Science Weekly podcast: Libel Reform Week and the importance of being vague
Science writer Simon Singh and Tracey Brown from Sense About Science tell us about Libel Reform Week and the campaign to change Britain's libel laws and protect scientific freedom of expression. Simon is currently locked in a legal battle over a comment piece published in the Guardian . Matthew Applegate, aka Pixelh8 , is performing an audiovisual study as part of Cambridge Science Festival . We went along to the Institute of Astronomy to hear the telescopes he used as his musical instruments. Ian Sample speaks to Kees van Deemter about the importance of being vague. Kees is trying to program computers to be a little more ... erm ... fuzzy
View post:
Science Weekly podcast: Libel Reform Week and the importance of being vague
PC speakers also pick up radio
Jon Godfrey likes internet radio stations, but he can hear music coming faintly from his PC speakers whether he is connected to the internet or not I have had a Dell Dimension 8250 for several years, and I have connected to it a set of speakers through which I listen to the radio whilst online. I am receiving a faint but audible music channel, which I can hear whether I am connected to the net or not. Jon Godfrey This seems to be a common example (to judge by a Google search) of radio frequency interference or RFI, though it's not something I've heard on a PC. The speaker wires may be acting as an aerial and picking up a radio signal, which you then hear from the speakers. The loudspeakers may also be implicated: some models seem to have better shielding than others. You could try moving the speaker and mains cables, and folding up (rather than coiling up) any spare bits of wire, or changing to shorter, better-quality shielded speaker cables. If that doesn't work, try adding some ferrite rings to the speaker and mains cables. KSL Consulting has a web page, Solving Radio Interference (RFI) on Computer Speakers , which says: "Bunching the cables with cable ties to reduce their length will reduce the interference, as will winding each speaker cable around ferrite rings (winding at least 10 to 15 turns around the ferrite ring). The ferrite rings act as RFI filters, making the cables inefficient aerials. This reduces the level of the radio signal on the amplifier wiring. Ferrite rings can be purchased from Maplin.co.uk under stock code QT26D ." Maplin and similar stores also supply clip-on ferrites and shielded cables . Note that Cat5 Ethernet cables can also act as aerials and deliver a radio signal to the PC motherboard. Ferrite rings are a cheap solution, if they work. Upgrading the speakers is a more expensive option. America's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published the useful Interference to Home Electronic Entertainment Equipment Handbook , which you can find online "preserved by KYES TV"
View original post here:
PC speakers also pick up radio
Imogen Heap: ‘Don’t blame the machines, it’s not their fault’
Why singer Imogen Heap wants to make electricity out of horse manure What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life? I was going to say Macs, but everyone says that, so I'm going to go into geek mode. I have these wireless wrist microphones that I wear on stage – they are throat mics that I've adapted. The audio gets picked up and goes into my computer. What's great about them is that I can wander about on stage and grab any instrument – like the wine glasses I use – and the mics are in the perfect position to pick up the sound. They've completely transformed me on stage. When was the last time you used them
Excerpt from:
Imogen Heap: 'Don't blame the machines, it's not their fault'
Charlie Brooker | Want to read this article? Then enter your password
Forgotten your password? That'll be the 58th one you've not remembered this year, then In days of yore, we're told, people had less leisure time because everything – everything – was a protracted pain in the fundament. Want to clean that smock? Then you'll have to walk six miles carrying a pail of water back from the village well. And that's before you've tackled the laundering process itself, which consists of three hours laboriously scrubbing your soiled garment against a washboard and wringing it through a mangle. By the time you've finished, it's bedtime.
Go here to read the rest:
Charlie Brooker | Want to read this article? Then enter your password
Lenovo ThinkPad X100e | Technophile
The ThinkPad X100e has both good and bad points, depending on whether you see it as an overpriced netbook or a cut-price ThinkPad business notebook The IBM ThinkPad became the industry's premier notebook brand after the launch of the 700T in 1992, and its distinctive black styling and red TrackPoint became a noticeable part of business travel. ThinkPads were never cheap, but they were very durable, had outstanding keyboards, and you could get support and spare parts almost anywhere. Prices came down after China's Lenovo took over IBM's PC division, but the brand has managed to retain most of its value. I've been carrying ThinkPads everywhere for more than a decade, so I was delighted to see the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e when it appeared at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. It was almost love at first sight. After using one (Type 2876), I'm less impressed, and my views might have tipped too far the other way. The main problem with the X100e is trying to decide what it is.
Read the original here:
Lenovo ThinkPad X100e | Technophile
Christopher Smith: Macs are beautiful, PCs are vile | Celebrity squares
Film director Christopher Smith devours new gadgets but he won't download films as he's a sucker for DVDs What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life? The thing that changed my life, and improved my life, was originally my video [player]. That idea of being able to rent movies genuinely changed me, I think. All of my filmgoing when I was a kid was watching videos. The most modern thing: I love my Sky+. I love the idea that I can use my iPhone and record stuff and having it waiting for me in a big bank. And I don't record movies – I record rubbish. When was the last time you used the Sky+ box, and what for? I used it the other day to record My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding for my wife. What additional features would you add if you could? I wouldn't change a thing, I just love it. I think it's perfect as it is. Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time
More here:
Christopher Smith: Macs are beautiful, PCs are vile | Celebrity squares
Will an algorithm pick you for your next coding job?
