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Television

Submission + - I need a webcam optimized for the living room.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: So — I have a windows machine hooked up to my 46" samsung LCD in the living room. Makes for a good social browsing experience. I started using it for video chat, and found it to be great except for the lack of optical zoom on my webcam (which is a pretty good one — the logitech quickcam pro 9000. When I sit on the couch about 9 feet away, I appear too small, the microphone has more trouble picking me up, and the digital zoom is of course useless at improving things. So I sit on my coffee table about 4 feet away from this huge LCD so the other person can actually see the expression on my face, defeating that 10-foot experience.

I thought to myself — "self, this should be pretty easy. Go grab a webcam with a bit of optical zoom, and maybe get a wireless headset to improve the sound quality on the mic." The wireless headset was pretty easy to find — lots of bluetooth solutions out there. as well as a stereo wireless headset by logitech called the clearchat, which I just got. But nowhere is there a tv-top-mount web cam with optical zoom with windows drivers. I'm a bit astounded... I tried just moving my wired webcam closer to me, setting it down on the coffee table and pointing it up at me, but then the experience is quite odd — I'm looking at the tv screen to see my skype-buddy, but it looks to them that I'm looking far into the distance, because the angles are all wrong, which is disconcerting for them, because that's the same way I like when I'm ignoring someone :)

Anyway — here's what I did find — the sony eye USB device (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Eye), which has a manual optical zoom, but that's optimized for PS3 only, and has no windows drivers — in other words, no skype or other windows video chat. I also found some webcams seemingly optimized for the 10-foot experience (http://shop.skype.com/intl/en-ca/skype-for-tv/), and they're USB devices as well (sounds good) , but.... you need a skype-enabled TV for these. WHAAAA?? Again no windows drivers. Also found this guy: (http://www.everythingusb.com/net_cowboy_dc-ncp130.html) with a mondo 7x optical zoom , but... it isn't really tv-mountable, and thus would suffer from the "faraway stare" problem if place, say, on the shelf next to the tv. People might also think I'm the creepy neighbor next door with a 7x optical zoom webcam.

So. I'm looking for better options. Anyone?
Intel

Submission + - First Intel Sandy Bridge CPU Benchmarks Out!! (anandtech.com)

Submitted by siliconbits
siliconbits writes: Anand from Anandtech has managed to get his hands on an early Sandy Bridge processor and has tested it extensively. Benchmark figures are excellent and may well give AMD (and Fusion) some food for thoughts (and some nightmares).
Businesses

Submission + - A Threat to Google's Future from Intent Generation (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Alex Rampell, the CEO of TrialPay, has an interesting article in TechCrunch analyzing the future of the money-making parts of Google and how Google will be threatened by "Intent Generation" and "Vertical Search." Everyone knows that Google makes almost all it's money from contextual ads that appear with Google's search results, but while the battle for search is over for now — Google won — Rampell writes that the battle for the underlying revenue is just heating up. "The holy grail is the ability to show the perfect advertisement at the perfect time (precognition, like in Minority Report), something Facebook has a better chance of doing than anyone," writes Rampell. "Intent Generation catches people further up the funnel, before they search, and delivers them what they want, and gets them to purchase, before they start searching." Payment companies are another threat because by knowing how much you spend and where, they have a tremendous opportunity to change future behavior, generating and catalyzing intent. "For Google's enemies, the best way of hurting the search goliath is not to build a better search engine, but rather to give people a reason to stop searching for a wide class of goods and services by preempting search on Google.""
Australia

Submission + - Life span of copper vs optical fibre?

Submitted by john.lyle
john.lyle writes: The proposed government-built fibre-to-the-home National Broadband Network in Australia has generated a lot of debate, most of it centred around the $40 billion plus price tag. One argument against it that I heard recently is that optical fibre only has a physical life span of 15-20 years, after which the entire network would have to be replaced. I've searched the web and not found any reliable sources indicating the life span of either copper or optical fibre, but if this claim is valid, then it does seem like an important factor that has largely been overlooked in the debate. What does the slashdot community think?

Submission + - Argentine ISP to close in 90 days by Govt decision

Submitted by Doctor Jonas
Doctor Jonas writes: Argentine ISP Fibertel has been barred to follow up their operations because of the dissolution of their status as a company, previously being absorbed by Cablevisión of Argentina, now part of media conglomerate Grupo Clarín. The Minister of Planning Julio de Vido announced the measure, and said it was Grupo Clarín's own doing by having shut down the Fibertel company and turning it into merely a commercial brand, and that ISP licenses are not transferable after acquisitions from one company to the other. The Argentine opposition said the move was another attack into Grupo Clarín's standing and another part of the feud between them and President Cristina Fernández and her husband, former president Nestor Kirchner. Cablevisión has promised to go to the courts to overturn the decision, even with TV ads, and the opposition seeks to protect Fibertel's continuing operations through a bill in Congress. More than a million households and businesses would need to change ISPs in merely 90 days, possibly strengthening the internet provisioning dominance of both Telefónica (subsidiary of the Spanish Telefonica) and Telecom.
Australia

Submission + - Australian Elections Result In Hung Parliament (abc.net.au) 1

Submitted by ajdlinux
ajdlinux writes: For the first time since World War II, Australia has a hung parliament. The future of the Government now lies in the hands of the five independent and Green MPs, who will decide over the next few days which party they will back to form the next government. The Labor Party's National Broadband Network is now in doubt, but it at least seems the internet filter won't go ahead now that the Greens have the balance of power in the Senate.

