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Apple

Submission + - Apple Delays Simpler and Cleaner iTunes 'to get it right'

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "iTunes has been criticized in the past for being slow and growing increasingly unwieldy as more and more media types have been added to what used to be simply a music player. Apple announced iTunes 11, the latest version of the program at its iPhone 5 event in September and said the update would be released by the end of October, but Apple's deadline for the upgrade has slipped. "The new iTunes is taking longer than expected and we wanted to take a little extra time to get it right," Apple told technology site AllThingsD. "We look forward to releasing this new version of iTunes with its dramatically simpler and cleaner interface and seamless integration with iCloud before the end of November." The update is said to be the most significant upgrade to iTunes in the 11-year life of the program, which has grown from a simple music player to the most powerful retailer in the music business — and a force in the movie, television and e-books businesses — and, on Apple’s PCs, the portal to its app store."
Patents

Submission + - RedHat celebrates AMQP/1.0 release with new patent (uspto.gov) 6

Submitted by
pieterh
pieterh writes: "One day before the "Advanced Message Queuing Protocol" AMQP/1.0 becomes an OASIS standard, Red Hat secures
patent number 8,301,595, for accessing an LDAP server over AMQP. In January 2008 I provided to the AMQP Working Group, including Red Hat, the Digest-AMQP spec, "a way to integrate WWW servers and LDAP servers over an AMQP network." Here's the GitHub repository. Red Hat's patent 8,301,595 was filed two and a half years later, on June 14, 2010. In 2009 I wrote about another Red Hat patent on AMQP. That time, Red Hat said required patents would be made available royalty-free, but then as now, the patent was not on the standard but of a common use around it."
Power

Submission + - Volcano power plan gets U.S. go-ahead (gizmag.com) 2

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Having successfully negotiated the challenging regulatory slopes of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Department of Energy, and a host of Oregon state agencies, the Newberry Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) demonstration project is in the process of creating a new geothermal reservoir in central Oregon. The core of the new reservoir is a two mile (2.7 km) deep well drilled about four miles (5.4 km) from the center of Newberry Volcano. The rock surrounding the wellbore reaches temperatures in the order of 600 F (300 C), and is nearly impermeable to water. That, however, is about to change.

Newberry Volcano is one of the largest and youngest volcanoes in the United States. Having last erupted about 1,300 years ago, it consists of over 400 individual volcanic vents, which, when combined, form a broad mounded landform referred to as a shield volcano. The Newberry EGS Demonstration geothermal reservoir is being formed in the high-temperature, low-permeability deep lava of the volcano's northwest flank.
Science

Submission + - Supernovae from stars 100 to 250 times mass of Sun (cosmosmagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two ‘superluminous supernovae’, 10 to 100 times brighter than normal supernovae, have been detected from ancient stars that formed not long after the big bang and were 100 to 250 times the mass of the Sun.
Censorship

Submission + - Russia internet blacklist law takes effect (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A law that aims to protect children from harmful internet content by allowing the government to take sites offline has taken effect in Russia.

The authorities are now able to blacklist and force offline certain websites without a trial.

The law was approved by both houses of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin in July.

Human rights groups have said the legislation might increase censorship in the country.
Bug

Submission + - Crazy Bug / Exploit In /. Moderation System? (wordpress.com) 3

Submitted by beaverdownunder
beaverdownunder writes: I think I may have just uncovered a crazy bug / exploit in Slashdot’s moderation system.

If you click ‘Parent’ on the post you wish to moderate, you can then moderate the posts inside that sub-thread without immediately losing any moderator points, if you then go back to the home screen (by clicking on the Slashdot logo) after you moderate the comments.

It appears that the system does catch up with you periodically, and then deduct the points you spent — but during that period of time it seems you can go quite far into negative deficit. For example, I ‘spent’ my last moderator point today five times (strictly for research purposes; I don't plan on doing so again. That would be bad.)

Checking again, I'm indeed now out of moderator points, but my 'over-mods' seem to have stuck. Perhaps others with moderator points can help verify this bug?

Although, I really wonder if this is a 'new discovery', or if this 'exploit' is already commonly abused... But that's just my cynical side showing through.
NASA

Submission + - Behind the scenes at NASA's Mission Control Center (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
willith
willith writes: "I was recently given the opportunity to spend several hours on the floor of Historic Mission Operations Control Room #2, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. MOCR2 was used to control almost manned Gemini and Apollo mission, including Apollo 11 & 13. More, my tour guide was none other than famous Apollo mission controller Sy Liebergot, one of the fellows behind the solution that saved Apollo 13. I go in-depth on the role of the flight controller during Apollo, and focus on how and why Mission Control functioned, and I spend a lot of time talking about the consoles and how they worked. The feature includes a ton of anecdotes and stories from Mr. Liebergot about mission control in general, and about what he did during Apollo 12 & 13 specifically. I also put together a supplemental report that goes through each and every station and describes their Apollo-era layout. I wrote this story to be the kind of thing I'd always wanted to read, but could never find online. There are also lots and lots of pictures of MOCR2!"
Privacy

Submission + - Judge to Newspaper - Reveal Name of Commenter (kansascity.com)

