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Microsoft

Submission + - Windows Phone 8 SDK - By Appointment Only (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Developers worried about the changes that might be waiting for them in the new Windows Phone 8 API are going to have to wait even longer to find out. Microsoft has just announced that the SDK will be available soon, but only to the developers it approves.
If you already have a published app, then you can apply to be part of the program but the announcement says:
"But I do want to set your expectations that program access will be limited."
The public SDK will be made available "later this year" which is behind the time table that developers were led to expect.
As you can imagine, the developer community, judging by the comment stream, is less than happy.
What makes this whole strange development even more strange, is that the announcement was made on the day Nokia previewed a range of WP8 devices.
The Nokia launch got most of the publicity, so perhaps the idea was that a little negative news wouldn't be noticed.
The real question is, why the limited availability?
Is there some dark secret lurking in the SDK?
China

Submission + - Booming Chemical Production In Developing World Is Going to Be Costly: UN Report

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead writes: The chemical industry is increasingly shifting production to developing countries, where production costs are lower. Doing business in the developing world also has the added benefit of fewer regulations, which reduces costs for producers. But lax regulations come at the expense of the public health and the environment, costs that are expected to reach $90 billion in sub-Saharan Africa by 2020.

The newest Global Chemicals Outlook report (PDF) released by the United Nations Environment Program notes that global chemical production is growing, and that growth is fastest in developing countries. By 2020, chemical production is expected to grow 25 percent in the U.S., that number stands at 40 percent for Africa and a whopping 59 percent and 66 percent for India and China, respectively.

That growth is partly due to manufacturing shifts, and also largely reflects growth in consumption, especially as chemicals penetrate more and more of what we buy. The worldwide chemical market has grown from $171 billion in 1970 to over $4.1 trillion today. In developing countries, that boom was even bigger. For example, benzene consumption in China grew more than 800 percent from 1990 to 2008, compared with 13 percent in the U.S. during that same time frame.
Programming

Submission + - How Would You Fix the Linux Desktop? (itworld.com) 2

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Slashdot readers are familiar with the Torvalds/de Icaza slugfest over 'the lack of development in Linux desktop initiatives.' The problem with the Linux desktop boils down to this: We need more apps, and that means making it easier for developers to build them, says Brian Proffitt. 'It's easy to point at solutions like the Linux Standard Base, but that dog won't hunt, possibly because it's not in the commercial vendors' interests to create true cross-distro compatibility. United Linux or a similar consortium probably won't work, for the same reasons,' says Proffitt. So, we put it to the Slashdot community: How would you fix the Linux desktop?"
Businesses

Submission + - It's Easy To Steal Identities (Of Corporations) (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Two lawyers in Houston were able to exploit business filing systems to seize control of dormant publicly traded corporations — and then profit by pushing their worthless stock. In many states, anyone can change important information about a publicly registered company — including the corporate officers or company contact information — without any confirmation that they have anything to do with the company in the first place. Massachusetts requires a password to do this through the state registry's website, but they'll give you the password if you call and ask for it. Long focused on individual ID theft, state governments are finally beginning to realize that corporate ID theft is a huge problem as well."
Japan

Submission + - Mt Fuji may be close to erupting (wired.co.uk)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: The pressure in Mount Fuji's magma chamber is now higher than it was in 1707, the last time the nearly 4,000-metre-high Japanese volcano erupted, causing volcanologists to speculate that a disaster is imminent.

The new readings, taken by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, reveal that the pressure is at 1.6 megapascals, nearly 16 times the 0.1 megapascals it takes to trigger an eruption.

This, lead volcanologist on the case Eisuke Fujita told Kyodo News, is "not a small figure".

Researchers have speculated for some time that the volcano, located on Honshu Island 100km southwest of Tokyo, is overdue an eruption. In 2000 and 2001 a series of low-frequency earthquakes were recorded beneath the volcano, leading to widespread predictions of an imminent blow. Since the March 2011 tsunami and the 6.4 magnitude earthquake that followed four days later, Japan has been on tenterhooks, and in May 2012 a professor from Ryukyu University warned that a massive eruption within three years would be likely because of several major factors: steam and gases are being emitted from the crater, water eruptions are occurring nearby, massive holes emitting hot natural gases are appearing in the vicinity and finally, the warning sign that pushed the professor to make the announcement, a 34km-long fault was found underneath the volcano. The fault, experts suggested, could indicate a total collapse of the mountainside if there is another significant shift, and it would probably cause a collapse in the event of an eruption, leading to huge mud and landslides.

The new readings prove that the localised tectonic shifts of 2011 have indeed put immense pressure on the magma chamber, but the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention has qualified its warning by noting that pressure is just one contributory factor to an eruption. The 1707 quake, however, was itself caused by a recent earthquake that amped up the pressure in its magma chamber.

"It's possible for Mount Fuji to erupt even several years after the March 2011 earthquake, therefore we need to be careful about the development," a representative said.

A 2004 government report originally estimated that an eruption would cost the country £19.6 billion. However, new studies are underway by Honshu Island's Shizuoka prefectural government. The study is focussing on the potential damage that would be caused by a series of simultaneous earthquakes in the Tokai, Tonankai and Nankai regions located along the Nankai Trough, where it is feared another earthquake will soon take place. The most recent models have revealed that, in the worst-case scenario, 323,000 people would die and the tremors could trigger an eruption at Mount Fuji.

