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EU

Submission + - EU charges Samsung with abusing vital telecoms patent (reuters.com) 1

Submitted by Dupple
Dupple writes: The European Commission charged Samsung Electronics on Friday with abusing its dominant position in seeking to bar rival Apple from using a patent deemed essential to mobile phone use.

The Commission sent a "statement of objections" to the South Korean group, with its preliminary view that Samsung was not acting fairly.

"Intellectual property rights are an important cornerstone of the single market. However, such rights should not be misused when they are essential to implement industry standards, which bring huge benefits to businesses and consumers alike," Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in statement.
Android

Submission + - KDE's Plama Active Ported To Nexus 7 (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: KDE developers have succeeded in running the touch-optimized Plasma Active Linux Distribution on Nexus 7. Earlier Ubuntu developers managed to create a installer for Nexus 7, but those builds also showed that Unity, in its current form, is not ready for touch-based devices. KDE has an edge here as they have optimized versions for netbooks, desktops and touch-based devices so a user doesn't have to make any compromises as one has to do with other DEs or shells which are focusing more in touch-based devices only.

Detailed instructions on how to install KDE Plasma Active on Nexus 7 are given here.

Submission + - USAF Taps ESPN To Compile Drone "Highlight" Video 2

Submitted by mbstone
mbstone writes: The Air Force has a problem: Its drones generate thousands of hours of video (I almost said "footage.") And most of it is miles of endless desert. USAF needs to distill the highlights, if you will, and nobody does it better than ESPN, the TV sports network. Air Force officials have asked ESPN for help in analyzing the 327,384 hours collected just this year.

What we really need in times like these is sportscaster Warner Wolf. 'Let's go to the videotape, pick it up right here, Taliban in the home black.'

Submission + - Mobile Raspberry Pi Computer: Build your own portable Pi-to-Go (parts-people.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Everyone has seen Raspberry Pi Computer, the credit card sized mini PC circuit board that cost only $35. Now there is a new Mobile Raspberry Pi called Pi-to-Go. Mini LCD, 10 hour battery, with 64GB SSD hard drive and packed together in a 3D printed case. See if you are up to the task to build your own.
Hardware

Submission + - Samsung Galaxy S3s Suddenly Dying Due To Possible Hardware Issue 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Some Samsung Galaxy S III owners are reporting their devices are suddenly being bricked. The phone simply won’t turn on again after it is charged overnight, or after the screen is turned off. Users are reporting that the mainboards are the root of the problem and that the flash memory is becoming corrupted and failing, though the devices do seem to last somewhere between 150 and 200 days before dying. According to reports, Samsung is replacing them under warranty whether or not people have rooted the devices or installed non-standard firmware, but the company is allegedly using the same revision for the mainboards, suggesting the problem may simply come back in a few months again.
Government

Submission + - Who Should Manage the Nuclear Weapons Complex, Civilians or Military? (thebulletin.org) 1

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: For the first time since 1946, Congress is seriously debating whether the US nuclear weapons complex should be under civilian or military control. That the article is in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is significant, as it was many of the scientists who founded BAS who argued for civilian control in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They believed that atomic energy was too destructive, and the military too secretive, which would possibly thwart scientific discovery and erect a major obstacle to international control and cooperation. Great read on how the management has changed over the decades and the discussion that needs to happen before Congress acts.
Medicine

Submission + - Polio Eradication Program Suspended in Pakistan After Aid Workers Shot 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Jamal Khan reports that the United Nations has suspended its polio vaccination drive in Pakistan after eight people involved in the effort were shot dead in the past two days dealing a grave blow to the drive to bring an end to the scourge of polio in Pakistan, one of only three countries where the crippling disease still survives. Militants accuse health workers of acting as spies for the US and claim the vaccine makes children sterile and Taliban commanders in the troubled northwest tribal region have also said vaccinations can't go forward until the US stops drone strikes in the country. Insurgent opposition to the campaign grew last year after it was revealed that a Pakistani doctor ran a fake polio vaccination program to help the CIA track down and kill Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in the town of Abbottabad in the country's northwest. The Pakistani government has condemned the attacks against aid workers, saying they deprive Pakistan's most vulnerable populations — specifically children — of basic life-saving health interventions. Polio usually infects children living in unsanitary conditions, attacks the nerves and can kill or paralyze. A total of 56 polio cases have been reported in Pakistan during 2012, down from 190 the previous year, according to the U.N. Most of the new cases in Pakistan are in the northwest, where the presence of militants makes it difficult to reach children. The new campaign aimed to give oral polio prevention drops to 34 million children under the age of five. Clerics and tribal elders were recruited to support polio vaccinations in an attempt to open up areas previously inaccessible to health workers."
Security

Submission + - Stabuniq malware found on servers at U.S. financial institutions (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Security researchers from Symantec have identified an information-stealing Trojan program that was used to infect computer servers belonging to various U.S. financial institutions. Dubbed Stabuniq, the Trojan program was found on mail servers, firewalls, proxy servers, and gateways belonging to U.S. financial institutions, including banking firms and credit unions, according to a Symantec software engineer. "Approximately half of unique IP addresses found with Trojan.Stabuniq belong to home users," the engineer wrote in a blog post. http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/trojanstabuniq-found-financial-institution-servers "Another 11 percent belong to companies that deal with Internet security (due, perhaps, to these companies performing analysis of the threat). A staggering 39 percent, however, belong to financial institutions."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Kills Expression Suite (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Microsoft has announced that the Expression suite of design tools is no more. It has been removed from sale immediately and it has been placed on a maintenance only status until it reaches its end of life. Expression was Microsoft’s offering for designers and competed directly with Adobe products. You can now download the components of Expression — Design 4, Web 4 and Encoder 4 — for free but you can’t buy them. Of course, knowing that you are using "doomed" products, even for free, takes some of the icing off the cake.The central component of the suite the UI designer Blend is to be integrated with Visual Studio 2012 probably along with Update 2. It looks as if Microsoft is giving up on trying to get designers to use its tools.
Robotics

