The Hacker Shelf is nice crowd-sourced guide to (legally) free books on various computational and mathematical subjects. The
topics page gives you an idea of the breadth of material available.
posted by philipy
on Mar 15, 2012 -
24 comments
Malaysia is proposing a
Computing Professionals Bill, based on the
Registration of Engineers Act [.PDF] which makes it mandatory for all practicing "computing professionals" to be registered with a government body. Dealing in the IT industry, including
sending “proposals, plans, designs, drawings, schemes, reports, studies or others to be determined by the Board to any person or authority in Malaysia” without being registered will incur a fine not exceeding RM20,000 (~US$6380) or 6 months in jail.
Malaysian IT professionals and
geeks are up in arms, and similarities have been drawn to
Nigeria's law on computing professionals.
posted by divabat
on Dec 8, 2011 -
26 comments
Security researchers at North Carolina State University led by Xuxian Jiang (who had previously discovered
12 malicious Android applications sold through Google's Android Market) have
uncovered holes in how the permissions-based security model is enforced on numerous Android devices. Called "leaks", these vulnerabilities allow new and existing malicious applications to eavesdrop on calls, track the user's location, install applications, send SMS messages, delete data from the device, and more. (
via)
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Dec 5, 2011 -
30 comments
OpenCPU provides a
RESTful interface to the popular open-source statistical package
R, enabling the user to perform calculations and create publication-quality or web-embeddable visualizations via standard web requests.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Nov 10, 2011 -
17 comments
Over the past 30 years, designer, writer and Principal Researcher for Microsoft Research
Bill Buxton has collected input and interactive devices whose designs he found "interesting, useful or important. In the process, he has assembled a good collection of the history of pen computing, pointing devices, touch technologies, as well as an illustration of the nature of how new technologies emerge." This week, he
unveiled his collection at the Computer-Human Interaction conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. An extensive gallery has been posted online with images and notes at
The Buxton Collection.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 11, 2011 -
6 comments
Chasing Pirates: Inside Microsoft’s War Room - From the special thread that Chinese factories counterfeit in mile-long spools that adorns software authenticity stickers, to near-perfect bootleg discs leaving microscopic evidence of their factory origins, to Mexican and Russian gangsters who are dealt with very carefully, the NYT covers Microsoft's multi-pronged, international war on piracy.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Nov 7, 2010 -
30 comments
Do you like manuals? Do you like Wikis? Do you like open source software? Check out
FLOSS Manuals for wiki-fied manuals for popular and fun open source software, including
PureData,
Inkscape,
Blender,
Ardour, among others. Taking a page from programmers, the group endorses "
book sprints", where creative writers, editors and artists work closely together to complete an online book in a short, intense burst of effort.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Oct 1, 2010 -
6 comments
Russia Uses Microsoft to Suppress Dissent - Adding to its
long-running series on corruption and abuse in post-Communist Russia, the New York Times has reported on Russian authorities using the pretext of software piracy to seize computers from journalists and political dissidents critical of current policies. In a surprising twist, lawyers representing Microsoft have been found working with Russian police, despite reporters and NGOs providing evidence of legitimate software purchases. An
official response to the NYT piece suggests impostors claim to represent Microsoft in Russia, and notes the company's offer of free software licenses to these and similar groups.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Sep 12, 2010 -
25 comments
David Gelernter, professor of computer science, painter, neoconservative columnist, and unabomber victim, on
rethinking the internet.
The structure called a cyberstream or lifestream is better suited to the Internet than a conventional website because it shows information-in-motion, a rushing flow of fresh information instead of a stagnant pool.
posted by DZack
on Apr 11, 2010 -
20 comments
I've never really had a clear understanding of how mechanical computing worked, until today when I watched these US Navy training films from 1953.
Part 1 focuses on shafts, gears, cams and differentials.
Part 2 explains mechanical component solvers, integrators and multipliers. More information about ship gun fire-control systems
here.
posted by drmanhattan
on Feb 14, 2010 -
28 comments
Quantum processes involved in photosynthesis? "[A]lgae and bacteria may have been performing quantum calculations at life-friendly temperatures for billions of years. The evidence comes from a study of
how energy travels across the light-harvesting molecules involved in photosynthesis. The work has culminated this week in the extraordinary announcement that these molecules in a marine alga may exploit quantum processes at room temperature to transfer energy without loss. Physicists had
previously ruled out quantum processes, arguing that they could not persist for long enough at such temperatures to achieve anything useful." (
via mr)
posted by kliuless
on Feb 10, 2010 -
43 comments
A year before his passing at the age of 102,
LSD discoverer
Albert Hofmann pens a letter to Apple CEO
Steve Jobs (who had remarked publicly about his own use of the hallucinogenic as a creative factor)
asking for Jobs' support for further research into the use of LSD in psychotherapy. In the remainder of the article, Ryan Grim
touches briefly on the use of LSD by scientists and computer programmers who have transformed the world through novel discoveries and inventions.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Jul 9, 2009 -
64 comments
Inspiration to do something with your holiday weekend: Steven K. Roberts is an interesting guy with a bit of a hobby problem. In 1983 his
recumbent bike sported "only" a security system, lights, a CB radio and a state-of-the-art
TRS80/100 laptop.
Winnebikeo would eventually evolve into
BEHEMOTH, the "Big Electronic Human-Energized Machine... Only Too Heavy". BEHEMOTH incorporated (amongst other things) HUD, cooling system,
small Sun SPARCstation, HAM Radio, credit card verifier, bubblejet printer, hydraulic disk brakes...
[more inside]
posted by Ogre Lawless
on May 21, 2009 -
28 comments
