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IOS

Submission + - Apple iOS 6: From the development perspective (examiner.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From the article: "
Apple recently unveiled the finalized version of iOS 6. There are several updates to the Operating System over iOS 5, which include Facebook integration, an updated Siri, removal of the YouTube app in favor of a downloadable one, and an overhaul of the Maps application. These features have been poured over by other, so the goal here will be to take a different perspective on iOS 6 than most other Technology writers are taking. That is, what the updates to iOS 6 tells us about Apple's internal development for iOS, and how that impacts application developers.
"
Space

Submission + - New Theoretical Clock Transcends Both Time and Space (sciencedaily.com) 1

Submitted by
SchrodingerZ
SchrodingerZ writes: "Scientists at Berkeley Labsin California have theorized a new idea for a clock that can remain ticking even after the death of our universe. The idea is to create a four dimensional crystalline structure that is unaffected by third dimensional havoc. It would work by having the ‘electric field of [an] ion trap holds charged particles in place and Coulomb repulsion causes them to spontaneously form a spatial ring crystal. Under the application of a weak static magnetic field, this ring-shaped ion crystal will begin a rotation that will never stop,’ says Berkeley faculty Xiang Zhang. ‘The persistent rotation of trapped ions produces temporal order, leading to the formation of a space-time crystal at the lowest quantum energy state.’ It is considered to be 4-dimesional because ‘a spatial ring of trapped ions in persistent rotation will periodically reproduce itself in time, forming a temporal analog of an ordinary spatial crystal. With a periodic structure in both space and time, the result is a space-time crystal’. Because this space-time ‘crystal’ would already be at the lowest quantum state possible, theorists believe the structure could continue on after the rest of the universe fades and destroys itself ( thermodynamic equilibrium). Though the idea is mathematically sound (proven by nobel prize winner Frank Wilczek), constuction and manipulation is still only theoretical."

Comment Power Consumption. (Score 3, Informative) 113

by bobwrit (#41369579) Attached to: Intel Details Power Management Advancements in Haswell
"Folks have been trading blows over whether Intel could compete with ARM's core power consumption. " For the mobile markets, Here's the best numbers I could find on the various processor's power output: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20110921142759_Nvidia_Unwraps_Performance_Benchmarks_of_Tegra_3_Kal_El.html The 10W Intel processor is still ~8x outside the power output of a Tegra 3 at 1GHz/Core, and ~6.662x the power output of a OMAP4 processor. While Intel is clearly working on getting down to the ~1W power range, they still have a ways to go. They may get there, but until I see silicon, I'm not holding my breath for it.
NASA

Submission + - NASA Morpheus Lander Explosion

Submitted by DishpanMan
DishpanMan writes: For every success story from NASA like Curiosity, there is a failure story, like today's Morpheus project test flight at Kennedy Sapce Center. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/exploration/morpheus/index.html. The project is trying to build a low cost Moon and Asteroid lander using clean fuels on a shoestring budget. While tethered flight test were successful, today's actual flight test ended in a crash and a ball of fire followed by a spectacular explosion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hvlG2JtMts Initial feedback points to hardware failure, but the investigation is still ongoing.

Submission + - Craigslist drops exclusive license to your posts (eff.org)

Submitted by Penurious Penguin
Penurious Penguin writes: Last week on Slashdot we read the bad news, i.e. "Craigslist Demands Exclusivity For Postings", an odd demand which would have prevented ad-content on Craigslist from being advertised anywhere else but Craigslist. Thankfully, today we read from the EFF, the Good News: Craigslist drops exclusive license to your posts.

Perhaps they can now apply their ambitions toward improving Craigslist in other ways?
Android

Submission + - Custom Android ROM Developers get OTA Update Capabilties like Carriers (xda-developers.com) 1

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: A new service dubbed OTA Update Center has been launched that enables Android ROM developers to provide over-the-air (OTA) updates of their ROMs in a centralized and easy fashion. Custom ROM developers had very little at their disposal when it came to providing updates and when any user with such a ROM did want to apply an update, he/she was required to reinstall the new ROM from scratch that often involved deletion of backup, installation of new ROM, restoration of data. This was a lengthy process and often a deterrent when it came to updating the ROM. Also, the developers were required to have their own infrastructure whereby they would be required to host their own servers and have the required bandwidth to serve scores of downloads. The OTA Update Center changes this and provides a free to use service that is easy and noon-friendly to use. The website reads, “This project is especially for the rom devs around, to be able to implement an easy to use, and free OTA Update app.”

