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Apple

Submission + - Steve Jobs 'It's only a phone' Emails Debunked (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: Editing error causes a rumpus

An email exchange between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and and angry iPhone 4 user has been making waves on the web for a few days now.

We first started following the thread of intrigue when the normally-reliable Boy Genius Report (BGR) published the transcript of an alleged email conversation between the messianic Apple leader Jobs and an aggrieved Apple fan.

Submission + - Tattoos for the Math and Science Geek 7

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I've been thinking of getting a sleeve of math and science tattoos for quite a while now. With the money saved up, the only question remaining is, what equations/ideas should I get? I know for certain that I'm going to include some of Maxwell's equations, and definitely Ohm's Law. So, if you were going to put a tribute to the great math and science minds on your body forever, which ones would you choose?

Submission + - Verizon makes customer service a firing offense (consumerist.com)

Submitted by
Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: "Verizon To Reprimand, Fire Employees Who Try To Save Customers Money

Internal Verizon memos reveal that the wireless ogre is eager to reprimand or fire customer service representatives who proactively recommend blocking access to the company's overpriced data services. The company is also going to be stingier about issuing back credits to customers who spot unnecessary and unwanted services littering their monthly bills.

"
Cellphones

Journal Journal: Rumor: 500 Kin Phones 9

Journal by symbolset

When Microsoft's Kin was released a month ago, it came with the usual sequence of tittilating leaks (project Pink), a swell of coverage leading to liveblogging of the release press conference, and an advertising blitz impressive in its scope. Since it's supposed to be a social phone of course it has numerous fansites including Facebook and Twitter. Of course there's a Wikipe
Crime

Submission + - Calif. Tracks Parolees with GPS, then Ignores It (bnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Several years ago, California decided to require high-risk parolees, such as gang members and sex offenders, to wear GPS monitoring devices. The idea was to relay location information to law enforcement to ensure that the convicts stay where they’re supposed to. Unfortunately, the state often misses acting on those alerts, making the devices both a lesson in the pitfalls of technology management and a massive exercise in largely useless spending.
Science

Submission + - Geologists to be charged for not predicting quake? (earthmagazine.org)

Submitted by mmmscience
mmmscience writes: In 2009, a series of small earthquakes shook the region of L'Aquila, Italy. Seismologists investigated the tremors, but concluded that there was no direct indication of a big 'quake on the horizon. Less than a month later, a magnitude-6.3 earthquake killed more than 300 people. Now, the chief prosecutor of L'Aquila is looking to charge the scientists with gross negligent manslaughter for not predicting the 'quake.
Linux

Submission + - Adobe (temporarily?) kills 64 bit flash for Linux (adobe.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It seems that with the release of the 10.1 security patches Adobe has, at least temporarily, killed 64 bit Flash for Linux. Statement says: "The Flash Player 10.1 64-bit Linux beta is closed. We remain committed to delivering 64-bit support in a future release of Flash Player. No further information is available at this time. Please feel free to continue your discussions on the Flash Player 10.1 desktop forums." The 64 bit forum has been set to read only: http://forums.adobe.com/community/labs/flashplayer10_64bit The 10.1 forum is at http://forums.adobe.com/community/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer10

Submission + - New Handheld Computer is 100% Open-Source (linux.com)

Submitted by metasonix
metasonix writes: While the rest of the industry has been blubbering about the iPad and imitations thereof, Qi Hardware is actually shipping a product that is completely open-source and copyleft. The Ben NanoNote is a handheld computer that apparently contains no proprietary technology. It uses a 366 MHz MIPS processor, 32MB RAM, 2 GB flash, a 320x240 pixel color display, and a Qwerty keyboard. No network built in, though it is claimed to accept SD-card WiFi or USB-Ethernet adapters. Included is a very simple Linux OS based on the OpenWrt distro installed in Linksys routers, with Busybox GUI. It's apparently intended primarily for hardware and software hackers, not as a general-audience handheld. The price is right, though: $99.
Education

Submission + - Texas Approves Conservative Textbook Curriculum (dallasnews.com) 2

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: In a landmark move that will shape the future education of millions of Texas schoolchildren, the State Board of Education on Friday approved new curriculum standards for U.S. history and other social studies courses that reflect a more conservative tone than in the past.

Split along party lines, the board delivered a pair of 9-5 votes to adopt the new standards, which will dictate what is taught in all Texas schools and provide the basis for future textbooks and student achievement tests over the next decade.

Texas standards often wind up being taught in other states because national publishers typically tailor their materials to Texas, one of the biggest textbook purchasers in the country.

