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Cloud

Submission + - IBM dumps Siebel in favour of open-source SugarCRM (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by sweetpea86
sweetpea86 writes: IBM is planning to replace its Siebel based customer relationship management products with software owned by open-source software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor SugarCRM. This is the second major contract loss for Siebel, as HP recently revealed that it too would be replacing the platform with products provided by SaaS vendor Salesforce.com. However, the changes are perhaps unsurprising given that Siebel was bought by Oracle in 2005 for £3.5 billion.
Iphone

Submission + - Apple to crush carriers, become direct service provider (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Apple’s next huge move isn’t into the television or banking industries according to one expert. Instead, Apple will take on carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless by becoming a direct mobile service provider. Veteran wireless industry strategist Whitey Bluestein, who has managed strategic deals for the likes of AT&T, Intel, T-Mobile, Verizon, Microsoft, Nokia and Best Buy, says Apple will soon begin to offer wireless service directly to iPhone and iPad users. Apple has the distribution channels, digital content portfolio and customer base to make the move, Bluestein says, and it also has more than 250 million credit cards on file for iTunes users who could be billed directly for wireless service...

Submission + - International Travel and Cell Phones 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm looking at starting to travel outside of the US (and, for that matter, North America) soon, and I'm going to want a cell phone to use in my travels. Using Sprint here in the US (no SIM cards), it is safe to assume I cannot use my normal phone abroad. Not to mention, in many cases, it would just be cheaper for me to get a local phone plan for two weeks to a month. Does anyone have any good rules of thumb for picking out a phone that will work in as wide of an area as possible, or good advice sites? Is there any carrier in the US or Canada where you can say "If the phone works with this carrier, and is unlocked, you can use it in these countries...?"
Businesses

Submission + - Business requires propaganda on personal social media accounts.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last fall, the current president of WaLa (nee ArcMail) had a "brilliant" idea for lifting his company out of obscurity. He required his employees to post positive comments about the company on their personal social media accounts, esp. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. To monitor the execution of this plan and to distribute the comments over time, each employee was given specific dates on which they were required to post some positive reference. The activity is clearly visible in employee Twitter streams in November / December but seems to have trailed off in 2012, no doubt due to stong employee apathy and an inability to spark any real social media buzz. Is this a common practice? Would you work for a company that has this requirement?
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Amusing Unix admin tools (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "Some say they’re “hilarious,” actually, as this collection of Unix admin tools written by Brendan Gregg is drawing generally rave reviews in social-media circles. The one getting the most laughs is called “maybe.” Gregg explains: “This was back in the days when sysadmins would lock user accounts for being ‘naughty,’ and then unlock them sometime later when they thought the user had learned their lesson. I'm not sure there is an analogue today, since we are so dependent on computing. It'd be like blocking an employee from the Internet for a few days for running bittorrent; I guess they'd learn their lesson, but they'd probably be unable to do their job, too.” (There’s also an unrelated bonus video – viewed almost 800,000 times on YouTube — of Gregg yelling at disk drives.”)"
Cloud

Submission + - How Green Is The Cloud? Depends On What Powers It (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "The word "cloud," with its connotations of ethereal wispiness, was perfectly chosen by marketers to obfuscate a key reality of cloud computing: it requires huge data centers that use up massive amounts of electricity. There's something of a competition on to see who can build the most energy efficient data centers, in order to cut costs and build up green PR. But the question of how green a data center is should be answered by not just how much electricity it uses, but also where that electricity comes from. That can be hard to track down, but Greenpeace has done the legwork in a new report."
Intel

Submission + - Why Intel leads the world in semiconductor manufacturing (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "When Intel launched Ivy Bridge last week, it didn’t just release a new CPU — it set a new record. By launching 22nm parts at a time when its competitors (TSMC and GlobalFoundries) are still ramping their own 32/28nm designs, Intel gave notice that it’s now running a full process node ahead of the rest of the semiconductor industry. That’s an unprecedented gap and a fairly recent development; the company only began pulling away from the rest of the industry in 2006, when it launched 65nm. But how has Intel managed to pull so far ahead? Joel Hruska of ExtremeTech talks to Mark Bohr, Senior Intel Fellow and the Director of Process Architecture and Integration to find out some of Chipzilla's tips and tricks."
Piracy

Submission + - Stop Being Poor: U.S. Piracy Watch List Hits A New Low With 2012 Report (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Trade Representative released its annual Special 301 Report yesterday, unsurprisingly including Canada on the Priority Watch list. While inclusion on the list is designed to generate embarrassment on target countries, Michael Geist explains why this year's report should elicit outrage. Not only is the report lacking in objective analysis, it targets some of the world's poorest countries with no evidence of legal inadequacies and picks fights with any country that dare adopt a contrary view on intellectual property issues.
Power

Submission + - The Chevy Volt of airplanes, the Volta Volare GT4, is ready to fly (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Seriously: electric airplanes — they’re about to take off. Technically, though, the four-passenger carbon fiber aircraft isn’t really an electric plane but more of a plug-in hybrid plane, much like the Chevrolet Volt. Whatever it is, the Volta Volare aeronautics company of Portland, Oregon says the plane can travel 300 miles on battery power, then a 1.5-liter gasoline engine engages and extends the plane’s range to 1,000 miles. The company sees the plane being attractive for its low cost of operation and its environmental friendliness. Aviation gasoline (avgas) is typically leaded fuel, which has been gone from motor vehicle fuel since the 1980s. On a 200-mile trip in a comparable four-passenger gas-engine private plane, you’d burn $80 worth of avgas, while the electricity to carry the GT4 200 miles would cost only $20 — nice savings, but perhaps a little inconsequential when the plane itself is expected to cost around $500,000. Testing begins this spring on the Volta Volare GT4."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Overhauling an amusement parks multi zone audio player

