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IBM

Submission + - SPAM: Will high-tech trucks save Big Rig industry?

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: Big Rigs have a problem: Big trucks use more than 20% of transportation energy, they produce 40 % of the nitrous oxide emissions but they represent only 8 % of the vehicle market. So as fuel prices rise and the push for more efficient, less polluting vehicles rises, the trucking industry is under pressure change drastically.

And changing it must do with major help from the high-tech world, according to a study released today from IBM. The Truck 2020: Transcending turbulence study says that the truck of 2020 will function in ways vastly different than today's vehicle — and telematics and hybridization will be at the heart of these new functions.

[spam URL stripped]
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Sci-Fi Reading for an E-Commerce College Course?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My friend will be teaching an e-commerce class at a four-year college starting in the spring. He wants to present not just existing business models (Amazon, eBay, iTunes), but also help students to think about the future — what might be hot in ten, twenty, thirty years. To that end, he's looking to draw from science fiction literature — today's fiction could be the inspiration for tomorrow's billion-dollar idea. Any suggestions for books that he should assign? What sci-fi works have the most intriguing (put plausible) technology and consumer products? The more variety, the better; some kind of anthology would be ideal.
Security

Submission + - Gizmodo serves malware and blames Linux and OS X (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by JacobSteelsmith
JacobSteelsmith writes: The very popular, technology focused blog Gizmodo was apparently duped into serving advertisements offering 'scareware.' These advertisements notified users that their PC was infected with malware, and offered up 'antivirus' software. It's not clear whether this was a drive by installation or if it required user interaction.

In an apology, the author claims the staff would have noticed sooner 'except everyone on staff is on OS X or Linux for production machines.' They did not say whether AdBlock prevented them from seeing the advertisements, or they did not notice any installation prompts. The author says the advertisements only ran 'for a little while' and only 'a few people' should have been affected. The blog post warns to look for qegasysguard.exe if you are experiencing random popups.

Submission + - Discovery of 'cancer-proof' rodent cells (physorg.com)

Submitted by anglico
anglico writes: PhysOrg.com — Despite a 30-year lifespan that gives ample time for cells to grow cancerous, a small rodent species called a naked mole rat has never been found with tumors of any kind—and now biologists at the University of Rochester think they know why.

The findings, presented in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that the mole rat's cells express a gene called p16 that makes the cells "claustrophobic," stopping the cells' proliferation when too many of them crowd together, cutting off runaway growth before it can start. The effect of p16 is so pronounced that when researchers mutated the cells to induce a tumor, the cells' growth barely changed, whereas regular mouse cells became fully cancerous.

Submission + - AbiWord 2.8 and AbiCollab.net released (abisource.com)

Submitted by uwog
uwog writes: The AbiSource community has released version 2.8 of the well-known AbiWord word processor. In addition to support for annotations (comments) and native SVGs, it comes with powerful, real-time collaboration capabilities that were originally developed for the One Laptop Per Child project. With this release, users can now collaborate with multiple people on the same document at the same time, using all of the rich-text features that AbiWord brings to the table. These features are tightly integrated with a new online web service called AbiCollab.net, which lets you store documents online, allows easy document sharing with your friends, and performs format conversions on the fly.
Security

Submission + - 6 disabled antivirus in few minutes (lepoint.fr)

Submitted by frecky
frecky writes: A minute and fifty-six seconds. This is the time it took for two security experts to disable Mc Afee, general widely used antivirusy. Norton, heavyweight in the sector, has not done much better: it took four minutes. G-Data antivirus considered reliable because of its dual analysis engine, has survived five minutes. AVG, NOD32 and Kaspersky
arn't better, with fifteen to forty minutes of heroic resistance. The competition was held under the iAWACS Congress, organized by the Graduate School of Computer Science Auto Electronic (École supérieure d'informatique électronique automatique) (ESIEA), in Laval (France).
The Military

Submission + - DD-214 Now Available Online

Submitted by pdragon04
pdragon04 writes: When leaving the US Armed Forces, it was always stressed how important it was to never loose your copy of your DD-214 as it was your only record of having served. Getting a new copy if you lost it was a long and arduous process and significantly delayed obtaining veterans benefits. An email today from my college's financial aid office stated:

