JavaOne Wish List
Every Java developer has one or more things she'd like to see announced at JavaOne. Maybe it's a new product, or perhaps a technology decision. What is your wish list? Share it with us... and dare to dream.
Biofuels: Beyond Corn
Gene sequencing could help make more energy-efficient biofuels practical.
NY hikes security on dirty bomb Internet chatter
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York police stepped up security throughout Manhattan and at bridges and tunnels on Friday in response to an Internet report -- which authorities said they could not verify -- that al Qaeda might be plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the city. (Read on Source)
What motivates John Dingell? Do I care? Not today because I like what he is pushing
David Leonhardt devotes his Economic Scene column to a political-psychological analysis of John Dingell's carbon tax proposal (What is he really up to?):A tax on carbon emissions, covering everything from gasoline to electricity use, is the climate solution that economists and environmentalists have long dreamed of because it?s probably the... (Read on Source)
Eldest Wirtz brother to control firms
Rockwell Wirtz has been named president of Wirtz Corp. and chairman of its Chicago Blackhawks hockey team following the death of his father last week.
EPA, NHTSA At Odds on Fuel Economy
Ah, here???s a story about Washington that just makes us cringe as we sip our morning coffee. It seems that this year the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Safety Administration have turned in reports that are at odds over national average fuel economy of all cars and trucks currently being sold. The EPA actually collects all the data for both reports but the NHTSA calculates sales projections with its report. In the past the two have varied between 0.1 to 0.8 mpg with 2006???s numbers being just 0.1 mpg off.
This year however ??? while debate rages on how to regulate fuel economy for the next 15 years ??? the two reports are off a staggering 1.2 mpg: the NHTSA???s 26.5 mpg versus the EPA???s 25.3 mpg. Neither group is talking, though, and there???s no explanation for this year???s great divide.
Conspiracy theorists can begin their rants about the administration???s support for the auto industry. The NHTSA???s numbers support a 4% gain in truck fuel efficiency environmentalists are demanding while the EPA???s report backs up the auto industry???s claim of 2% improvement. We???ll just continue to shake our heads and wait for an explanation.
Fuel Economy Confounds (Detroit Free Press)
Ozzie foreshadows ?Zurich,? Microsoft?s elastic cloud
Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie foreshadowed a couple of still-to-be-released Microsoft?s cloud-developer services during his speech at the company?s annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) on July 24.
Ozzie was careful to avoid codenames or ship dates during his talk for Wall Street analysts and media in Redmond. But it was pretty clear Ozzie was alluding to Microsoft?s plans for its alternatives to Amazon.com?s Elastic Cloud and similar offerings.
Hong Kong Express Airways launches direct Flights to Seoul, Korea
Hong Kong Express Airways launches direct Flights to Seoul, Korea.
Freebase Parallax Taunts Us With Awesome Semantic Web Video
Staff researcher David François Huynh has created an interesting tool for browsing semantic database Freebase , called Freebase Parallax . Written up by ZDNet's Oliver Marks , the video Huynh recorded demonstrating Parallax (below) will knock your socks off. Unfortunately, actually using Parallax demonstrates just how far from solid Freebase, ... (Read on Source)
Infidelity Dissected: New Research On Why People Cheat
The probability of someone cheating during the course of a relationship varies between 40 and 76 percent. "It's very high," say researchers.
Pandora Issues "Call to Arms" to its Listeners
Lately it seems that all the publicity in the world won't do Pandora any good. Last month Pandora's founder, Tim Westergren, talked about making a "pull-the-plug kind of decision" for the service. "The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money," ... (Read on Source)
David Laibson: Tweak Human Behavior to Fix the Economy
The collapse of the housing market. Runaway health costs. The dearth of retirement savings. At times, the challenges facing the US economy seem so insurmountable that we might be tempted to think we need a vast overhaul of our free-market principles. But David Laibson, a behavioral economist at Harvard, says many of our problems can be fixed relatively simply. Unlike classical economists, who assume everyone uses all available information to act in their self-interest, behavioral economists also study psychological factors to learn why consumers often act like confused procrastinators. "The traditional economic model is too perfectly rational," Laibson says. "People tend to get a lot of important decisions wrong." But Laibson, 42, says there is no reason to despair. With an institutional nudge in the right direction, most consumers wise up pretty quickly. For instance, he says, only about half of US employees save enough for retirement, in part because the average worker waits two years to enroll in a 401(k) program. But one of Laibson's studies showed that when new workers needed to take action to opt out of a 401(k) program — the standard model requires effort to opt in — the participation rate for new employees jumped from about 50 percent to 85 percent in a year. "A lot of big problems can be fixed by introducing defaults," Laibson says. Given a little help, the most doltish consumer can act smarter — without even realizing it. 401(k)...