Submitted by mcmadman
mcmadman writes: The multi zone audio player I'm working with uses an almost decade old card/software combo that is prone to crashes and other anomalies. I would like to know if there are open source (read free), or other alternatives that would allow multiple simultaneous playlists played through the myriad of audio interfaces out there. The line outs are then plugged into a cobranet matrix which handles the distribution of the music/sound to their respective areas. I'm looking at 8 channels minimum, timed playlist start/stops and triggered announcements. So far the only software and hardware I've found are proprietary broadcasting solutions which tend to be a bit heavy on the wallet or meant for home use.
Science

Submission + - Researchers Model Pluto's Atmosphere, Find 225 mph Winds (txchnologist.com)

Submitted by
MatthewVD
MatthewVD writes: "Pluto may have been downgraded to a dwarf planet, but researchers modeling its wisp of an atmosphere continue to find that it is asurprisingly complex world, particularly when it comes to weather patterns. Howling winds that sweep clockwise around the planet at up to 225 mph — though the atmosphere is so thin, it would only feel like 1 mph hour on Earth. The algorithms used to model the atmosphere will be helpful in studying far more complex atmospheres, like Earth's."
Medicine

Submission + - Scientific Jigsaw Puzzle: Fitting the pieces of the low-level radiation debate (sagepub.com)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Skip past the dry abstract to Jan Beyea's main article for a thorough exploration of what's wrong with current 'safe' levels of low-level radiation exposure. The Bulletin is just releasing its "Radiation Issue", which is available for free for 2 weeks. Explores how the NRC may be changing recommended safe dosages, and how the studies for prolonged exposure have, until recently, been based on one-time exposures (Hiroshima, etc New epidemiological studies on prolonged exposure (medical exposures, worker exposures, etc) are more accurate and tell a different tale. This is a long article, but reads well.
Microsoft

Submission + - Wozniak Praises 'Beautiful' Windows Phone (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has praised the user interface of Microosft's Windows Phone, saying that aspects of its user interface are more "beautiful" than comparable sides to the iPhone. The comments, in a New Domain, follow on from a comment by Forrester boss Goerge Colony who blogged that Apple would decline in the post-Jobs era. Both pieces have kicked off the kind of online argument you would expect"

Submission + - An Open Letter To Developers of Ad Blocking Software (itproportal.com) 1

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: John Battelle, CEO Federated Media Publishing sends out an open letter to Developers of Ad Blocking Applications: Dear Developers of Ad Blocking applications, I'll cut straight to the chase. What have we done to you to deserve your wrath? The ad blockers that you design prevent our ads from being displayed. Less advertising means less revenue for producing the quality content that you and everybody else craves and needs. High quality online content allows readers all over the world to educate and better themselves, without incurring any relative costs. Think about it: without online advertising where would the Internet be? Every site that depends on display advertising and page views would find it very hard to make ends meet. Producing good content is generally a very expensive procedure. As it stands, the overwhelming majority of the traditional (by traditional, I mean those who make a living out of writing) online content community works using the following equation.

Monthly Revenue = average advert slots per page x total number of page views x average cost per advert impression

Decreasing any of the variables on the right hand side will decrease revenue on the left hand side. And preventing adverts from displaying can have a devastating effect on the online media ecosystem, directly affecting web designers, journalists, editors, copywriters, developers, sales people, operations teams etc.

"When advertising works, millions keep their jobs" — Reader's Digest Ad
Transportation

Submission + - Vibrating steering wheel gives directions and keeps drivers' eyes on the road (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Many drivers would be lost – quite literally – without their in-car navigation systems. When installed in vehicles that some people would say are already overcrowded with instrumentation, however, could such systems be just one visual distraction too many? Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and AT&T Labs are addressing that concern, by experimenting with a system that conveys navigational cues through vibrations in the steering wheel. The experimental haptic-feedback-providing steering wheel designed for the project is by no means the first one ever made. Scientists at the University of Utah, for instance, have been testing a wheel that tugs on the skin of the driver’s fingers, indicating which way they should turn. Additionally, various automakers are now offering cars with steering wheels that vibrate to warn drivers of approaching road hazards, or to let them know that they’re drifting out of their lane.
Science

Submission + - Chinese researchers map family names (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by G3ckoG33k
G3ckoG33k writes: Chinese researchers have mapped the occurrence of family names down to a county level and will proceed matching them with genetic data. From the article: "Last names are handy for more than constructing family trees—they can also trace population connections and movements across and between countries. Researchers in China recently mapped the country's so-called isonymy structure, which shows how likely people are to share their last name with those around them. The resulting patchwork matches patterns of ethnic distribution and tracks some of China's historic migrations, such as the diversity of people who settled in the Yangtze River basin over many centuries. ". Is this just intriguing science or is it a new step towards a higher level of racism. Imagine... Oh wait, we already have Facebook (www.facebook.com) and the White Pages (http://www.whitepages.com/).
Science

Submission + - Open Research Computation closes before opening (openresearchcomputation.com)

Submitted by wagdav
wagdav writes: Open Research Computation, a peer reviewed journal on software designed for use by researches closes on 7th May 2012, however it just started to accept manuscripts somewhere last year. The journal was to be open access and tried to be different than others with very demanding pre-submission requirements such as: code availability, high quality documentation and testing, the availability of test input and output data, and reproducibility. Now it is planned to be launched as an ongoing series of Source Code for Biology and Medicine.

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