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Science

Submission + - Great video of Aurora Borealis from helium balloons (vimeo.com)

__aaqpaq9254 writes: Wonderful Vimeo video. Here's the summary: From the site: This timelapse video contains the first-ever photos from alongside the edge of the Northern Lights, aka. the Aurora Borealis.
Captured at 100,000 feet using a modified GoPro HD Hero2 camera attached to a carbon fiber frame, this homemade spacecraft reached altitude using a helium weather balloon and also hosted other scientific instruments used to measure features of the Aurora. According to the project leader, Ben Longmier, "We were measuring the plasma particle density at an altitude of 30 km, where the particle density is enhanced due to the presence of the aurora and high energy electrons streaming down into the magnetosphere."
[Note: it also may feature the first-ever footage of the Northern Lights scored without the use of classical music. We're breaking all kinds of firsts, here.]

Comment Is it LodeSys, Apple or Memorex!? (Score 1) 244

Regarding 3rd party In-App purchases for apple iOS apps, I would consider whether the patent covers Apple's iOS framework for In-App purchases through the App Store. It would behoove Apple to apply for a patent this software process, in order to prevent a third party from patenting the process / technology and leeching money from Apple's App store commerce, whether LodeSys's patent applies here is controversial. There are rumors that the Justice department is investigating LodeSys's actions on the basis of whether they violate RICO laws, and we will have wait and see, whether Justice takes any action in the future.

I would remind people that the Patent office issuing a patent for some collection of claims, does not mean that patent can't be overturned in court.

Also, I would remind Open Source Software programmers, that IP law with software patents and trademarks will always pose barriers and hurdles to take in mind. As the software market matures, the software industry is beginning to resemble the pharmaceutical industry, where brand-name drugs have a legal monopoly for the that country for the remaining life of the patent, after which generic drugs can be introduced in a regulated fashion. Until the Intellectual property law principles of software patents are restricted or clarified, the company with the biggest legal staff has the bigger stick.

One would support furthers efforts by the EFF, ACM and other independent groups to support efforts like the ACLU to help the little guy / company toe the IP law line, and survive.

Comment As awesome in person, as you might expect (Score 1) 1613

It is regrettable that Steve Jobs has died. He was remarkable person to meet in person as well as experience through the media. I expect that much will be written about him the days ahead. However, there is no doubt he changed the world as we know it. Like him or not, he could not be ignored or underestimated. Take Care and be well!

Comment Look up stare decisis (Score 2) 84

The problem with the patent law in the Federal Court of Eastern Texas cannot just solved with a democratic vote, because the law is not entirely democratic, but depends previous legal precedents in that jurisdiction. Even if there is legal reform, the reform does not overturn previous legal precedents retroactively. One must understand that federal civil litigation is quite different from criminal procedure. Intellectual property law depends as much on property law and common law for the judges interpretation. It does not really matter what judges say in NYC, San Francisco or Chicago, since they are in different federal jurisdictions. Only the Supreme Court of The USA can overturn such cases on valid appeals. Even if congress passes a new patent law, it only solves things going forward in time, not necessarily retroactively.
Lodsys though seems very well funded financially, and I would not be surprised if there was some indirect connection to Microsoft. It seems too common for coincidence that Microsoft's competitors fall prey to messy lawsuits, whether it be Apple, Linux distribution companies or IT companies. Not that I have hard evidence, but that has been MS's MO back in the 90's when Apple was staggering around without Steve Job's leadership.

Nonetheless, Apple does not want to stand by and watch their iOS market's being damaged, and Google and other mobile systems might be subject to litigation. However, I have not heard of any suits against Microsoft and their allied developers. Only time will tell.

Comment Behind the explosion - flammable dust ignited (Score 1) 199

Preliminary reports from m.i.c. gadget (an off-shore China news site, which is not subject to China goverment. censorship) say that the explosion occurred in a part of the assembly line, where the workers use a flammable dust to polish iPad screens. It is believed that a worker, who was smoking a cigarette in a prohibited area, caused the explosion. Access to the building is limited right now until the risk of secondary explosions can be minimized.
See this local article at fortune.com
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/21/inside-the-apple-ipad-factory/

Pretty obvious what happaned. Safety standards for the operating assembly line will need to be reviewed and enforced. As for the impact on iPad2 output remains to be seen, but preliminary reports at the Apple store speculate that wait times for iPad2 may go up 1-2 weeks. Since most of the iPad2 manufacturing was based in Chengdu, one will have to see what subsequent effect this explosion will have on manufacturing capacity.

