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Businesses

Submission + - How Will Amazon, Barnes & Noble Survive The iPad Mini? (ibtimes.com) 3

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "For about a year, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble were almost completely alone in the 7-inch tablet market. It was nice while it lasted. The past few months have seen Google and Microsoft unveil their 7-inch tablet offerings — the Nexus 7 and Microsoft Surface, respectively — and it looks like Apple is about ready to get into the mini tablet game, too. If Apple releases its first "iPad Mini" next month, what can Amazon and Barnes & Noble do to keep the Cupertino colossus at bay, as well as the other new competitors in the 7-inch tablet game?"
Math

Submission + - Breakthrough in drawing complex Venn diagrams (wordpress.com)

Submitted by 00_NOP
00_NOP writes: Venn diagrams are all the rage in this election year, but drawing comprehensible diagrams for anything more than 3 sets has proved to be very difficult. Until the breakthough just announced by Khalegh Mamakani and Frank Ruskey of the University of Victoria in Canada, nobody had managed to draw a simple (no more than two lines crossing), symmetric Venn diagram for more than 7 sets (only primes will work). Now they have pushed that on to 11. And it's pretty too.
Google

Submission + - What Happens to Google Employees When They Die? 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Forbes Magazine reports that employee benefits of Google are among the best in the land—free haircuts, gourmet food, on-site doctors and high-tech “cleansing” toilets are among the most talked-about but the latest perk for Googlers extends into the afterlife. “This might sound ridiculous,” says Google's Chief People Officer Laszlo Bock, “But we’ve announced death benefits at Google.” Should a US Googler pass away while under the employ of the 14-year old search giant, their surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive a check for 50% of their salary every year for the next decade. Even more surprising, a Google spokesperson confirms that there’s “no tenure requirement” for this benefit, meaning most of their 34 thousand Google employees qualify. "One of the things we realized recently was that one of the harshest but most reliable facts of life is that at some point most of us will be confronted with the death of our partners,” says Bock. “And it’s a horrible, difficult time no matter what, and every time we went through this as a company we tried to find ways to help the surviving spouse of the Googler who’d passed away.” Google gets a lot of press for its perks but Bock says it’s not about the money. "It turns out that the reason we’re doing these things for employees is not because it’s important to the business, but simply because it’s the right thing to do. When it comes down to it, it’s better to work for a company who cares about you than a company who doesn’t. And from a company standpoint, that makes it better to care than not to care.”"
Your Rights Online

Submission + - uTorrent Adds "Featured Torrents" Advertising - With No Opt Out (Yet) (utorrent.com)

Submitted by wrekkuh
wrekkuh writes: BitTorrent, Inc, the company who owns the freeware (but closed-source) BitTorrent client uTorrent, has announced that it will be updating it's popular client with "Featured Torrents." In a post on uTorrent's forum, the company explained -

"This featured torrent space will be used to offer a variety of different types of content. We are working towards bringing you offers that are relevant to you. This means films, games, music, software...basically anything that you will find interesting."

In the Q&A portion of their announcement, the company adds — "There is no way to turn in-client offers off*. We will pay attention to feedback, and may change this in the future." (*The Plus version of the BitTorrent client does not include these ads).
Education

Submission + - Ask slashdot for open source/free software to help manage students grades

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have been assigned the task of finding a software package to automatize the The management of grades in a high school. It does not need to be a complete system, but rather just manage grading calculations and printing of report cards. The management of grades is currently done using spreadsheets. What are some open source options to handle this situation?
Java

Submission + - Rootbeer GPU Compiler allows almost any Java code to run on the GPU (github.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today the source code to the Rootbeer GPU Compiler was released open source on github. This work allows for a developer to use almost and Java code on the GPU. It is free, open source and highly tested. Rootbeer is the most full featured translator to convert Java Bytecode to CUDA. It allows arbitrary graphs of objects to be serialized to the GPU and the GPU kernel to be written in Java.
Space

Submission + - Lauch Escape System to be tested for Apollo like capsule in the Baltic sea (copenhagensuborbitals.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Danish amateur rocket group Copenhagen Suborbitals are readying to test their Launch Escape System for the Tycho Deep Space capsule in the Baltic Sea east of the island Bornholm Sunday 12th August. Live coverage can be found at http://rocketfriends.org/?page_id=13 , http://www.livestream.com/csscph , http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/rocketshop and http://www.raketvenner.dk/

Live transmissions are expected from 8 am localtime (UTC+2). Live transmissions, audio commentary as well as VHF audio are expected to be available. The Tycho Deep Space is the intended capsule for a later planned suborbital shoot to the edge of Space lead by Peter Madsen and Christian von Bengtson.

