine measuring only a few micrometers across which works as well as a normal-sized version — although it sputters, they admit. Researchers at the University of Stuttgart and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems say that the engine does basically work, meaning there's nothing, in principle, to prevent the construction of highly efficient, small heat engines."

msevior writes "Although Linus Torvalds and some Slashdot commentators may disagree, GNOME 3 has many admirers. GNOME 3 was awarded the Linux Journal Readers' Choice award for 2011." Though I'm one of the complainers, I hope to be converted with the help of Gnome Shell extensions.

KowboyKrash writes "Does any Slashdotter know how to print from an Android tablet? I have read about Google Cloud Print, but will it work from all (or at least most) apps? Is there a better solution? A little background: With my laptop being four years old, and the battery failing, I want to replace it with a device with 10 hours of battery. I am purchasing an Asus Transformer Prime after Christmas as a gift to myself; my plan is to replace my laptop completely for portable computing. I've already selected several apps that should meet my needs, including Polaris Office, and TeamViewer to remotely access my desktop. So are there any printing solutions for Android? Printing to my network printer at home is good enough."

New submitter mraudigy sends this quote from Physorg: "CERN scientists say their data from two main experiments using CERN's $10-billion Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border will be made public next Tuesday, but any firm discovery will have to wait until next year. They say the data helps narrow the region of the search because it excludes some of the higher energy ranges where the Higgs boson might be found, and shows some intriguing possibilities involving a small number of 'events' at the lower energy ranges."

redletterdave writes "Consumer Reports' latest ratings survey of cell phone carriers revealed that Verizon Wireless scored the highest satisfaction score out of the four major U.S. service providers, earning particularly high grades for texting and data service. Verizon was followed closely by Sprint and T-Mobile USA, but all three companies earned scores lower overall than their figures from last year. AT&T was at the very bottom of the list for the second year in a row. While AT&T's satisfaction score in 2011 wasn't as bad as its score from 2010, the Dallas-based cell phone provider, which recently discontinued its bid to acquire its better rival T-Mobile, still ranked at the bottom of the pack. Last year, AT&T was the only carrier for the Apple iPhone, but still managed to receive the lowest scores."

redletterdave writes with news that Google Chrome is in the process of surpassing Firefox to become the second most popular web browser. Pinpointing the exact time of the change is difficult, of course, since different analytics firms collect slightly different data. The current crop of media reports were triggered by data from StatCounter, which shows Chrome at 25.69% and Firefox at 25.23% for November. Data from Net Applications shows Firefox still holding a 4% lead, but the trends suggest it will evaporate within a few months.

redletterdave writes "Popular gaming magazine GamePro has shut down its U.S. operations after 22 years of publications by its parent company IDG. GamePro's website, which has been online for about 13 years, will be converted to a gaming channel and incorporated into PCWorld on Dec. 5. Sources within the magazine say GamePro's employees, including its executives, received phone calls this morning with the news. The news comes as a relative surprise, as GamePro experienced its highest traffic ever last week. The company also released its first quarterly magazine earlier this month after deciding monthly print issues were too costly to maintain."

MrKevvy writes "An Ottawa physicist is using laser light to create truly random numbers much faster than other methods do, with obvious potential benefits to cryptography: 'Sussman's Ottawa lab uses a pulse of laser light that lasts a few trillionths of a second. His team shines it at a diamond. The light goes in and comes out again, but along the way, it changes. ... It is changed because it has interacted with quantum vacuum fluctuations, the microscopic flickering of the amount of energy in a point in space. ... What happens to the light is unknown — and unknowable. Sussman's lab can measure the pulses of laser light that emerge from this mysterious transformation, and the measurements are random in a way that nothing in our ordinary surroundings is. Those measurements are his random numbers.'"

redletterdave writes "The European Commission plans to put a stop to the way Facebook gathers information about its users, including their political opinions, religious beliefs, whereabouts and sexual preferences, and how the social network sells that information for commercial purposes. A new EC Directive aims to ban targeted advertising unless users specifically allow it, and to amend the current European data protection laws to ensure consistency in how offending sites are dealt with across the EU. If the European Commission has its way, Facebook would suffer big losses in advertising dollars that fund its site, which would further damage the company's plans to go public next year. Facebook has defended itself, claiming its advertisers target wide demographics like age and location, rather than specific individuals. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company denies outright that it misuses or mishandles user information."

arcite writes "The Mars Science Laboratory Rover 'Curiosity,' an SUV-sized rover packed to the gills with the latest scientific instruments and an innovative landing system, is set to launch tomorrow. As the heaviest and largest Mars rover to date, if it is successful in touching down on the red planet, it will be the best bet yet for NASA to find signs of life. Stuffed with turkey and burned out on holiday shopping, Geeks everywhere will be watching the skies above (or the livestream here) and wishing NASA's Curiosity godspeed!"

