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Hardware

Submission + - Apple offers to pay Google $1 per device (geek.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Motorola feels that Apple is infringing on several FRAND patents that have to do with how every smartphone in existence connects to WiFi and cellular networks. Since Apple makes smartphones, and Google is looking to use their newly acquired Motorola as a weapon, the two companies are only a few days away from the courtroom.

Apple has conceded that the Moto patents are valid by offering to pay Google/Moto $1 per device, but only going forward. Motorola wants 2.25% per device and for it to cover all Apple devices (back dated). If Motorola pursues the case and the court issues a per device rate that is higher than Apple’s offer, Apple promises to pursue all possible appeals to avoid paying more than $1. Motorola could end this quickly, or watch as Apple drags this out for what could be years.
Government

Submission + - Recall after bug causes touchscreen to display wrong dose on infusion pump (securityledger.com)

Submitted by
chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: "The steady drumbeat of disturbing news about vulnerable, IP enabled medical devices continues this week, after medical device maker Hospira said it has issued a voluntary recall of its Symbiq-brand drug infusion pumps after discovering a software error that may cause touch interfaces on the pumps to not respond to user touches or to display dosage information that is inaccurate.
The problem was detected in around 1.5% of Symbiq One Channel and Two Channel Infusers (model numbers 16026 and 16027), but could potentially affect "all Symbiq infusion systems currently in the field." The software bug could result in “a delayed response and or the screen registering a different value from the value selected by the user,” the company said in a statement."
Government

Submission + - IEEE Standards for Voting Machines (ieee.org)

Submitted by kgeiger
kgeiger writes: Voting machine designs and data formats are a free-for-all. The result is poor validation and hence opportunity for fraud. From TFA:

IEEE Standards Project 1622 is working on electronic data interchange for voting systems. The plan is to create a common format, based on the Election Markup Language (EML) already recommended for use in Europe. This is a subset of the popular XML (eXtensible Markup Language) that specifies particular fields and data structures for use in voting.
Android

Submission + - Japanese Android developers arrested for infecting 10 million users (yomiuri.co.jp)

Submitted by Dupple
Dupple writes: Five people, including the owner of an information technology-related company, were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of providing a virus built into smartphone applications that stole more than 10 million pieces of personal information from users' address books.

The Metropolitan Police Department said about 90,000 people's smartphones were infected with a virus lurking in applications they downloaded.

According to the MPD, this is the first case established to deal with such a large information theft in Japan.

Investigative sources said a man who runs an IT-related company allegedly created video applications for Android smartphones containing a virus that extracts personal information stored on the phone. In collusion with a woman who is the former president of another Tokyo-based IT-related firm, the man released the apps on Google Inc.'s official store for free in late March.

Submission + - The Telegraph introduces paywall (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian reports on The Telegraph's new "New York Times-style metered system". The paywall applies only to non-UK visitors and kicks in after 20 free page views, when users are asked to pay for a £1.99 monthly subscription. The Telegraph is UK's third most popular newspaper website and two-thirds of its audience is based abroad.

Editor's note:
The website of The Times of London became mostly irrelevant after introducing a paywall. The New York Times, however, did not — perhaps because it doesn't really have a paywall (it involves cookies or simply removing a parameter from the query string). It is not clear yet if The Telegraph will adopt NYT's purposely half-assed implementation or not — I don't live in the UK and the paywall hasn't kicked in yet after well over 20 articles. My guess is keeping it free in the UK will keep the website from joining The Times in limbo.

Submission + - Kim Dotcom Outs Mega Teaser Site, Finalizes Me.ga as Domain Name (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Kim Dotcom has let out more information about the launch of Megaupload’s successor Mega, which he claims will be "bigger, better, faster, stronger, [and] safer." Mega is currently looking for partners those are willing to provide servers, supports and connectivity and become "Mega Storage Nodes." The prime requirement, according to Dotcom, is that the servers should be located outside the US and that the companies should also be based outside of the US. For this reason, Dotcom has decided that the new service will be launching with "Me.ga" domain name.
Robotics

Submission + - Vanderbilt University Steps Into the Exoskeleton Market (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: For people who are unable to walk under their own power, exoskeletons offer what is perhaps the next-best thing. Essentially “wearable robots,” the devices not only let their users stand, but they also move their legs for them, allowing them to walk. While groups such as Berkeley Bionics, NASA, Rex Bionics, and ReWalk are all working on systems, Nashville’s Vanderbilt University has just announced the development of its own exoskeleton. It is claimed to offer some important advantages over its competitors.
The Courts

Submission + - Apple's Samsung statement reprimanded by UK court of appeal (guardian.co.uk) 6

Submitted by Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: In the UK, Apple were previously ordered to add a statement to their website stating that Samsung did not copy their designs, following a previous case where this was ruled by the UK courts. However, today the same court revealed that Apple's statement is not good enough. From the article:

The acknowledgement put up last week, linked from the home page by a tiny link, was deemed to be "non-compliant" with the order that the court had made in October. The court has now ordered it to correct the statement – and the judges, Lord Justice Longmore, Lord Justice Kitchin and Sir Robin Jacob, indicated that they were not pleased with Apple's failure to put a simpler statement on the site.

It appears the main objection is the statement is on a separate page and only linked from the hompage — and that the statement is buried in marketing blurb, and also put next to references to a case Apple won.
Censorship

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

Submitted by another random user
another random user 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.

If the websites themselves cannot be shut down, internet service providers (ISPs) and web hosting companies can be forced to block access to the offending material.
Cloud

Submission + - Kim Dotcom reveals Mega to replace Megaupload (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by another random user
another random user writes: Kim Dotcom has announced plans for Mega, a service to replace his shut down file-sharing website Megaupload.

Mega is expected to use encryption methods which will mean only users will know what they are uploading.

It will be decided in March whether Mr Dotcom should be extradited from New Zealand to the US to face charges relating to copyright theft.

The 38-year-old said he would launch Mega on 20 January 2013 — a year to the day since his arrest.

By keeping details of files uploaded on Mega secret from the site's administrators, Mr Dotcom said he believed this would mean the site was not in violation of US laws. "The new Mega will not be threatened by US prosecutors," he said.

"The new Mega avoids any dealings with US hosters, US domains and US backbone providers and has changed the way it operates to avoid another takedown."
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."

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