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Comment Re:IE6 comes with XP, IE8 with Win7 (Score 1) 422

by Max Littlemore (#30508924) Attached to: Firefox 3.5 Now the Most Popular Browser Worldwide

For what it's worth, I work for one of the state govt's of Australia and one of our departments has just switched from Win2k to XP :/ so I'm guessing we won't be moving to Windows 7 for at least 2 years.

Care to name the state and department? If it's the state I live in, I'd like to write a letter about this to my member. In fact that's so outrageous I might even get around to writing a letter to someone from Parliament.

Submission + - Alternate 2009 Copyright Expirations

Submitted by jrincayc
jrincayc writes: It's nearly the end of 2009. If the 1790 copyright maximum term of 28 years was still around, everything that had been published by 1981 would be now be public domain, so the original Ultima and God Emperor of Dune and would now be public domain. If the 1909 copyright maximum term of 56 years (if renewed) still existed, everything that was published by 1953 would now be public domain, freeing The City and the Stars and Forbidden Planet. If the 1976 copyright act term of 75* years (* it is more complicated) still existed, everything published by 1934 would now be public domain including Murder on the Orient Express. But thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act nothing in the US will have it's copyright term expire until 1923 works expire in 2018.
Security

Submission + - ICCS 2010: A Global Solution to Cyber Threats (fordham.edu) 1

Submitted by dyous87
dyous87 writes: Last year more than 500 professionals from 40 countries around the world met at the International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 to discuss the worlds greatest emerging cyber threats. This August 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Fordham University will partner again to host the 2nd annual International Conference on Cyber Security.

Submission + - How to get songs and videos from iTunes, iPod, iPh (dvd-video-converters.com)

Submitted by housepeng
housepeng writes: ml_iPod is a Winamp plugin that enables music to be loaded onto and off of an Apple iPod without using iTunes via Winamp's Media Library. One of the main attractions of the plugin is being able to transfer files from the iPod to your computer which is not possible with Apple's iTunes software. Winamp's newest iPod plug-in can indeed copy files from iPhone in Windows without jailbreaking. It also supports Creative Zen and PlaysForSure certified devices.
Download and install Winamp if you haven't yet. And then use it to get songs, pictures and videos from iPod, iPhone to Windows PC.
Earth

Submission + - Is Black Soot Melting the Himalayas?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Himalayas, home to some 110 peaks that stretch along 1,550 miles of Asia and harbor 10,000 glaciers, is the main source of replenishment to lakes, streams and some of the continent's mightiest rivers, on which millions of people depend for their water supplies. Since the 1960s, the acreage covered by Himalayan glaciers has declined by more than 20 percent with a rate of warming twice the global average over the past 30 years. Now Live Science reports that tiny particles of pollution known as "black carbon" — and not heat-trapping greenhouse gases — may be causing most of the rapid melting of glaciers in the Himalayas. "Tibet's glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate," says James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. "Black soot is probably responsible for as much as half of the glacial melt, and greenhouse gases are responsible for the rest." The circulation of the atmosphere in the region causes much of the soot-laden air to "pile up" against the Himalayas. The soot mixes with other dust from nearby deserts, creating a massive brown cloud visible from space that absorbs incoming solar radiation. As this layer heats up in the Himalayan foothills, it rises and enhances the seasonal northward flow of humid monsoon winds, forcing moisture and hot air up the slopes of the majestic mountain range. Jeffrey Kargel of the University of Arizona, Tucson, says that the role of soot "adds a new wrinkle" to the story of glacier melting, but that in the big picture of climate change the main villains are still gases such as CO2. "I do want to make sure we keep our eyes on the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and that's greenhouse gases," he said."
Networking

Submission + - When Is enough bandwidth at home enough? 1

Submitted by Dubbel
Dubbel writes: In 1993, I was in College and took advantage of a dial up \ SLIP account for internet access from home which my university made available to all students with shell accounts. It was a blazing 14.4Kbps connection. As internet usage increased and I began to get busy signals more often that not, I took advantage of a student discount at a local ISP and got a dial up 33.6 Kbps "Unlimited" PPP service for the princely sum of $40 a month...a significant portion of my net worth at the time. At that point in internet history, online services such as Prodigy and Compuserve were charging by the minute for World Wide Web access which was outside of the content they hosted and this still didn't give you access to the full breadth and depth of what the internet had to offer. I had 1 friend whom I considered to be filthy rich who had a dual channel 128Kbps ISDN line. As soon as broadband became available, I was the first person I new to get it. First it was 1 MBps, then 1.5, then 3 and currently I subscribe to a 6 Mbps DSL service all the while never really exceeding the $40 a month price barrier (now after service bundle discounts and prior to the addition of taxes). Now my ISP is offering their new VDSL internet, TV, & IP telephony service in my area which tops out at a staggering 18 Mbps for around $65 a month which is separate from the bandwidth available for telephony & TV. For the first time ever, I find myself asking....do I really need more bandwidth? Am I ludicrous for asking this question? How many others in the Slashdot community have found their personal broadband saturation point to be beneath fastest service available separate from personal financial constraints?

