Slashdot Mirror

Zothecula writes: By altering a single gene to inhibit the activity of an enzyme called phosphodiesterase (PDE4B), researchers have given mice the opportunity to see what an increase in intelligence is like. "They tended to learn faster, remember events longer and solve complex exercises better than ordinary mice. For example, the “brainy mice” showed a better ability than ordinary mice to recognize another mouse that they had been introduced to the day before (abstract). They were also quicker at learning the location of a hidden escape platform in a test called the Morris water maze. However, the PDE4B-inhibited mice also showed less recall of a fearful event after several days than ordinary mice." While many people would welcome such a treatment, the scientists say their research could lead to new treatments for those with cognitive disorders and age-related cognitive decline.

derekmead writes "Scientists have had a basic understanding of how life first popped up on Earth for a while. The so-called 'primordial soup' was sitting around, stagnant but containing the basic building blocks of life. Then something happened and we ended up with life. It's that 'something' that has been the sticking point for scientists, but new research from a team of scientists at the University of Leeds has started to shed light on the mystery, explaining just how objects from space might have kindled the reaction that sparked life on Earth. It's generally accepted that space rocks played an important role in life's genesis on Earth. Meteorites bombarding the planet early in its history delivered some of the necessary materials for life but none brought life as we know it. How inanimate rocks transformed into the building blocks of life has been a mystery. But this latest research suggests an answer. If meteorites containing phosphorus landed in the hot, acidic pools that surrounded young volcanoes on the early Earth, there could have been a reaction that produced a chemical similar one that's found in all living cells and is vital in producing the energy that makes something alive."

New submitter theclockworkcomputer writes "100 years ago tomorrow, Alan Turing was born. To celebrate, I wrote a Universal Turing Machine in 100 Punchcards. I've uploaded a video to explain a small part of the read head (the Jacquard). One needle is shown out of a total of 28. As this is about a program for a Turing Machine and not about a Turing Machine itself, I hope to be excused from the requirement of infinite tape."

mikejuk writes "2012 is the one hundredth anniversary of Alan Turing's birth, with many celebration events being planned around the world. This week Warner Bros outbid other companies for the script of a biopic based on Turing's life. The script for The Imitation Game, by first-time screenwriter Graham Moore and based in turn on the biography by Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma, was snapped up by Warner Bros in a 7-figure deal. Right now the leading candidate to portray Turing is Leonardo DiCaprio."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Two separate efforts using technology to protect people from earthquakes have recently been in the news. At the University of Leeds, UK, researchers will use nanotechnology and RFID tags to build a 'self-healing' house in Greece. The house's walls will contain nanoparticles that turn into a liquid when squeezed under pressure, flow into cracks, and then harden to form a solid material. The walls will also host a network of wireless sensors and RFID tags that can alert the residents to an imminent earthquake. Meanwhile, another team at the Washington University in St. Louis is using a wireless sensor network to limit earthquake damages."

heptapod writes "New Scientist is reporting that UK researchers have created a computer that can learn rock, paper, scissors by observing humans. CogVis uses visual information to recognize events and objects in addition to learning by observing."

heptapod writes "New Scientist is reporting that UK researchers have created a computer that can learn rock, paper, scissors by observing humans. CogVis uses visual information to recognize events and objects in addition to learning by observing."

gcondon writes "The Register is reporting that Microsoft is teaming up with the University of Leeds to teach students how to write secure code. Given the sheer number of programming errors that can lead to security vulnerabilities, it probably makes sense to learn from the company that has tried them all." UndercoverBrotha points out that University of Leeds is one of several venues: "Microsoft is planning to offer 11-week courses at Universities around the world."

Update: 03/24 18:00 GMT by J : Another report worth reading is Writing Software Right, which requires a free but annoying registration at Technology Review. This regards automated methods of finding software errors (not security specifically). Sun's "Jackpot" is discussed, a lint that also "identifies general instances of good or bad programming."

And Microsoft's efforts in this field are explained as well -- the company "paid more than $60 million in 1999 to acquire Intrinsa, maker of a bug-finding tool called Prefix. The program, which sifts through huge swaths of code searching for patterns that match a defined list of common semantic errors, helped find thousands of mistakes in Windows and other Microsoft products." As a Microsoft QA person says, "Our challenge is to get our software to the point that people expect it to work instead of expecting it to fail."

benjiboo writes "From the back page: 'Are you looking for a concise book packed with insight and wisdom not found elsewhere? Do you want to gain a deeper understanding of the Java programming language? Do you want to write code that is clear, correct and reusable?' I did, so I bought the book and decided to use it for my first review :)" Read on for bejiboo's review of Effective Java. Effective Java Programming Language Guide author Joshua Bloch pages 252 publisher Addison Wesley rating 8/10 reviewer Ben ISBN 0201310058 summary 57 pieces of Java wisdom.