New submitter kenboldt writes "Someone going by the alias 'foia' has dropped a link to a zip file containing thousands more emails similar to those released in 2009. There are apparently many more which are locked behind a password, presumably waiting to be released at some time in the future." The University of East Anglia has released a brief statement indicating that the emails were probably obtained during the 2009 breach and held back until now as "a carefully-timed attempt to reignite controversy."

MahlonS writes "I am a retired network hack wintering in my RV in a campground in southern GA. 3 years ago I reconfigured the Wi-Fi system to a marginal working ability; It's now ready for a serious upgrade, prompted by a new cable net connection replacing a weak DSL. 5 dual-radio HP Curve access points connect to a 6th via single or double radio hops (effectively a Wireless Distribution System) in heavily wooded space. Unidirectional antennas at the APs (the APs are in water resistant enclosures) are placed on poles above the RVs, about 15 feet above ground. Primary hops are about 300 feet to 3 of the APs, secondary hops about the same. Signal measurements indicate that there is adequate RF between the access points. In 2008, average user count averaged about 30 users; newer devices (smart phones, etc) will likely increase that number (winter population total is about 80 RVs). While the old design worked OK when lightly loaded, I suspect that the single DSL line generated so many packet resends that the APs were flooded. This is a quasi-State Park, so money is always an issue, but there is enough squawk from the user community that a modest budget might be approved. The main AP connects to an old Cisco router. Burying wire is frowned upon, due to shallow utilities, and campfire rings that float around the campsites — sometimes melting TV cables. Since I'm not up on current Wi-Fi tech, are there solutions out there that would make this system work much better?"

redletterdave writes "Apple reportedly sent five employees to meet with five different Chinese environmental groups on Nov. 15, only to learn about several troubling environmental issues at as many as 22 different product parts suppliers. In the three-hour meeting, the Chinese environmentalist coalition claimed the factories were releasing toxic gasses, heavy metal sludge and other pollutants. Apple acknowledged that a number of its supply firms have failed to properly keep track of their wastewater emissions and vowed to improve its environmental standards for suppliers; this is the first time Apple has admitted any wrongdoing in relation to environmental pollution from any of its Chinese supply chains. The meeting comes one month after one of Apple's Chinese suppliers of MacBook parts was shut down by China's government in response to resident complaints of 'unbearable odors,' which were described as a mix of chemical fertilizer and burning plastic."

redletterdave writes "PETA believes Nintendo's iconic plumber Mario takes a 'pro fur' stance" because he 'wears the skin of a raccoon dog to give him special powers' in the new handheld game released Nov. 13. PETA illustrated its disgust with Nintendo in an online campaign called 'Mario Kills Tanooki.' The page includes a side-scrolling Super Mario-style game called 'Super Tanooki Skin 2D,' where you play an angry, skinless tanuki that must chase a bloody raccoon-pelt-wearing-Mario across a 16-bit world and try to reclaim its fur."

