CIStud writes "A new poll conducted of IT industry executives and integrators shows a divided and unsure industry regarding which presidential candidate is better for Information Technology to prosper. The poll, conducted by JZ Analytics on behalf of CompTIA, shows 'Not Sure' winning in four out of five areas. President Obama holds and edge over Mitt Romney in every category, including which person is best for the IT industry in terms of tax policy (remarkably), access to capital, tech exports, education and privacy."
An anonymous reader writes "As a kid in the late 1970s and the 1980s, Dungeons and Dragons, as well as many other fine tabletop roleplaying games, figured heavily in my life. From learning about various forms of governments (theocracies, oligarchies, etc.) and Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology, to what N.B. and et al. mean, to the social glue that enabled people like me to get together, write cool adventures, problem-solve, and have a blast doing it all, role playing games were a powerful force in my life. The thing is, I still enjoy playing them. A lot. I get together once a month with friends and we play for sometimes up to eight straight hours of epic battles, puzzles, legends, lore, and camaraderie. All of this, unfortunately, seems totally alien to someone who did not grow up with RPGs and who has never experienced the sheer joy of a dungeon crawl. Have you ever had to explain to your spouse or significant other why you value gaming so much, or why it is ok to spend a hunk of time with other gamers? How do you begin to relate it all to them?"
Hugh Pickens writes "As the media reports that seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong says he will no longer fight doping charges from the US Anti-Doping Agency, which will strip him of his titles and ban him from competitive cycling for life, Tracee Hamilton writes that the Lance Armstrong vs. USADA fight is a tough one in which to take a side, because to believe USADA means suspending belief in the science of drug testing. 'If you take personalities out of the equation, you're left with pee in a cup and blood in a syringe,' writes Hamilton. 'Armstrong never failed a drug test. He was tested in competition, out of competition. He was tested at the Olympics, at the Tour de France, at dozens if not hundreds of other events. And he never failed a test.' Instead Travis Tygart, chief executive officer of the USADA, gathered a group of people who swear they saw Armstrong doping. 'If the results can be discarded in favor of testimony, then let's go right to the testimony phase and quit horsing around with blood and urine.' There has been no trial, no due process, but in the minds of many, that testimony outweighs the results of hundreds of drug tests. 'I don't know if Armstrong did the things he's accused of doing, and neither do you,' concludes Hamilton adding that it can't work both ways. 'Either a drug test is the standard, or it isn't.'"
New submitter wermske writes "Ars Technica and ZDNet report the Location Privacy Act of 2012 (SB-1434) was passed by the California legislature on Wednesday. The California Location Privacy Act, co-sponsored by the ACLU of California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, updates California privacy law to reflect the modern mobile world by providing needed protection against warrantless government access to a person's location information. Recent reports indicate that cell phone tracking is routine and few agencies obtain warrants for such surveillance. The need for this protection resurfaced last week when warrantless GPS tracking appeared again in the national news — a federal appeals court ruled that law enforcement is allowed to track the GPS signal coming from a suspect's prepaid phone without a warrant. The scope of the Location Privacy Act would include gathering GPS or other location-tracking data from cell phones, tablets, computers, automobiles, etc. The next stop is the governor's desk; however, there is concern that Governor Jerry Brown may not sign this act into law. In 2011, Gov. Brown vetoed an attempt at enforcing stricter privacy rules."
Nerval's Lobster writes "Facebook recently invited a handful of employers into its headquarters for a more in-depth look at how it handles its flood of data. Part of that involves the social network's upcoming 'Project Prism,' which will allow Facebook to maintain data in multiple data centers around the globe while allowing company engineers to maintain a holistic view of it, thanks to tools such as automatic replication. That added flexibility could help Facebook as it attempts to wrangle an ever-increasing amount of data. 'It allows us to physically separate this massive warehouse of data but still maintain a single logical view of all of it,' is how Wired quotes Jay Parikh, Facebook's vice president of engineering, as explaining the system to reports. 'We can move the warehouses around, depending on cost or performance or technology.' Facebook has another project, known as Corona, which makes its Apache Hadoop clusters less crash-prone while increasing the number of tasks that can be run on the infrastructure."
