Google is taking its search expertise to one of its favorite audiences: software developers.
The company on Thursday launched a Web site, Google Code Search, which the company says will let programmers search billions of lines of code for tips on how to write their own software.
The service, conceived by the Google Labs early technology group, will crawl publicly available code, most of which is made available through open-source projects. The search and indexing covers code on Web pages and code that resides in compressed files, said Tom Stocky, a product manager at Google.
Google expects that the search engine will be used primarily as a learning tool to help students and serious programmers, rather than a way to find and copy another person's code.
"Most of the code is open source so you can reuse it. But I don't think that's the primary use--it's more about how to learn about things and, when you're building open-source packages, to make sure you doing it the right way," Stocky said.
For example, a developer may need to write a function as part of an application and search the Web to see other examples.
Google engineers, many of whom participate in open-source projects, already use these code-searching capabilities internally. Since it is a Google Labs project, the company is not yet seeking to make money through ads linked to searches, Stocky said.
The search engine will let people do both keyword search and "regular expressions," which allow people to search a specified pattern, he said. For example, a person could narrow a search to JavaScript functions, which will help find more examples, Stocky said.
As it does with many of its services, Google will release an application programming interface (API) to create an XML feed based on a specific query.
Although it doesn't sell programming tools, Google has an active developer-outreach program and relies on third-party programmers to enhance its services.
For example, developers have created popular mashup applications that display information from a Web site, such a real-estate listings site, using Google Maps.
"More and more (the developer community) is the way Google products are getting to scale," Stocky said. "We think developers can really improve Google products and use Google technology to improve their own products."
For more :
news.com.com
LCD contrast hurts my eyes!
Question from phlicker
"I just bought a new LCD monitor and it says it has a 700:1 contrast ratio. Is that good? How does it compare to the old CRT monitors. I tried to find out what my old monitor's ratio was but it didn't say. I looked at other CRT's and couldn't find it. Is this new to LCD monitors? Also, I put this in another post..... I just bought a new 19 wide screen Acer LCD monitor and it's killing my eyes, like low refresh rate on a CRT monitor. I hear an LCD does not have a refresh rate, or not like the CRTs any way. I was wondering why my eyes would bother me so bad. I have my monitor hooked up via the VGA hook-up (thought my video card had a DVI hook-up but it's a daul monitor instead). Is there a major difference in the way it's hooked up? If so I will get a different video card and keep the new monitor. If not I will go back to my old monitor and take the new one back. I really like the wide screen on the new one, especially when I'm using a 3D grahpics program."
Answer from DeadeyeFlint
"Whether 700:1 is good enough for your monitor depends on your monitor's size. Assuming it's 19 or 20", it should be good enough for all practical purposes. No, this is not new to LCDs. Contrast ratio is the differences between bright and dark on an image.
Are you seeing your LCD flashing like a CRT on low refresh rate? If so, I'd RMA the LCD. It shouldn't do that even with a VGA (Sub-D, analog, whatever) connection. My old LCD uses VGA connection and it doesn't do that. It has to do with the way LCD pixels are designed. They are designed such that they don't darken if they are not refreshed periodically, as long as they are turned on. CRT pixels, on the other hand, do (as such, if the refresh rate is not high enough, you'll see it flashing and eventually giving you big headaches). If your LCD is flashing, there is definitely something wrong with the unit."...
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NSA Bill Performs a Patriot Act
A bill radically redefining and expanding the government's ability to eavesdrop and search the houses of American citizens without court approval passed a key Senate committee Wednesday, and may be voted on by the full Senate as early as next week.
By a 10-8 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved S.2453, the "National Security Surveillance Act," (.pdf) which was co-written by the committee's chairman Senator Arlen Specter (R-Penn) in concert with the White House.
The committee also passed two other surveillance measures, including one from Senator Dianne Feinstein, one of the few senators to be briefed on the NSA program. Feinstein's bill, which Specter co-sponsored before submitting another bill, rebuffs the administration's legal arguments and all but declares the warrantless wiretapping illegal.