RulerOf writes "A few years ago, my girlfriend's grandfather was diagnosed with Macular Degeneration. Ever since, he has had progressively more trouble with daily activities. While his wife and family are able to help him with most things, at the age of 88 and without many living friends left, he dearly misses the ability to read printed text. He was able to get by for some time with magnifying glasses and other basic aids but now even those do not help. Recently, a local clinic which specializes in treatment for low-sight and blind individuals made him aware of and showed him several assistive reading devices that successfully allowed him to read. He mentioned this to his family members, and when I was told about it, I thought that these devices sounded like they were not much more than a camera attached to an LCD monitor or television with a little bit of special software thrown into the mix." (Read on below for more.) RulerOf continues: "Some investigation online turns up products such as these, and their prices are so prohibitively high ($2400-$3000) that the manufacturer won't even list them on their website. Furthermore, the effects that these devices can apply to the pictures they output look awfully similar to the effects filters built into many webcams, and the ability to zoom and pan a live view of the screen is something that I've done effortlessly for years on OS X, and that I know exists in many Linux desktop environments. My current plan is to try to build something like this with a used Mac Mini, a Logitech HD Webcam with a full-screen view of the camera always up, and a Magic Trackpad to control zoom level and screen position, plugged into a huge LCD TV that he already owns. Have any of you ever built something like this? Am I wrong in thinking that the ease of use would be comparable to the purpose-built devices when configured correctly? Is this something that might work better with a newer nettop device, a digital camera or camcorder, and Windows (where I'm skilled at automating things) or Linux at the core instead?"

With his first accepted submission, billakay writes "A recently open-sourced experimental Linux infrastructure created by Bell Labs researchers allows 3D rendering to be performed on a GPU and displayed on other devices, including DisplayLink dongles. The system accomplishes this by essentially creating 'Virtual CRTCs', or virtual display output controllers, and allowing arbitrary devices to appear as extra ports on a graphics card." The code and instructions are at GitHub. This may also be the beginning of good news for people with MUX-less dual-GPU laptops that are currently unsupported.

dartttt writes "Linux Mint 12 'Lisa' will come with its own customized desktop and it will be based on Gnome 3. The core desktop will be based on a series of Gnome Shell extensions called 'MGSE' (Mint Gnome Shell Extensions) that will provide a layer on top of Gnome 3. MGSE also includes additional extensions such as a media player indicator, and multiple enhancements to Gnome 3. Thus Linux Mint 12 will be more like a hybrid desktop balancing traditional desktop and new modern technologies."

phands writes "SCO has moved to partially reopen their 10 year old lawsuit against IBM. Unbelievable! Details at Groklaw." From the article, quoting SCO's filing: "SCO respectfully requests that the Court rule on IBM’s Motion for Summary Judgment on SCO’s Unfair Competition Claim (SCO’s Sixth Cause of Action), dated September 25, 2006 (Docket No. 782), which motion is directed at the Project Monterey Claim, and IBM’s Motion for Summary Judgment on SCO’s Interference Claims (SCO’s Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Causes of Action), dated September 25, 2006 (Docket No. 783), which motion is directed at the Tortious Interference Claims."

First time accepted submitter redletterdave writes "After being introduced in September, HP's new CEO Meg Whitman announced Oct. 27 that the company 'needs to be in the tablet business.' However, by creating a lackluster product in the Slate 2 that runs on a soon-to-be-outdated operating system, HP will surely find itself back where it started, when furious Best Buy executives demanded HP to take back their thousands of unsold tablets piling up in storage."

BuzzSkyline writes "According to a post at Physics Buzz, 'Just weeks after speeding neutrinos seem to have broken the speed of light, another universal law, the fine structure constant might be about to crumble.' Astronomical observations seem to indicate that the constant, which controls the strength of electromagnetic interactions, is different in distant parts of the universe. Among other things, the paper may explain why the laws of physics in our corner of the universe seem to be finely tuned to support life. The research (abstract) is so controversial that it took over a year to go from submission to publication in Physical Review Letters, rather than the weeks typical of most other papers appearing in the peer-reviewed journal."

New submitter obliv!on writes "As previously discussed, the White House has started to reply to petitions on their 'We the People' website. They've now replied to the petition asking for an end to software patents. The response mentions the America Invents Act and encourages the use of the USPTO's open implementation website. Quoting: 'There's a lot we can do through the new law to improve patent quality and to ensure that only true inventions are given patent protection. But it's important to note that the executive branch doesn't set the boundaries of what is patentable all by itself. Congress has set forth broad categories of inventions that are eligible for patent protection. The courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have interpreted the statute to include some software-related inventions.' The response goes on to denote some open source and open data initiatives in government. It's nice to hear that the administration understands 'concerns that overly broad patents on software-based inventions may stifle the very innovative and creative open source software development community.' However, the overall response redirects action to the petitioners through participating in the open implementation site and contacting Congress, instead of a promise to prepare additional legislative measures for Congress to consider on behalf of the petitioners."

