Yunliang Yu, IT Senior Manager
 Open source is an investment in the future.
FDS Motto: we serve and empower the faculty.
- Contact Info:
- Office Hours:
- 12:01AM - 12:02AM every other day excluding today.
Not by appt:)
- Specialties:
-
Mathematics
- Famous Sayings:
- Your dream will come true,
if you eat your soup.
--- Angela Yu - Don't be a turkey; read a book.
--- Christina Yu
- To learn and practice what is learned from time to time is pleasure, is it not? To have friends from afar is happiness, is it not? To be unperturbed when not appreciated by others is a gentleman, is it not?
--- Kungfu Zi - Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
--- Chinese Proverb 
mathprograms.org, academicjobsonline.org,
mathjobs.org,
ShortURLs.
/. headline news :-)
- IBM Smartphone Software Translates 11 Languages
2009-11-23T23:53:00+00:00
coondoggie writes to mention that IBM researchers have an internal smartphone software project that is capable of translating text between English and 11 other languages (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, Italian, Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Arabic). There are no concrete plans to release this as a public product, but IBM certainly isn't shutting out that possibility. "Hosted as an internal IBM service since August 2008, n.Fluent offers a secure real-time translation tool that translates text in web pages, electronic documents, Same time instant message chats, and provides a BlackBerry mobile translation application. According to IBM the software, n.Fluent, was developed from an internal IBM crowd-sourcing project where Big Blue's nearly 400,000 employees in more than 170 countries submit, update and continuously refine word translations. Every time it's used, n.Fluent 'learns' and improves its translation engine. To date, the tool has been used by IBMers to translate more than 40 million words, IBM stated."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Program To Detect Smuggled Nuclear Bombs Stalls
2009-11-23T23:11:00+00:00
Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a program to detect plutonium or uranium in shipping containers has stalled because the United States has run out of helium 3, a crucial raw material needed to build the 1,300 to 1,400 machines to be deployed in ports around the world to thwart terrorists who might try to deliver a nuclear bomb to a big city by stashing it in one of the millions of containers that enter the United States every year. Helium 3 is an unusual form of the element that is formed when tritium, an ingredient of hydrogen bombs, decays — but the government mostly stopped making tritium in 1989 after accumulating a substantial stockpile of Helium 3 as a byproduct of maintaining nuclear weapons. 'I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,' says Representative Brad Miller, chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the problem. Helium 3 is not hazardous or even chemically reactive, and it is not the only material that can be used for neutron detection. The Homeland Security Department has older equipment that can look for radioactivity, but it does not differentiate well between bomb fuel and innocuous materials that naturally emit radiation like cat litter, ceramic tiles and bananas — and sounds false alarms more often. In a letter to President Obama, Miller called the shortage 'a national crisis' and said the price had jumped to $2,000 a liter from $100 in the last few years. With continuing concern that Al Qaida or other terrorists will try to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States, Congress has mandated that, by 2012, all containers bound for the US be inspected overseas."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Recession Pushes More Workers to Steal Data
2009-11-23T22:26:00+00:00
An anonymous reader writes to share the findings of a recent transatlantic survey which suggests that the recession is pushing workers to be a little bit more accommodating when it comes to sharing, viewing, or stealing sensitive information from the company they work(ed) for. "Pilfering data has become endemic in our culture as 85% of people admit they know it's illegal to download corporate information from their employer but almost half couldn't stop themselves taking it with them with the majority admitting it could be useful in the future! [...] The survey entitled 'the global recession and its effect on work ethics,' carried out for a second year by Cyber-Ark – found that almost half of the respondents 48% admit that if they were fired tomorrow they would take company information with them and 39% of people would download company/competitive information if they got wind that their job was at risk. Additionally a quarter of workers said that the recession has meant that they feel less loyal towards their employer."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- LHC Has First Collisions After Years of Waiting
2009-11-23T21:43:00+00:00
An anonymous reader writes "Only four days after the first attempt to send a particle beam around the LHC, we have arrived at the point when all four experiments got their first real collisions from the machine. This was met by celebrations and champagne, as people have been waiting years and years for this moment. It is a testament to the engineering of the machine that collisions were reached already, so few days after restarting. The LHC had already demonstrated ca 10h stable beams, and now also stable beams in both directions at the same time. In the coming weeks, we need only wait for increased intensity and the first attempts at acceleration."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Obama Kicks Off Massive Science Education Effort
2009-11-23T20:58:00+00:00
In a speech at the White House today, President Obama launched a new campaign, "Educate to Innovate," designed to get American students fired up about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The full text of the speech is also available on whitehouse.gov. "The new campaign builds on the President's Inaugural Address, which included a vow to put science 'in its rightful place.' One of those rightful places, of course, is the classroom. Yet too often our schools lack support for teachers or the other resources needed to convey the practical utility and remarkable beauty of science and engineering. As a result, students become overwhelmed in their classes and ultimately disengaged. They lose, and our nation loses too. The partnerships launched today aim to change that. They respond to a challenge made by the President in April, when he spoke at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences and asked the nation's philanthropists, professional and educational societies, corporations, and individuals to collaborate and innovate with the goal of reinvigorating America's STEM educational enterprise. The partnerships announced today — dramatic commitments in the hundreds of millions of dollars, generated through novel collaborations and creative outreach activities — are just the first wave of commitments anticipated in response to his call."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Opera 10.10 Released, Includes New "Unite" Tech
2009-11-23T20:16:00+00:00
