nyan.kitty256 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Google Apps beats Office 365 for DOI contract (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @09:17PM

angry tapir writes: "The U.S. Department of the Interior has picked Google Apps to provide cloud-based email and collaboration applications to about 90,000 staffers, choosing Google's services over Microsoft's Office 365. Google had sued the U.S. agency in 2010, claiming its requirements for the contract tilted the scales unfairly toward Microsoft. Google eventually dropped its lawsuit last September."

Submission + - BART Defends Mobile Service Shutdown (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @08:59PM

itwbennett writes: "In a filing to the FCC, Grace Crunican, BART's general manager, defended last August's mobile shutdown, saying that 'a temporary disruption of cell phone service, under extreme circumstances where harm and destruction are imminent, is a necessary tool to protect passengers.' Taking the opposing position, digital rights groups, including Public Knowledge, Free Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the FCC that 'wireless interruption will necessarily prohibit the communications of completely innocent parties — precisely those parties closest to the site where the emergency is located or anticipated.'"

Submission + - Bug Busters! OpenBSD 5.1 released. (openbsd.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @06:25PM

An anonymous reader writes: Today the 31st release of OpenBSD has surfaced. As usual, it includes improved hardware support, OpenSSH 6.0, and over 7000 ports with major performance and stability improvements in the package build process(and some really cool stickers).
http://www.openbsd.org/51.html

Submission + - NYTimes: "FBI Foils its own Terrorist Plots" (techdirt.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @06:23PM

Fluffeh writes: "Breaking up terrorist plots is one of the main goals of the FBI these days, but if it can't do that, well, it seems that making plots up, them valiantly stopping them is okay too — but the NYTimes is calling them on it. "The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.""

Submission + - Xamarin: "Android Ported to C#" (xamarin.com)

Submitted by

Eirenarch

on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @05:38PM

Eirenarch writes: "Xamarin has just announced that they got the Java part of Android ported to C# via machine translation. The resulting OS called XobotOS is available on Github. They claim some serious performance gains over Dalvik. For them this is an experiment that they are not planning to focus on but they will be using some of the technologies in Mono for Android."

Submission + - Venus to Appear in Once-In-A-Lifetime Event (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by revealingheart on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @05:06PM

revealingheart writes: ScienceDaily reports that on 5 and 6 June this year, millions of people around the world will be able to see Venus pass across the face of the Sun in what will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It will take Venus about six hours to complete its transit, appearing as a small black dot on the Sun's surface, in an event that will not happen again until 2117.

Transits of Venus occur only on the very rare occasions when Venus and Earth are in a line with the Sun. At other times Venus passes below or above the Sun because the two orbits are at a slight angle to each other. Transits occur in pairs separated by eight years, with the gap between pairs of transits alternating between 105.5 and 121.5 years — the last transit was in 2004.

"We are fortunate in that we are truly living in a golden period of planetary transits and it is one of which I hope astronomers can take full advantage," writes Jay M Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College, Massachusetts.

Submission + - British Government Prepares For Solar Storms (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by

judgecorp

on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @03:30PM

judgecorp writes: "The British Government has announced its plans to handle solar storms. The idea is to improve the resilience of infrastructure including satellite communications — which the government says will also be useful against the future possibility of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons"

Submission + - BlackBerry 10 unveiled (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by arcite on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @03:11PM

arcite writes: Research in Motion Ltd's new CEO, Thorsten Heins unveiled BlackBerry 10 in Florida today. Will new features such as a virtual keyboard that learns from typing behavior to a camera that easily focuses on faces be enough to scrape back precious market share (which could possibly fall to 5%) from the likes of Apple and Android? With no physical device yet revealed and a release date ranging anywhere from August to October, it will be an uphill battle.

Submission + - MIT Tetris Hack: Source code released (mit.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @12:15PM

An anonymous reader writes: The MIT Tech published an article with technical details behind the Tetris hack. The article includes photographs of the LED modules, as well as a link to some of the source code used in the hack. The hackers have released some of the source code on GitHub are looking for people to contribute code that could run on the system.

