Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Earth

Submission + - Stephen Hawking's Warning: Abandon Earth Or Die (bigthink.com)

Submitted by siliconbits
siliconbits writes: According to famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, it's time to free ourselves from Mother Earth. "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space," Hawking tells Big Think. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."
Bug

Submission + - FoxIt Releases Fix for PDF Jailbreak Flaw (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Despite Adobe shuffling the blame onto Apple, the now famous PDF flaw that allowed jailbreaking in Apple's mobile devices has received a fix from FoxIt. FoxIt is a third party PDF reader that claims in its most recent patch to "fix the crash issue caused by the new iPhone/iPad jailbreak program which can be exploited to inject arbitrary code into a system and execute it there." This is a curious fix since Adobe claims the exploit arises from Apple's PDF reader implementation and, evidently, also appeared in FoxIt Reader.
Science

Submission + - The "net generation" isn't. Old guys wrong again (spiegel.de)

Submitted by Kanel
Kanel writes: Kids that grew up with the internet are not the "digital natives" consultants have made us believe. They'r ok with the net but they don't care much about web 2.0 and find plenty of other things more important than the internet.
Consultants and book-writers, mostly old guys, have called for the education system to be re-modelled to suit this new generation, but they never conducted surveys to see if this "generation @" were anything like what they had envisioned. Turns out children who have known the net their whole life are not particularly skilled at it, nor do they live their life on-line.
Businesses

Submission + - Ousted HP CEO settles with accuser (skunkpost.com)

Submitted by crimeandpunishment
crimeandpunishment writes: It's too late to save his job, but former Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd has reportedly settled with the woman who accused him of sexual harassment. A person familiar with the case told the Associated Press Hurd agreed to pay the woman, but would not reveal the amount. However, the source said the settlement did not involve any payment from HP. The accusations by the woman, who was a contract employee for HP, triggered a chain of events leading to the discovery of Hurd's alleged falsified expense reports for dinners he had with her....and resulted in his forced resignation Friday.
Businesses

Submission + - Microsoft, Intel Get Pass on Higher H-1B Fees

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Criticizing companies that outsource high-paying American jobs, Senator Charles Schumer described Indian IT company Infosys as a 'chop shop'. The comments came as the Senate scrambled to fund the $600MM Mexican Border Security Bill by hiking application fees for H-1B and L-1 visas. The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa. Schumer pointed out the bill would not affect high-tech companies such as Intel or Microsoft, although they are among the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B program.
Biotech

Submission + - Genetically Modified Canola Spreads to Wild Plants (npr.org) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: A research team conducting a survey has found that about 86% of wild canola plants in North Dakota have genetically modified genes in them and 'two samples contained multiple genes from different species of genetically modified plants.' Canola usually has little competition when cultivated but does not fare well in the wild. The Roundup Ready and Liberty Link strains of genetically modified canola appear to be crossing over to wild plants and helping it survive. The University of Arkansas team claims that the ease in which genetically modified canola has 'escaped' into the wild should be noted by seed makers like Mansanto because this is proof that it will happen.

Submission + - Man arrested for expressing opinion. (google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Connecticut police say they arrested a man at a management company after he mentioned the shooting rampage across the state that killed nine people and said he understood the killer's mindset."

Thoughtcrime, anybody?

Submission + - TorrentReactor buys and renames a Russian town. (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by baronvoncarson
baronvoncarson writes: Just saw this over at Torrent Freak. They are reporting that TorrentReactor has purchased a small Russian town. Costing $148,000, TorrentReactor have renamed the town after themself and plan on building infrastructure within the town.

Torrent Freak writes;
"With the financial injection from TorrentReactor the people of Gar (now the people of TorrentReactor) will be able to get connected to the Internet. Right now, there are only three computers available in the entire town, and just one is connected to the Internet via a dial-up connection.

