Content Syndication

3NewsEducation Ministry chief warns of redundanciesRadio New ZealandEducation Ministry chief executive Karen Sewell says there will be redundancies as it tries to slash millions in spending, but admits the exact number will not be known for some time. Ms Sewell says it is difficult to identify which jobs will go but ...Education cuts would move paperwork to frontline - PSANew Zealand HeraldNational's axe hangs over Education Ministry jobs3NewsCost Cuts Raise Education Quality Concernsguide2.co.nzNewstalk ZB -Scoop.co.nz (press release) -New Zealand Heraldall 21 news articles »

Stuff.co.nzTeenager killed in Kapiti Coast crashTVNZA teenager is dead and several others injured after the ute they were in crashed on the Kapiti Coast on Wednesday morning. Police say the accident happened Maungakotukutuku Road near Paraparaumu. The crash happened just after nine o'clock when police ...Teens were on back of ute in fatal crashNewstalk ZBOne killed and five injured in Kapiti crashNew Zealand Herald16-year-old killed, five injured in 4wd crash at ParaparaumuScoop.co.nz (press release)all 27 news articles »

3NewsChristchurch taxi driver killers: 'too drunk to remember'3NewsA Christchurch youth who stabbed an Afghan taxi driver to death has been sent to jail for at least 15-and-a-half years. Shannon Boyes-Warren, 16, has pleaded guilty to the murder of Christchurch taxi driver Abdul Rahman Iktiari. ...Taxi killers to be sentencedTVNZTeen jailed for life for taxi driver killingNewstalk ZBTeenager jailed for murdering taxi driverSifyNZ City -Voxyall 37 news articles »

Stuff.co.nzProblem confirmed with Girl Guide biscuitsTVNZIt has been confirmed there is a problem with this year's batch of Girl Guide biscuits - but do not worry, it is not the taste. Girl Guides has been investigating complaints the look of the biscuits is not as uniform as they would like. ...Girl Guide biscuit time, but has the recipe changed?3NewsBiscuits unshapely but taste the sameNewstalk ZBGirl Guide biscuits sent for testingStuff.co.nzall 14 news articles »

CBC.ca'R. Shlomo plan timing regrettable'Jerusalem PostAfter the announcement of an east Jerusalem building plan during US Vice President Joe Biden's visit was heavily criticized on Wednesday, Interior Minister Eli Yishai told Army Radio that the timing was simply a ...Biden meets Abbas amid row over settlementsBBC NewsInterior Minister: East Jerusalem plan wasn't intended to provokeHa'aretzBiden's West Bank tour clouded by settlement plansThe Associated PressLos Angeles Times -Telegraph.co.uk -Xinhuaall 3,054 news articles »

New Zealand HeraldTertiary education set to receive shake upTVNZSlacking students, nonsense courses and student loans are all in the government's sights as the new Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce makes his mark. Joyce is promising to cut funding to tertiary institutes with poor pass results, ...Cutting tertiary courses will hurt Maori - SharplesRadio New ZealandNo plans to cut courses - JoyceOtago Daily TimesMinister unveils tertiary education reformStuff.co.nzNewstalk ZB -New Zealand Herald -Voxyall 69 news articles »

Globe and MailBomber's death fresh blow to Indonesia militantsReutersCANBERRA/JAKARTA (Reuters) - A suspected mastermind of the Bali bombings was killed in a police raid in Indonesia in the latest blow to an Islamist militant movement in the world's most populous Muslim country. Dulmatin, who once trained with al Qaeda ...Bali bombing suspect confirmed dead in police raidThe Associated PressOfficial: Bali bombing mastermind deadCNN InternationalIndonesian police shoot dead allegedly Bali bombing terroristXinhuaThe Australian -Aljazeera.net -Jakarta Postall 1,088 news articles »

3NewsSmart meters here to stay for consumersNewstalk ZBPeople will just have to go with the flow and accept it if electricity companies impose smart meters on them, according to Consumer New Zealand spokeswoman Sue Chetwin. The Energy Minister has given the go ahead for the installation of the smart meters ...Regulation of smart meters ruled outStuff.co.nzGovernment decides against smart meter regulationRadio New ZealandMinister OKs 'dumb' smart metersNational Business ReviewVoxy -New York Times (blog) -Voxyall 24 news articles »

3NewsArmy museum admits more medals missingOtago Daily TimesSecurity at the Waiouru Army Museum is under scrutiny again as it admits that two more sets of medals have been missing for some time. But Army spokesman Kristian Dunne said the loss of inventory was due to an accounting issue, not a security one. ...Waiouru medal loss 'regrettable'Radio New ZealandArmy "shamefaced" over missing medalsNewstalk ZBMore medals vanish from Waiouru Army MuseumStuff.co.nzNewstalk ZBall 18 news articles »

