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Android

Submission + - Why You Can't Build Your Own Smarthphone: Patents (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "In the mid-00s, more and more people started learning about Android, a Linux-based smartphone OS. Open source advocates in particular thought they could be seeing the mobile equivalent of Linux — something you could download, tinker with, and sell. Today, though, the Android market is dominated by Google and the usual suspects in the handset business. The reason nobody's been able to launch an Android empire from the garage is fairly straightforward: the average smartphone is covered by over 250,000 patents."
Firefox

Submission + - Happy 8th Birthday Firefox! (benjaminkerensa.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mozillian Benjamin Kerensa calls fellow Firefox Users and Mozillians to Celebrate Firefox's 8th Birthday.

Comment Re:Oh Please! (Score 2) 150

by menno_h (#41898621) Attached to: Gate One 1.1 Released: Run Vim In Your Browser

The editor wars came to a standstill in the 90's! Why did you have to break the ceasefire?
But if we're flaming anyway, I would like to remind you that Emacs Makes Any Computer Slow and that it is a very nice operating system; it just lacks a text editor (but it's still infinitely better than nano or pico or notepad).

And real men use ed!
Businesses

Submission + - Apple Said to Be Exploring Switch From Intel for Mac (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "Apple Inc. (AAPL) is exploring ways to replace Intel Corp. (INTC) processors in its Mac personal computers with a version of the chip technology it uses in the iPhone and iPad, according to people familiar with the company’s research.

Apple engineers have grown confident that the chip designs used for its mobile devices will one day be powerful enough to run its desktops and laptops, said three people with knowledge of the work, who asked to remain anonymous because the plans are confidential. Apple began using Intel chips for Macs in 2005."
Security

Submission + - Electronic Voting Data Security in Ohio (freepress.org)

Submitted by jvaigl
jvaigl writes: The news about an uncertified software update in almost half of Ohio's counties is making the rounds. The scariest part isn't that software was modified under a contract where assumption #1 was that the legally required certification was not to be performed. It's that the contract calls for this standalone program (running on the computer in each county used to upload the data to the state computer) to modify the output format from XML to .CSV. Yes, in Ohio, we're storing the tabulated results from each county in a plain text ascii file on a Windows computer before someone clicks the upload button. Anyone who knows enough to fire up notepad can edit which ever results they want in any race they choose, apparently. See the last couple pages in the contract for the data format. Who says we don't need federal standards for data interchange and system security in voting software?
Supercomputing

Submission + - how we built a supercomputer in 24hrs (youtube.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Time lapse video of students and postdocs at the University of Zurich constructing the zBox4 supercomputer. The machine has a theoretical compute capacity of ~1% of the human brain and will be used for simulating the formation of stars, planets and galaxies.
Security

Submission + - Building the Ultimate Safe House

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Candace Jackson writes that an increasing number of home builders and buyers are looking for a new kind of security: homes equipped to handle everything from hurricanes, tornados and hybrid superstorms like this week's Sandy, to man-made threats ranging from home invasion to nuclear war and fueling the rise of these often-fortresslike homes are new technologies and building materials—which builders say will ultimately be used on a more widespread basis in storm- and earthquake-threatened areas. For example, Alys Beach, a 158-acre luxury seaside community on Florida's Gulf Coast, have earned the designation of Fortified...for safer living® homes and are designed to withstand strong winds. The roofs have two coats of limestone and exterior walls have 8 inches of concrete, reinforced every 32 inches for "bunkerlike" safety, according to marketing materials. Other builders are producing highly hurricane-proof residences that are circular in shape with "radial engineering" wherein roof and floor trusses link back to the home's center like spokes on a wheel, helping to dissipate gale forces around the structure with Deltec, a North Carolina–based builder, saying it has never lost a circular home to hurricanes in over 40 years of construction. But Doug Buck says some "extreme" building techniques don't make financial sense. "You get to a point of diminishing returns," says Buck. "You're going to spend so much that honestly, it would make more sense to let it blow down and rebuild it.""
Open Source

Submission + - Navigating the Vast Ocean of Open Source (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "Open source is no longer relegated to the discount software vendor that serves cash strapped startups. In enterprise software development these days, open source is not only immensely valuable, but increasingly crucial to stay competitive in releasing high quality software at regular intervals in a world where technology is changing so fast and every edge matters.

Today, rolling your own logging package instead of using something like log4j is as silly as trying to build your own web server instead of using Apache httpd was 10 years ago. Still, there are other components like guava that are less well known, but are currently making a name for themselves as libraries that can take the solution you are building to the next level of sophistication and quality. Just knowing they exist—and knowing where they fit—can help you design and build better software at a lower cost.

In addition to conducting a traditional build versus buy analysis, it’s critical to think about the maintenance and support story surrounding an open source package. Here are some things to consider and questions to ponder."
Mars

Submission + - NASA Planetary Science Budget Cuts Sparks New Humans vs. Robots Debate (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "The recent budget cuts imposed by the Obama administration in NASA's planetary science budget has sparked a new humans vs. robots debate, but with a twist. Some are now suggesting, since humans make better field geologists than robots, that a robotic sample return mission should be bypassed entirely in favor of a human Mars mission"
NASA

Submission + - NASA shifts vital computer tasks onboard long-running Mars Odyssey satellite (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "After 11 years, NASA scientists running the Mars Odyssey Orbiter have decided to switch the machine's redundant computing functions from one side to the other in an attempt to keep the technology serviceable as possible. Odyssey, which spends its time performing a number of science functions like taking close-up shots of the Red Planet and relaying information from the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers operating on the surface of the planet, has redundant systems — side A and side B, NASA says."

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