In contrast, Specter's bill concedes the government's right to wiretap Americans without warrants, and allows the U.S. Attorney General to authorize, on his own, dragnet surveillance of Americans so long as the stated purpose of the surveillance is to surveill suspected terrorists or spies.
Lisa Graves, senior legislative counsel for the ACLU, called the bill "stunning."
"The administration has taken their illegal conduct in wiretapping Americans without court orders, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Constitution, and used it as springboard to not only get FISA changed to allow the Terrorist Surveillance Program, but to actually, going forward, not give protections to American's privacy rights," Graves said.
Jim Dempsey, the policy director for the more moderate Center for Democracy and Technology, described the bill's passage out of committee as "light years or miles beyond the Patriot Act."
"What started out as Senator Specter wanting to rein in the president's program has turned on its head and is now not just a legislative ratification of the program, but an expansion of warrantless wiretapping of Americans," Dempsey said. "It would allow the NSA to turn its vacuum cleaners on even domestic phone calls and e-mails of citizens.
"They do all of this in Alice-in-Wonderland fashion by defining all kinds of categories of surveillance to be not surveillance," said Dempsy.
Specter, who called NSA's warrantless surveillance a "festering sore on our body politic", champions his bill, since it allows, but does nor require, the Administration to submit the whole surveillance program to review by a secretive court. Specter says President Bush promised to submit the NSA program to the court, if the bill passes.
The bill also strikes from U.S. law a requirement that that all surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists be done in accordance with FISA. But an aide for Specter disputes that this radically changes FISA or the balance of powers: Specter considers this to be an update to FISA, that moves the law towards where technology is now, according to the aide who spoke on background.
President Bush has acknowledged the NSA program monitors Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without court authorization, but says the program only targets communications where one side or the other have suspected terrorist connections.
Feinstein says her briefings lead her to believe the current system needs only minor changes, such as increasing the number of judges that issue warrants.
"I have been briefed on the terrorist surveillance program, and I have come to believe that this surveillance can be done, without sacrifice to our national security, through court-issued individualized warrants for content collection on U.S. persons under the FISA process," Feinstein said Wednesday in a press release.
That program has recently been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in Detroit, and is being challenged by more than 20 lawsuits across the country.
The bill:
- Redefines surveillance so that only programs that catch the substance of a communication need oversight. Any government surveillance that captures, analyzes and stores patterns of communications such phone records, or e-mail and website addresses, is no longer considered surveillance.
- Expands the section of law that allows the Attorney General to authorize spying on foreign embassies, so long as there's no "substantial likelihood" that an American's communication would be captured.
- Repeals the provision of federal law that allows the government unfettered wiretapping and physical searches without warrants or notification for 15 days after a declaration of war. The lack of any Congressional restraint on the president's wartime powers arguably puts the President at the height, rather than the ebb, of his powers in any time of war, even an undeclared one.
- Repeals the provision of federal law that limits the government's wartime powers to conduct warrantless wiretapping and physical searches to a period of 15 days after a declaration of war.
- Repeals the provision of federal law that puts a time limit on the government's wartime powers to conduct warrantless wiretapping and physical searches against Americans. Under current law, the president has that power for only 15 days following a declaration of war.
- Allows the Attorney General, or anyone he or she designates, to authorize widespread domestic spying, such as monitoring all instant messaging systems in the country, so long as the government promises to delete anything not terrorism-related.
- Moves all court challenges to the NSA surveillance program to a secretive court in Washington D.C. comprised of judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Only government lawyers would be allowed in the courtroom.
- Allows the government to get warrants for surveillance programs as a whole, instead of having to describe to a judge the particular persons to be surveilled and the methods to be used.
A markup of the corresponding House bill, sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico) was scheduled for today, but was cancelled.
Specter has moved to have his bill voted next week on via a voice vote, called a unanimous consent motion, according to the ACLU's Graves. Such a procedure would leave no record of who voted for or against the bill.
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Crime, Punishment Made Easy
Reuters 14:00 PM Sep, 13, 2006
BEIJING - - A court in China has used a software program to help decide prison sentences in more than 1,500 criminal cases, a Hong Kong newspaper said on Wednesday.