Introduction

Effective Java is a book very much in the style of Scott Myers' earlier C++ "Effective" series. The book contains 57 individual snippets of Java wisdom, broadly categorised into 10 sections including Classes and Interfaces, Exceptions, Threads and Serialisation. Scott Myers' books are classics; I was interested to see how this would compare.

The author, Joshua Bloch, has been involved in writing many industrial-strength Java libraries. His background is very much evident, in this, his first text. He consistently demonstrates the virtues of favouring libraries, clean APIs and advance design. I found the author very readable, and able to make a convincing argument, even in his more 'controversial' pieces. As with Scott Myers' books, there is a real-world, rather than purist approach taken to the language, with most of the code examples having a real-world feel to them. This is a breath of fresh air when lots of programming books tend to use more contrived examples.

The items

The author has endeavoured to keep the book accessible to less-experienced programmers throughout, while providing food for thought for the more advanced reader. For the most part this is succesful, but a small percentage of articles tend toward the simple side. Examples include 'Minimise the accessibility of classes and embers,' 'Write doc comments for all exposed API elements,' and 'Know and use the libraries.' We've all heard this advice many times and I don't feel that these add value. The vast majority however, are pitched at the right difficulty level. The selection of items is well balanced and broad, although unfortunately there are none pertinent to GUI programming.

Many of the articles are fundamentally based on known design patterns and idioms. Although a useful index to these patterns is included, I would have liked to see the virtues of design patterns summarised and demonstrated to a greater extent, perhaps in the introduction.

I was highly impressed with all code examples. Where used, they are consistently short, relevant and concise, with more verbose examples included on the website. The chosen code examples only ever assist in explaining complex concepts clearly.

The strongest area of the book for me was the section on threading. The author clearly demonstrates, for instance, how overuse of synchronised methods can lead to deadlock. He also provides food for thought on how the thread scheduler might trip us up. A section on moving from C constructs, which initially struck me as an odd category, proved very interesting and thorough. 'Replace enum constructs with classes' is a particularly interesting item, demonstrating the fragility of C enums, and indicating why the often-used replacement in Java (a bunch of public static constants) suffers from the same failings.

In conclusion

Ideally I would have liked to see some of the thinner items removed, and perhaps replaced with a section on the GUI libraries. I also liked the short prose sections, and thought the author could have spent more time setting out his stall before launching in to the items. Having said this, this is one of those rare books which could help a good programmer become an excellent one. Many of the books currently out there are aimed at either the beginner or the guru, and this book fills a gap.

I find this style of book very useful, in that I could foresee meeting the vast majority of the described situations at some point or another. So long as you aren't looking for tips to help you with your GUIs, this title is more than worth the investment.

For anyone interested, those sections in full:

• creating and destroying objects
• methods common to all objects
• classes and interfaces
• substitutes for C constructs
• methods
• general programming
• exceptions
• threads
• serialisation

You can purchase Effective Java from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Dan Ormsby writes: "No news on this site, just great photos of chemical phenomena along with instructions on how to perform them yourself. Don't try this at home!"

Dan Ormsby writes: "No news on this site, just great photos of chemical phenomena along with instructions on how to perform them yourself. Don't try this at home!"

Dan Ormsby writes: "No news on this site, just great photos of chemical phenomena along with instructions on how to perform them yourself. Don't try this at home!"

In the first part of Slashdot's 'Making Music with Linux' series, we discussed the possibilities of using Linux as an audio production operating system. While we lamented the lack of a fully-functional audio suite for Linux, we saw the silver lining in the cloud of patience, and witnessed a great number of free sound tools that were well on their way to greatness. In this installment, we talk a little more about high-end audio mastering, low-end sound transport, and using Linux as a tool for sound synthesis. Part II of a series.

Burning a CD under Linux is super-easy, and there are quite a few programs that make it possible under Linux. X-CD-Roast is a popular tool, and is used constantly by Linux enthusiasts to burn their own multi-session content onto a compact disc. The problem is that there is still no Linux equivalent for the huge multi-track mixer you'll find at professional recording studios. If you're hoping to mix down tracks and perform studio-quality takes and 'bounces' of your work, you're going to need an expensive chunk of professional digital audio hardware. Once you've got your finished master, you'll have no problem making as many copies as you want using your Linux machine. Until we have a real-time mixdown utility, the waiting game wins again.

The world of low-bandwidth sound transport is wide open on the Linux platform, except for the glaring exception of not being able to play Windows Media Player sound files on your machine. Although the 'media darling' of sound transport is the mp3 file format, there's no denying the fact that mp3 provides solid sound quality and a small file footprint. Mp3 still isn't the answer to all of our prayers, however. No matter what anyone tells you, mp3 is not CD-quality sound, and tends to boost the mid-range in most tunes.

