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Submission + - The burden of intellectual property rights on clean-energy technologies (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: If climate change is to be addressed effectively in the long run, nations of all descriptions must pursue mitigation and adaptation strategies. But poor countries face a potential hurdle when it comes to clean-energy technologies—most of the relevant intellectual property is held in the rich world. Many observers argue that it's unfair and unrealistic to expect massive energy transformations in the developing world unless special allowances are made. Yet intellectual property rights are intended in part to spur the very innovation on which climate mitigation depends. This article is the first post in a roundtable that debates this question: In developing countries, how great an impediment to the growth of low-carbon energy systems does the global intellectual property rights regime represent, and how could the burdens for poor countries be reduced?

Submission + - Could fossils of ancient life from Earth reside on the Moon? (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: Does the moon contain fossils of billions of years old organisms from Earth? That theory has been laid out in recent research at the Imperial College of London, reported in a story in Air and Space Magazine by Dr. Paul Spudis, a lunar and planetary geologist. The implications for science and future lunar exploration are profound.

Submission + - Samsung's Portable SSD T1 Tested, Super-Fast Solid State External Storage (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The bulk of today’s high-capacity external storage devices still rely on mechanical hard disk drives with spinning media and other delicate parts. Solid state drives are much faster and less susceptible to damage from vibration, of course. That being the case, Samsung saw an opportunity to capitalize on a market segment that hasn't seen enough development it seems--external SSDs. There are already external storage devices that use full-sized SSDs, but Samsung's new Portable SSD T1 is more akin to a thumb drive, only a little wider and typically much faster. Utilizing Samsung's 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology and a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface, the Portable SSD T1 redlines at up to 450MB/s when reading or writing data sequentially, claims Samsung. For random read and write activities, Samsung rates the drive at up to 8,000 IOPS and 21,000 IOPS, respectively. Pricing is more in-line with high-performance standalone SSDs, with this 1TB model reviewed here arriving at about $579. In testing, the drive did live up to its performance and bandwidth claims as well.

Submission + - Java vs. Node.js: Epic Battle For Dev Mindshare

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: While it may have been unthinkable 20 years ago, Java and JavaScript are now locked in a battle of sorts for control of the programming world. InfoWorld's Peter Wayner examines where the old-school compiler-driven world of Java hold its ground and where the speed and flexibility of Node.js gives JavaScript on the server the nod. 'In the history of computing, 1995 was a crazy time. First Java appeared, then close on its heels came JavaScript. The names made them seem like conjoined twins newly detached, but they couldn't be more different. One of them compiled and statically typed; the other interpreted and dynamically typed. That's only the beginning of the technical differences between these two wildly distinct languages that have since shifted onto a collision course of sorts, thanks to Node.js.'

Comment Leaving Law Enforcement A Way In (Score 2) 220

by jdschulteis (#49077815) Attached to: Obama Says He's 'A Strong Believer In Strong Encryption'

Dear Mr. President,

Back in 1997 a group of leading experts wrote a paper about "leaving law enforcement a way in". From that paper's Executive Summary:

The deployment of key-recovery-based encryption infrastructures to meet law enforcement's stated specifications will result in substantial sacrifices in security and greatly increased costs to the end user. Building the secure computer-communication infrastructures necessary to provide adequate technological underpinnings demanded by these requirements would be enormously complex and is far beyond the experience and current competency of the field. Even if such infrastructures could be built, the risks and costs of such an operating environment may ultimately prove unacceptable. In addition, these infrastructures would generally require extraordinary levels of human trustworthiness.

Submission + - Holder Considering Forcing Gun Owners To Wear Tracking Bracelets (downtrend.com) 1

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: The Attorney General told a House subcommittee they’re considering “gun-tracking bracelets” as a “common sense” way to reduce gun violence.

Eric Holder said the Obama Administration is looking at several technological innovations to reduce the number of stolen guns being used in crime.

“I think that one of the things that we learned when we were trying to get passed those common sense reforms last year, Vice President Biden and I had a meeting with a group of technology people and we talked about how guns can be made more safe,” he said.

“By making them either through finger print identification, the gun talks to a bracelet or something that you might wear, how guns can be used only by the person who is lawfully in possession of the weapon.”

“It’s those kinds of things that I think we want to try to explore so that we can make sure that people have the ability to enjoy their Second Amendment rights, but at the same time decreasing the misuse of weapons that lead to the kinds of things that we see on a daily basis,” Holder said.