Submission + - Pixar's OpenSubdiv Tech demo (youtube.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last week at SIGGRAPH, Pixar Animation Studios announced OpenSubdiv, an open source implementation of the Renderman subdivision surface technology, thus releasing the patents to the long standing Pixar "secret sauce". In addition to the offline subdivision scheme, it also includes a GPU implementation. This video demonstrates a realtime deforming subdivision surface running at 50 FPS in Maya (though it is freely available to use anywhere). The source code is available on Pixar's GitHub account.
Wikipedia

Submission + - Let The Campaign Edit Wars Begin

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Megan Garber writes that in high school, Paul Ryan's classmates voted him as his class's "biggest brown noser," a juicy tidbit that is a source of delight for his political opponents but considered an irrelevant piece of youthful trivia to his supporters. "But it's also a tension that will play out, repeatedly, in the most comprehensive narrative we have about Paul Ryan as a person and a politician and a policy-maker: his Wikipedia page," writes Garber. Late last night, just as news of the Ryan choice leaked in the political press — the first substantial edit to that page removed the "brown noser" mention which had been on the page since June 16. The Wikipedia deletion has given rise to a whole discussion of whether the mention is a partisan attack, whether "brown noser" is a pejorative, and whether an old high school opinion survey is notable or relevant. As of this writing, "brown noser" stands as does a maybe-mitigating piece of Ryan-as-high-schooler trivia: that he was also voted prom king. But that equilibrium could change, again, in an instant. "Today is the glory day for the Paul Ryan Wikipedia page," writes Garber. "Yesterday, it saw just 10 [edits]. Today, however — early on a Saturday morning, East Coast time — it's already received hundreds of revisions. And the official news of the Ryan selection, of course, is just over an hour old." Now Ryan's page is ready to host debates about biographical details and their epistemological relevance. "Like so many before it, will be a place of debate and dissent and derision. But it will also be a place where people can come together to discuss information and policy and the intersection between the two — a town square for the digital age.""
Apple

Submission + - Apple offered expensive licensing option to Samsung in 2010 (edibleapple.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The treasure trove of documents from the ongoing Apple-Samsung dispute continue to flow on. The latest startling revelation touches on Apple and Samsung’s licensing discussions pre-litigation.

In October 2010, 6 months before Apple said “enough is enough” and initiated its lawsuit against Samsung, Apple offered Samsung a licensing deal for its patented technologies. As part of its offer, Apple said it was willing to offer Samsung a royalty rate of $30 per Android smartphone and $40 per Android tablet. Apple also indicated that it would wipe 20% off of its royalty asking price if Samsung was willing to cross license its own patents with Apple.

As part of its presentation, Apple explained: "Samsung chose to embrace and imitate Apple’s iPhone archetype. Apple would have preferred that Samsung request a license to do this in advance. Because Samsung is a strategic supplier to Apple, we are prepared to offer a royalty-bearing license for this category of device."
Communications

Submission + - Curiosity Transmits First 360-Degree Panorama From Mars (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "Five days after NASA's Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars, the one-ton robot sent another postcard back to Earth, this one a 360-degree doozy. Curiosity's first panorama, albeit black-and-white, gives Earthlings a great high-quality glimpse at the surface on Mars, specifically within the 96-mile Gale Crater."

Submission + - Huge pumice rock 'island' seen floating in South Pacific (msn.com)

Submitted by ZombieBraintrust
ZombieBraintrust writes: Pumice, the lightweight stone used to smooth skin, is usually found in beauty salons, but on Thursday sailors from New Zealand's Royal Navy found nearly 10,000 square miles of the lava rock bobbing on the surface of the South Pacific Ocean.
Science

Submission + - Researchers Invent Microparticles That Will Let You Live Without Breathing (gizmocrazed.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: A group of researchers led by Dr. John Kheir, from the Department of Cardiology at Boston Children's Hospital, developed microparticles that quickly oxygenate the bloodstream and allow a person to stay alive for 15 to 30 minutes without drawing a breath.
The concept of keeping a patient alive without breathing is not that new, however other attempts at this almost miraculous medicine have all but failed. The sheer determination to succeed in this endeavor came in 2006, when Dr. Kheir lost young patient after her lungs hemorrhaged during a case of pneumonia. That hemorrhaging led to brain damage and eventually death soon after because the good doctor couldn't was unable to keep her alive long enough to give her a heart-lung machine.
Google

Submission + - Google Improving Search Quality, Lists 86 Changes to Search Algorithm (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Google has announced a list of changes, totaling 86 in numbers, for the month of June and July that it is going to release for its search algorithm most of which are meant to influence the quality of search results. On its Inside Search blog post, Google has listed 57 changes for the month of June, 22 changes for the month of July and 7 other changes. The changes that Google is making include 6 “Page Quality” changes that will try and bring out more high-quality and unique material from trusted source. Changes under project codenamed “Answers” will incorporate detection of natural language and will address things whereby people search for things like “What is the time in India?”, "When is Mother's Day?", "What is $500 in euros?", etc. Google has also worked on how relevant images are being showed in results. Adult content filtering is also a focus in the current list of changes under project codenamed “SafeSearch”.

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