"It's official, DD-214's are NOW Online. The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) has provided the following website for veterans to gain access to their DD-214's online: http://vetrecs.archives.gov/

This may be particularly helpful when a veteran needs a copy of his DD-214 for employment purposes. NPRC is working to make it easier for veterans with computers and Internet access to obtain copies of documents from their military files. Military veterans and the next of kin of deceased former military members may now use a new on-line military personnel records system to request documents. Other individuals with a need for documents must still complete the Standard Form 180, which can be downloaded from the on-line web site. Because the requester will be asked to supply all information essential for NPRC to process the request, delays that normally occur when NPRC has to ask veterans for additional information will be minimized. The new web-based application was designed to provide better service on these requests by eliminating the records centers mailroom and processing time."
Linux

Submission + - Linux Distro only for surfing?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm currently building a smart home with touchpanel PCs (nettop based) on the walls. These PCs should only run a web browser (Firefox) in full screen kiosk mode (no window decoration, no menu, nothing, only the web page itself).

This sounds like an easy task for Linux, there'll be plenty of distributions to choose from — I thought. I thought wrong:
There a plenty of answers when I search the net. Many of them have a slightly different scope (they want a locked down system with window manager) and all of them show outdated projects and distributions.

Am I missing something here? Is there a solution too simple for me to find? Or is there no out of the box solution and I have to build my own?
Games

Submission + - SPAM: Can Nintendo really be planning another DS variant

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: 'There was a lot of talk yesterday about an article in the Japanese publication Nikkei which claimed that Nintendo was readying a new iteration of its DS line of handheld gaming systems,' writes blogger Peter Smith. 'The report claims the new unit will have 4" screens (the current unit has 3.25" screens) and is designed for older gamers who have trouble seeing the small screens of the current DSi. This new model is otherwise identical to the existing DSi and will ship by end of year in Japan.' As an 'older gamer' himself, Smith calls on Nintendo to stop this annual upgrade madness and do something truly innovative for a change, and he calls on gamers to put some pressure on Nintendo and not buy the new DS.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - GM to offer in-vehicle WiFi on select models (autoblog.com)

Submitted by jojabo
jojabo writes: Everywhere connectivity is even closer with the announcement that GM will be offering dealer-installed Autonet routers in its SUV and truck offerings. Chrysler was the first to put Autonet in cars a year ago, and Volkswagen signed up in August of this year, putting the mobile router docking station in its Routan. The Autonet kit is available this month for installs in the GMC, Chevrolet, Buick, and Cadillac lineups, or you can order it on GM's accessories site.

Submission + - Amazon Cloud Adds Hosted MySQL (amazon.com)

Submitted by 1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: Amazon Web Services has added a relational database service to host MySQL databases in the cloud, and is also dropping prices on its Amazon EC2 compute service by as much as 15 percent. Amazon says the new service lets users focus on development rather than maintenance, but it will probably be bad news for startups offering database services built atop Amazon's cloud. Cloud Avenue warns that Amazon RDS should serve as "a warning bell for the companies that build their entire business on Amazon ecosystem. ... They are just one announcement away from complete destruction." Data Center Knowledge has a roundup of analysis and commentary on Amazon RDS and its impact on the cloud ecosystem.
Linux

Submission + - Comparing Freedom on Maemo and Android (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Maemo 5 and Android have received a lot of publicity lately, despite the former not even shipping yet. Both have become famous partly for using the Linux kernel, but now that we have a choice, how do we pick one? Is the issue as mundane as choosing your favorite desktop distribution, or is there a more significant difference? The article compares the two from an end user and developer perspective, emphasizing root access and ease of sharing code.
Games

Submission + - 2D Boy Post "Pay-What-You-Want" Final Wrap-up (2dboy.com) 1

Submitted by sleeponthemic
sleeponthemic writes: Developer 2D Boy has posted the final results of their "pay what you want" experiment, selling their World of Goo game for an unrestricted price. After coming to the attention of slashdot a further ~26,000 sales were recorded for a total of 83,147. Note that publicizing crucial mid sale statistics — such as the revelation that ~17,000 people chose to "donate" $0.01 seems to have affected the average donation, which increased from $2.03 to above $3, by the end of the week.

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