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Handhelds

Is the Quick Death of Failed Tech Products a Good Thing? 181

Posted by Soulskill from the first-impressions-are-everything dept.
Joining the ranks of accepted submitters, HumanEmulator writes "The NY Times reports on how the Hollywood summer-movie business model is being applied to tech products: 'Every release needs to be a blockbuster, and the only measure of success is the opening-weekend gross. There is little to no room for the sleeper indie hit that builds good word of mouth to become a solid performer over time.' New products are being pulled from shelves only weeks after a lackluster release. What if the TouchPad, the Microsoft Kin, or even Google Wave had had more time on the market? Is this blockbuster-or-bust model a good thing for consumers, or for the industry in general?"
EU

EU Central Court Could Validate Software Patents 77

Posted by timothy from the we-have-come-seeking-rent dept.
protoshell writes "'Software patents in Europe could be validated with a central patent court,' warns Richard Stallman in an article published in the Guardian. After the rejection of the software patent directive in 2005, large companies have shifted their lobbying towards the validation of software patents in Europe through a central patent court, which is foreseen with the Unitary Patent project. Even if the European Patent Convention literally excludes software from patents, the European Patent Office and the German courts interpret the exclusion narrowly, which makes software patents valid in the end."
Security

Court Filing On How 2004 Ohio Election Hacked 504

Posted by CmdrTaco from the still-not-over-this-yet-eh dept.
chimpo13 writes "A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush."
AI

Computer Learns Language By Playing Games 133

Posted by Soulskill from the did-you-just-teach-computers-how-to-conquer-the-world dept.
Frans Faase writes "By basing its strategies on the text of a manual, a computer infers the meanings of words without human supervision. The paper Learning to Win by Reading Manuals in a Monte-Carlo Framework (PDF) explains how a computer program succeeds in playing Civilization II using the official game manual as a strategy guide. This manual uses a large vocabulary of 3638 words, and is composed of 2083 sentences, each on average 16.9 words long. By this the program improves it success rate from 45% to 78% in playing the game. No prior knowledge of the language is used."
Television

Apple To Start Making TVs? 313

Posted by samzenpus from the I-want-my-iTV dept.
timothy writes "Apple might want to sell you your next TV,' says this CNN report. Which makes a lot of sense, considering that Apple's razors-and-blades, vertical-marketplace model for iTunes (and the various iDevices) doesn't make as much sense with the world of TV, where your Sony, Samsung, or (egads!) Westinghouse set is just as happy with a Google TV box, or a Roku, or one of many other media devices, as it is with an Apple TV attached."
Supercomputing

Japan's 8-petaflop K Computer Is Fastest On Earth 179

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-can-it-run-doom dept.
Stoobalou writes "An eight-petaflop Japanese supercomputer has grabbed the title of fastest computer on earth in the new Top 500 Supercomputing List to be officially unveiled at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg today. The K Computer is based at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, and smashes the previous supercomputing records with a processing power of more than 8 petaflop/s (quadrillion calculations per second) — three times that of its nearest rival."
Open Source

Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project 250

Posted by CmdrTaco from the draw-your-swords dept.
Meskarune writes "Dropbox is trying to kill the Dropship project, a useful program that allows users to import files into their accounts using hashes and bypassing the need to make files public. Dropbox sent out fake DMCA requests to all parties involved, and is banning and censoring the program."
NASA

NASA Looking To Build 'Gas' Stations In Space 201

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hope-they-have-pay-at-pump dept.
coondoggie writes "Fuel is a major issue when it comes to long-duration spaceflights — its weight is a problem for launch and once a spacecraft runs out of fuel there's no place to get more. That's where in-space 'gas' stations located at strategic spots along a route would be a boon to spaceflight. Which is exactly what NASA is looking to do by beginning to solicit proposals for what it calls an In-Space Cryogenic Propellant Storage and Transfer Demonstration that will lay the groundwork for humans to safely reach multiple destinations, including the Moon, asteroids, Lagrange points and Mars."

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