When you're living with a low-bandwidth target, the sound you're streaming is secondary in importance to stretching that stream over a maximum number of clients with the least amount of lag. RealPlayer suffers from the same mid-range band pass issues as mp3, but in the grand scheme of things, you're a lot more likely to encounter RealPlayer as an option when you're surfing. Producing RealPlayer content is easy to do and easy to host, but the downside is that it's not free. RealProducer will run you $149.95 from RealNetworks.

Joseph Ottinger, Linux-savvy musician, shares his thoughts on streaming audio. "I choose mp3 because of the high quality and decent compression. Real's stuff is nice because it's streaming, but even on a fast connection, that stuff sounds like it's ground up. Microsoft's streaming format is worse, lacking even more of the fundamental sound's depth and clarity. The problem with mp3 is Napster. Napster makes it easy to send and find mp3's. A lot of people trade though, so people rip stuff at low quality just to get their numbers up and their bandwidth down."

Csound is a wonderfully portable and versatile sound synthesis package written entirely in C. Csound uses two files to work its magic; a score file that basically acts as a timed-event trigger file, and an orchestra file to interpret what voices it should use to play the score. This is a classical approach to sound synthesis, and can be used to either generate a sound file or, if your system is fast enough, to send the output directly to a DAC on your system's soundcard. If you like, you can even use a standard MIDI file to act as the score file. Csound has about a bazillion extensions, and nifty gadgets that use it.

For those interested in using their Linux machine as a powerful tool for creating original instruments and sounds, they'll find a friend in Cecilia, a wonderful sound synthesis tool that sits right on top of Csound, without you having to get your hands dirty. Cecilia provides real-time signal processing on sound files, live input, or can work as a software synthesizer on its own. If you're in love with real-time resonance or envelope filters, Cecilia lets you configure the software synth to the limit.

Next time, we discuss Linux sound hardware and support, and we're going acronym-diving! Find out what OSS and ALSA are, and why they've got something to do with those big speakers you bought. We'll also navigate the treacherous waters of musical notation with Linux. If you know of any fantastic audio production programs, please let us know! See you next time...

Cacl, a PhD student at University of Michigan in their School of Information Divison has written a feature addressing the concerns and problems of preserving digital information. This is an area of study of his - and interesting to read about.

Preservation of Digital Information

Recently there was an Ask Slashdot about the the problem of preserving digital material. The basic idea was that we are creating a massive wealth of digital information, but have no clear plan for preserving it. What happens to all of those poems I write when I try to access them for my grandkids? What about the pictures of my kids I took with that digital camera? Can I still get to them in time to embarrass them in the future?

Obsolescence of digital media can happen in three different ways:

• Media Decay: Even when magnetic media are kept in dry conditions, away from sunlight and pollution, and hardly ever accesses they will still decay. Electrons will wander over the substrate of the media, causing digital information to become lost. CD-ROMs luckily do not have this same problem with electron loss. They still are sensitive to sunlight and pollution though. Many people mentioned last week that distributors of blank CD media often make claims of an hundred years or more for the duration of their products. Research seems to indicate the truth is closer to 25 years,which seems like a long time, until you consider the factors below. Besides, information professionals often think in terms of centuries rather than decades.
• Hardware obsolescence: Far more dangerous than the degradation of the actual information container is the loss of machines that can read it. For instance, the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research received a bunch of data on old punch cards. The problem was they had no punch card reader. It took a decent chunk of time, and a good deal of money to eventually be able to read the data off of these cards, even requiring some old technicians to come out of retirement to help tweak the system. Hardware extinction is hardly a foreign topic to Slashdotters. It happens, and as technology increases its pace of change, it will happen more quickly.
• Software obsolescence: The real stone in the shoe of digital preservation is obsolescence of the software needed to open the digital document. This can include drivers, OSS, or plain old application software. We all have piles of old software that were written for older systems, or come across an old file the bottom of a drawer where we can't even remember what application it used.

There are several strategies for preserving digital information. People mentioned some last week:

• Transmogrification: printing the digital document into an analog form and preserving the analog copy. An example would be printing out a Web page and archiving the print of that Web page. This, obviously, takes out the main strength of a Web document, hyperactivity, and may also ignore important color and graphical content. An alternative form of this is the creation of hardcopy binary that could later be data entered into the computers of the future. The media suggested have ranged from acid free paper to stainless steel disks etched with the binary code. The two major problems with this idea are that any misrepresentation of the binary could have disastrous results for the renewal of the document, and transformation to hard copy limits the functionality of many types of digital documents to the point of uselessness.
• Hardware museums: preserving the necessary technology needed to run the outdated software. There are several weaknesses to this plan. Even hardware that is carefully maintained breaks and becomes un-usable. In addition, there is no clear established agency that will be responsible for maintaining these machines. Spare parts eventually become impossible to find and legacy skills are required for maintenance. There must be technicians with the requisite skills to service these preserved machines. Finally, it does not create efficient use if all possible future users must bottleneck to just a handful of viewing sites to have access to the information.
• Standards: reliance on industry-wide standardization of formats to prevent obsolescence. Market place pressures for software produces create an incentive for a company to differentiate their product from their competitors. While unrealistic in a capitalistic marketplace, standards such as SGML have proven successful for large scale digital document repositories, like the Making of America archive hosted by the University of Michigan. However, many of these large repositories also receive information from donors that is not in a standardized format, and do not feel comfortable turning away those documents.
• Refreshing: moving a digital object from one medium to another. For instance, transferring information on a floppy disk to a CD-ROM. This definitely seemed to be the preferred method of most Slashdotters. While this takes care of degradation and obsolescence of the media, it does not solve the problem of software obsolescence. A perfectly readable copy of a digital document is useless if there is not software program available to translate it into human-readable form.
• Migration: moving the digital document into newer formats. An example might be taking a Word 95 document and saving it as a Word 97 document. Single generation leaps are usually not a problem, so large volumes of information could be saved. Unfortunately, migrations over several generations are often impossible, as is migrating from a document type that was abandoned, and did not evolve. Also, information loss is common in migration, and may cause the document to become unreadable. While this may be the best single method available, it is very labor intensive, and some knowledge of the nature of documents would be essential to determining which information containers to migrate. For instance, often you lose aspects of a document (good and bad) when you migrate it, but which of those aspects are important?
• Emulation: creating a program that will fake the original behavior of the environment in which the digital object resided. This is another very intriguing method that could be used. It's actually already pretty common. For instance, most processor chips include emulators for lower level processors. There also aleady exists on the Internet a very active group of people who are interested in emulating old computer platforms. Still, we need to do a lot of research yet on the cost of this method, and what sorts of metadata are necessary to bundle with the digital object to facilitate its eventual emulation. Another problem is the intellectual property hassle caused by emulation. Reverse engineering is a big no no, and there is no point in making the lawyers rich. This area is actually where Open Source can be of biggest help to preserving the longevity of different kinds of applications.

Many people in the discussion last week seemed to believe that simple refreshment or migration of the data would be a sufficient answer to the problem. At a personal level that may be true, but for anyone responsible for large amounts of digital information, neither is a completely convincing method. Here are a couple of reasons why:

• Not all documents are the same- In the digital preservation literature, most people talk as if all digital information is in ASCII format. Au contraire. As computing becomes increasingly robust, so do the documents we create. Multimedia games, three dimensional engineering models, recorded speeches, linked spreadsheets, virtual museum exhibits and a host of other documents spurred by the development of the Web have cropped up. How are they going to be affected by migration to a new environment?
• It's so darned expensive- It's a little gauche to talk about, but the Y2K bug caused what ended up being a huge migration of digital information. How much did the US alone spend on that fiasco? $8 billion? For smaller organization who do not prepare for the preservation of their digital information, the cost of emergency migrations could cause all sorts of budget trouble.

There is some belief that there is no reason to preserve information at all. Most of what is created is just tripe anyway, and we should be more focused on creating content than preserving it. There are two reasons why some sort of preservation is important. First of all, it is inefficient to recreate information that already exists. Human energy is better spent on building upon existing knowledge to create new wisdom. How much do we already spin our wheels as several people collect the same data? What more could we be doing if we spent the energy instead on new pursuits? Secondly, there is some data that is irreplacable.

Which is not to say that we should keep everything. In a traditional archive, only 1% of documents received are kept. Ninety nine out of one hundred documents are destroyed for various reasons. A similar ratio is not unreasonable for digital documents. Consider that 16 billion email messages are sent each day. It seems ridiculous to keep all of them, but how do we weed out the ones we do want to keep? Appraisal of digital documents for archival purposes is going to become a major issue in the not distant future. There are already examples of data that have been lost, or nearly lost. NASA lost a ton of data off of decayed tapes. The U.S. Census nearly lost the majority of the data from the 1960 census. These huge datasets are important for establishing a scientific record that reveals longitudinal effects.

Increasingly, the record of the human experience is kept in a digital format. The act of preserving that information is the act of creating the future's past, the literal reshaping of our world in the eyes of the future. Nobody knows the best answer yet. There is probably not a single answer that will fit absolutely all situations. Information professionals are just beginning to do research in the form of user testing, cost-benefit analysis and modeling to answer some of the thornier issues raised by the preservation of digital information. There are things out there worth saving, we just need to figure out the best way to do it.

Some links of interest in case you would like to read more:

• a really good bibliography of related sources by Michael Day
• an article by Jeffrey Rothenberg outlining some of the issues
• a site at Leeds University with many related links