Comment Re:GOTO is a crutch for bad programmers (Score 1) 677

by jdschulteis (#49040411) Attached to: Empirical Study On How C Devs Use Goto In Practice Says "Not Harmful"
// You mean like this?
// I don't mind it, but I have worked with people who would hate this style.
void func3() {
    if (AcquireResource3()) {
        DoStuffWithResources();
        Cleanup3();
    }
}
void func2() {
    if (AcquireResource2()) {
        func3();
        Cleanup2();
    }
}
void func() {
    if (AcquireResource1()) {
        func2();
        Cleanup1();
    }
}

Submission + - Samsung: WHAT is my SmartTV reporting? To whom? 14

Submitted by NetAlien
NetAlien writes: Being curious about the recent Samsung SmartTV stories, I connected my SmartTV through an old-fashioned HUB (copies all traffic to every port; unlike a switch) to my router. This allowed me to capture all traffic to/from my TV through my laptop's ethernet port. A wireshark capture shows that remote sites are trying to access my TV until I turn it on, then after nearly 7400 packets, it settles down. Then changing channels over ~4.5 minutes results in ~10,000 more packets. The TV continues sending data for several more seconds after the set appears to be off. Multiple servers were contacted in these domains: amazonaws.com, akamaitechnologies.com, cloudfront.net, twitvid.com, pcloud.com, yahoo.com, aclwireless25.com and some by IP address. WHAT are you sharing Samsung???

Comment Re:GOTO is a crutch for bad programmers (Score 1) 677

by jdschulteis (#49040201) Attached to: Empirical Study On How C Devs Use Goto In Practice Says "Not Harmful"
// I wouldn't go so far as to claim this is "better" than the goto version.
// Especially since "goto cleanup" is a well-known idiom.
// However, I do think this reads quite naturally.
void func() {
    bool hasResource1, hasResource2, hasResource3;
    hasResource1 = AcquireResource1();
    if (hasResource1) {hasResource2 = AcquireResource2();}
    if (hasResource1 && hasResource2) {hasResource3 = AcquireResource3();}
    if (hasResource1 && hasResource2 && hasResource3) {
        DoStuffWithResources();
    }
    if (hasResource3) {Cleanup3();}
    if (hasResource2) {Cleanup2();}
    if (hasResource1) {Cleanup1();}
    return;
}

Submission + - Peak Google: The Company's Time at the Top May Be Nearing Its End

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Farhad Manjoo writes at the NYT that at first glance Google looks plenty healthy, but growth in Google’s primary business, search advertising, has flattened out at about 20 percent a year for the last few years and although Google has spent considerable resources inventing technologies for the future, it has failed to turn many of its innovations into new moneymakers. According to Manjoo as smartphones eclipse laptop and desktop computers to become the planet’s most important computing devices, the digital ad business is rapidly changing and Facebook, Google’s archrival for advertising dollars, has been quick to profit from the shift. Here’s why: The advertising business is split, roughly, into two. On one side are direct-response ads meant to induce an immediate purchase: Think classifieds, the Yellow Pages, catalogs or Google's own text-based ads running alongside its search results. But the bulk of the ad industry is devoted to something called brand ads, the ads you see on television and print magazines that work on your emotions in the belief that, in time, your dollars will follow. “Google doesn’t create immersive experiences that you get lost in,” says Ben Thompson. “Google creates transactional services. You go to Google to search, or for maps, or with something else in mind. And those are the types of ads they have. But brand advertising isn’t about that kind of destination. It’s about an experience.” According to Thompson the future of online advertising looks increasingly like the business of television and is likely to be dominated by services like Facebook, Snapchat or Pinterest that keep people engaged for long periods of time and whose ads are proving to be massively more effective and engaging than banner advertisements.

In less than five years, Facebook has also built an enviable ad-technology infrastructure, a huge sales team that aims to persuade marketers of the benefits of Facebook ads over TV ads, and new ways for brands to measure how well their ads are doing. These efforts have paid off quickly: In 2014 Facebook sold $11.5 billion in ads, up 65 percent over 2013. Google will still make a lot of money if it doesn’t dominate online ads the way it does now. But it will need to find other businesses to keep growing. This is why Google is spending on projects like a self-driving car, Google Glass, fiber-optic lines in American cities, space exploration, and other audacious innovations that have a slim chance of succeeding but might revolutionize the world if they do. But the far-out projects remind Thompson of Microsoft, which has also invested heavily in research and development, and has seen little return on its investments. “To me the Microsoft comparison can’t be more clear. This is the price of being so successful — what you’re seeing is that when a company becomes dominant, its dominance precludes it from dominating the next thing. It’s almost like a natural law of business.”

Comment Re:Animal, not plant (Score 3, Insightful) 68

by jdschulteis (#49034977) Attached to: Converting Sunlight Into Liquid Fuel With a Bionic Leaf

If it is so good, why not just store the hydrogen for fuel? Wouldn't it be cheaper/easier to skip the last steps?

Hydrogen is difficult to store in a lightweight, compact system. One good way to store hydrogen is to chemically combine it with carbon and oxygen and put the resulting liquid in tanks at ordinary temperatures and pressures.

Comment Re:Animal, not plant (Score 1) 68

by jdschulteis (#49034909) Attached to: Converting Sunlight Into Liquid Fuel With a Bionic Leaf

If they have a more efficient process with simpler (cheaper) inputs, kudos to them. But this ain't no artificial leaf.

It's a two-step process.The artificial leaf step uses sunlight to split water. The second step has bacteria combine the resulting hydrogen with carbon dioxide to produce isopropanol. Rather different from the time-tested use of yeast to convert sugars into ethanol.

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