aneroid writes "The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has certified its first secure mobile device running Android 2.2 — the Dell Streak 5. It is certified for use in the Defense Department's secure but unclassified communications. 'Although the Streak 5 is no longer available commercially, Dell is supplying it to DOD because the military likes the form factor,' said John Marinho, director of Dell enterprise mobility solutions. It 'includes a set of Android application interfaces designed to enhance the security of the device. Besides being able to transmit secure unclassified messages, the device can have its data remotely wiped in the event of loss or theft.' The device also has the ability to lock down after multiple unsuccessful password entries and allows admins to remotely control the peripherals and security policy levels on the device. You may recall that President Obama got an NSA-certified phone-PDA to use instead of his BlackBerry. We also discussed a related article last year about the U.S. Army considering smartphones. So, how soon will we start seeing other smartphone vendors bid for secure-communications-devices contracts?"

jldailey618 writes "Nokia just unveiled an OLED smartphone that is controlled by flexing the device with both hands. By bending corners and pushing the sides inward and outward, the user can scroll, zoom, and select. 'Researchers would not discuss exactly how the processor behind the twisty screen functioned, but they did say that it would be compatible with most current operating systems.'" Reader jones_supa adds a link to The Inquirer (with video), which points out that the twist-based (rather than poke-based) interface means "you can do many basic functions such as scrolling, zooming and answering calls even while wearing mittens."

nixkuroi writes "Redbox, apparently not having noticed the backlash against Netflix, has decided to charge its customers 20% more per day. Though there will be a discounted grace period for the first day of rental until Nov. 30 2011, the full pricing increase will kick into effect on December 1."

First time accepted submitter krinderlin writes "My home network consists of a Linksys WRT54GL for WAN access and a WRT54G version 8 for a wireless bridge for my Blu-Ray and old XBox 360*. Due to a recent move and coaxial jack placements, I can't run Ethernet to the office, so I'm now looking at about 8 wireless clients at any given time. I'd like to start piecing together a network upgrade to 802.11n, but want to keep the flexibility and power of DD-WRT. So what 802.11n routers do you have with DD-WRT? What would you recommend for PCIe x1 and USB adapters? *Because $100 for a 802.11g adapter is pure insanity."

First time accepted submitter IDarkISwordI writes "A new abstract headed to SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 provides a method for rapid execution of computer graphics, synthesized into photographs with accurate lighting and physics based on limited input from a user and interpretation by their code." The results are impressive; hard to watch the video demo (on linked page) without boggling.

AZA43 writes "As if its latest BlackBerry service outage--the worst in company history--and the mass exodus of BlackBerry users to iOS and Android weren't bad enough, RIM is now facing a potential trademark lawsuit over the name of its next generation BlackBerry OS: BBX. The BBX announcement was the most significant news to come from RIM's BlackBerry Developer Conference this week, and now it looks like RIM may have change the upcoming platform's name to something else. RIM just can't seem to do anything right these days."

New submitter HommeDeJava writes "Research In Motion unveiled a new operating system for its tablet and smartphones at the company's BlackBerry developer conference in San Francisco. Called BlackBerry BBX, the new OS combines features of the existing BlackBerry OS and its recently acquired real-time QNX OS. Could BBX attract software developers and spur interest from consumers?"

eldavojohn writes "The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick has a rather nebulous title and the subtitle doesn't really help one understand what this book hopes to be about. The extensive citations are welcomed as the author barely scratches the surface of any theory of information. It also cherry picks odd and interesting facets of the history of information but presents them in a chronologically challenged order. This book is, however, a flood and as a result it could best be described as a rambling, romantic love note to Information — eloquently written and at times wondrously inspiring but at the same time imparting very little actual knowledge or tools to the reader. If I were half my age, this book would be the perfect fit for me (just like Chaos was) but knowing all the punchlines and how the story ends ahead of time rather ruined it for me. While wandering through interesting anecdotes, Gleick masks the reader from most of the gory details." Read on for the rest of eldavojohn's review. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood author James Gleick pages 544 publisher Pantheon rating 5/10 reviewer eldavojohn ISBN 978-0375423727 summary A wandering well-written historical who's who of Information Theory salted with references to hot topics. The book starts out with an introduction to the hero of The Information: Claude Shannon. It also introduces the hero's sidekick: Alan Turing. Aside from our initial introduction to Shannon's work at Bell Labs and his monumental paper from 1948, the author drops many names — a foreshadowing of what is to come in the book. George Campbell, George Boole, Norbert Wiener, Vannevar Bush, John Archibald Wheeler, Richard Dawkins and many many more. This sets the tone for the rest of the book as each chapter jumps around in time and grabs many quotations and excerpts to provide a gem studded narration by Gleick.