3NewsHamilton Police offers victim supportOtago Daily TimesA car which crashed through two sets of glass doors and into the front foyer of the Hamilton central police station narrowly missed several people, coming to rest about a metre from the front service counter shortly before 1pm. ...Car deliberately smashed into police stationNewstalk ZBMan crashes car into Hamilton police station3NewsCar driven through front entrance of Hamilton Police StationNew Zealand Police (press release)all 21 news articles »

An anonymous reader writes "After a little over five months of pondering, xkcd fans have cracked a puzzle hidden inside Randall Munroe's recent book xkcd: volume 0. Here is the start of the thread on the xkcd forums; and here is the post revealing the final message (a latitude and longitude plus a date and time)." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mirk writes "Computer-science legend Edsger W. Dijkstra famously wrote: 'It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.' The Reinvigorated Programmer argues that the world is full of excellent programmers who cut their teeth on BASIC, and suggests it could even be because they started out with BASIC." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

gollum123 writes "US regulators may dedicate spectrum to free wireless Internet service for some Americans to increase affordable broadband service nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday. The FCC provided few details about how it would carry out such a plan and who would qualify, but will make a recommendation under the National Broadband Plan set for release next week. The agency will determine details later. One way of making broadband more affordable is to 'consider use of spectrum for a free or a very low-cost wireless broadband service,' the FCC said in a statement." Nobody has more than a couple of paragraphs on this story. None of the press coverage mentions the obvious likelihood that any such free network would be heavily filtered, censored, and monitored. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes "A new report from Games Industry indicates that MMO gamers in the United States paid $3.8 billion to play last year, with an analysis of five European countries bringing the total close to $4.5 billion USD. In America, the report estimated that payments for boxed content and client downloads amounted to a measly $400 million, while the subscriptions came to $2.38 billion. Hopefully that will fund some developer budgets for bigger and better MMOs yet to come. The study also found that roughly a quarter of the US population plays some form of MMO. Surely MMOs are shaping up to be a juicy industry, and a market that can satisfy people of all walks of life." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ElectricSteve writes "It's been a long time coming. While Arthur C. Clarke's geosync satellites have taken to space, and James Bond's futuristic mobile technology has become commonplace, still the dream of sustained personal flight has eluded us — until now. At $86,000, the Martin Aircraft jetpack costs about as much as a high-end car, achieves a 30-minute flight time, and is fueled by regular gasoline. A 10% deposit buys you a production slot for 12 months hence." Here's a video of some indoor test flights. This isn't Buck Rogers's jetpack — it's about 5 by 5 feet and weighs more than the average human. You won't be able to commute with it (the FAA has not certified this class of device) so it's recreational only for now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

gollum123 sends an excerpt from the NY Times on how Google has taken a lead in language translation, in one of the company's few unqualified successes as it attempts to broaden is offerings beyond search. "...Google's quick rise to the top echelons of the translation business is a reminder of what can happen when Google unleashes its brute-force computing power on complex problems. The network of data centers that it built for Web searches may now be, when lashed together, the world's largest computer. Google is using that machine to push the limits on translation technology. Last month, for example, it said it was working to combine its translation tool with image analysis, allowing a person to, say, take a cellphone photo of a menu in German and get an instant English translation. ...in the mid-1990s, researchers began favoring a so-called statistical approach. They found that if they fed the computer thousands or millions of passages and their human-generated translations, it could learn to make accurate guesses about how to translate new texts. It turns out that this technique, which requires huge amounts of data and lots of computing horsepower, is right up Google's alley. ...Google's service is good enough to convey the essence of a news article, and it has become a quick source for translations for millions of people." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

blozza2070 notes the news that Jeff Jaffe has been appointed CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium. Until January Jaffe was CTO at Novell and, while his name hasn't come up very often in this community, he is one of the architects of the Novell-Microsoft patent deal. A reading of Jaffe's blog while at Novell tends to paint him as a software patent supporter, Microsoft apologist, and no fan of the FSF. This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

adeelarshad82 writes "After originally rejecting the story, online retailer NewEgg confirmed that a shipment of Core i7s were indeed fake, and apologized for the affair. NewEgg has also broken off its relationship with IPEX, the supplier of the phony lot. The retailer said that it has already contacted affected customers and would continue to reach out and replace the counterfeit parts. We discussed the fake Core i7s over the weekend." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

