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Submission + - Why Learning to Code Outweighs a Degree in Computer Science (theepochtimes.com) 1

Submitted by jjp9999
jjp9999 writes: A college degree may not the best route when it comes to jobs in coding. Jobs for computer science majors flow aplenty, yet employers (and job-seekers) often learn quickly that the college grads don't have the skills. "This is because the courses taught in virtually all computer science curriculums focus on theory, and they only dabble in teaching practical programming skills," says Cody Scholberg on Epoch Times. This ties into a unique factoid in the world of programmers. Nearly half of the software developers in the United States do not have a college degree. Many never even graduated from high school. Instead, many aspiring programmers are turning to open source learning materials, or to the new programming bootcamps popping up around the United States. While theory does have its place, the situation begs the question of whether colleges are teaching the right skills people need to join the workforce, and what its place is amid the rise of open source learning.

Submission + - Great Firewall of UK blocks game patch because of substring matches

Submitted by Sockatume
Sockatume writes: Remember the fun of spurious substring matches, AKA the Scunthorpe problem? The UK's advanced "intelligent" internet filters do. Supposedly the country's great new filtering regime has been blocking a patch for League of Legends because some of the filenames within it include the substring "sex". Add one to the list of embarrassing failures for the nation's new mosaic of opt-out censorship systems, which have proven themselves incapable of distinguishing between abusive sites and sites for abuse victims, or sites for pornography versus sites for sexual and gender minorities.

Submission + - Weibo Goes Down in China, Traffic Redirected to Freedom Software (theepochtimes.com)

Submitted by jjp9999
jjp9999 writes: Weibo, China's replacement for Twitter and Facebook, went offline for about two hours on Jan. 20, when a DNS attack switched its IP address to overseas VPN software used to circumvent censorship. On Jan. 21, the brief IP switch was the most discussed topic on Weibo, with one user, ITHome, saying posting “What IP is 65.49.2.178? It’s sure to go down in history.” The IP address is one of those used by Freegate, which is free software released by Chinese dissidents in the U.S. intended to help Chinese people break through the Great Firewall. However, Bill Xia, president of Dynamic Internet Technology, which makes Freegate, said he and his team of volunteers thought their networks were under attack when they got a surge of traffic with about 100,000 users a second hitting their IP address. Xia said they are still trying to analyze the incident, but he assumes it was a slip-up the Chinese authorities in charge of censoring content. “Our guess is they messed up again,” he said. “This doesn’t make sense for them, so I assume it was a mistake in their operation.”

Submission + - Fighting the Flu May Hurt Those Around You (sciencemag.org) 4

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: When you've got the flu, it can't hurt to take an aspirin or an ibuprofen to control the fever and make you feel better, right? Wrong, some scientists say. Lowering your body temperature may make the virus replicate faster and increase the risk that you transmit it to others. A new study claims that there are at least 700 extra influenza deaths in the United States every year because people suppress their fever.

Comment Military and police. That's it. (Score 1) 254

by jjp9999 (#45911647) Attached to: I think wearable computing will take off...

I could see this becoming big for militaries and police, but that's it. They're already talking about making cops wear cameras in Canada. They'd also want it for facial recognition, which means a computer could tell them who is wanted, or if a person has ties that makes them shady.

I think consumer versions won't take off for all the above reasons. Once people realize the other uses for these devices and what that means, I think they'll avoid them (especially since the early adopters probably need to be geeks). Also, there are too many copyright issues out there (i.e. accidentally recording a song in a video you upload, wearing them into movies, watching TV, going into a building that doesn't want you recording, etc.).

Comment Re:Peak Apple 2012 (Score 1) 79

by jjp9999 (#45768647) Attached to: Apple Forges Agreement With China Mobile

I had a friend who worked at the Apple Store in NYC. He said they used to get huge lines of Chinese people every day when they opened who would buy as many iPhones as they'd be willing to sell. Apparently they were jailbreaking the phones and reselling them for huge markups in China. Not sure if this is still going on, but from what he was telling me there's huge demand for iPhones in China.

Comment Re:The U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt. (Score 5, Insightful) 264

by jjp9999 (#45504995) Attached to: NSA Infected 50,000 Computer Networks With Malicious Software

I enjoyed the response of Europeans a lot more when they learned their governments were doing the exact same thing. Americans care about this stuff. When people in other countries learn their governments do the exact same things, they try to excuse it then turn the conversation back to America.

Submission + - Bionic Eye Implant Available In U.S. Next Month (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: Starting next month, Americans suffering from degenerative eye diseases can get excited about the launch of the Argus II, a bionic eye implant to partially restore vision. Designed for those suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, the Argus II is a headset that looks akin to Google Glass but is actually hard wired into the optic nerve to transmit visual information from a 60 electrode array. The device opens the door for similar "humanitarian" implants that both reduce the difficulty in getting government approval and increase the adoption of brain implants.

Submission + - Building a (Virtual) Roman Emperor's Villa (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Scientists have been using everything from supercomputing clusters to 3D printers to virtually recreate dinosaur bones. Now another expert is trying to do something similar with the ancient imperial villa built for Roman emperor Hadrian, who ruled from 117 A.D. to 138 A.D. Hadrian’s Villa is already one of the best-preserved Roman imperial sites, but that wasn't quite good enough for Indiana University Professor of Informatics Bernie Frischer, who trained as a classical philologist and archaeologist before being seduced by computers into what evolved into the academic discipline of digital analysis and reproduction of archaeological and historical works. The five-year effort to recreate Hadrian’s Villa is based on information from academic studies of the buildings and grounds, as well as analyses of how the buildings, grounds and artifacts were used; the team behind it decided to go with gaming platform Unity 3D as a key part of the simulation.

Submission + - Airline Pilots Rely Too Much on Automation Says Safety Panel

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Nearly all people connected to the aviation industry agree that automation has helped to dramatically improve airline safety over the past 30 years but Tom Costello reports at NBC News that according to a new Federal Aviation Administration report commercial airline pilots rely too much on automation in the cockpit and are losing basic flying skills. Relying too heavily on computer-driven flight decks now pose the biggest threats to airliner safety world-wide, the study concluded. The results can range from degraded manual-flying skills to poor decision-making to possible erosion of confidence among some aviators when automation abruptly malfunctions or disconnects during an emergency. “Pilots sometimes rely too much on automated systems," says the report adding that some pilots “lack sufficient or in-depth knowledge and skills” to properly control their plane’s trajectory. Basic piloting errors are thought to have contributed to the crash of an Air France Airbus A330 plane over the Atlantic in 2009, which killed all 228 aboard, as well as a commuter plane crash in Buffalo, NY, that same year. Tom Casey, a retired airline pilot who flew the giant Boeing 777, said he once kept track of how rarely he had to touch the controls on an auto-pilot flight from New York to London. From takeoff to landing, he said he only had to touch the controls seven times. "There were seven moments when I actually touched the airplane — and the plane flew beautifully,” he said. “Now that is being in command of a system, of wonderful computers that do a great job — but that isn’t flying." Real flying is exemplified by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, says Casey, who famously landed his US Airways plane without engines on the Hudson River and saved all the passengers in what came to be known as the “Miracle on the Hudson.” The new report calls for more manual flying by pilots — in the cockpit and in simulations. The FAA says the agency and industry representatives will work on next steps to make training programs stronger in the interest of safety.

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