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Software

Submission + - Biggest Game Console Failures in History (discovery.com) 1

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "As Microsoft's motion-controlled Kinect gaming device hits stores, everyone from players to industry analysts are wondering whether the device is a "game changer." Unfortunately, releasing new gaming technologies to the market are far from a sure bet. Discovery News reminisces over some of the biggest flops in game console history that, at the time, held so much promise."

Submission + - Robbers steal 100+ copies of COD: Black Ops (baltimoresun.com)

Submitted by 1080bogus
1080bogus writes: "Handgun-wielding robbers who burst into a video-game store in Harford County over the weekend made off with more than just cash. They also stole more than 100 copies of the highly anticipated "Call of Duty: Black Ops." The Black Ops games stolen Saturday night had been set aside for sale on Tuesday, said Monica Worrell, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office. Fans across the country have pre-ordered copies to avoid missing out." I'm glad I bought mine through Steam. I don't have to worry about burglars or lines.
Security

Submission + - US wants upper hand in battling high-tech bad guys (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: The US Department of Justice this week said it was looking to boost the research and development of technology that could significantly bolster new forensic tools for digital evidence gathering. The DoJ's research and development arm, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) said it was particularly interested in tools targeting forensic tools for mobile cellular devices; cloud computing environments; VoIP communication and vehicle computer systems.

Submission + - Atlantic current backward during ice age (cosmosmagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Atlantic Ocean current, which may be affected by future climate change, today takes heat north to Europe but 10,000 years ago it was weaker and flowed in the opposite direction.

Submission + - U.K. Reviewing Copyright Laws (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
Uebergeek
Uebergeek writes: "It looks like the UK is going to be reviewing its copyright laws. Their Prime Minister specifically cites to the U.S.'s fair use doctrine as something they wish to incorporate into their own laws... apparently they wish to "encourage the sort of creative innovation that occurs in America." One can only assume that they've been missing the continual assault on the Fair Use doctrine here in the States."
Censorship

Submission + - The Revolt of China's Twittering Classes

Submitted by
Ponca City
Ponca City writes: "After Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China, few voices in mainland Chinese media discussed Liu’s Nobel Prize. But Hu Yong, a media critic in Beijing, writes that China’s blogosphere and microblogs exploded after Liu was announced as the winner and a search of the hash tag “#Liuxiaobo” shows that relevant messages pop up hundreds of times per minute on Twitter. "Twitter has become a powerful tool for Chinese citizens as they increasingly play a role in reporting local news in their communities," writes Hu. "Chinese Twitter users lead the world, using it for everything from social resistance, civic investigation, and monitoring public opinion, to creating black satire, “organizing without organizations” in the Guangdong anti-incineration movement, and mailing postcards to prisoners of conscience." The Chinese Twittersphere has three prominent features writes Hu. First, as China’s rulers strengthen their censorship efforts, Twitter has become highly politicized. Second Twitter brings opinion leaders together around one virtual table, attracting a lot of “new public intellectuals” and “rights advocates,” as well as veterans of civil rights movements and exiled dissidents. Finally, Twitter has become the coordinating platform for many campaigns asserting citizens’ rights. "With the proliferation of Twitter clones in China, social movements in China are getting a long-term boost""
Software

Submission + - The Complications Of Owning Software

Submitted by shmG
shmG writes: When someone buys something at a store, they assume they own it. A recent court ruling says that isn't so with software — and that means that unlike a used car, you can't resell it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in Vernor v. Autodesk that an individual who purchases and then resells secondhand software is not the "owner" of that copy of the software. Therefore, that person cannot resell it if the license agreement accompanying the software restricts such resale. "What if you have a Honda Accord with software running the navigation and radio systems? If Honda were to put in a software licensing agreement, what's the difference between that and regular software? It would mean you wouldn't be able to resell the Honda Accord. You could do this with anything that runs software — microwaves, TVs, cell phones,et cetera," Halpern said.
Science