Submission + - Why Intel leads the world in semiconductor manufacturing (extremetech.com)

Submitted by

MrSeb

on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @10:52AM

MrSeb writes: "When Intel launched Ivy Bridge last week, it didn’t just release a new CPU — it set a new record. By launching 22nm parts at a time when its competitors (TSMC and GlobalFoundries) are still ramping their own 32/28nm designs, Intel gave notice that it’s now running a full process node ahead of the rest of the semiconductor industry. That’s an unprecedented gap and a fairly recent development; the company only began pulling away from the rest of the industry in 2006, when it launched 65nm. But how has Intel managed to pull so far ahead? Joel Hruska of ExtremeTech talks to Mark Bohr, Senior Intel Fellow and the Director of Process Architecture and Integration to find out some of Chipzilla's tips and tricks."

Submission + - Open Research Computation closes before opening (openresearchcomputation.com)

Submitted by wagdav on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @03:21AM

wagdav writes: Open Research Computation, a peer reviewed journal on software designed for use by researches closes on 7th May 2012, however it just started to accept manuscripts somewhere last year. The journal was to be open access and tried to be different than others with very demanding pre-submission requirements such as: code availability, high quality documentation and testing, the availability of test input and output data, and reproducibility. Now it is planned to be launched as an ongoing series of Source Code for Biology and Medicine.

Submission + - Samsung drops the price of the Galaxy Tab 7 to $50 Continue reading on Examiner (examiner.com)

Submitted by bobwrit on Tuesday April 17, 2012 @07:49PM

bobwrit writes: "Today, Samsung announced that they will be lowering the price of the original Galaxy Tab to $50, with a new Verizon contract. This offer will be sustained until April 22nd. This tablet is still being shipped with Android 2.2 on it. It also has a back facing 3 MP camera, with a front facing 1.3 MP camera. In order to get this price, you will need to order the tablet from the Verizon store."

Submission + - Magician suing for copyright over magic trick (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Tuesday April 17, 2012 @06:29PM

Fluffeh writes: "Teller, the silent half of the well-known magic duo Penn and Teller, has sued a rival magician for copying one of his most famous illusions. The case promises to test the boundaries of copyright law as it applies to magic tricks. A Dutch magician with the stage name Gerard Bakardy (real name: Gerard Dogge) saw Teller perform the trick in Las Vegas and developed his own version — then started selling a kit — including a fake rose, instructions, and a DVD — for about $3,000. Teller had Bakardy's video removed with a DMCA takedown notice, then called Bakardy to demand that the magician stop using his routine. Teller offered to buy Bakardy out, but they were unable to agree on a price. So Teller sued Bakardy last week in a Nevada federal court."

Submission + - Twitter: "We promise to not be a Patent Troll!" (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Tuesday April 17, 2012 @06:21PM

Fluffeh writes: "Twitter today unveiled a bold new commitment that will be made in writing to its employees—the company will not use any patents derived from employee inventions in offensive lawsuits without the inventor's permission. Twitter has written up a draft of what it calls the "Innovator's Patent Agreement," or IPA, which encourages its developers to invent without the fear that their inventions will be used for nefarious purposes. "The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes," Messinger wrote. "We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.""

Submission + - Snoozing Pilot Mistakes Venus for Aircraft; Panic, Injuries Ensue (reuters.com)

Submitted by Cazekiel on Tuesday April 17, 2012 @05:41PM

Cazekiel writes: In January 2011, an Air Canada Boeing 767 carrying 95 passengers and eight crew members was on route to Zurich from Toronto when its First Officer, fatigued and disoriented from a long nap he'd taken, panicked in seeing what he believed to be a US cargo plane on a collision course with his aircraft. The panicking F.O. pushed forward on the control column to make a rapid descent, only it wasn't an aircraft he'd been looking at, but Venus. According to the article:

"The airliner dropped about 400 feet before the captain pulled back on the control column. Fourteen passengers and two crew were hurt, and seven needed hospital treatment. None were wearing seat belts, even though the seat-belt sign was on."

The only danger in this situation had been the F.O. napping for 75 minutes instead of the maximum 40, as the disorientation and confusion stemming from deeper sleep was the culprit in this mix-up. However, the Air Canada Pilots Association, quote, "has long pressured authorities to take the stresses of night flying into account when setting the maximum hours a pilot can work," taking into account that North Atlantic night-flights are hardest on an already-fatigued pilot.

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