dougled writes "A survey of 4,500 college professors (and campus technology administrators) reveals what faculty members think of digital publishing (they like it, but don't do it very much), how much they use their campus learning management systems (not nearly as much as their bosses think), and how digital communication has changed their work lives (they're more productive, but far more stressed)."
schliz writes "The Australian Taxation Office has called for phone-tapping powers while backing a controversial proposal to force telcos to store web traffic and subscriber data for up to two years. It said such data may be crucial to investigations, with the Commissioner of Taxation previously explaining that the connection between criminals and their finances made them 'especially vulnerable to revenue collection agencies, because of the ability to identify the discrepancy between their wealthy lifestyle and modest tax declarations.' The Tax Office's statements come after this week's passage of new legislation that will allow law enforcement agencies to force internet service providers to store data on subscribers while an official warrant is sought."
The place is big. It has lots of bats. And the people there not only make things, but play games and just plain hang out. Some are making a TARDIS they hope to take to Burning Man. Others are college student roboteers, working on their entry in a regional IEEE robotics contest. They're cutting, shaping, drilling, soldering, programming, talking, and generally having a great time. Timothy says they're Texas-friendly, too, so go ahead and stop on by if you're in the neighborhood. They're open 24/7, too, so whenever you have an urge to make something, ATX Hackerspace is ready to help you satisfy that urge.
Penurious Penguin writes "A few days ago, news of an ex-marine detained for his Facebook posts reached far and wide throughout the interweb. It was a hotly debated affair and considered from many perspectives. Today, a judge has ordered the release of Brandon Raub, citing a lack of facts regarding the detention. It's a strange case, undoubtedly, but perhaps even stranger when taking into account a few things. For example, Raub reportedly made claims that one of the psychiatrists involved in the case threatened him with forced medication. For history polymaths, government proposals of forced medication may not be a surprise; you may remember the case of Susan Lindauer. The situation may also remind of 2009, when Fusion Centers targeted Ron Paul supporters, certain universities, and conspiracy theorists as threats to national security, even logging anti death-penalty and anti-war activists into federal terrorism databases. Personally, I find myself wondering what sorts of epic dangers someone like Noam Chomsky might seem to pose after a stressful day and a few beers, if overheard by certain departments."
SmartAboutThings writes "A recent story at the NY Times talks about a possible partnership between Facebook and mobile billing company Bango. 'You might want to buy a game or concert tickets or an astrological forecast. Careful where your fingers go. One tap, and a charge will show up on your phone bill. "Frictionless" payment is how Bango puts it. Bango will get a cut of each click; it declined to say how much.' Assuming this doesn't remain a rumor, then quite soon we might be able to pay for goods using our Facebook accounts. Could this help Facebook regain the lost trust for their investors?"
How a man who passed (almost) every drug test could be labeled a drug cheater and stripped of seven Tour de France titles.
When you post a photo to Instagram, you retain the rights, Instagram gets to use it, and that's that ? legally, your photo isn't supposed to appear anywhere else.
Evernote, the note-taking service that keeps your receipts, web clippings, recipes, and the title of that book you want to read, wants to organizes your work life too.
Vintage slapstick comedies and 1920s experimental cinema collide with found sounds in .The video uses a split screen, so two films are always showing simultaneously, leading to strange and unexpected contrasts and connections. The dreamy music -- which was also collaged together from vintage source material -- lends a whimsical, wistful effect to the piece.
One of the most celebrated cyclists in history finally ends a war of attrition with doping police, who on Friday vacated every race he'd ever ridden.
Aside from the sheer biological ludicrousness of Todd Akin's ideas on female physiology, one unsettling subplot to the debacle is his presence on the House of Committee on Science, Space and Technology. That's right: A man who, to put it gently, ignores what science tells us about how babies are made, helps shape the future of science in America.
music can make the movie's classic confrontation even more ominous than it already was.
Not long ago, we thought Autodesk was going to take over the world. It bought Instructables, they invested in TechShop, and its CAD software continued to excel.
Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, a documentary film about a Tetris championship held in 2010, has been making the film-festival rounds for a year or so. You can finally watch it at home on DVD or through various streaming services.