Chapter one provided me a piece of anecdotal information that I had actually never come across. It concerns the talking drums of Africa, an apparently ill-documented form of communication that existed in Africa. Rather, I had heard of the talking drums but never considered it in a context of information theory. It appears to be one of the earliest forms of long distance communication, predating all telegraphs. A drummer in one village would drum out the syllables and nuances in a lengthy sentence and often repeat it a few times. Drummers in distant villages would hear this and try to parse out what the drums were saying. As a result of this, they wouldn't just say 'moon' they would say something like 'the shiny white face that rises in the night' or something lengthier to ensure that the message was interpreted correctly. An ingenuous method of communicating, the chapter oddly never mentions parity bits or error detection, two things I basically equated with the additional words that were redundant. It does, of course, return to our hero Shannon who would later investigate the redundancy in the English language.

The next chapter concerns Walter J. Ong and his work concerning the persistence of information. Gleick discusses the find at Uruk and the subsequent deciphering of the cuneiform tablets. What was interesting about these tablets, however, is that they were inane things like bills and recipes. But when Donald Knuth saw one at a museum, he called what he read 'an algorithm.' The third chapter jumps to 1604 and the publishing of the very first dictionaries. Although amusing, this chapter merely extrapolates how difficult it was for us to codify our language (and still is nigh impossible). At the end Gleick translates this effort to cyberspace and similar problems.

The next chapter introduces Charles Babbage and his difference engine. To keep it interesting, Gleick includes excerpts from Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Lord Byron. And oddly enough there was some mentor relationship between Charles Babbage and Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace. Concerning Babbage, Gleick calls Ada 'first his acolyte and then his muse' for some reason this odd relationship is preserved in The Information. Lady Lovelace had many intuitions into how symbolic logic and algorithms would work in the future but I found much of this chapter to be concerning relationships and excerpts from letters. To give you an example of what I'm talking about, I learned that Ada died many years before Babbage of cancer of the womb and she took laudanum and cannabis to ease the pain. What does this have to do with The Information? You also learn that Babbage told a friend before his death that he would gladly give up whatever time he had left if he could spend three days five centuries in the future. Only one of the many stories of foolishly optimistic hope this book sells to the reader.

The next chapter involves the evolution of the telegraph. And the bulk of it concentrated on a telegraph that was quite unknown to me. The French Telegraph — or rather system of signs from high buildings — that could send messages by signaling from village to village. Aside from being an extrapolation of a binary signal from ages of yore like the lighting of fires on elevated land or smoke signals, I didn't really understand why the politics and problems of these devices were explored so in depth. When we finally get to the electric telegraph, we get some odd (albeit interesting) details about it instead of the theory. From the abbreviation of common sentences down to codewords to the fight of patenting the signaling mechanism, Gleick again avoids any sort of real numerical or even technical analysis of how humans were progressing from one bandwidth level to another. Cost per letter drove some odd advancements like acronyms and the investigation of how words could be encoded into less symbols. It ends with a reference to George Boole and logic as these symbolic representations lead the way for words to be replaced and turned into equations.

The book moves on to Claude Shannon and briefly touches on his work on signal noise. It jumps around to Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica and Gödel's subsequent destruction of any dreams of representing everything with symbols by way of his famous Incompleteness Theorem. It goes on to talk about Weyl, Nyquist, Hartley, etc continuing the veritable who's who while providing very little actual knowledge of their work. Who could mention Gödel without also talking about Nazis? Certainly not Gleick. The politics of the time, the references back to Lovelace and Babbage dominate this chapter leaving very little room for any actual Information Theory. On page 201 you'll find H = n log s. Although you won't find more than a paragraph of explanation nor any extrapolations on that formula. Thsi chapter did yield something interesting — a piece of paper from Shannon's estimates of data storage on a logarithmic scale. While some estimates are close, others are very far off but he was already thinking of DNA as information storage. The anecdotes and quotations from peers of the time are impressively researched and cross referenced but at what cost?

