By timothy from
Slashdot's shades-of-some-others department:
New submitter
trogdoro (3716731) writes with an excerpt from
Linux Cookbook author Carla Schroder's enthusiastic introduction to what looks like a tempting tool,
combining elements of GUI and text-mode interfaces:
Command-line lovers, allow me to introduce you to Xiki, the incredibly interactive, flexible, and revolutionary command shell. I do not use the word "revolutionary" lightly. The command shell has not advanced all that much since the ancient days of Unix. Xiki is a giant leap forward. If you're looking for the Next Big Thing in FOSS, Xiki is it. It's not the first tool meant to combine text and graphic interface, but from the
screencast demo, Xiki looks like it gets a lot of things right.
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By Soulskill from
Slashdot's will-now-elect-officials-through-online-petitions-instead department:
An anonymous reader sends news that
Norway will no longer experiment with online voting:
[T]he trials have ended because, said the government, voters' fears about their votes becoming public could undermine democratic processes. Political controversy and the fact that the trials did not boost turnout also led to the experiment ending. In a statement, Norway's Office of Modernisation said it was ending the experiments following discussions in the nation's parliament about efforts to update voting systems. The statement said although there was "broad political desire" to let people vote via the net, the poor results from the last two experiments had convinced the government to stop spending money on more trials. ... A report looking into the success of the 2013 trial said about 70,000 Norwegians took the chance to cast an e-vote. This represented about 38% of all the 250,000 people across 12 towns and cities who were eligible to vote online. However, it said, there was no evidence that the trial led to a rise in the overall number of people voting nor that it mobilised new groups, such as young people, to vote.Read Replies (0)
By Soulskill from
Slashdot's america's-real-national-pastime department:
An anonymous reader writes:
According to new research from the CDC, 9.8% of deaths in working-age adults (22-64 years old) in the U.S. from 2006 to 2010 were "attributable to excessive drinking." This makes excessive drinking the fourth leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. The study included deaths from medical conditions, such as liver disease and alcohol-induced strokes, as well as deaths from alcohol-related events, like car accidents, homicides, and fall injuries. However, it did not account for cases where excessive alcohol consumption was a factor in contracting conditions like AIDS, pneumonia, and tuberculosis, so the count may actually be higher. Many western states with low population spread out over a large area showed the highest alcohol-related death rates, while states from the east coast and the midwest tended to be on the lower end of the spectrum. The study also tracked years of life lost, which is higher for alcohol-related deaths than for most other types of death. Researcher Robert Brewer said, "One of the issues with alcohol that is particularly tragic is the extent to which it gets people in the prime of their lives."Read Replies (0)
Visualizing Algorithms
Posted by News Fetcher on June 27 '14 at 06:00 AM
By Soulskill from
Slashdot's grab-your-binoculars-and-go-code-watching department:
An anonymous reader writes
"Many people reading this site probably have a functional understanding of how algorithms work. But whether you know algorithms down to highly mathematical abstractions or simple as a fuzzy series of steps that transform input into output, it can be helpful to visualize what's going on under the hood. That's what Mike Bostock has done in a new article. He walks through algorithms for sampling, shuffling, and maze generation, using beautiful and fascinating visualizations to show how each algorithm works and how it differs from other options.
He says, "I find watching algorithms endlessly fascinating, even mesmerizing. Particularly so when randomness is involved. ... Being able to see what your code is doing can boost productivity. Visualization does not supplant the need for tests, but tests are useful primarily for detecting failure and not explaining it. Visualization can also discover unexpected behavior in your implementation, even when the output looks correct. ...Even if you just want to learn for yourself, visualization can be a great way to gain deep understanding. Teaching is one of the most effective ways of learning, and implementing a visualization is like teaching yourself."Read Replies (0)