The software, tested for two years in a court in Zibo, a city in the eastern coastal province of Shandong, covered about 100 different crimes, including robbery, rape, murder and state security offences, the South China Morning Post said, citing the software's developer, Qin Ye.
"The software is aimed at ensuring standardized decisions on prison terms. Our programs set standard terms for any subtle distinctions in different cases of the same crime," Qin was quoted as saying.
A Beijing-based software company had worked with the Zichuan District Court in Zibo since 2003 to develop the program and input mainland criminal law, the paper said.
Judges enter details of a case and the system produces a sentence, the paper said.
"The software can avoid abuse of discretionary power of judges as a result of corruption or insufficient training," the paper quoted Zichuan District Court chief judge, Wang Hongmei, as saying.
But some Chinese newspapers criticized the move as a farce that highlighted the "laziness of the court" and that would not curb judicial corruption as touted.
The software would be adopted by more courts in Shandong province, the paper said.
But it did not say how big a role it played in sentencing, as Chinese court rulings are often decided by "trial committees" made up of judges and Communist Party officials.
Despite campaigns to reform China's courts, judicial abuses, official influence and arbitrary sentencing remain a widespread concern, particularly in lower courts where many judges have not even been to law school.
On Tuesday, the Supreme People's Court said that media spokesmen would be appointed by local courts in China to release information on open trials and court activities to ensure the public's "right to know."
But details of cases involving state or commercial secrets, privacy and juvenile delinquency are banned from being disclosed, the Beijing News said.
Making the case for movies
So, who wants to buy a movie from iTunes anyway?
That is a question I thought about quite a bit over the last little while. I buy a lot of music from iTunes, several television shows and most recently a few music videos. Then I asked myself if I would spend $10 to $15 to purchase a feature film.
My answer: Hell yeah!
That answer actually took more consideration than I thought it would, but after talking to my wife and looking at our lifestyle, it didn’t take long to figure out it would work for us.
As the father of a 13-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son, get-togethers at our house are frequent. Often times the kids want to watch a movie and they have seen DVDs we have on the shelf, so that means a trip to the video store.
More often than not, this happens just after I have comfortably sat down in my chair with a refreshing bottle of Heineken, ready to enjoy my evening. Now, I have nothing against the video store—I do, however, hate going to the video store with three or four teenage girls in tow. If you haven’t done it before, don’t be a hero and think it’s a piece of cake—it’s not.
So, here’s the question. Would I pay $10to $15 to stay home, scroll through iTunes, pick a movie, download it and then send the kids upstairs to watch it on Apple’s iTV? You betcha!
I talked to some people that said they won’t buy movies online because they want the extras that come with the DVD. Good point—so I pondered on this for a while and thought when is the last time I watched the extras on a DVD? Besides music concerts, I can’t remember if I ever have watched the extras.
My kids aren’t the only reason I would buy a movie from iTunes. Let’s not forget my wonderful wife. I know there are times we would watch a movie if it was handy, but at the end of a long day, as the two of us are sitting on the couch totally wiped out, neither one of us wants to get up and drive to the video store.
Again, with the quick access of the iTunes Store, I’m sure there would have been a few movies in my Library from this summer alone.
I also travel a fair bit and usually take some television shows with me to watch at night when I get back to my hotel. Last night I scrolled through the movies on iTunes and thought how nice it was to have the option to choose a movie.
Last year, I wrote about my reasons for buying so much music from iTunes. Mostly it comes down to convenience for me—it’s as simple as that. Purchasing movies is no different, for all the reasons I listed above.
I want to be able to get what I want, when I want, without needlessly leaving my bottle of Heineken to get warm.
for more information
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Petite green cars tempt tourists
The narrow, cobbled streets of Cordoba in southern Spain are no place for a car, but a Spanish entrepreneur wants to change that.
 The cars have a top speed of about 20mph |
Alfredo Romeo opens the door of a newly built garage just off one of Cordoba's main streets. He can hardly wait to show off the cars inside.
He points to a sleek, curvy little number. "It's a wonderful car, a marvellous car," says Mr Romeo with used-car salesman relish.