Education

Submission + - Textbook references Wikipedia

Black Parrot writes: Not as a source, but as a destination. From the third edition (December 2009) of Russell & Norvig's popular AI textbook: 'The Encyclopedia of AI (Shapiro, 1992) contains survey articles on almost every topic in AI, as does Wikipedia. These Articles usually provide a good entry point into the research literature on each topic.' Has Wikipedia passed a milestone of respectability?
Government

Bill To Ban All Salt In Restaurant Cooking 794

lord_rotorooter writes "Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill that would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them. The measure (if passed) would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of food for all restaurants or bakeries. While the use of too much salt can contribute to health problems, the complete banning of salt would have negative impacts on food chemistry. Not only does salt enhance flavor, it controls bacteria, slows yeast activity and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. Salt also inhibits the growth of microbes that spoil cheese."
PlayStation (Games)

PS3 Hacked? 296

Several readers have sent word that George Hotz (a.k.a. geohot), the hacker best known for unlocking Apple's iPhone, says he has now hacked the PlayStation 3. From his blog post: "I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip. 3 years, 2 months, 11 days...that's a pretty secure system. ... As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG."
Programming

Submission + - iPhone Development Reality Show - online live (commandguru.com)

MacTechnic writes: MacTechnic writes "So what iPhone Developers do when the weather gets cold? They go to the BigRock Headquarters outside Venice, Italy and produce their own programming reality show. Aaron Hillegass from BigNerdRanch has lead a team of ten intrepid programmers, who are working this week to develop a social networking application, later hopefully to be offered through the iphone App store, and later perhaps another version through Android. All the events can be viewed live via streaming video this week at http://www.commandguru.com./ The source code for the application is available at the subversion repository http://commandguru.svn.beanstalkapp.com/wikimeety/

Events are scheduled on local time for Rome, Italy, i.e. GMT + 1, and thus are best available for insomniacs in the USA, but a compilation documentary should be available later on. No elimination of contestants occur during the event, but there are a lot of design and coding tips for iphone developers."

Submission + - iPhone Realty Show online live streaming (biocompta.com) 1

MacTechnic writes: So what iPhone Developers do when the weather gets cold? They go to the BigRock Headquarters outside Venice, Italy and start their own programming reality show. Aaron Hillegass from BigNerdRanch has lead a team of ten intrepid programmers, who are working this week to develop a social networking application, initially to be offered through the iphone App store, but later perhaps through Android. All the events can be viewed live via streaming video this week at http://www.commandguru.com./ The source code for the application is available at the subversion repository http://commandguru.svn.beanstalkapp.com/wikimeety/
Events are scheduled on local time for Rome, Italy, i.e. GMT + 1, and thus are best available for insomniacs in the USA, but a compilation documentary will be available later on. No elimination of contestants occur during the event, but there are a lot of design and coding tips for iphone developers.

Submission + - SPAM: Living with COPD

An anonymous reader writes: Besides, readjusting your lifestyle to control the disease,the most important thing you must do is inform your family.This can be a difficult task and it is hard to know how they will take the news until you tell them. But it’s something that has to be done both for you and for them.
Link to Original Source
Google

Submission + - Is it time to regulate Google?

pcause writes: The Official Google Blog announces that Google will now offer "personalized" search results based on your last 180 days of queries EVEN IF YOU AREN"T LOGGED IN . This is just confirmation that Google is tracking you, even when you aren't logged in, and that it keeps at LEAST 6 months of history. We know from the event where AOL released data to search researchers that 6 months of data is enough to identify an individual despite the supposedly anonymous cookie.

Yes you can opt out of the personalization, but does that mean Google isn't still collecting data about you? I doubt it. Google has always invaded your privacy by tracking you, but they are now admitting it. There'd be huge flames here on /. if the government was doing this. Google is no more trustworthy than the government as they do all this to make money and are totally unaccountable.

Is it time to regulate Google?

Comment FreeBSD and GCD (Score 3, Interesting) 191

Although I don't expect Apple to release an Apple Server edition with a Tilera multicore processor, I would be interested to see a version of FreeBSD running with Grand Central Dispatch on a Tilera multicore chip. It would give a good idea of how effective GCD would be in allocating cores for execution. Any machine with 100 cores must have a considerable amount of RAM, perhap 8GB+, even with large caches.

Apple has been very active in developing LLVM compilers, and has recently added CLANG front end, instead of GCC. I don't think apple has open sourced all their work yet, but check llvm.org for the current details. The real trick is breaking any algorithm into blocks. Using OpenCL to organize your code for execution. I mean how different is a 100 core multi-CPU chip from a multicore GPU accellerator!

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