netbuzz writes "When the NASDAQ stock index hit its all-time high of 5,133 on March 10, 2000, it had more than doubled in a year and the dot-com bubble was already leaking in a big way. A week later the NASDAQ had fallen 9 percent. A year later it was below 2000. Gone were such poster children of the era as Pets.com, Kozmo, and — who could forget? — Whoopi Goldberg's Flooz. Here's a look back." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bjb writes "While helping a somewhat computer illiterate person figure out a problem recently, they mentioned that PDF files had recently stopped working. Upon investigation I found something installed called 'PDF Suite.' Never having heard of it, I Googled it with 'malware' and other key words, but nothing turned up, though my suspicion remained (and was somewhat confirmed by WOT.) So my question is, where can you go to find out if something is legitimate? Because the person I'm helping is on a dial-up connection, downloading malware detection applications (and updates) is too heavy consider. And I don't maintain a USB stick with such apps, since I don't do this kind of thing very often. Where can you quickly find information?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CWmike writes "Today Cisco Systems introduced its next-generation Internet core router, the CRS-3, with about three times the capacity of its current platform. 'The Internet will scale faster than any of us anticipate,' Cisco's John Chambers said while announcing the product. At full scale, the CRS-3 has a capacity of 322Tbit/sec., roughly three times that of the CRS-1, introduced in 2004. It also has more than 12 times the capacity of its nearest competitor, Chambers said. The CRS-3 will help the Internet evolve from a messaging to an entertainment and media platform, with video emerging as the 'killer app,' Chambers said. Using a CRS-3, every person in China, which has a population just over 1.3 billion, could participate in a video phone call at the same time. (Or you could pump nearly one Library of Congress per second through the device, or give everyone in San Fransisco a 1Gbps internet connection.) AT&T said it has been using the CRS-3 to test 100Gbit/sec. data links in tests on a commercial fiber route in Florida and Louisiana." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

kkleiner writes "For many years countless individuals in the US have had to watch with envy as dogs and horses with joint and bone injuries have been cured with stem cell procedures that the FDA has refused to approve for humans. Now, in an exciting development, Regenerative Sciences Inc. in Colorado has found a way to skirt the FDA and provide these same stem cell treatments to humans. The results have been stunning, allowing many patients to walk or run who have not been able to do so for years. There's no surgery required, just a needle to extract and then re-inject the cells where they are needed. There has always been a lot of hype around stem cells, but this is the real deal. Real humans are getting real treatment that works, and we should all hope that more companies will begin offering this procedure in other states soon." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

harrymcc writes "Windows has been so dominant for so long that it's easy to forget Windows 1.0 was vaporware, mocked both outside and inside of Microsoft — and that its immediate successors were considered stopgaps until OS/2 was everywhere. Tandy Trower, the product manager who finally got Windows 1.0 out the door a quarter century ago, has written a memoir of the experience. (He thought being assigned the much-maligned project was Microsoft's fiendish way of trying to get rid of him.) The story involves such still-significant figures as Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, and Nathan Myhrvold; Trower left Microsoft only in November of 2009 after 28 years with the company." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

macslocum writes "Nat Torkington begins sketching out an open data process that borrows liberally from open source tools: 'Open source discourages laziness (because everyone can see the corners you've cut), it can get bugs fixed or at least identified much faster (many eyes), it promotes collaboration, and it's a great training ground for skills development. I see no reason why open data shouldn't bring the same opportunities to data projects. And a lot of data projects need these things. From talking to government folks and scientists, it's become obvious that serious problems exist in some datasets. Sometimes corners were cut in gathering the data, or there's a poor chain of provenance for the data so it's impossible to figure out what's trustworthy and what's not. Sometimes the dataset is delivered as a tarball, then immediately forks as all the users add their new records to their own copy and don't share the additions. Sometimes the dataset is delivered as a tarball but nobody has provided a way for users to collaborate even if they want to. So lately I've been asking myself: What if we applied the best thinking and practices from open source to open data? What if we ran an open data project like an open source project? What would this look like?'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trailrunner7 writes "Security researchers have found that Vodafone, one of the world's larger wireless providers, is distributing some HTC phones with malware pre-installed on them. The phone, HTC's Magic, runs the Google Android mobile operating system, and is one of the more popular handsets right now. A researcher at Panda Software received one of the handsets recently, and upon attaching it to her PC, found that the phone was pre-loaded with the Mariposa bot client. Mariposa has been in the news of late thanks to some arrests connected to the operation of the botnet." Read more of this story at Slashdot.