"It's noiseless. It's very safe. It's reliable. This model is the two-seater. I love the cars."
But Mr Romeo is not selling cars, he is renting them. And he is not talking about Porsches or Lamborghinis. Instead, he is renting Gems, or Global Electric Motorcars.
Half a dozen of the vehicles are scattered throughout the garage, plugged into the mains. They are charging up for a day of work on Cordoba's busy streets. One charge is usually good for about 50 miles (80km).
Gems are made in the US by a division of Daimler-Chrysler. They have a flowing, curvilinear design reminiscent of an Apple eMac computer, or a Volkswagen Beetle.
FOR MORe : bbc news
iPod nano
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Take everything you love about iPod and shrink it. Now shrink it again. With 2GB (500 songs) and 4GB (1,000 songs) models starting at $199, the pencil-thin iPod nano packs the entire iPod experience into an impossibly small design. So small, it will take your music places you never dreamed of.  Believe Your Ears Call it astonishing. Unbelievable. Impossible, even. Then pick it up and hold it in your hand. Take in the brilliant color display. Run your thumb around the Click Wheel. Put on the earbuds and turn up your music. That’s when everything becomes clear: It’s an iPod. It holds up to three days’ worth of music. It plays for up to 14 hours between battery charges.(1) It displays the color album art for the song you’re listening to right now. It carries your photos, podcasts and audiobooks. It syncs seamlessly with iTunes. It connects to a host of iPod accessories. Simply put, iPod nano is 100-percent iPod. And then some. Touch and Go  iPod nano’s Click Wheel puts music under your thumb. Click to fast-forward, rewind, play, pause or access menus. Use the touch-sensitive surface to control volume or browse music. You can do it all without looking. But with an iPod this beautiful, who’d want to?  Song Stylings Add accessories to your iPod nano via the Dock connector and headphone jack and your music will always keep up with you — at home, on the go, even in your car. Of course, in either signature white or sleek black, iPod nano itself makes the ultimate accessory.  Up to 4GB(2) of skip-free storage on a featherweight iPod means you can wear almost three days’ worth of music around your neck. Or jog with 1,000 songs on your arm. Now that you can take your music everywhere, there’s no limit to where it will take you. FOR MORE: apple.com
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PayPal Blocks Hurricane Relief Funds
By
Nate Mook, BetaNews
September 4, 2005, 8:40 PM
It's no secret that the widespread destruction of Hurricane Katrina was exacerbated by delayed relief efforts, but the latest victims of bureaucracy are those individuals simply trying to help out. Humor site Something Awful raised almost $28,000 in less than 9 hours - right up until PayPal froze the funds.
Something Awful's dedicated community may call themselves "goons," but they have historically been quick to respond when needed. The site previously raised $22,000 to fund armor plating for soldiers in Iraq. And the disaster unfolding in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf coast was no exception.
With its main Web servers located in downtown New Orleans and offline due to flooding, Something Awful founder Rich Kyanka asked visitors to donate to the Red Cross from a temporary page explaining the situation.
"Some people are emailing me, asking if they can donate to SA to help with our server move and downtime and temporary hosting and stuff. Don't worry about us, we'll be fine," Kyanka wrote. "If you really want to make a difference, donate to the SA Red Cross Relief Fund link above. They need it more than we do."
Unable to take credit card payments directly due to his site being down, Kyanka set up a PayPal account specifically to handle the effort. Donations poured in at a rate of almost $3,900 per hour - an astounding number from any perspective.
That is, until PayPal shut down Something Awful's donation account late Saturday evening. Because PayPal's customer support was closed for the night, Kyanka was unable to discover why $27,695.41 in Red Cross relief funds were locked. PayPal's automated system explained that it had received "more than one report of suspicious behavior from your buyers."
In the interim, Something Awful directed visitors to donate directly to the Red Cross. Kyanka said he originally setup Something Awful's own fund so he could send free merchandise such as hats and t-shirts to those who donated.