“Most of it will be split among villagers and the rest will be used to re-equip the local school, repair roads, purchase agricultural equipment and machinery. Also torrentreactor.net company decided to pay for broadband Internet connection in the settlement which will result in about 900,000 rubles ($30,000) because there are no networks nearby,” TorrentReactor says."
Google

Submission + - What Are Google and Verizon Up To? (nytimes.com)

Submitted by pickens
pickens writes: Robert X. Cringley has an op-ed in the NY Times in which he contends that Google has found a way to get special treatment from Verizon but without actually compromising net neutrality by beginning to co-locate some of their portable data centers with Verizon network hubs. "With servers so close to users, Google could not only send its data faster but also avoid sending it over the Internet backbone that connects service providers and for which they all pay," writes Cringley. "This would save space for other traffic — and money for both Verizon and Google, as their backbone bills decline (wishful thinking, but theoretically possible). Net neutrality would be not only intact, but enhanced." So why won't Google and Verizon admit what they're up to? "If my guess is right, then I would think they’re silent because it’s a secret. They’d rather their competitors not know until a few hundred shipping containers are in place — and suddenly YouTube looks more like HBO."
Google

Submission + - Google modifies links after users click on them 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I just discovered that clicking on the result urls that Google provides fires up a javascript that changes the link so that it goes to a redirector at google.com, letting them know not only what you search for but also which of the result links you choose. If you want to try it, hover a result link, then right click on it and hover again to see how it changed. Tracking the results is Ok, Altavista does it for example, but changing the link after you click on it isn't so clearly good web behaviour.
America Online

Submission + - Is AOL finally crashing and burning? (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AOL's disastrous quarterly report showed cash from continuing operations was down 44% from a year ago (while "adjusted operating income" was down 37%), as it continues a rocky transition from monthly subscription fees into advertising. (Their quarterly report also notes "the cessation of large-scale access subscriber acquisition campaigns" — investor-speak for the fact that AOL will finally stop mass mailings of free trial accounts.) Unfortunately, AOL's advertising business "did even worse. Its revenues declined by $110 million...every single segment is down." AOL has already lost 86% of the 30 million subscribers it reported in 2001 — down to just 4.3 million — but advertising hasn't yet filled the gap (possibly because many AOL ads had been displayed to the users AOL no longer has). But at least, as one technology blogger notes, AOL has finally released a mobile application, "In the new definition of 'late to the party'."
Google

Submission + - Google spy drones raises privacy concerns

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The Internet giant Google is in the process of testing the use of camera drones according to a published report. The "md4-1000" from Microdrones can carry any payload weighting up to 1.2 kilograms, is very silent, can fly as high as one kilometer. The drones are already used by the British police, among many other corporate and private users of the freely available drone, since 3 years. "The drones are very suited to deliver up to date image material for Google Maps," said Juerss

Submission + - Human ES cells identical with RP Cells

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Human embryonic stem (ES) cells and adult cells reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell-like state—so-called induced pluripotent stem or iPS cells—exhibit very few differences in their gene expression signatures and are nearly indistinguishable in their chromatin state, according to Whitehead Institute researchers. iPS cells are made by introducing three key genes into adult cells. These reprogramming factors push the cells from a mature state to a more flexible embryonic stem cell-like state. Like ES cells, iPS cells can then, in theory, be coaxed to mature into almost any type of cell in the body. Unlike ES cells, iPS cells taken from a patient are not likely to be rejected by that patient's immune system. This difference overcomes a major hurdle in regenerative medicine.
Space

Submission + - New spacecraft set for dangerous Jupiter trip

Submitted by solaGratia
solaGratia writes: It's the most heavily armored spacecraft ever launched to another planet. But it isn't headed into battle. Instead, it will be flying in one of the deadliest regions of the solar system: Jupiter's magnetosphere. "It's like sticking your head inside a microwave," he said. That's why the craft has to be armored; exposure to that much radiation without shielding would fry the electronics. The craft is Juno, and it's the first mission to Jupiter since Galileo was launched in 1986. It's one of the more wide-ranging studies of the giant planet.
The Internet

Submission + - New Apps Help Love the One You're Near (cnn.com) 1

Submitted by pickens
pickens writes: CNN reports that while established online dating services like eHarmony and Match.com go to painstaking lengths to match daters based on their exhaustive surveys of likes and dislikes, a new crop of GPS-based dating apps seems fixated largely on two qualities in potential mates: Proximity and convenience as Skout, Grindr and StreetSpark let people sort through lists of potential daters based on where they are located at any given moment listing distance between the person using the app and other member users in feet. "As humans, I think we value proximity. It's part of who we are. If somebody's 200 feet away from you, then go meet them, go say hi for five minutes. There's no need to have e-mails back and forth, SMS's back and forth," says one user. "The incentive is just to go meet." But some relationship coaches question whether the GPS dating apps are anything more than a fad. "I think it can be fun and it can be useful for a few months, and women will use it initially, but the more men there are the more high percentage of creepy guys there will be, and the more percentage of women will be deleting these apps," says one skeptic.

Slashdot Top Deals

The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin

Close