Wired.com
Microsoft takes to the computing "cloud" (AFP)
AFP - Packaged-software king Microsoft on Monday took to the computing "cloud" with a platform for offering programs as hosted services on the Internet.
iPhone Unlock Posted By : Jamie Hanson
Today, companies are providing unlimited reach to the top iPhone unlocking software. Moreover, ....
Crawling Back to Firefox
She was the new girl in town for a while, but Google Chrome has lost her shine. Sorry Chrome: You've been swell, but I'm going back to my old flame, Firefox.
An Hour with the Renowned South African Poet, Writer, Painter and Anti-Apartheid Activist Breyten Br
Breyten Breytenbach is one of South Africa's most famous poets. He's also an award-winning writer and painter, and well-known as an anti-apartheid activist and outspoken advocate for justice around the world. The exiled poet was born to an Afrikaner or white South African family in 1939. He moved to Paris in the early 1960s and became deeply ... (Read on Source)
search and count
Hi, I would like to seek help regarding searching a pattern on a particular input. Example input: "1|trunc(sysdate-1)|substring(pcol)" I would like to search for "|" and count it. any help will be much appreciated.
Microsoft sues TomTom for alleged patent infringement
Although Microsoft has been on the receiving end of plenty of patent complaints, this is only the third major case the company itself has filed.
Posey Would Have Made It
Send tips: alumnigonzo@gmail.com That’s pretty good, but can Paul Pierce carry him to a title? My friend Heather sent this video to me yesterday, but I’m going to credit Hot Clicks (which she definitely doesn’t read) because I know some people don’t take kindly to just posting a YouTube video. I mean, someone saw it ... (Read on Source)
7 More Sure-Fire Headline Templates That Work
Since people truly seemed to find my 10 Sure-Fire Headline Templates That Work useful for coming up with headlines and post titles that don?t follow the typical ?how to? and ?list? conventions, I thought I?d share a few more. (Read on Source)
Cohomology
I started writing an entry Heuristic introduction to sheaves, cohomology and higher stacks This is (supposed to be) a pedagogical motivation of the concepts sheaf, stack, ? -stack and higher topos theory. It assumes only that the reader has a heuristic knowledge of topological spaces and aims to provide from that a heuristic but useful idea of ... (Read on Source)
Another Day, Another Patent Lawsuit Against Apple Over The iPhone
Steve Jobs definitely invited it in hyping up the fact that the iPhone was covered by 200 patents, but it seems like every other week or so, we hear about yet another firm suing Apple for violating its patents with the iPhone. Apple has been sued over the iPhone over and over and over and over and over again. And now it's happened yet again. People talk about how every high tech product today is likely to violated hundreds, if not thousands, of patents, and the iPhone seems to be on its way to proving that point. At some point, doesn't someone realize how this highlights how much patents hinder innovation? It's the tragedy of the anti-commons, where any innovation today seems to require paying hundreds to thousands of tollbooths. It drives up the cost of innovation, almost always consisting of situations where the patent in question was not relied on for the newer innovation at all. It's a flat-out negative cost to society, which is the exact opposite of what the patent system is supposed to encourage.
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Researcher Offers Tool to Hide Malware in .Net (PC World)
PC World - A computer security researcher has released an upgraded tool that can simplify the placement of difficult-to-detect malicious software in Microsoft's .Net framework on Windows computers.
Gonzales Said to Have Intervened on Wiretap
Despite a longstanding policy to alert Congressional leaders quickly if a member could be the target of a security investigation, Alberto R. Gonzales resisted briefing lawmakers on Jane Harman?s wiretap. (Read on Source)
Tiriac still wants blue clay for Madrid Open - The Canadian Press
 guardian.co.uk | Tiriac still wants blue clay for Madrid Open The Canadian Press MADRID - Sooner or later, the Madrid Open will be played on blue clay despite the objections of top players Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Federer ends Nadal run in Madrid Federer beats Nadal for Madrid title |
News from HCC
The Hagerstown Community College Alumni Association will host the U.S. Army TRADOC Band as part of its annual Red, White and Blue Concert Series, on Sun., June 7, at 4 p.m., in HCC?s Alumni Amphitheater. (Read on Source)
Best Web Host For Images
A picture speaks a thousand words, but takes up at least 4 times as much web space. Yet images are often important parts of our blog, our website and even our Internet experience. Finding a good we...
Rapid-Test Sensitivity for Novel Swine-Origin Influenza A Virus in Humans
To the Editor: The Naval Health Research Center serves as the Navy hub for the Department of Defense's Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System (GEIS), in which it monitors influenza-like illness among recruit trainees of all military services, military dependents, and crew members of large Navy ships (population, >1000). ... (Read on Source)
David Brooks: A Republican senator put ‘his hand on my inner thigh’ for a ‘whole&#
Earlier this week, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about how “the dignity code” has been “completely obliterated” in Washington, DC. Discussing the concept on MSNBC today, Brooks recalled how he “sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time”: ... (Read on Source)
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