The next chapter concentrates on the enemy: Norbert Wiener from MIT. He comes across as a cigar smoking, condescending, self involved, snobby professor who's primary contribution is a now defunct 'science' once called Cybernetics. He's quick to identify other's works as derivatives as his own and is presented as the antithesis to Claude Shannon who is portrayed as modest, cautious, well spoken. On top of that, not only is Shannon's work not defunct it is the basis of so much of everything that is useful today. Gleick portrays Wiener so negatively I almost wondered if the condescending label 'wiener' was somehow related to Norbert. This chapter delves into conferences once held and the interactions between the participants. While it lead for great humor in Shannon/Wiener interactions, I don't understand why they were relayed to the reader. Shannon's rat and its demonstration resulted in interesting remarks but I don't understand why the reader is given so much insight into these proceedings of Cybernetics when the field turned out to be little more than buzzwords. An interesting note, however, is how some of the members would let the media run away with phrases that the scientist had never actually said. They would do this almost strategically to both validate this new field and provide interest from Universities and funding sources ... but should anyone corner them and ask for clarifications they could always truthfully say that they never said that verbatim. I wonder how often this happens today?

This next chapter on Maxwell's demon and entropy was actually a little enlightening in that it provided a fairly clear discussion of entropy (physics) and entropy (information). In addition to this correlation, it discusses why it's often negentropy or negative entropy. Leo Szilárd's work is discussed as well as this concept that 'information is not free.' Although Maxwell's demon is simply a exercise in physics philosophy, this chapter begins what will be finished later: an English explanation of how information is fundamentally tied to matter and the universe.

Gleick now reaches biological information: DNA. He spends a chapter on the origins of DNA and how contemporaries of information theory approached it upon its inception. Of course Dawkins and Gould had interesting things to say in this chapter but also Hofstadtler and Gamow had perhaps the most interesting things to add. That DNA is essentially a number and that number represents a machine that can replicate and say things about itself. One thing this book does well is build this sort of interesting relationship between information and humans. This chapter takes a stab at establishing that we are all at our cores just information in the universe. As biological beings we are feeding off of negative entropy.

The book takes a bizarre twist now into memes. That's right, chain letters and lolcats. And how they replicate and infect our brain despite being nothing more than information. I found this chapter to be obvious and boring — worthy of complete removal from the text. This interjection is out of place entirely and I'm still scratching my head wondering what merit it had in this book. Since it is such an odd assortment and arrangement of the history of information, this could be skipped by the reader.

The chapter on randomness opens with an individual I've never heard of before: Gregory Chaitin. Gleick seems to imply that Incompleteness and Quantum Physics are somehow tied together by way of Turing's Uncomputability Proof — or so Chaitin (once?) thought. Because they were both related to entropy (the word I guess) and the connection was randomness. I didn't understand why this was in here if not to mislead the reader. What follows are some of the giants work and quotes about randomness and random numbers. While mildly interesting, there's not a whole lot to be gleaned from this chapter. I did appreciate the references to Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov who did some original and even parallel work on information theory behind the iron curtain. Of course the text is rife with political situations and anecdotes (i.e. Kolmogorov's run in with one of Stalin's favorite pseudo-scientists). Oh and what book on information would be complete without G. H. Hardy visiting Srinivasa Ramanujan and remarking on the boring number of his taxi? The oft repeated story of the number 1,729. This anecdote feels out of place but Gleick uses it to probe the reader deeper into what randomness really means. Throw in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and I almost wondered if Gleick had re-read Gödel, Escher, Bach before writing this chapter.

The next chapter did actually touch on work that ties information to physics in that very basic sense of information is unable to be destroyed in our universe. The famous Preskill Hawking wager is discussed as well as the thermodynamics of computation and the resulting implications for quantum mechanics. The chapter wanders around to quantum cryptography (feeling a bit out of place) to qubits to RSA to ... well, it all (as it does throughout the book) comes back to Shannon. The chapter does end with an interesting quote from John Wheeler who apparently advocated translating the quantum versions of string theory and Einstein's geometrodynamics 'from the language of the continuum to the language of bit.' Sounds pretty interesting, right? Too bad all you get is the quote.