Submission + - Arduino and MK802 Robot, Controlled by Phone (youtube.com)

Submitted by
beefsack
beefsack writes: "An engineer by the name of Andrej Skraba has combined an Arduino board and an MK802 mini PC running Ubuntu to create a robot which is controllable via it's own node.js server and a mobile phone. Seen by some as products competing in a similar space, Andrej shows how the two devices can make the most of their unique features to complement each other well working together."
Space

Submission + - All Systems Go for Highest Altitude Supercomputer (eso.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of the most powerful supercomputers in the world has now been fully installed and tested at its remote, high altitude site in the Andes of northern Chile. It's a critical part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the most elaborate ground-based astronomical telescope in history. The special-purpose ALMA correlator has over 134 million processors and performs up to 17 quadrillion operations per second, a speed comparable to the fastest general-purpose supercomputer in operation today.
The Internet

Submission + - DARPA competition seeks wireless bandwidth intimidators (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "What if your wireless communications just absolutely, positively have to be heard above the din of other users or in the face of massive interference? That is the question at the heart of a new $150,000 challenge that will be thrown down in January by the scientists at DARPA as the agency detailed its Spectrum Challenge — a competition that aims to find developers who can create software-defined radio protocols that best use communication channels in the presence of other users and interfering signals."
United Kingdom

Submission + - UK Gov plans to give "greater freedom to use copyright works" (bis.gov.uk)

Submitted by crimperman
crimperman writes: The Uk Government is planning to change their copyright laws to give "greater freedom" on usage. The Dept for Business Innovation and Skills say the new measures "include provisions to allow copying of works for personal use parody and for the purposes of quotation." (there is currently no "fair usage" law in the UK). They also say the provisions "allow people to use copyright works for a variety of ... purposes without permission from the copyright owners." and ""bring up to date the provisions for education use."
A sensible copyright law from the UK? What are the chances of this getting through?
Patents

Submission + - Reexamination Request Filed Against Another Apple Patent (fosspatents.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After the rubber-banding, 'Steve Jobs' heuristics and pinch-to-zoom patents, another Apple patent in use against Samsung comes under pressure. An anonymous filer (or 'anonymous coward' in traditional Slashdot terminology), most likely Samsung, has filed a reexamination request against Apple's RE41,922 patent on a "method and apparatus for providing translucent images on a computer display". It's not among the patents a California jury evaluated this summer, but one of four patents an ITC judge preliminarily found Samsung to infringe. The reexamination request features five new pieces of prior art (three U.S. patents from the early 1990s and two Japanese patents), all of which dealt with translucent images. The patent office will decide next year whether to grant or deny the request for reexamination. Expect more such petitions targeting Apple patents.
Operating Systems

Submission + - FreeBSD Fundraising almost there (freebsdfoundation.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It seems that the FreeBSD Doundation fundraising is going pretty well. 461k $ funded in less that one month its a success and seems better than expected by other slashdot readers(http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/12/12/09/1726222/freebsd-project-falls-short-of-year-end-funding-target-by-nearly-50), and should not be rated as "fail". Since the FBD Foundation site have a lot of details of what is being done to improve FreeBSD and what will be done(in a non-tech description), what is the feature/subsystem/port that you thing deserves some love from FreeBSD developers?
DRM

Submission + - UK law change to allow digital copying (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by another random user
another random user writes: Making digital copies of music, films and other copyrighted material for personal use is to be made legal for the first time under government plans.

It has previously been illegal in the UK to rip songs from a CD to a digital player or transfer eBooks, music, films and games from one device to another.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said the move was "not only common sense but good business sense".

"Bringing the law into line with ordinary people's reasonable expectations will boost respect for copyright, on which our creative industries rely," he said.

"We feel we have struck the right balance between improving the way consumers benefit from copyright works they have legitimately paid for, boosting business opportunities and protecting the rights of creators."

Submission + - First Radeon HD 8000M GPU benchmarked (techreport.com)

Submitted by J. Dzhugashvili
J. Dzhugashvili writes: As Slashdot noted earlier this week, AMD has a new line of mid-range Radeon GPUs aimed at notebooks. The chips are based on the Graphics Core Next microarchitecture, and they're slated to show up in systems early next year. While the initial report was limited to specification details, the first review of the Radeon HD 8790M is now out, complete with benchmark data from the latest games. The 8790M is about 35% smaller than its 7690M predecessor but offers substantially better gaming performance across the board. Impressively, the new chip has similar power draw as the outgoing model under load, and its idle power consumption is slightly lower. Notebook makers should have no problems making the switch. However, it is worth noting that this new mobile GPU exhibits some of the same frame latency spikes observed on desktop Radeons, including in games that AMD itself has sponsored.

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