Submission + - Cheap metal-insulator-metal (MiM) diode created (physorg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A progress on metal-insulator-metal diode manufacturing just reported online in the professional journal Advanced Materials. For the first time a high-performance "metal-insulator-metal" diode was created with cheap materials. This is a fundamental discovery. It could change the way manufacturers produce electronic products at high speed, on a huge scale, at a very low cost, even less than with conventional methods.
via epSos.de
Wikipedia

Submission + - Can you use Wikipedia to decide who to vote for? (wikivoterguide.com) 3

Submitted by Decius6i5
Decius6i5 writes: This summer the WikiTrust team made the English language Wikipedia accessible through their Firefox plugin, which uses a reputation system to highlight untrustworthy text. I thought, made using this plugin I could read Wikipedia articles about politicians without being misled by vandals, so I created Wiki Voter Guide which uses Project Vote Smart's API to look up Wikipedia articles about candidates by ZIP code. Turns out, most local races aren't covered in Wikipedia yet, but I'd like to know what Slashdot readers think about all of this. With the help of reputation systems can Wikipedia become a useful way to research political candidates or is politically motivated vandalism an insurmountable problem?
Communications

Submission + - Fault takes out Internet in 3 different countries (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
Pop69
Pop69 writes: "Not some cut cable taking out some African countries where the infrastructure is weak. A fault in an Edinburgh exchange brought down subscribers internet connections in Northern Ireland, Scotland and northern England.

It's a worrying thing when BT, the monopoly telecom provider in the UK, has a network which is so lacking in resilience that this can happen."
Medicine

You Have Taste Receptors In Your Lungs 223

Posted by Soulskill from the not-the-rest-of-us,-just-you dept.
timothy points out news of a study from the University of Maryland's School of Medicine that found bitter taste receptors on the smooth muscle lining airways in the lungs (abstract in Nature). Quoting: "The taste receptors in the lungs are the same as those on the tongue. The tongue’s receptors are clustered in taste buds, which send signals to the brain. The researchers say that in the lung, the taste receptors are not clustered in buds and do not send signals to the brain, yet they respond to substances that have a bitter taste. ... 'I initially thought the bitter-taste receptors in the lungs would prompt a "fight or flight" response to a noxious inhalant, causing chest tightness and coughing so you would leave the toxic environment, but that’s not what we found,' says Dr. Liggett. ... The researchers tested a few standard bitter substances known to activate these receptors. 'It turns out that the bitter compounds worked the opposite way from what we thought. They all opened the airway more extensively than any known drug that we have for treatment of asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).'"
IT

Submission + - 7 Programming Languages On The Rise (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner reports on once niche programming languages gaining mind share among enterprise developers for their unique abilities to provide solutions to increasingly common problems. From Python to R to Erlang, each is being increasingly viewed as an essential tool for prototyping on the Web, hacking big data sets, providing quick predictive modeling, powering NoSQL experiments, and unlocking the massive parallelism of today's GPUs."

Submission + - iOS Security - locked screen easily eploited

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Note that if you have an iPhone and it is "locked" with a passcode — there's a security flaw within iOS. To demonstrate — press "Emergency Call" when locked and then enter some digits — (not 911!). After you hit the call button — click the lock button immediately. You can now see all contacts and their info. You can listen to all your voicemail. You can even make calls to any number.
-Craig Brockman
Mozilla

Submission + - Why Mozilla needs to pick a new fight Read more: (pcpro.co.uk) 2

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: Mozilla has succeeded in improving the browser world, and its rivals have outstripped it in terms of features. So what's the point of Firefox, then, wonders Stuart Turton. He suggests it could turn its community of developers to better use than battling it out for broswer market share. "I think Mozilla has a lot more to offer as a kind of roaming software troublemaker. The company has already proven itself brilliant at pulling a community together, offering it direction and spurring innovation in a lifeless market. Now that browsers are healthy, wouldn’t it be brilliant if Mozilla started a ruck elsewhere?" And where better to start than the stagnant office suite arena: "Imagine if Mozilla decided tomorrow to build an office suite. Imagine all those ideas. Imagine how brilliant that could be. Just imagine. Now imagine Firefox 4. Honestly, which one of those are you most excited by?"

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