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China

Submission + - China is building a 100-petaflop supercomputer (in 2015) (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "As the U.S. launched what's expected to be the world's fastest supercomputer at 20 petaflops, China is building a machine that is intended to be five times faster when it is deployed in 2015.

China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer will run at 100 petaflops (quadrillion floating-point calculations per second), according to the Guangzhou Supercomputing Center, where the machine will be housed.

Tianhe-2 could help keep China competitive with the future supercomputers of other countries, as industry experts estimate machines will start reaching 1,000-petaflop performance by 2018."
Idle

Submission + - Buddhist monk is the world's happiest man (nydailynews.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "Tibetan monk and molecular geneticist Matthieu Ricard is the happiest man in the world according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin. The 66-year-old’s brain produces a level of gamma waves — those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory — never before reported in neuroscience.

The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard's brain produces a level of gamma waves — those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory — "never reported before in the neuroscience literature", Davidson said.

The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain's left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, giving him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity, researchers believe.

Research into the phenomenon, known as "neuroplasticity," is in its infancy and Ricard has been at the forefront of ground-breaking experiments along with other leading scientists across the world."

Comment Re:Full time job first (Score 2, Insightful) 140

by tetrode (#41278787) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Begin Work In IT Freelancing?

Mod parent up.

I have hired freelancers for reasons of specific experience and being able to start from 0-100 in no time.

In order to do this you need to have some years of job experience under your belt.

After some 15 years of IT experience I made the switch to freelance and with the experience I had it was very easy.

I am sure that if you set your mind to it and work in a regular job with the aim of going freelance you can do this much quicker.

Having a fulltime job will enable you to start freelancing slowly.

Also start doing open source kind of work / projects for free - as this will give you different insights that you will never get from working in a company / freelance.

Comment My question list (Score 1) 569

by tetrode (#29008427) Attached to: What Questions Should a Prospective Employee Ask?

Here is the question list I have built up over the years:

Function

What is the responsibility of the function? Why is this position available? New function or replacement? How long has this position existed? Previous person? How many people have held this position in the last two years?
Who would be my supervisor? To whom would I report? Whom will I supervise? With whom will I be working most closely? Organigram?
What are the current problems facing the company/my department?
What are the top 3 priorities in the next 6 months and what would my role be in realizing this? And the top priorities in the next 2 years?
What hours do you (really) expect me to work.
What are the most challenging aspects of the position?
Describe the opportunities for training and professional development. Will I receive any formal training?

Organisation

What is the philosophy of the company? What is the mission statement?
What do you consider to be the companies strengths and weaknesses?
What are the companyâ(TM)s short terms and mid terms (2 yr, 5 yr) plans and goals? Acquisition plans?
What is the history of the company? How has the growth been, organically, by acquisitions?
What is this company's culture?
Office tour, check out the infrastructure, the people?

Financials

Yearly, Quarterly budget to make, history of budget â" always made?
How is the business running, how are the financials, how is the current funding, how is the company run financially?
What are the current plans for expansion or cutbacks?
Extra benefits need to be explained adequately?

Product

Explain product portfolio? History of the products, what are strong products, what are weak products? Plans for new products, new versions â" when, what, targeting who, which market?
What are the target groups, target clients (sample names)? Sales cycle time? Implementation time?

The Joel Test

Do you use source control?
Can you make a build in one step?
Do you make daily builds?
Do you have a bug database?
Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
Do you have a spec?
Do programmers have quiet working conditions? ïfY Office tour
Do you use the best tools money can buy?
Do you have testers?
Games

On the Feasibility of Single-Server MMOs 316

Posted by Soulskill from the where-are-my-ten-thousand-player-battles dept.
GameSetWatch takes a look at the issues involved in creating an MMO that does not split its users among many different servers. They suggest that running a single "shard" is the next step in the evolution of MMOs, since it better allows player choices to have a meaningful impact on the game world; supporting different outcomes across multiple shards is a technical nightmare. They estimate, from the hip, that the cost to develop the technology required to support a massive amount of players (i.e. far more than EVE Online) on a single server to be roughly $100 million. Another recommendation is the strong reliance on procedural and user-generated content creation to fill a necessarily enormous game world.
PC Games (Games)

Ensemble Studios' Canceled Project Was Halo MMO 118

Posted by Soulskill from the best-of-both-cash-cows dept.
simoniker writes "Following the recent announcement that Microsoft-owned Age Of Empires creator Ensemble Studios would close after the completion of Halo Wars, Gamasutra has discovered that a now-canceled Halo MMO was in development at the studio, unearthing prototype UI and level screenshots of the Ensemble-developed project. The prototype art, which was at one point made available on an Ensemble-linked online artist portfolio website, further confirms previous rumors that the studio was working on an MMO based on the Bungie-created sci-fi franchise." We discussed the future closing of Ensemble Studios a couple weeks ago. The set of pictures which seem to be screenshots and graphic models from the canceled Halo MMO has been posted on Flickr. In other Halo news, Bungie may be teasing the announcement of the next game on their website.
Programming

Submission + - The Virtues of a Monoculture: Why Microsoft Wins

Submitted by
blackbearnh
blackbearnh writes: "Why does Microsoft win the development environment war so often, when we all know it's a lifetime lock-in to Windows? Perhaps it's because the open source community offers too much choice, as this blog on the O'Reilly ONLamp site suggests. From the blog:

Microsoft offers the certainty of no choices. Choice isn't always good, and the open source community sometimes offers far too many ways to skin the same cat, choices that are born more out of pride, ego or stubbornness than a genuine need for two different paths. I won't point fingers, everyone knows examples.
"
Businesses

What Do You Do for New User Orientation? 97

Posted by Cliff from the things-a-bofh-wouldn't-do dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "What do you do for new user orientation? I started at a company as part of a very small help desk / MIS department. Part of my job is to give orientation to all new computer users for the entire company (no more than 10 new users a week). Right now I have to sit with each user, go over logging in, passwords, email, outlook, Microsoft Office, and so on. This takes between 30-45 minutes. What do other IT departments do? I was thinking of a Flash presentation or website, and maybe even a short orientation movie. What ideas have you tried and how well did they work?"

YouTube Killer (Media Portal w/ Revenue Sharing) 179

Posted by Hemos from the sharing-the-money dept.
MattPF writes "eefoof.com is a user-submitted content site similar to YouTube/Google Video which allows users to submit Videos, Images, Flash and Audio while receiving a share of the site's ad revenue. For example, if someone uploads a really popular video that accounts for a lot of traffic in a given month, the user will receive a good portion of the video ad revenue for the month. Could this be the YouTube killer?"

John Carmack Discuss Mega Texturing 313

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-mean-we-don't-do-that-already dept.
An anonymous readers writes in to say that "id Software has introduced a new technology dubbed Mega Texturing that will allow graphic engines to render large textures and terrains in a more optomized way while also making them look better. Gamer Within has Q & A with John Carmack on Mega Texturing."

Secure Programming in GNU/Linux Systems: Part I 64

Posted by CowboyNeal from the better-safe-than-sorry dept.
LNXPhreak writes "A new article on OSWeekly.com discusses secure programming in GPU/Linux systems in terms of programming talent and requirements. Quote: "A "secure program" is an application that sits on a security boundary, taking input from a source that does not have the same access rights as the program. Such programs include application programs used as viewers of remote data, web applications (including CGI scripts), network servers, and setuid/setgid programs."

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