Submission + - 'Killing in the Name' UK No. 1 thanks to Facebook (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Josh04
Josh04 writes: Due to a 900,000+ Facebook campaign, 90's rap metal group Rage Against the Machine are this year's Christmas number 1, beating out Simon Cowell's X-Factor contestant Joe McElderry to the top spot, making 'Killing in the Name' the first ever UK download-only Christmas number 1. The popular 90's rock song had support from celebrities and the BBC, who got in trouble earlier in the week for allowing five 'fucks' to slip through the censor on a live performance.

Comment One More Time (Score 2, Interesting) 306

by fm6 (#30502036) Attached to: Carriers, Manufacturers Are Strangling Android

Somebody please explain to me why Android matters. What does it have that all the other phone OSs don't? Better APIs? Nicer SDK? I imagine a lot of geeks like the idea of owning a hackable phone, but that's not enough by itself.

Whenever I ask this question, I get answers that only address issues with the iPhone, like the fact that nobody tells you what software you can run on it. Please recall that there are a lot of phone OSs out there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mobile_phone_operating_systems

Comment Re:Consider the future (Score 1) 278

by eyeverve (#30502022) Attached to: Firefox Mobile Threatens Mobile App Stores, Says Mozilla
I agree with your statement. I don't think native apps will go away, but I do think they will be the minority. I use an Android powered phone and the apps I use 95% of the time require that data be pulled from the cloud for some reason or another. Once web apps are allowed to interact more heavily with mobile device and connectivity speed increases, apps that use cloud data will most likely just shift to being web based.

Comment Re:Why do I get (Score 4, Insightful) 108

by Korin43 (#30501896) Attached to: Library Groups Ask DOJ To Oversee Google Books
But in this case they will have a monopoly simply because no one else has bothered to do what they're planning to do. Why should they be punished for being the only ones who want to digitize everything? I read constantly about how horrible it will be that Google will be the only ones doing this, but if people actually thought competition would help, there would already be a competitor.
Science

LHC Has First Collisions After Years of Waiting 324

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the no-black-holes-or-gateways-to-hell-yet dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Only four days after the first attempt to send a particle beam around the LHC, we have arrived at the point when all four experiments got their first real collisions from the machine. This was met by celebrations and champagne, as people have been waiting years and years for this moment. It is a testament to the engineering of the machine that collisions were reached already, so few days after restarting. The LHC had already demonstrated ca 10h stable beams, and now also stable beams in both directions at the same time. In the coming weeks, we need only wait for increased intensity and the first attempts at acceleration."
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: NASA takes ice hunt Earth-bound

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: While NASA is crashing into the moon to look for ice, it's also looking for the frozen stuff here on Earth, only in a much more conventional way. The space agency said on Oct. 15 it will start a series of 17 flights to study changes to Antarctica's sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. The flights are part of what NASA calls Operation Ice Bridge, a six-year project that is the largest airborne survey ever made of ice at Earth's polar regions. Researchers will work from NASA's DC-8, an airborne laboratory equipped with laser mapping instruments, ice-penetrating radar and gravity instruments. Data collected from the mission will help scientists better predict how changes to the massive Antarctic ice sheet will contribute to future sea level rise around the world, NASA stated.
[spam URL stripped]
Link to Original Source
Patents

Submission + - Imports of Toyota Prius May Be Banned (bloomberg.com) 1

Submitted by JynxMe
JynxMe writes: Paice, a tiny Florida company that has patented a way to apply force to a car's wheels from the electric motor or the internal combustion engine.

Paice thinks that Toyota (TM) is infringing on its technology, and is going after the automaker in court. The legal spat became much more serious for Toyota this week, when the U.S. International Trade Commission decided to investigate the matter. In the worst-case scenario for Toyota, the commission could ban the hybrid Camry, third-generation Prius, Lexus HS250h sedan and Lexus RX450h SUV.

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