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Submission + - ZDNet proclaims "Windows: It's over" 1

Submitted by plastick
plastick writes: "You can think Windows 8 will evolve into something better, but the numbers show that Windows is coming to a dead end."

ZDNet is known to take the side of Microsoft in the past. ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols explains "The very day the debate came to an end, this headline appeared: IDC: Global PC shipments plunge in worst drop in a generation. Sure, a lot of that was due to the growth of tablets and smartphones and the rise of the cloud, but Windows 8 gets to take a lot of the blame too. After all, the debate wasn't whether or not Windows 8 was any good. It's not. The debate was over whether it could be saved."

Submission + - Nano-Suit Protects Bugs From Space-Like Vacuums (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Put a fruit fly larva in a spacelike vacuum, and the results aren't pretty. Within a matter of minutes, the animal will collapse into a crinkled, lifeless husk. Now, researchers have found a way to protect the bugs: Bombard them with electrons, which form a "nano-suit" around their bodies. The advance could help scientists take high-resolution photographs of tiny living organisms. It also suggests a new way that creatures could survive the harsh conditions of outer space and may even lead to new space travel technology for humans.

Submission + - The forgotten MACRO language of HTML, XBL (wikipedia.org) 1

Submitted by tvlinux
tvlinux writes: The web is becoming more than just a media display, there is more interaction and more special things that need to be done. Right now jquery is the preferred method of very dynamic user interface. There is a W3 standard called XBL2.0. It is the macro language of the html. To me it seems like a great idea, Reusable HTML widgets where each one is a separate object contained with in it self. You can define properties, methods, events, each that is self contained.
If the browsers supported XBL2, I can vision a whole ecosystem of new widgets, charts, grids and inputs that people could add to web pages just like any other HTML element. I see less experience developers be able to create fancy websites by just using DOM and not having to learn jquery.
My question is WHY is XBL dead? I think a MACRO language for HTML is a good idea.
     

Submission + - Survey Claims 25% of PC Owners May Switch to Other Devices (ngohq.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 25% of computer owners say they may not replace their PC when their current machine becomes unusable, signaling a possible trend of consumers becoming PC-less because they switch to a tablet or a similar device, according to a national survey conducted by the Center for the Digital Future in collaboration with market research and strategy firm Bovitz.

"We are seeing a major change in how a large percentage of Americans view their computing needs," said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Security

Submission + - Stabuniq malware found on servers at U.S. financial institutions (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Security researchers from Symantec have identified an information-stealing Trojan program that was used to infect computer servers belonging to various U.S. financial institutions. Dubbed Stabuniq, the Trojan program was found on mail servers, firewalls, proxy servers, and gateways belonging to U.S. financial institutions, including banking firms and credit unions, according to a Symantec software engineer. "Approximately half of unique IP addresses found with Trojan.Stabuniq belong to home users," the engineer wrote in a blog post. http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/trojanstabuniq-found-financial-institution-servers "Another 11 percent belong to companies that deal with Internet security (due, perhaps, to these companies performing analysis of the threat). A staggering 39 percent, however, belong to financial institutions."

Submission + - Secret location of Minneapolis police license plate readers (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
zophy
zophy writes: "Here is some revealing information about government monitoring of United States citizens.
Car license plate readers are rapidly growing around the country. High-speed optical character recognition can compare observed plates against a "hot list" of wanted vehicles at 60 plates per second
A Minneapolis-based data scientist requested and received 2.1 million plates that were photographed in 90 days.
His data analysis reveals yet more information about your personal movements that the government permanently stores."
EU

Submission + - ACTA gets death certificate in Europe (ffii.org)

Submitted by Seeteufel
Seeteufel writes: The controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is now officially pronounced dead in the E.U. The European Parliament broadly rejected the Anti-Counterfeiting Agreement a while ago, but there was still a court case pending at the European Court of Justice about the legality of ACTA. The Commission was open about its intent to reintroduce ACTA raticication to the Parliament after a positive Court decision. Now we learn the Commission has withdrawn its questions to the Court.
Technology

Submission + - Research Discovery Could Revolutionalize Semiconductor Manufacture (lunduniversity.lu.se)

Submitted by arobatino
arobatino writes: A new method of manufacturing semiconductors which eliminates the substrate (in other words, no wafer) could be much faster and cheaper. From the article:

'A completely new method of manufacturing the smallest structures in electronics could make their manufacture thousands of times quicker, allowing for cheaper semiconductors. The findings have been published in the latest issue of Nature.

Instead of starting from a silicon wafer or other substrate, as is usual today, researchers have made it possible for the structures to grow from freely suspended nanoparticles of gold in a flowing gas.'
Bitcoin

Submission + - Bitcoin mining rewards drop to 25 bitcoin (mineforeman.com)

Submitted by
ASDFnz
ASDFnz writes: "At 15:24:38 28th of Novemeber 2012 GMT the 210,000th bitcoin block was mined by laughingbear at Slush’s pool https://mining.bitcoin.cz/ .

From now on the reward will only be 25 bitcoins or less. As mentioned in a Slashdot Article http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/11/25/2124236/bitcoin-mining-reward-about-to-halve earlier this week this is a very important milestone in the development of bitcoin, one that may either make or break it."
Earth

Submission + - Scientific American's Fred Guterl explores the real threats posed by technology (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Fred Guterl is the executive editor of Scientific American, and in this piece he explores various real threats posed by technology that modern civilization relies on. Discusses West African and Indian monsoons, infectious diseases, computer hacking. Here's a quote: "Today the technologies that pose some of the biggest problems are not so much military as commercial. They come from biology, energy production, and the information sciences — and are the very technologies that have fueled our prodigious growth as a species. They are far more seductive than nuclear weapons, and more difficult to extricate ourselves from. The technologies we worry about today form the basis of our global civilization and are essential to our survival."
Linux

Submission + - Splashtop For Linux Claims 10~15% Advantage Over VNC (phoronix.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Splashtop remote desktop application software has been ported to Ubuntu Linux. In the port that was announced today, the company claims Splashtop is 10~15% faster than VNC, the commonly used graphical desktop sharing system. The superior performance is attributed to "an efficient protocol, algorithms and optimizations." While non-free proprietary software, the Linux Foundation is also promoting Splashtop coming to Linux.
Mars

Submission + - Elon Musk outlines SpaceX's Mars settlement plans (space.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Space.com (http://www.space.com/18596-mars-colony-spacex-elon-musk.html) has the news of Alon Musk's November 16 talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London. Musk outlined SpaceX's plans to establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people by staring with a pioneering group of fewer than 10 people.

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