Opera 10.10 has been released, and with it their new "Unite" technology, which allows users to share content directly between all of their own devices. Unite wraps both web browser and web server into a single package in an attempt to change the way users think about their browser. "'We promised Opera Unite would reinvent the Web,' said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. 'What we are really doing is reinventing how we as consumers interact with the Web. By giving our devices the ability to serve content, we become equal citizens on the Web. In an age where we have ceded control of our personal data to third-parties, Opera Unite gives us the freedom to choose how we will share the data that belongs to us.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Chrome OS Benchmarked Against Moblin, Ubuntu Netbook, More
2009-11-23T19:33:00+00:00
An anonymous reader writes "Using the latest build of Google's Chromium OS source code, Phoronix built it out to run on a Samsung netbook and ran sixteen benchmarks, putting it up against Moblin 2.1, Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, openSUSE 11.2, and Fedora 12. They ran some of their usual desktop benchmarks (encoding, video, etc..), but more interestingly they ran a number of battery, CPU usage, and memory consumption tests under different settings that show some of the advantages and disadvantages for each of the Linux distributions, and spotted a few bugs along the way."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Modern Tech Versus the Past
2009-11-23T18:48:00+00:00
CNETNate writes "Most of us assume modern life is the peak of human achievement, but is it really? CNET decided to take a look at the major technologies of the modern world and compare them to their closest equivalent of pre-digital mankind — Facebook vs. dinner parties, World of Warcraft vs. actual war craft, iPhones vs. hills on fire — and the results are surprising. And slightly dumb, so laugh."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Hacked Climate Emails Stoke Debate
2009-11-23T18:48:00+00:00
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a series of hacked emails and documents that were recently posted on Wikileaks are causing quite a stir in the scientific community. All told, more than 1,000 emails and 2,000 documents were stolen from the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia University in the U.K. "The emails include discussions of apparent efforts to make sure that reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that monitors climate science, include their own views and exclude others. In addition, emails show that climate scientists declined to make their data available to scientists whose views they disagreed with. [] Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We 'will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!' Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Writing For Video Game Genres
2009-11-23T18:05:00+00:00
Aeonite writes "The third book in a pseudo-trilogy, Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG, offers advice from 21 experts in the field of video game writing, pulled from the ranks of the IGDA's Game Writers Special Interest Group and wrangled together by editor Wendy Despain. It follows in the footsteps of Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing and Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, and in keeping with the trend, offers the most specific, targeted advice for how to write for an assortment of game genres." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Telcos Want Big Subsidies, Not Line-Sharing
2009-11-23T17:22:00+00:00
It seems that a recent survey of global broadband practices by Harvard's Berkman Center at the behest of the FCC has stirred the telecommunications hornet's nest. Both AT&T and Verizon are up in arms about some of the conclusions (except the ones that suggest offering large direct public subsidies). "Harvard's Berkman Center study of global broadband practices, produced at the FCC's request, is an 'embarrassingly slanted econometric analysis that violates professional statistical standards and is insufficiently reliable to provide meaningful guidance,' declares AT&T. The study does nothing but promote the lead author's 'own extreme views,' warns a response from Verizon Wireless. Most importantly, it 'should not be relied upon by the FCC in formulating a National Broadband Plan,' concludes the United States Telecom Association. Reviewing the slew of criticisms, Berkman's blog wryly notes that the report seems to have been 'a mini stimulus act for telecommunications lawyers and consultants.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Review: Eufloria
2009-11-23T16:38:00+00:00
eldavojohn writes "Eufloria is a strategy game made by independent game company Dyson. I bought it on the Steam service this weekend for $20 and was impressed that it is a visually and aurally pleasing game. It's a real-time strategy game, but isn't a rehashed Civilization or Age of Empires — it employs a different kind of mechanic to conquer. Like a lot of games that rely on novel game mechanics (Braid & Spore come to mind), part of the game's experience relies on you learning as you progress through the 25 or so levels. They will definitely push you to utilize different strategies and tactics, so don't read this review if you're already planning to play this game, as it'll most likely be filled with spoilers about developing a strategy. I give the game an average 6 out of 10 and would like to say that with titles like Braid and Eufloria out there, 'independent' no longer equates to 'sucks.'" Read on for the rest of his thoughts.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Apple vs. Microsoft Multi-Touch Mouse Comparison
2009-11-23T15:53:00+00:00
blee37 writes "This is a side-by-side comparison of the Apple and Microsoft multi-touch mice. It includes video demonstrations of using the mice in applications, first-person shooters and 3D manipulation. It also has new photos of the internals of all the mice."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Amazon Scores Gift-Delivery Patent
2009-11-23T15:08:00+00:00
theodp writes "In May, the USPTO rejected Amazon.com's patent claims (PDF) for its Method and System for Placing a Purchase Order Via a Communications Network (a 1-Click spin-off). At the time, a USPTO Examiner cited Bilski, explaining that elements of CEO Jeff Bezos' gift-delivery invention 'may be performed largely within the human mind,' coming to essentially the same conclusion a NY Post reporter arrived at in 2002. But Amazon's attorneys have worked their legal wordsmithing magic (PDF), convincing the USPTO that 'obtaining delivery information for a gift from one or more information sources other than the gift giver and recipient' is indeed novel and patentable. A Notice of Allowance for the patent was mailed to Amazon on November 17th, just in time for Holiday Season injunction-giving!"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- William Gibson's Neuromancer Staged With Porn Star
2009-11-23T14:27:00+00:00
destinyland writes "Sunday night saw a reading of the William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel featuring porn star Sasha Grey at a New York art museum, along with sculpture-props simulating virtual reality. Artist Brody Condon promised to combine 'Gibson's 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction,' but the editor of H+ magazine challenges that description. 'In a 1993 interview, Gibson himself told me: "I think my world looks dystopian if you're a middle class white guy doing reasonably well in 1993... There are so many places in the world today that are so much crappier than anything I'm writing about."' And earlier this month William Gibson shared his response to a blog post about the event. 'Gol' dang! It's news to me!'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Mathematics Department