Explaining the situation on Something Awful's temporary Web site, Kyanka exploded: "It's not me you're hurting; it's the thousands of goddamn people with no homes, no money, and no hope fleeing a burning, flooded wasteland they used to call "home." I wasn't going to take a single cent of the donations, unlike PayPal, who decides that when people send money to help victims survive a national disaster, their company should still make over 2.35% of everything sent in."
Kyanka reached a PayPal customer support agent Sunday morning and was asked to fax in a driver's license, bank records, credit card records, and a written request to unlock the account. He was told it generally takes 3 to 5 business days to process the documents.
Another PayPal representative called Kyanka Sunday afternoon, offering to help resolve the problem. However, she also delivered some bad news: PayPal was unable to directly donate to the Red Cross. Due to prior agreements, the United Way is PayPal's relief organization of choice.
After initially agreeing to the charity swap, members of the Something Awful community questioned the United Way's record. And with no word of when the donations would be freed, Kyanka contacted PayPal and "asked them to refund everybody's money."
"All I tried to do was raise money and personally reward people for donating in a time of need, and it turned into a smoldering, twisted, burning car wreck along the highway. I'm beyond apologetic this did not work out the way I planned, but the pure hassle PayPal has given me trying to raise money just isn't worth it, especially when it could take over a week for the money to be unfrozen," Kyanka wrote in a final update.
"Please donate using the Red Cross link up top. I can't send you guys any free stuff, but I promise I'll sit here in my basement with the lights off, drinking a beer by myself and thinking of you."
source : betanews
Microsoft-Google battle heats up
Microsoft's chief executive vowed to "kill Google" in an expletive-laden tirade against the firm, according to US court documents filed by Google. The claim was made in a sworn statement by Mark Lucovsky, a former Microsoft employee who quit for Google in 2004.
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer has denied the claims, saying they are a "gross exaggeration of what actually took place".
The statement is the latest salvo in a bitter legal battle between the firms.
In his sworn statement, Mr Lucovsky - a key Windows architect - alleged that Mr Ballmer hurled a chair across the room when he informed him he was moving to Google, before launching into an abusive tirade against Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt.
However, Mr Ballmer has dismissed the claims.
"Mark's decision to leave was disappointing and I urged him strongly to change his mind. But his characterisation of that meeting is not accurate," he said in a statement.
For more source: bbcnews
16x DVD-RAM specification nearing approval
While DVD+R(W)/-R(W) formats have raced ahead in the speed of which they can be written, DVD-RAM has lagged behind at the 5x limit. This nearing specification by the Recordable DVD council gives the DVD-RAM format a boost and allows it to play catch-up with its rival formats.
While the new 16x media will be compatible with new DVD-RAM drives people with older 1-5x compatible drives will not be able to read or write these new discs. Of course the new 16x DVD-RAM compatible writers will be able to read and write older 1-5x DVD-RAM media. Along with this the DVD-RAM format writing strategy will be changed from Constant Linear Velocity to Constant Rotational Speeds (CAV) due to the increasing rotational speeds. While the new format has not been approved yet it is hoped to be approved soon.
Once the new DVD-RAM format has been approved then companies such as Hitachi , Panasonic and others can start shipping both optical drives and media. This is expected to happen before the end of 2005, but availability may mean it will be an early Q1 2006 release date for the media and hardware.
While the DVD-RAM format is waiting for approval the DVD+RW alliance will be getting ready to finalise and launch the 16x DVD+RW format which is expected sometime soon, though there is no roadmap for its release yet.
source : cdfreaks
Computer engineer fired for eating leftover pizza
A COMPUTER engineer who was sacked for eating pizza left over from a company meeting, has won a competition for the most outrageous firing.
The competition, run by Simply Hired, said that Jim Garrison was chosen as the most bizzare sacking from more than 1,000 entries.
He will win a free Caribbean cruise with passengers famously fired by Donald Trump on his popular television show, "The Apprentice".
Garrison, ate two of the six pieces of pepperoni pizza left over from a company meeting, although he didn’t work in the department that held the meeting.
He thought that since the company had bought it and it looked like it was going to be wasted if it wasn't eaten he would have it.