Approval came after the GOP-dominated board approved a new curriculum standard that would encourage high school students to question the legal doctrine of church-state separation --a sore point for social conservative groups who disagree with court decisions that have affirmed the doctrine, including the ban on school-sponsored prayer.

Dallas Morning News: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/DN-sboe_22tex.ART0.State.Edition2.140f306f.html

Comment Re:It's not "beginning", it's in full-swing (Score 1) 89

by Svenne (#31807754) Attached to: Android Gets Carrier-Operated European App Store

ALL of the countries targeted by Vodafone are ALREADY supported by Google Market. That is (from TFA): The Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

Well, except for Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

The thing is, I as an end user don't care about what's keeping Google from opening up the market. It's not like they've gone out of their way to offer alternative methods of payment, say for example associating your credit card with your google account or something like that. For us end users, all we know is that we've missed out on paid apps for a year, and there's no light at the end of the tunnel as far as we know.

Maybe some day, in another year or two, paid apps will be available for us, but if alternatives has popped up to fill that gap I'm all for it.

Comment Re:It's not "beginning", it's in full-swing (Score 2, Insightful) 89

by Svenne (#31802524) Attached to: Android Gets Carrier-Operated European App Store

What app developers need to do is just what the parent has done. Just stick with Google's app store, and don't try to peddle their apps on other markets. This way, customers always come to one place, rather than check one store and not others.

No. What Google need to do is to enable that part of the market for the so called European gaps. The first Android mobile phone marketed in Sweden was the HTC Magic, and that was back in February 2009. It's been more than a year and Google still has not made paid apps available on the Market.

Before that happens, I'm all for independent market places filling the need that Google for some reason doesn't.

Maybe this will speed things up. One can at least hope, even if Sweden wasn't on the list of countries supported by Vodafone's store.
Medicine

Submission + - Men Take More Risks Around Pretty Women

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "As a group, young males are at the highest risk of early death of any group in industrialized countries in part because they are the biggest risk-takers e.g. men are 2.5 times more likely than women to be killed in road accidents. Now researchers have investigated the risk-taking behaviors of 96 young adult men, with an average age of nearly 22, by asking them to do both easy and difficult tricks on skateboards, first performing the tricks in front of another man, then in front of a young, attractive female. As the researchers expected, the skateboarders took greater risks in the presence of the attractive female, even when they knew there was a greater chance they could crash. Along with this increased risk-taking, the young men had higher testosterone levels when they performed in front of the female (PDF) than when they did their jumps in front of another guy. "This experiment provides evidence for an effect that has existed in art, mythology, and literature for thousands of years: Beautiful women lead men to throw caution to the wind," wrote the authors of the study, Richard Ronay and William von Hippel, of the University of Queensland in Australia. "These findings suggest that, for men, the adaptive benefits gained by enticing mates and intimidating rivals may have resulted in evolved hormonal and neurological mechanisms that facilitated greater risk-taking in the presence of attractive women.""

Comment Re:Watch This (Score 3, Informative) 133

by Svenne (#31374534) Attached to: Microsoft Spends $9 Billion On Research, Focuses On Cloud

Did you actually read the comments?

"Let's Open-Source the cloud (Score:2, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward writes: on Wednesday March 03, @08:50PM (#31349408)

Then we can run our own cloud and connect to it from wherever we want. There's a snowball's chance in hell I'm going to run my desktop on hardware that is out of my control, but for local applications, that might be interesting."

---

"Cost prohibitive? (Score:3, Insightful)
by bsDaemon (87307) writes: on Wednesday March 03, @09:00PM (#31349544)

EC2 charges based on CPU time and bandwidth usage, so this sounds like it'd end up eating up a monthly fee of ~$netbook per month. Why would anybody want to spend their money on this?"

---

"i never saw the point of cloud desktops (Score:3, Interesting)
by alen (225700) writes: on Wednesday March 03, @09:55PM (#31350268)

hardware is dirt cheap and getting cheaper. you can buy a powerful server for cheap as well. but after you buy the Citrix or whatever licenses, a few more servers for redundancy, a ton of storage at enterprise prices, the enterprise hardware support, increase network bandwidth etc the savings vanish and it's cheaper to just buy regular desktop machines.

same thing with EC2. by the time you put in the network hardware and new circuits and pay Amazon for 24x7 instances it's cheaper to just buy desktops. i'm typing this on a 5 year old HP that runs windows 7 just fine.

i bet all this cloud nonsense is enterprise hardware companies trying to push higher margin products and no real trend that anyone is doing. the numbers just don't work out"

---

No? Check.

Just felt like bitching? Check.

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