Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Samsung Galaxy Alpha: An iPhone 6 killer? (gizmorati.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Samsung Galaxy Alpha and Apple iPhone 6 are going to set the mobile markets on fire in 2014.

Read the original articles to see detailed comparison about Display, Materials, Size and Weight, Battery Life, Power.

Comment Where are my designated initializers? (Score 3, Insightful) 193

It's just pathetic that so many years down the road the committee can't get its act together to provide this much loved C99 feature at least for POD. This is a major issue, if not the major issue) with porting C code. The word wanking comes to mind. Here, GCC guys really need to take the lead but it's starting to feel like GCC guys are actually holding back on it. It's not like the coding is a challenge.

Submission + - How patent trolls destroy innovation (vox.com)

walterbyrd writes: A new study by researchers at Harvard and the University of Texas provides some insight on this question. Drawing from data on litigation, R&D spending, and patent citations, the researchers find that firms that are forced to pay NPEs (either because they lost a lawsuit or settled out of court) dramatically reduce R&D spending: losing firms spent $211 million less on R&D, on average, than firms that won a lawsuit against a troll.

"After losing to NPEs, firms significantly reduce R&D spending — both projects inside the firm and acquiring innovative R&D outside the firm," the authors write. "Our evidence suggests that it really is the NPE litigation event that causes this decrease in innovation.

IOS

Xiaomi's Next OS Looks Strikingly Similar To iOS 181

stephendavion writes Looks like Chinese device maker, Xiaomi, is taking its "Apple of the East" tag too literally. First, their CEO brazenly copies Steve Jobs' signature look, sitting cross-legged on the floor. And now, Xiaomi's latest version of Android shamelessly rips off iOS 7. MIUI 6, which is Xiaomi's upcoming edition of Android for its latest phones and tablets, looks almost exactly like Apple's operating system for iPhones, iPads and the iPod Touch. It features the same bright color palette and a flat design. Heck, it even does away with Google's "app drawer" and puts all apps on your home screen. It's like the CEO handed iPhones to the design team and barked: "Here, copy this!"

Comment Re:artificial scarcity (Score 1) 81

we're the richest country in the history of the earth

No, we're in deeper debt than any society in history.

As I understand it, every great empire that ever was, was deeply in debt. After you get past that hand to mouth thing, how deep your are able to go into debt becomes the measure of your wealth. Another way of putting it: what would you rather have, the money or the stuff? Can you eat money? Sail on it? Marry it?

The Military

DARPA Uses Preteen Gamers To Beta Test Tomorrow's Military Software 84

Daniel_Stuckey writes with a story about an interesting (or, you might think, creepy) institution at the University of Washington's Seattle campus. It's the Center for Game Science, a research lab that makes educational video games for children, and that received the bulk of its funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the wing of the U.S. Department of Defense that supports research into experimental military technology. Why is DARPA the original primary funder of the CGS? According to written and recorded statements from current and former DARPA program managers, as well as other government documents, the DARPA-funded educational video games developed at the CGS have a purpose beyond the pretense of teaching elementary school children STEM skills.
Space

Entire South Korean Space Programme Shuts Down As Sole Astronaut Quits 186

An anonymous reader writes The entire South Korean space program has been forced to shut down after its only astronaut resigned for personal reasons. Yi So-yeon, 36, became the first Korean in space in 2008 after the engineer was chosen by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) to lead the country's $25m space project. Her resignation begs questions of KARI regarding whether she was the right person to lead the program and whether the huge cost of sending her into space was a waste of taxpayer's money.
AI

New Watson-Style AI Called Viv Seeks To Be the First 'Global Brain' 161

paysonwelch sends this report from Wired on the next generation of consumer AI: Google Now has a huge knowledge graph—you can ask questions like "Where was Abraham Lincoln born?" And it can name the city. You can also say, "What is the population?" of a city and it’ll bring up a chart and answer. But you cannot say, "What is the population of the city where Abraham Lincoln was born?" The system may have the data for both these components, but it has no ability to put them together, either to answer a query or to make a smart suggestion. Like Siri, it can’t do anything that coders haven’t explicitly programmed it to do. Viv breaks through those constraints by generating its own code on the fly, no programmers required. Take a complicated command like "Give me a flight to Dallas with a seat that Shaq could fit in." Viv will parse the sentence and then it will perform its best trick: automatically generating a quick, efficient program to link third-party sources of information together—say, Kayak, SeatGuru, and the NBA media guide—so it can identify available flights with lots of legroom.
Cellphones

Reversible Type-C USB Connector Ready For Production 191

orasio writes: One of the most frustrating first-world problems ever (trying to connect an upside-down Micro-USB connector) could disappear soon. The Type-C connector for USB has been declared ready for production by the USB Promoter Group (PDF). "With the Type-C spec finalized, it now comes down to the USB-IF to actually implement the sockets, plugs, cables, adapters, and devices. The problem is that there are billions of existing USB devices and cables that will need adapters and new cables to work with new Type-C devices. It’s a lot like when Apple released the Lightning connector, but on an even grander scale. Further exacerbating the issue is the fact that China, the EU, and the GSMA have all agreed that new mobile devices use Micro-USB for charging — though it might be as simple as including a Micro-USB-to-Type-C adapter with every new smartphone."

Slashdot Top Deals

On the eighth day, God created FORTRAN.

Working...