Apple and Samsung's international courtroom tribulations took a slight turn for the worse for the parties involved. Friday, a South Korean court ruled that both parties infringed on one another's intellectual property and owe damages.
The world is full of one-uppers. Got a diamond watch? Someone else has one with more rocks. But get the Himalaya watch (Everest Edition) from Kobold, and your watch is a guaranteed story-topper. Its face came from Everest.
The leader of the U.S. Special Operations Command and architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden is seriously unhappy about a forthcoming book by a member of the SEAL raiding team. And he wants other elite U.S. commandos to know they could be in for a world of legal trouble if they write their own tell-alls.
There must be a cooler way to deliver pizza than slapping a backlit plastic triangle on the roof of a rusted-out Honda Civic. Local Motors is working to figure out how.Local Motors is an open source car design firm that produces small batches of nutty, brilliant, consumer-designed (and sometimes consumer-built) automobiles. As co-founder and CEO ...
Rocky Shepheard has perfected a paradox: a vegan egg yolk, no feathered friend required. Nope, it's not one of those coconut-and-carrot-puree concoctions that molecular gastronomists are so fond of. This sulfury golden goo is every bit as eggy as anything laid by a hen.
Travel through time and space on Mars in this cool mosaic, which includes at least one shot from every robotic mission to successfully land on the Red Planet's surface.
Everyone knows there are some instinctual reactions to threats. It could be anxiety from standing too close to the edge of a cliff, or a flinch from a punch. But the exact neuroscience behind those reactions are still something of a mystery.
Smarty-pants slime molds can solve mazes and produce diagrams similar to the Tokyo rail system -- and now, scientists suggest, they may also be able to help treat cancer.
The Mars rover Curiosity has its first destination in its sights, and its name is Glenelg. Follow along astrobiologist and Extremo Files blogger Jeffrey Marlow's tour of the landmark's Earthly namesake.
In my previous Photography Snapshot, I discussed the importance of light and how it bounces to create images. In this Snapshot we will discuss the difference between reflection and refraction, how a lens focuses light and how a lense's focal length will impact an image.
Matthew Olin is a talented designer who, as part of his MFA in graphic design from the University of Minnesota, put together some really cool posters of DC and Marvel super heroes using letters (called glyphs to typophiles) for the outlines.
Facebook has built a software platform called Prism that can juggle data across data centers spanning the globe. And at some point, it plans to open source this mystery creation, sharing it with whoever wants it.
Product licensing used to be so easy. If you wanted to make a Mickey Mouse watch, you'd ring up Walt Disney and negotiate terms. But what if you want to create products based on an internet meme like Philosoraptor or the honey badger? It's not like you can call 4chan to ask for permission.
While preserving the treasure-hunting rewards of thrift store shopping, a new crop of startups aims to improve upon the rest of the experience by harnessing the internet and your smartphone.
While filming Stanley Kubrick's legendary war movie? ?that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Kubrick classic.
A rogue state is on the verge of developing a deadly biological weapon against which the rest of the world has no defense. With tensions mounting, a cabal of American military officers, intelligence agents, and scientists gather at a secure facility at the Defense Department's oldest base. Their mission: to plot America's response to the bio-weapon threat. The scenario is fictional. But the meeting, which took place at the Army's historic Carlisle Barracks in southern Pennsylvania in mid-August, is real.
If you don?t already know about Escort Live, you probably should. The app links up with an Escort radar detector via Bluetooth, and when your detector catches a signal bandwidth that might be a police speed gun or red light camera, it sends the data into the software?s global database. It works like Trapster or Waze by sharing speed-trap sites and plotting trouble spots on its integrated map.
A vampire capitalist haunts New York in the film adaptation of , Don DeLillo's sci-finance novel that focuses on a Wall Street billionaire named Eric Packer who trades, converses, theorizes, kills and screws his way through New York in a single day. Cronenberg talks about bringing the movie to the screen.
The irony must taste bitter to the world's largest PC makers: At the height of the revolution in personal digital technology, selling computers turns out to be a lousy business.
For years Janne Parviainen worked as a painter, happy with two-dimensions, until he came across light painting photography. He realized the technique could bring out that third, illusive dimension of depth in a way paint and canvas could not.
Aggressive Silicon Valley reporter Kara Swisher will write for .