Submission + - ISPs Throttling BitTorrent Traffic, Study Finds (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: A new report by an open source internet measurement platform, Measurement Lab, sheds light onto throttling of and restriction on BitTorrent traffic by ISPs (Internet Service Provider) across the globe. The report by Measurement Lab reveals that hundreds of ISPs across the globe are involved into throttling of peer-to-peer traffic through and specifically BitTorrent traffic. The Glasnost application run by the platform helps in detecting whether ISPs shape traffic and tests can be carried out to check whether the throttling or blocking is carried out “on email, HTTP or SSH transfer, Flash video, and P2P apps including BitTorrent, eMule and Gnutella”. Going by country, United States has actually seen a drop in throttling compared to what it was back in 2010. Throttling in US is worst for Cox at 6 per cent and best for Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others at around 3 per cent. United Kingdom is seeing a rise in traffic shaping and BT is the worst with 65 per cent. Virgin Media throttles around 22 per cent of the traffic while the least is O2 at 2 per cent. More figures can be found here.
Android

Submission + - Judge Blocks U.S. Sales of Samsung Nexus Products (wsj.com)

Submitted by
PyroMosh
PyroMosh writes: "Apple has been granted another injunction against Samsung, their second in a week. This new ruling comes down against the Samsung Nexus phones, the prior was against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. The patents in dispute involve "searching across multiple databases" and apparently voice search. Ridiculous patent fights have long ago become commonplace in this industry, but injunctions are fairly rare. How can a judge block sales of a product line over a patent that covers a concept that predates the product by decades?"
Linux

Submission + - 2012: The year of Linux on the ... Drones? (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by xtracto
xtracto writes: The U.S. Navy and Dept. of Defense have learned valuable lessons that translate to huge contracts for the Linux OS. What does this mean for open source and the community that drives it? Jack Wallen offers his take.
Android

Submission + - Apple Wins Injunction Against Galaxy Nexus Smartphone (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "A California court has granted Apple an injunction against Samsung over sales of its Galaxy Nexus smartphones in the U.S. The injunction was handed down on Friday afternoon by the same California court that earlier this week issued an injunction against sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1. It will go into effect as soon as Apple posts a $96 million bond that will be used toward any damages sustained by Samsung if the injunction is subsequently found to be erroneously enjoined. Friday's ruling centers on U.S. Patent 8,086,604, which covers a user interface for conveniently retrieving information from a computer system. Earlier in the day, Judge Koh found Apple had not infringed U.S. Patent 7,362,867, which covers the scrambling system used in 3G cellular communications. Samsung had accused Apple of breaching the patent in its iPhone and iPad products, and the specific argument centered on the intended meaning of a single phrase in the patent: 'scrambling codes.' The court also denied requests by Apple that two claims against it covering U.S. Patents 7,456,893 and 7,577,460 be thrown out."
Android

Submission + - Judge Bans Sale of Galaxy Nexus (latimes.com)

Submitted by busyqth
busyqth writes: After the injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 earlier in the week, A US district court judge has now also granted an injunction against the sale of Google's flagship ICS phone, the Galaxy Nexus. Is Steve Jobs laughing in the great beyond? Is this the beginning of the end for Android?
Programming

Submission + - What modern paradigms are worth pursuing? (aosd.net)

Submitted by
jd
jd writes: "There seem to be a number of new paradigms emerging in the programming world. Templates and other similar features don't seem to have solved the problems of complexity in modern software, with the inevitable result of people inventing other forms of abstraction.

Of these, the two that seem the most significant are Aspect-Oriented Programming (an example of a compiler can be found here) and Feature-Oriented Programming (>a href="http://wwwiti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/iti_db/forschung/fop/featurec/">again, a sample compiler).

Intel, on the other hand, is disregarding the complexity of the problems and is focusing on the complexity of the solutions. They have bought and fully opened the Cilk++ frontend for G++, which adds instruction-level parallelism to C++ programs.

But are these actually any use? I don't expect to see businesses crying out for coders experienced in FOP, nor do I expect to see complex projects such as KDE exploit such features. Although Cilk and Cilk++ have now been out a while, I can name no program that uses them.

Are they underused because nobody's heard of them or because nobody who has heard of them has found anything they're a good solution for? Are additional layers on top of Object Oriented languages the equivalent of Fifth-Generation Languages — a warning flag that the entire approach has hit a brick wall, requiring a rethink rather than a new layer?"
Piracy

Submission + - Don't Forget: "Six Strikes" Starts this Weekend (dslreports.com)

Submitted by Dr. Eggman
Dr. Eggman writes: If don't recall, then Broadband/DSL Reports is here to remind us that ISPs around the US will begin adhering to the RIAA/MPAA-fueled "Six Strikes" agreement on July 1st. Or is July 12th? Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Cablevision are all counted among the participants. They will each introduce "mitigation measures" against suspected pirates, including: throttling down connection speeds and suspending Web access.

Submission + - Harmful effects of closed source software

Submitted by Drinking Bleach
Drinking Bleach writes: In a world with a few citizens that believe closed source/non-free software is unethical in all cases and make no leeway for any, it is curious what some of the more prominent members of the community believe. Eric Raymond, coiner of the term "open source" and founder of the Open Source Initiative, writes in detail of how to evaluate the effects of running any particular piece of closed source software and details the possible harms of doing so. Ranking limited firmware as the least kind of harm to full operating systems as potentially the greatest harms, he details his reasoning for all of them.

Likewise, Richard Stallman, founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation, writes about a much more limited scope, Nonfree DRM'd games on GNU/Linux, in which he takes the firm stance that non-free software is unethical in all cases but concedes that running non-free games on a free operating system is much more desirable than running them on a non-free operating system itself (such as Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X).

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