The former CTO of Dopplr has hacked together an algorithm to find the best (open source and public) coders in whatever location he's in. A taste of the future? Will your next job come from an algorithm? You'll have noticed that among other things you can get here at the Guardian are jobs. But the way that we find jobs is a bit outdated, isn't it? Plug in a CV, hope that someone picks it up; or alternatively, hunt through job ads trying to find something that fits your experience and skills. Wouldn't it be easier - at least in the programming field to begin with - if your job could find you? That's the possibility being held out by a recent post on Hackdiary , in which Matt Biddulph ("I'm based in Berlin. I'm a software designer and creative technologist. I work at Nokia. I was the CTO of Dopplr, a social network for frequent travellers acquired by Nokia in 2009") notes that his new job involves recruiting people for new projects in Berlin, which he's only recently moved to. The problem: how do you figure out who the people to recruit for your project are, when you're not familiar with the people in the area but need to get going? Well, one option is to analyse submissions to Github , the open source code repository used by dozens of companies and individual programmers. Biddulph explains: "When I'm hiring, one of the things I always want to see is evidence of personal projects. Over the last two years, GitHub has become an amazing treasure trove of code, with the best social infrastructure I've ever seen on a developer site. GitHub profiles let the user set their location, so I started with a few web searches for Berlin developers. This finds hundreds of interesting people, but how do I prioritise them?" Good question.
See the rest here:
Will an algorithm pick you for your next coding job?
Microsoft Office 2010 programs available separately
Microsoft has announced estimated retail pricing for Microsoft Office 2010 in the UK, but Cyteck only wants one application…. In response to your story about Microsoft Office 2010 priced from free , will it be possible in future to purchase Office 2010 applications as separate programs? I'm interested in Outlook, and I wonder if Ask Jack might be able to enlighten me on that. Cyteck Microsoft UK has just released estimated retail prices for separate applications, so you can assume that all of these will be available separately. Basically they all cost £119.99 each -- that's Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher and Access -- except for OneNote, which costs £69.99. Microsoft Software Computing Jack Schofield guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Original post:
Microsoft Office 2010 programs available separately
Kneber botnet catches 2,500 companies worldwide
About 75,000 personal computers in almost 2,500 companies and government agencies worldwide have been caught in a botnet based on a new variant of the ZeuS Trojan About 75,000 personal computers in almost 2,500 companies and government agencies across the globe have been caught in a botnet uncovered by a researcher at the US-based NetWitness network forensics firm. Hackers were able to collect logins and passwords for Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail and other accounts, including online banking sites. They were also able to access some corporate servers used to store confidential data, including one used for processing credit-card payments. Companies reportedly attacked include Paramount Pictures, Merck, Juniper Networks and Cardinal Health in the US, but affected computers in more than 200 countries including Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. The Wall Street Journal reported that Merck and Cardinal Health said they had isolated and contained the problem, and Merck said "no sensitive information was compromised". NetWitness's Alex Cox uncovered the botnet while installing monitoring software to help a large corporation deal with cyberattacks. He found a 75GB cache of data generated by the botnet, which NetWitness has called Kneber after a username linking the infected systems. NetWitness said in a statement: "Disturbingly, the data was only a one-month snapshot of data from a campaign that has been in operation for more than a year." The PCs in question, almost all running Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, had been compromised by a new variant of the well-known ZeuS Trojan, which is one of the "top five" in its class. Cox told the SearchSecurity.com site that the variant used in the latest attacks had a detection rate of less than 10% among antivirus software.
See the original post here:
Kneber botnet catches 2,500 companies worldwide
Converting data from PDF files to Excel spreadsheets
John Haworth wants to reliably convert a lot of data from PDF files to Excel for spreadsheet analysis. I receive a lot of data in PDF format and it would be very useful to reliably convert it for spreadsheet analysis. Currently I print files then OCR scan and save them in Excel. It needs time-consuming scrutiny to ensure reliability. John Haworth There are lots of ways to get data from Adobe PDF files into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and several of them should work better than the one you are using. However, I'm not sure any of them will avoid the need for "time-consuming scrutiny to ensure reliability". The best way to do that is to get whoever publishes the data in PDF to send it to you in Excel format, or in another common format such as csv (comma-separated values). Any process that involves a conversion will generally involve some level of checking, though you should be able to decrease the level as the system proves itself. Since PDF-to-Excel conversions are economically significant (possibly saving hours of re-keying and checking), there are commercial solutions such as Cogniview's PDF2XL -- which might be your best bet -- and Blue Label Soft's PDF to Excel Converter 2.4 . A search will find more. However, before buying anything, you should try some of the free online solutions, such as Nitro's PDF to Excel Online . Zamzar, a site that offers a very wide range of conversions , has recently added PDF to Excel. Before that, you could have used it to convert PDF to text and then loaded it into Excel using the Text Import Wizard -- a process that could well be more accurate than your OCR. Incidentally, if the files are commercially sensitive, you should consult your IT department first
Read the original post:
Converting data from PDF files to Excel spreadsheets