Regions that would be affected, including Kanagawa, Yamanashi and Shizuoka, plan to hold a test run of an evacuation by 2014, with a meeting of local governments covering progress of the plans and of shelter preparations slated for April 2013.
Transportation

Submission + - Texas Opens Fastest US Highway With 85 Mph Limit 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Most highways in the US top out at 75 mph while some highways in rural West Texas and Utah have 80 mph speed limits but all that is about to change as Texas opens a stretch of highway with the highest speed limit in the country, giving eager drivers a chance to rip through a trip between two of the state’s largest metropolitan areas at 85 mph for a 41-mile toll road between Austin and San Antonio. “I would love it,” says Austin resident Alan Guckian. “Sometimes it’s fun to just open it up.” But while some drivers will want to test their horsepower and radar detectors, others are asking if safety is taking a backseat as a 2009 report in the American Journal of Public Health found that more than 12,500 deaths were attributable to increases in speed limits on all kinds of roads and that that rural highways showed a 9.1 percent increase in fatalities on roads where speed limits were raised. “If you’re looking at an 85 mph speed limit, we could possibly see drivers going 95 up to 100 miles per hour,” says Sandra Helin, president of the Southwestern Insurance Information Service. “When you get to those speeds, your accidents are going to be a lot worse. You’re going to have a lot more fatalities.""
Education

Submission + - Science wins over creationism in South Korea (nature.com) 1

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: South Korea’s government has urged textbook publishers to ignore calls to remove two examples of evolution from high-school textbooks. The move marks a change of heart for the government, which had earlier forwarded a petition from the 'Society for Textbook Revise' to publishers and told them to make their own minds up about the demands. The petition called for details about the evolution of the horse and of the avian ancestor Archaeopteryx to be removed from the books.
In May, news emerged that publishers were planning to drop the offending sections, sparking outrage among some scientists. The resulting furore prompted the government to set up an 11-member panel, led by the Korean Academy of Science and Technology.
On 5 September, the panel concluded that Archaeopteryx must be included in Korean science textbooks. And, while accepting that the textbooks' explanation of the evolution of the horse was too simplistic, the panel said the entry should be revised rather than removed or replaced with a different example, such as the evolution of whales.
The Military

Submission + - DARPA's Robo-Cheetah Is Now Faster Than Usain Bolt (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "The Boston Dynamics Cheetah just clocked a 28.3 miles per hour sprint on a treadmill, and it’s heading outdoors soon. At that speed, it could edge out the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt in a dead sprint. (Bolt peaked at 27.78 miles per hour in his world record setting 100 meter dash back in 2009.) "To be fair, keep in mind that the Cheetah robot runs on a treadmill without wind drag and has an off-board power supply that it does not carry,” admitted Boston Dynamics in a press release. “So Bolt is still the superior athlete.” Nevertheless, the team hopes to drop these implements and have a freestanding speed bot by early next year. They’re calling that model the WildCat."

Comment So what about a crowd sourced ticketing system? (Score 0) 327

by Finerva (#41234783) Attached to: Networked Cars: Good For Safety, Bad For Privacy
Instead of incidental speeding tickets (for those that rarely speed) or hazardous driving in heavy traffic where cops aren't always free to pursue, the driving community could flag vehicles using some heads-up, windshield interface. After X amount of flags, the driver could be reviewed and disciplined. Speed snapshots could be taken at the time of a flag for cross-referencing purposes.

The point of this would be to eliminate the "I need to meet my end of the month ticket quota" tickets and get back to actually moderating bad drivers. So in my world, speeding could be more hazardous in some contexts and less in others and it would seem fair for the driving community to moderate that.

What do you think?

Comment Re:Your generation is not special, more will follo (Score 0) 331

there is a rising sentiment in the gaming world that the current generation consoles are 'good enough' and that the next generation of consoles might be the last

By "good enough" I read this to mean, "graphical plateau". Obviously there will be another plateau, but at least for the next 2-3 years I don't really expect to go from Final Fantasy 7 to Mass Effect 3 in terms of magnitude of graphics performance improvement. My thoughts are, so what? We're slowly itching toward the day when I fire up a game and its as realistic and stunning as anything on a flat screen could be. And yes yes, 3D TVs blah blah blah, makes no different honestly, its still the same glorified plateau as long as I'm staring at a screen. The next plateau is when I fire up a game and it connects to some neural interface in my brain and I play the entire game in the mind's eye. Anything before then is just piling frosting on a ten year old cake, still tastes the same underneath it all.

Image

China's Nine-Day Traffic Jam Tops 62 Miles 198

Posted by samzenpus from the living-on-the-road dept.
A traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet expressway has now entered its ninth day and has grown to over 62 miles in length. This mother-of-all delays has even spawned its own micro-economy of local merchants selling water and food at inflated prices to stranded drivers. Can you imagine how infuriating it must be to see someone leave their blinker on for 9 days?

Submission + - Greenland May Disappear in 10 Years (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Finerva
Finerva writes: The entire ice mass of Greenland will disappear from the world map if temperatures rise by as little as 2C, with severe consequences for the rest of the world, a panel of scientists told Congress today.

Greenland shed its largest chunk of ice in nearly half a century last week, and faces an even grimmer future, according to Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University

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