However, several of the employees from the right department had apparently hatched out plan to take the pizza home with them and moaned to management like big girl's blouses.
It took the company a month to fire Garrison, but the pizza was given as the reason. Simply Hired have refused to release the name of the employer other than to say it was a large mortgage company.
Garrison now works at a satellite TV company and does not touch leftovers. I should have entered, I was once fired from my computer operator job by the Queen because she was not amused by my sense of humour. [And who can blame Her Majesty. You're fired, Ed.]
More
here.
source:
theinquirer
Playstation 3 Blu Ray drive will cost Sony $100+
BLU RAY drives for the Playstation 3 will cost Sony a small fortune. It turns out that at the release of the console in the first half of 2006, Sony will have to pay more than $100 per drive it builds in Playstation 3. This is a lot of money, because even in retail you can buy a DVD +RW drive for less than $50 now. This means that Microsoft can get it much cheaper than $50, maybe even half that price, due to the enormous quantity it needs to buy for millions of XboX 360 consoles.
Blu Ray marchitecture looks great as its backward compatible with DVDs and CDs, and you can store 25GB per layer on the Blu Ray media. This will provide you with an amazing 50GB for two layer drives at some point in the future.
Nevertheless, it's a very expensive step that Sony is willing to take as it will increase cost of Playstation 3 unit dramatically. Sony said Playstation 3 is going the be expensive and this is one of the reasons why.
Microsoft is playing a safe game here, it will launch with DVD+RW but in some point in the future might release a new Xbox 360 version with HD-DVD or a Blu Ray drive. We don’t expect that this will happen anytime soon, but we are sure it will happen at some point in the next few years.
At least Sony will push the mass availability of Blu Ray drives and medias as it plans to ship hundredes of thousands of consoles in 2006
source:
theinquirer
DirectX 10 Coming :D
MICROSOFT finally saw sense and decided to drop Windows Graphic Foundation (WGF) and replace it with the more easier and logical DirectX 10 name for its nexgen API.
It gave some details to the developers officially about its upcoming API and we know that it plans to release this API together with Longhorn. Or Visa, as we must learn to call it.
The DirectX 10 API will have completely new and faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and is supposed to run much faster. The company decided to cut the backward compatibility with DirectX 9, 8, 7 and lower in this API but there will be a way to use games programmed for those APIs. Microsoft will enable support for DX 9 or lower games through a software layer, meaning it might run slower.
The company did this to make the next API faster, it said, and at the same time will take some burden of the CPU runtime. At the same time we learned that DirectX 10 will have support for Shaders beyond Shaders, model 4.0.
It's coming with Longhorn but we learned that Shader Model 4.0 might come even before Vista. µ
source: theinquirer
Sharp shows new dual-view LCD
John Blau, IDG News Service
05/09/2005 07:54:33
Sharp has begun mass production of a new LCD (liquid crystal display) that can simultaneously display different information depending on which direction the screen is being viewed from, the company said Thursday during a news conference at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin. The Japanese manufacturer also named its first customer: General Motors.
Adam Opel, the German arm of the U.S. car manufacturer, plans to test the dual-view display in its Vectra Caravan model, according to Michael Kurpies, director of marketing at Sharp's German subsidiary.
The plan at Opel is to use the left side of the screen as a navigation system for the driver and the right side as an in-car entertainment center to show DVD movies.
The new LCD, which is on display at Sharp's booth, uses a number of proprietary technologies. One of them is a means to superimpose a so-called "parallax barrier" on an ordinary TFT (thin-film transistor) LCD. This and the other technologies enable the dual-view system to send light from the backlight into right and left directions, making it possible to show different visual content on the same screen depending on the angle.
Sharp sees the new dual-view LCD finding applications in other areas, such as PCs.
At the IFA show, the Japanese manufacturer also unveiled a 4GB hard disc MP3 player. The product, with the less-than enlightening name HR-MB35, measures 57 millimeters by 106 mm by 17 mm, supports MPC, WMA and WAV files and promises 18 hours of playback from one charge.
The IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung) will run in Berlin through Sept. 7.
Source: pcworld
