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Submission + - Why iOS 7 Is Making Some Users Feel "Sick" (theguardian.com) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The introduction of fake zooms, parallax, sliding and other changes in Apple's new iPhone and iPad software has a very real effect on people with vestibular disorders; Apple's new mobile operating system for the iPhone and iPad, iOS 7, is stark and minimal, yet dynamic. It makes frequent use of zoom and slide animations; the home screen boasts parallax, with icons apparently floating above subtly animating wallpaper. And it's making people sick. Triggers and symptoms vary, but TidePool mobile app developer Jenni Leder's experience is not uncommon. A self-professed power-user, she frequently switches apps; but on iOS 7, this has caused headaches and feelings associated with motion sickness. "I now have to close my eyes or cover the screen during transitions, which is ridiculous," she told The Guardian, adding that there's nowhere to hide: "It's not apps that affect me, but accessing them. Tap a folder and the view zooms in. Tap an app and it's like flying through the icon and landing in that app's micro world — and I'm getting dizzy on the journey there." Reactions to screen-based systems — especially those utilising 3D effects — aren't new. Cynthia Ryan, executive director of the Vestibular Disorders Association, says 3D effects can cause "intense nausea, dizziness and vertigo", sometimes from general vision problems, but also from visual-vestibular conflict. She added symptoms "manifest more severely if a viewer already has a disorder of the vestibular system".

Submission + - The Last GUADEC? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: How can we ensure, together, that this will not be the last GUADEC? Last year, during GUADEC, there was that running joke amongst some participants that this was the last GUADEC. It was, of course, a joke. Everybody was expecting to see each other in Brno, in 2013. One year later, most of those who were joking are not coming to GUADEC. For them, the joke became a reality.

People are increasingly leaving the desktop computer to use phones, tablets and services in the cloud. The switch is deeper and quicker than anything we imagined. Projects are also leaving GTK+ for QT. Unity abandoned GTK+, Linus Torvald's Subsurface is switching from GTK+ to Qt. If you spot a GNOME desktop in a conference, chances are that you are dealing with a Red Hat employee. That's it. According to Google Trends, interest in GNOME and GTK+ is soon to be extinct.

Submission + - Harvesting Electricity from Smokestacks (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The CO2-ridden plumes rising from industrial smokestacks and power plants may be warming the planet, but they could also be a new source of electrical power. Researchers have developed a two-stage process to harvest some of the chemical energy in carbon dioxide emissions, using a device called a capacitive electrochemical cell. Built roughly like a battery, the cell has two electrodes—one surrounded by a membrane that allows hydrogen ions to flow in and out, and the other that does the same with bicarbonate ions, produced when carbon dioxide is bubbled through water. By tapping into existing carbon dioxide emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants, industrial smokestacks, and residential heating worldwide, the new process could generate about 1570 terawatt-hours of power each year—about 400 times that produced by Hoover Dam, all without adding to global carbon dioxide emissions.

Submission + - Why Microsoft is on the brink of failure 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the 900 million dollar write off earlier this week and the 12% stock free fall on Friday, to say Microsoft had a rough month is an understatement.

Microsoft has some serious work to do and the lack of a strong retail presence and a bad price point for the Surface aren't helping. Microsoft needs to refocus on innovation and functionality and stop bashing Apple in commercials if it wants to survive.

Submission + - Fedora Project Considering Switch to Layered Design (fedoraproject.org)

Submitted by Karrde712
Karrde712 writes: Fedora Cloud Architect Matthew Miller announced today[1] a proposal on a plan to redesign the way that the Fedora Project builds its GNU/Linux distribution. Fedora has often been described as a "bag of bits", with thousands of packages and only minimal integration. Miller's proposal for "Fedora.Next" describes reorganizing the packages and upstream projects that comprise Fedora into a series of "rings", each level of which would have its own set of release and packaging requirements. The lowest levels of the distribution may be renamed to "Fedora Core".

Discussion on the list has questioned whether this is meant to be a return to the old "Fedora Core" and "Fedora Extras" model of Fedora's early life, to which Miller responded: 'I'm aware of this concern — I was there too, you know. As I was talking about the idea with people, it kept being hard to not accidentally say "core". Finally, as I was talking to Seth Vidal, he said, in his characteristic way, "Look, here's the thing. You should just call it Fedora Core. If you don't, people are going to be grumbling in the back corner and saying that it's really Core, and the conversation becomes about a conspiracy about the name. Just call it Fedora Core, and then have the conversation about the important point, which is how it's different."'

Much discussion is ongoing on the Fedora Devel mailing list. If any Slashdot readers have good advice to add to the discussion, it would be most useful to respond to the ongoing thread there.