Was that chapter too technical for you? Don't worry, the text moves back to Wikipedia (shouldn't this have been addressed in the early chapters of dictionaries?) and actually talks about deletionism versus inclusionism and the Wikipedia debates on Pokemon articles. Of course, our old friends Babbage, Turing, Shannon, et al are brought back to somehow comment on this modern encyclopedia with quotes from Gleick like 'The universe is computing its own destiny' (for added drama that sentence is its own paragraph on page 377). Strangely enough there is no reference to Edward Fredkin throughout this book. Gleick jumps to domain name saturation on the internet and hits up 'the cloud' at the very end. I almost marvel at how many bases he can touch in one chapter. The penultimate chapter covers our inundation with news every single day of our lives probably from now to eternity. Unsurprisingly, Gleick conjures up quotes of ages long past (almost to the dark ages) of people complaining of the printing press or telegraph or newspaper or internet ruining their lives by assaulting them with information and news. Turns out 'Information Overload' is not a new concept. A chapter devoted to people complaining about too much information in a book on information seems to be too much credit for them, in my opinion.

The book really fizzles out as it tries to wrap up. Far from finalizing anything, the reader is given the concept of 'the library of babel' alongside the famous six degrees of separation. We are now more interconnected than ever before thanks to ... information!

Luckily this book has almost fifty pages of references to other books that contain far more complete and far more organized thoughts on information. I would not recommend this book to any of my colleagues unless they never went to college and never once picked up another book on Information. That said, I felt it was very well written and will no doubt continue to be sold en masse in bookstores. If anyone else read this book and came away with some very deep and profound understanding of the subject matter, I would love to hear it. Right now, the audience for this book is very small in my mind. It might best be given to a young engineer who has yet to go to college but has the vim and vigor to track down the real sources of The Information.

You can purchase The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

relyte writes "In the spirit of the recent poll — where many people recommended ergonomic upgrades — what's the best way to get a comfortable, ergonomic, efficient work environment? I'm just starting my career in software development, and I'd like to get a great chair, keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc. What models would you recommend to save wear and tear on joints, eyes, and muscles? Are there other categories I should consider?"

MrCrassic writes "It looks like the glory days of Google Buzz have finally come to an end. Google has formally announced the termination of this service to concentrate their efforts on Google+. From the article: 'In a few weeks we'll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won't be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.' Other products, such as Code Search, the Google Labs website and Jaiku, will also be on the chopping block.

DesScorp writes "Science News reports on a story which blames a centuries long cooling of Europe on the discovery of the new world. Scientists contend that the native depopulation and deforestation had a chilling effect on world-wide climate. 'Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University.' The story notes that the pandemics in the Americas were possibly an example of human climate manipulation predating the Industrial Revolution, though isotope measurements used during research have much uncertainty, so 'that evidence isn't conclusive.'"

I.M.O.G. writes "Today AMD lifted the embargo on their most recent desktop AMD FX architecture, code named Bulldozer, whose CPU frequency record Slashdot recently covered. The fruition of 6 years of AMD R&D, this new chip architecture is the most significant news out of AMD since the Phenom II made its debut. The chips are available now in all major retail outlets, and top tier hardware sites have published the first Bulldozer reviews already." Here are reviews from a few different sites — pick your favorite: Tom's Hardware, PC Perspective, Hot Hardware, [H]ardOCP, or TechSpot. They don't agree on everything, but the consensus seems to be that the new chips aren't blowing anyone's socks off, and that they struggle to compete with Intel's comparable offerings. The architecture shows promise, but performance gains will take time to materialize, making it difficult to leapfrog Intel to any significant degree.

nightcats writes "The League Championship Series of baseball are upon us, and numerous sports media pundits, armies of fans at comment boards, and TV people are openly debating the possibility of robot umpires coming to Major League Baseball, to either replace or enhance the human umps' work on the field. Question: what kind of project are we reasonably talking about here? What would the scope and length be from planning/design to user testing/implementation (presumably in a spring training/minor league setting)? What kinds of hardware (video scanners, touch-sensitive bases/foul lines, etc.) and software would be required?" And, as long as we're on the subject — do you think it would be good for the game?