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Lesson of the day: we monkey around with Mother Nature at our own risk ...

A once-ubiquitous symbiotic intestinal microbe, H. pylori, is now found in just one-fifth of young Americans, thanks to antibiotics. Its disappearance may be linked to a rise in asthma rates, researchers suggest.

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:53 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Well, this is like saying that all buildings should be erected using only a hammer, and a screwdriver. Very simple. That way construction workers could move easily from one building to the next without having to learn new tools.

The buildings wouldn't look very good, or be very functional, but who cares? We'd save a lot of money on tools and training!

AC writes "Upper management of the company I work at recently declared that all new development should be done with a single combination of development tools, language, and framework. The main rationale is that people can be relocated from one group / project to another faster, because they don't need to learn a new environment when they switch. Of course the chosen language / framework used by everybody does not need to be the best tool for the job, but it should be good enough to allow every project to get done. What does Slashdot think about this? Is it OK to use the same development tools and language for every project, instead of choosing what fits best? Will the time saved be sufficient to offset the time lost to the 'not the best tool for the job' environment developers will be forced to use?"

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:27 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Got any old DOS games lying around that you can't play anymore because your system no longer supports them? Get DOSBox. It rocks on OS X Leopard, and runs on XP and even Vista. I'd forgotten how much fun the first gen FPS games were.

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:04 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Don't just think of them as defects, treat them that way. Because they are! Doh!

ZDNet Zero-Day blogger Nate McFeters has asked the question, 'Should vulnerabilities be treated as defects?' McFeters claims that if vulnerabilities were treated as product defects, companies would have an effective way of forcing developers and business units to focus on security issue. McFeters suggests providing bonuses for good developers, and taking away from bonuses for those that can't keep up. It's an interesting approach that if used, might force companies to take a stronger stance on security related issues.

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:22 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Maybe next week he'll demo a perpetual motion machine, too.

This "research" tickles me, because it's motivation is so transparent: fear of death. It's alchemy reborn, only with modern tools and jargon. But it'll get no further than it did five hundred years ago. No Philosophers Stone, and no Fountain of Youth, just wasted days fearing the inevitable.

Think about it - without death, there can be no life. And everything that lives will someday die. How far human life can be extended is open to some debate, but immortality, which is the real, unspoken goal of these wingnuts, is a contradiction and, in the end, a potential nightmare.

In research that will first be presented on Friday at the conference, Methuselah-funded scientists will demonstrate a proof-of-concept experiment for using bacterial enzymes to fight atherosclerosis, or the hardening of the arteries.

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:21 /Technology | 2 writebacks | permanent link

Ouch!

Windows Vista is not for Intel, it has been claimed. The chip giant will not be installing the new operating systems on its many thousands of desktop PCs. It has "no compelling case" to do so.

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:10 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

How Crichton-esque. Can it be done commercially? And can it be done without genetically modifying the E. coli that naturally live in our guts to diesel factories? I suppose we'll find out, but I'm not holding my breath.

According to The Times Online, genetically modified microbes have been developed capable of turning surplus material such as wood chips, sugarcane, or others, not into ethanol, but into a substance which could substitute directly for crude oil. They claim it could be sold for about $50/bbl, and the production process would be carbon negative.

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:37 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

The guy who thought of putting potato chips in a can is certainly worthy of a remembrance in my technology section. RIP.

Dr. Fredric J. Baur was so proud of having designed the container for Pringles... that he asked his family to bury him in one. His children honored his request. Part of his remains was buried in a Pringles can — along with a regular urn containing the rest... Dr. Baur, a retired organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Procter & Gamble, died May 4 at 89... He developed many products, including frying oils and a freeze-dried ice cream, for P&G... But the Pringles can was his proudest accomplishment, his daughter said. He received a patent for the package as well as the method of packaging Pringles in 1970.

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:44 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Ya know, I've always wondered about this, and now Mr. Schneier sets the record straight.

Aren't fax signatures the weirdest thing? It's trivial to cut and paste -- with real scissors and glue -- anyone's signature onto a document so that it'll look real when faxed. There is so little security in fax signatures that it's mind-boggling that anyone accepts them.

Thu, 29 May 2008 06:16 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Read this only if you find obscure, Biblically stylized writing about software development tools funny ...

Embarcadero takes on the Sons of Kahnanrado

Mon, 26 May 2008 07:29 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Read carefully: this isn't about XP vs OSX, it's about IE7 vs. Safari. Then take a look at the client list of the "independent" user experience guru and you'll understand what is meant by the marketing term "astroturf".

A benchmark test for rich internet application (RIA) frameworks claims Apple's OS X lags Microsoft's Windows XP on Intel when rendering HTML, being just over half as fast.

Fri, 23 May 2008 18:55 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Makes you wonder about other rating programs, doesn't it?

The Financial Times has the story that billions in incorrect AAA ratings given out by Moody's were the result of a coding error in its computer models. "Internal Moody's documents seen by the FT show that some senior staff within the credit agency knew early in 2007 that products rated the previous year had received top-notch triple A ratings and that, after a computer coding error was corrected, their ratings should have been up to four notches lower."

Thu, 22 May 2008 06:21 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

And all the developers said "Amen!"

As part of an Ars Technica series on how one developer migrated from Windows to OS X (and why), this second article concentrates on how Microsoft bungled the transition from XP to Vista. The author looks at some unfortunate decisions Microsoft made that have made Windows an unpleasant development platform. "So Windows is just a disaster to write programs for. It's miserable. It's quite nice if you want to use the same techniques you learned 15 years ago and not bother to change how you do, well, anything, but for anyone else it's all pain... And it's not just third parties who suffer. It causes trouble for Microsoft, too. The code isn't just inconsistent and ugly on the outside; it's that way on the inside, too. There's a lot of software for Windows, a lot of business-critical software, that's not maintained any more. And that software is usually buggy. It passes bad parameters to API calls, uses memory that it has released, assumes that files live in particular hard-coded locations, all sorts of things that it shouldn't do."

Tue, 06 May 2008 06:46 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

I, for one, am fascinated...

Fri, 02 May 2008 06:33 /Technology | 1 writeback | permanent link

Reviled, loathed and loved - many programmers first language but no pro's last. Happy Birthday, BASIC!

In the predawn hours of May Day, two professors at Dartmouth College run the first program in their new language, BASIC.

Thu, 01 May 2008 06:30 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link