Reverse Gear - Slashdot User

Submission + - Multitasking makes you stupid and slow (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by

Reverse Gear

on Sunday January 27, 2008 @05:09PM

Reverse Gear writes: "What most of us have slowly come to realize have also of late become more and more of a scientific fact.

certain studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy.
In a long and interesting article Walter Kirn talks about the scientific results that support his claim and his own experiences with multitasking."

Submission + - Buses win over developers for Google

Submitted by

Reverse Gear

on Sunday March 11, 2007 @03:23PM

Reverse Gear writes: "The New York Times has an interesting article about how different kinds of fringe is starting to mean more in the fight for the best brains in Silicon Valley. The article mainly focuses on Google's high tech shuttle bus system which is quite extensive covering a huge portion of the San Fransisco Bay area and allows the employees to be much more efficient. 1/4 of the employees are now using this system. A Google software engineer quoted in the article:
"They could either charge for the food or cut it altogether, (...) If they cut the shuttle, it would be a disaster.""

Submission + - Lakes found under Antarctic ice using space lasers

Submitted by

Reverse Gear

on Sunday February 18, 2007 @06:53PM

Reverse Gear writes: "There is a new study circling the media about these newly found big lakes found underneath the antarctic ice sheets that apparently empty and fills back up quite fast (study has been working in 3 years and has detected massive movements), from the article:

The scientists allay fears that global warming has created these pockets of water. They say these lakes lie some 2,300 feet below compressed snow and ice, too deep for environmental temperature to reach. However, it is necessary to understand what causes the phenomenon as it can facilitate an understanding of the impact of climate change on the ice sheet in Antarctica
NASA also has some information on the technique used to detect these lakes"

Submission + - DNA to test old theory of Roman village in China

Submitted by

Reverse Gear

on Monday February 05, 2007 @01:41AM

Reverse Gear writes: "Many of the inhabitants of a lonely village in north western China seems to have distinctive western features.
An old theory from the 1950'ies suggests that an old roman legion which in 53BC had lost it's commander, Markus Craccus, in what is now Iran, had been traveling east as mercenaries until they were caught by the Chinese 17 years later. The Chinese described them as using a "fish-scale formation". The remainders of the legion is then suggested to have been the ancestors of the village.
Scientists are now trying to verify the fascinating theory by testing the DNA of the inhabitants of the Chinese village."

Submission + - Rootkit could hide in PCI cards

Submitted by

Reverse Gear

on Saturday November 18, 2006 @08:05AM

Reverse Gear writes: "Security focus has an interesting article about a paper published on the possibility of hiding a rootkit in different PCI cards and be able to survive a reboot or cleansing of the harddisk.
It seems though that the author of the article doesn't think this will be much implemented. From the article and paper:
"(Because) enough people do not regularly apply security patches to Windows and do not run anti-virus software, there is little immediate need for malware authors to turn to these techniques as a means of deeper compromise""

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