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Autism Traits Prove Valuable for Software Testing 180

Back in 2009 we ran a story about a Chicago based non-profit company that trained high-functioning autistic people to be software testers. Two years later Aspiritech has grown to offer services in Belgium, Japan and Israel. Autistic debuggers are used by large clients like Oracle and Microsoft and have proven to be so good in fact that companies are now recruiting to meet demand. From the article: "Aspiritech's board of directors includes social service providers, therapists, a vocational expert and a software engineer. The nonprofit also received start-up advice and consultation from Keita Suzuki, who has co-founded a similar company, called Kaien, in Japan. Aspiritech has hired and trained seven recruits with Asperger's syndrome. These recruits have since worked on software-testing projects for smartphone and cloud-computing applications. Aspiritech now offers functional-, compatibility- and regression-testing, as well as test-case development, with experience in cloud-computing platforms including Salesforce."

China Defends Its IP Practices, Says 'We Paid Up' 214

hackingbear writes "Countering accusations that China's high-speed rail technologies are knockoffs, the head of China's Intellectual Property Administration in a conference said (paraphrasing): "We bought technologies from German, Japan, France, and Canada. We paid up. It is perfectly legal. We then innovate on top of them like most other inventions in the world. Why is that pirating?' (Link is to a Google translation; here is the original.) He cited China's ability, the world's first, to build high-speed rail in a high mountain area as an example of additional innovation."

Attachmate To Acquire Novell For $2.2B Cash 221


Comment Already in use for NEXUS, sort of. (Score 1) 221

The summary makes it sound like nobody is using iris scanning technology now, but Homeland Security has been using it for the NEXUS program (to cross between Canada/US without talking to anyone) for years. I've been looking into a machine's "eyes" for a couple years now, and it's been really reliable from my point of view. It looks like what is actually new is that this system can pick up irises from a few feet away, instead of 8-12 inches.

UVB-76 Explained 222


Viruses Tapped To Create Spray-On Batteries 70


Crack the Code In US Cyber Command's Logo 380

Dan writes "According to Wired: 'The US military's new Cyber Command is headquartered at Ft. Meade, Maryland, one of the military's most secretive and secure facilities. Its mission is largely opaque, even inside the armed forces. But the there's another mystery surrounding the emerging unit. It's embedded in the Cyber Command logo. On the logo's inner gold ring is a code: 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a.'"

California To Drop State Rock Over Asbestos Concerns 256


A Close Look At Apple's A4 Chip 245


Fuel Cell Marvel "Bloom Box" Gaining Momentum 562


IEEE Ethernet Specs Could Soothe Data Center Ills 51

alphadogg writes "Cisco, HP and others are waging an epic battle to gain more control of the data center, but at the same time they are joining forces to push through new Ethernet standards that could greatly ease management of those increasingly virtualized IT nerve centers. The IEEE 802.1Qbg and 802.1Qbh specifications are designed to address serious management issues raised by the explosion of virtual machines in data centers that traditionally have been the purview of physical servers and switches. In a nutshell, the emerging standards would offload significant amounts of policy, security and management processing from virtual switches on network interface cards (NIC) and blade servers and put it back onto physical Ethernet switches connecting storage and compute resources. 'There needed to be a way to communicate between the hypervisor and the network,' says Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Systems Group. 'When you start thinking about the complexities associated with running dozens of VMs on a physical server the sophistication of data center switching has to be there.'"

Microsoft Plans Flickr Competitor 156


Submission VM-based rootkits proved easily detectable->



The paper concludes by saying that


Link to Original Source

Logic doesn't apply to the real world. -- Marvin Minsky