[1] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2013-July/186323.html

Submission + - 98 Million Americans Might Have Received Polio Vaccine Contaminated With Cancer (infowars.com)

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention website curiously mothballed pages admitting that the polio vaccine administered from 1955 to 1963 to over 98 million Americans was contaminated with a primate form of cancer virus. cdclogoOther CDC web pages also referencing the link between the widely-distributed vaccine and cancer have similarly been discarded. The pages are still available through Google’s cache system and at the links below: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/updates/archive/polio_and_cancer_factsheet.htm http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/updates/archive/polio_and_cancer.htm

Submission + - Microsoft is sitting on six million unsold Surface tablets (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Microsoft took everyone by surprise last year with the Surface tablet. It was something completely new from the company everyone knew as a software company. However nine months later and the sheen has worn off the Surface tablet and Microsoft's financial results on Thursday revealed it has taken a $900 million write down on the Surface RT tablets, leading David Gilbert in IBTimes to estimate it is sitting on a stockpile of six million unsold tablets.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Disble advertising (on Slashdot)?

Submitted by globalist
globalist writes: Recently I've seen this message "As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising." on Slashdot. I'd like to ask Slashdot — what advertising? I don't see any, to start with. Thanks!

Submission + - NASA pondering bleak future of exoplanet-hunter (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA and a team of other experts will in the next few weeks evaluate options for recovering the crippled space telescope Kepler. NASA's Kepler, which has been incredibly successful at spotting potentially habitable-zone planets since 2009, lost its control mechanism this month and has been rendered largely inactive.

Submission + - VP8/WebM cross-licensing compatibility with open source questioned (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Google, while signing the agreement with MPEG LA concerning VP8 codec, had assured that there would be a third party license agreement in place for the protection of those using the VP8/WebM. This however doesn’t seem to be the case as an open source advocate has ruled that the recently published draft VP8 patent cross-license agreement seems to be closing doors on software freedom. According to a Simon Phipps each user who is looking to make use of the cross-license has to enter into a contract with Google and as most of the open source projects either don’t have the required in-house legal expertise or lack funds to hire a legal personnel there might be no one who will sign such a contract with Google. Further the license cannot be sub-licensed which means that downstream users will not have the license automatically transferred to them.

Submission + - Aurora Attackers Were Looking for Google's Surveillance Database

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When in early 2010 Google shared with the public that they had been breached in what became known as the Aurora attacks, they said that the attackers got their hands on some source code and were looking to access Gmail accounts of Tibetan activists. What they didn't make public is that the hackers have also accessed a database containing information about court-issued surveillance orders that enabled law enforcement agencies to monitor email accounts belonging to diplomats, suspected spies and terrorists. Whether this was the primary goal of the attacks as well as how much information was exfiltrated is unknown. current and former U.S. government officials interviewed by the Washington Post say that the database in question was possibly accessed in order to discover which Chinese intelligence operatives located in the U.S. were under surveillance.

Submission + - Next Samsung Android Tablet To Have Intel Inside? (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: The story of Intel over the past half-decade or so has been its persistent inability to get its chips into the mobile devices that represent almost all of the computing market's growth. But that may be about the change. Some rumors and emerging benchmarks seem to indicate that Samsung's upcoming iteration of its 10-inch Galaxy Tab will be powered by an Atom chip, not the ARM chips that have driven almost the entire Android market to date. With Samsung representing almost all of the Android market's profits, this is a huge get for Intel.

Submission + - Goodbye, Lotus 1-2-3 (zdnet.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: In 2012, IBM started retiring the Lotus brand. Now 1-2-3, the core product that brought Lotus its fame, takes its turn on the chopping block. IBM stated, "Effective on the dates listed below, [June 11, 2013] IBM will withdraw from marketing part numbers from the following product release(s) licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement:" IBM Lotus 123 Millennium Edition V9.x, IBM Lotus SmartSuite 9.x V9.8.0, and Organizer V6.1.0.
Further, IBM stated, "Customers will no longer be able to receive support for these offerings after September 30, 2014. No service extensions will be offered. There will be no replacement programs."

Submission + - EU to criminalize nearly all seeds and plants (blakkened.com)

Submitted by NSN A392-99-964-5927
NSN A392-99-964-5927 writes: A new law proposed by the European Commission would make it illegal to “grow, reproduce or trade” any vegetable seeds that have not been “tested, approved and accepted” by a new EU bureaucracy named the “EU Plant Variety Agency.”

It’s called the Plant Reproductive Material Law, and it attempts to put the government in charge of virtually all plants and seeds. Home gardeners who grow their own plants from non-regulated seeds would be considered criminals under this law.

As you might suspect, this move is the “final solution” of Monsanto, DuPont and other seed-domination corporations who have long admitted their goal is the complete domination of all seeds and crops grown on the planet.

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