Submitted by
Andy Prough
Andy Prough writes: "A Kansas judge has ordered a Topeka newspaper to release the name of a commenter on one of its stories about the trial of Anceo D. Stovall for the murder of Natalie Gibson. Using the name "BePrepared", the commenter posted the following in response to a story about the ongoing trial on July 21 at 1:45pm: "Trust me that’s all they got in their little world, as you know, I have been there. Remember the pukes names they will do it for ever.” The problem? The court is convinced that "BePrepared" was a juror, and was not supposed to be accessing news about the trial before it ended on July 24th. The court wants BePrepared's name, address and IP address. The jury was ultimately unable to find Stovall guilty of 10 of the 11 charges against him — including murder. Both defense and prosecution lawyers appear to want a new trial, and if it turns out that BePrepared was a juror, they are more likely to get their wish."
Microsoft

Submission + - Malware Authors Quickly Create Fake Antivirus Just For Windows 8

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When it comes to fake security products that are really just malware, October has been a very hectic month. First, we reported on how the FTC managed to shut down scareware that tricked 1 million users with names such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus. Next, we noted how this did not faze cybercriminals whatsoever, as a new fake antivirus was discovered that changes its interface based on whether you’re running Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP. After all that, Windows 8 launched late last week. Sure enough, on the last day of October, those behind fake antivirus programs have created a Windows 8 flavor.
Idle

Submission + - In time for Halloween: 9 new tarantula species discovered (mongabay.com)

Submitted by Damien1972
Damien1972 writes: If you suffer from acute arachnophobia, this is the perfect Halloween discovery for you: a spider expert has discovered nine new species of arboreal tarantulas in the Brazil. Although tarantula diversity is highest in the Amazon rainforest, the new species are all found in lesser-known Brazilian ecosystems like the Atlantic Forest and the cerrado.
Books

Submission + - Zombie eBook Titles Double in One Year (beyond-black-friday.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Every year on Halloween, this Kindle blogger counts the number of ebooks with the word "zombie" in their title that appear in the Kindle Store (like "Zombie Girl Invasion" and "Zombies Eat Lawyers.") And this year, the number of zombie titles "has doubled in less than a year." There are now 4,874 different ebooks in the Kindle Store with zombies in their title — as well as at least two interactive Kindle games which also contain the word zombie.
KDE

Submission + - KDE Plasma Active: The Mobile Interface That Works (linuxpromagazine.com)

Submitted by
jrepin
jrepin writes: "Bruce Byfield is not a fan of interfaces for mobile devices. At best, he finds them clumsy makeshifts, tolerable only because nothing better is available. The only exception is KDE's Plasma Active, which not only works well on tablets, but, with its recently released version 3.0, remains the only mobile-inspired interface he can tolerate on a workstation..What makes Plasma Active so well-designed?"
Science

Submission + - Flexible Circuits By The Slice (acs.org)

Submitted by
MTorrice
MTorrice writes: "Researchers have demonstrated a way to make high performance, flexible integrated circuits using almost exclusively standard equipment and materials already needed to make conventional chips. Such a method could allow electronics manufacturers to build new devices, such as smart medical implants and flexible displays, without needing to significantly overhaul current production protocols. The method, developed by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, started with researchers patterning integrated circuits on silicon wafers using a standard production line. They then cut off the top 20 to 30 micrometers of the wafer using a thin wire—like slicing a block of cheese—to produce a thin, flexible platter of circuits."
Government

Submission + - Stolen cellphone databases switched on in US (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: U.S. cellphone carriers took a major step on Wednesday toward curbing the rising number of smartphone thefts with the introduction of databases that will block stolen phones from being used on domestic networks. The initiative got its start earlier this year when the FCC and police chiefs from major cities asked the cellular carriers for assistance in battling the surging number of smartphone thefts. In New York, more than 40 percent of all robberies involve cellphones and in Washington, D.C., cellphone thefts accounted for 38 percent of all robberies in 2011. It's been a particularly ugly year for iPhone thefts. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/100812-iphone-ipad-thefts-263110.html
Transportation

Submission + - Self-Driving Car Faces Off Against Pro on Thunderhill Racetrack

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Rachel Swaby writes that a self-driving car and a seasoned race-car driver recently faced off at Northern California's three-mile Thunderhill Raceway loop. The autonomous vehicle is a creation from the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS). "We tried to model [the self-driving car] after what we've learned from the best race-car drivers," says Chris Gerdes. So who won? Humans, of course. But only by a few measly seconds. "What the human drivers do is consistently feel out the limits of the car and push it just a little bit farther," explained Gerdes. "When you look at what the car is capable of and what humans achieve, that gap is really actually small." Because the self-driving car reacts to the track as if it were controlled in real time by a human, a funny thing happens to passengers along for the ride. Initially, when the car accelerates to 115 miles per hour and then breaks just in time to make it around a curve, the person riding shotgun freaks out. But a second lap looks very different. Passengers tend to relax, putting their faith in the automatically spinning wheel. "We might have a tendency to put too much confidence in it," cautioned Gerdes. "Watching people experience it, they'll say, oh, that was flawless." Gerdes reaction: "Wait wait! This was developed by a crazy professor and graduate students!""
Science

Submission + - Early therapy can change brains of kids with autism (cnn.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "As the number of children with autism has risen dramatically over the past couple of decades, experts have learned that the earlier a child gets diagnosed, the earlier specialized therapy can be initiated, which can significantly improve outcomes.

Now researchers have been able to show that a particular type of behavioral therapy called the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) not only improves autism symptoms, but actually normalizes brain activity and improves social behavior."

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