Submission + - Organophosphate Pesticide Exposure Linked to ADHD (nih.gov)

Submitted by jfjfjdk
jfjfjdk writes: Organophosphate pesticides are the tool of choice in the United States to control insects on food crops, but it's looking increasingly likely that their use has contributed to ADHD. A new UC Berkeley study finds a 500% increase in ADHD rates at age 5 for children in Salinas Valley farming communities from mothers with high levels of pesticide metabolites during pregnancy. This follows a recent Harvard study with similar results.
On an unrelated note, Russian state scientists often published their organophosphate weapons as novel pesticides to avoid treaty obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Submission + - Photographing Buildings Excluded From Street View (blogoscoped.com)

Submitted by crf00
crf00 writes: Spiegel reports that German photographer and IT consultant Jens Best wants to personally take snapshots of all those (German) buildings which people asked Google Street View to remove. He then wants to add those photos to Picasa, including GPS coordinates, and in turn re-connect them with Google Maps. Jens believes that for the internet “we must apply the same rules as we do in the real world. Our right to take panoramic snapshots, for instance, or to take photographs in public spaces, both base laws which determine that one may photograph those things that are visible from public streets and places.”

Jens says that for his believe in the right of photographing in public places, as last resort he’s even willing to go to jail. Spiegel says Jens already found over 200 people who want to help out in this project and look for removed locations in Google Street View, as there’s no official list of such places published by Google.

Submission + - Rat's Nest of Music Licensing Horror in one Chart 1

Submitted by Hodejo1
Hodejo1 writes: The flow of rights and and royalties in music is such a convoluted mess it's no wonder licensing the stuff has become such a minefield. Here's a US-centric chart, shared with Digital Music News by royalty administration specialist Music Reports that distills it all in a single frame. Needless to say it has devolved to a point where everyone just puts their hand out demanding payment, whether they actually hold legitimate rights or not. So why pay a fortune in royalties when there is no guarantee you actually licensed all the rights? The UK-centric chart is no better.

Submission + - Lack of copyright law propelled German economy (spiegel.de)

Submitted by jeffreytran
jeffreytran writes: The Der Speigel has a fascinating story about how lack of enforceable copyright law led to a flourishing of literacy and knowledge. Contrary to popular wisdom, increased protection such as those found in Great Britain at time gave scholars less of an incentive to share their knowledge.

Submission + - CVS to sell $100 Sylvania netbook and $179 ereader

Submitted by JohnRoss1968
JohnRoss1968 writes: From Engadget.

Watch out Kmart, CVS is getting its very own $100 smartbook and $180 e-reader and there's nothing you can do about it! We've gotten a hold of some marketing materials which confirm that this fall your neighborhood drugstore will be stocking a Sylvania netbook running Windows CE and a color e-reader. There aren't too many details on the little laptop itself, although we can only guess that the thing will be very similar to many of the other cheap smartbooks we've seen lately. Oh, it does claim to be able to stream video / YouTube, but we'll believe it when we see it play Bieber's Segway escape without freezing up. There are a few more details on the 7-inch LookBook e-reader after the break, but it will pack 512MB of storage space, a full keyboard and will have access to Kobo's e-book store. Seems like some good old cheap tech to us, but we're willing to bet that more than a few CVS shoppers will be tempted to throw one of these into the basket along with the deodorant and shampoo.

How cheap do you think things like net-books and tablet computers will get, and can you think of odd uses for ultra-cheap tablets and net-books.

For the full Story go here...
http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/19/cvs-to-sell-100-sylvania-netbook-and-179-e-reader-this-fall-t/
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Bringing Mobile Phones To Those Who Can't Hear (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Experts in Germany and the U.S. are developing technologies to make mobile devices more accessible to people with problems hearing, getting beyond simple hearing aids and amplifiers.

At the Fraunhofer Institute, researcher Stefan Goetze came up with a piece of software that automatically adjusts different frequencies to help people who are hard of hearing make out sounds more clearly. ...
Goetze has already tried out his software on an iPod Touch. He said one obstacle to wider use on iPhones, for example, is that when iPhones connect as phones the other functions that control the sound quality are turned off.
Science

Submission + - Universe will fall apart eventually (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: BBC is reporting the latest confirmation that the end of the universe will be a whole lot of nothing. A team leam lead by Eric Jullo of JPL has published a paper in Science reporting the results of their detailed survey of galaxy cluster Abell 1689.

Posting as AC due to creeping nihilism.

Submission + - Carlson Sues IBM for Outsourcing Fraud (informationweek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cutting off a deal at the halfway point, Carlson is suing Big Blue for not living up to the outsourcing hype. IBM is denying any wrongdoing. It would be a huge black eye for IBM if Carlson wins the suit. It could also start a wave of lawsuits for disgruntled companies paying more for outsourcing than they bargained for.

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