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Android

Submission + - Turn Your Smartphone into a Real Tricorder! (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sensordrone Lets You Run Hundreds of Previously Impossible Sensor Apps:

Sensordrone can fit on your keychain, monitor your environment, and talk with your smartphone via Bluetooth. Sensordrone includes more sensors than anything else available, so you can run hundreds of new apps. Apps that are surprisingly useful in your daily life, fun apps, scientific apps, and more.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/453951341/sensordrone-the-6th-sense-of-your-smartphoneand-be

Submission + - Open Source eBook Kiosk for the Disconnected

Submitted by
N8F8
N8F8 writes: "The book industry is so focused on the web-connected ebook market that I haven't been able to find a SINGLE product or service that allows eBook lending for communities that aren't connected to the web all the time. Is anyone aware of a eBook kiosk system that caches eBooks locally? Or a Open Source software that would allow users to plug a USB eBook reader into a kiosk, browse through a catalog and download the eBook to the reader? Also, is anyone aware of a major book publisher or book distributor that would allow such a system or at least bulk eBook license?"
Censorship

Submission + - An HTTP Status Code for Censorship? (shkspr.mobi)

Submitted by Tryfen
Tryfen writes: UK ISPs are being forced to block The Pirate Bay. One is using "HTTP 403 Forbidden" to tell users that they cannot access the site. So, should there be a specific HTTP status code to tell a user that they are being censored?

Comment Re:hey! (Score 2) 289

This is seriously, seriously wrong.

Why on earth would someone spend the effort to be a lawyer if they just get paid the same? How do you think exceptional employees would feel about carrying everyone else like that? Everyone's going to be HAPPY to be a carbon copy cog in the great machine? If everyone has the same disposable incomes... people would be fighting for the easy jobs. The unhappiness has only moved from feeling taken advantage of due to differences in wages to feeling taken advantage of due to the vast differences in job difficulty across the entire company's payroll for the same disposable income. )".

Maybe, if pay was the same, people would actually be able to focus on doing the jobs that they ENJOY, instead of feeling like they had to take a different position to afford to eat. This has the added benefit of the fact that people who are doing jobs they enjoy/care about tend to do better at those jobs and try harder, so the company better results as well. Bottom line, some people enjoy the work of lawyers, they would still go through the trouble to become lawters. Other people enjoy managing, they would still take the time to be managers. Some people enjoy being janitors, they would feel free to do that without feeling like they were missing out on a paycheck.
Education

Submission + - Udacity Announces Certification Option (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Online "digital university" Udacity has announced a partnership with Pearson VUE that enables them to offer students the option of a certified credential.
Students will only need to undertake this additional step, which will involve "a nominal fee":
"if they wish to pursue Udacitiy's "official credential and be part of [its] job placement program."
Including an extra final test overcomes one of problems faced by online education — was it really the student who's name appears on the certificate that completed the course and took the test?
Was it that student's own unaided work?
By going to a Pearson Vue testing center your identity can be checked. And by sitting a test your knowledge can be established. However, as the first round of tests for Udacity courses are only 90 minutes, with a multiple choice format and no programming they are not a substitute for the course assessment that currently takes place — and, of course, this is not the intention. The idea is that your identify is checked and the fact that you do know enough for it to be reasonable that you actually took the more difficult online exam is the rational.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - The Adventure Bundle: Old-School Adventuring in the Underground?

Submitted by gh0stnaV
gh0stnaV writes: A very young and fresh generation of old-school point-and-click adventures seems to be quietly brewing in hiding among the grass roots. Several developers have recently organized themselves into yet another bundle, dubbed the Bundle-in-a-Box. Some of the games here are already well-known, e.g. Gemini Rue (Wadjet Eye Games) or Ben There, Dan That! (Size Five Games), but there's also the newcomer The Sea Will Claim Everything (Jonas Kyratzes) as well as a couple of games for those who choose to pay above the current average. Most of the offerings come from one-man teams, as true to the indie tag as can get. The question remains, though: will this underground development model prove viable? And does the world of point-and-click belong only to heavy hitters like Double Fine? Right now, the numbers point to an affirmative on the second question, while the first one hangs in the balance.
Science

Submission + - Ask Slashdot. An online science course which makes full use of the Web?

Submitted by blubadger
blubadger writes: Having slept through chemistry at school, I'm looking to fill in the gaps in my science education by following a short online course or two. I've been searching for "Chemistry 101", "Basics of Physics", "Biology Primer", and so on. There's some high-quality stuff on offer – from Academic Earth, MIT and others – but it tends to take the form of videos of traditional university lectures. I was hoping to cut through the chit-chat and blackboards and get straight into the infographics and animations that will help me understand complex ideas. Flash and HTML5 Canvas seem wasted on videos of lectures. If the quality were high enough I would be willing to pay. Have Slashdotters seen anything that fits the bill?
Social Networks

Submission + - Online Social Networks can be Tipped by as Little as 0.8% of their Population (arxiv.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new algorithm developed by researchers at West Point seems to break new ground for viral marketing practices in online social networks. Assuming a trend or behavior that spreads in an online social network based on the classic “tipping” model from sociology (based on the work of Thomas Schelling and Mark Granovetter), the new West Point algorithm can find a set of individuals in the network that can initiate a social cascade – a progressive series of “tipping” incidents — which leads to everyone in the social network adopting the new behavior. But the real good news for viral marketers is that this set of individuals is often very small – a sample of the Friendster social network can be influenced when only 0.8% of the initial population is seeded. The trick is finding the seed set – which the West Point algorithm often does in only a few minutes. The algorithm is described at a paper to be presented later this summer at the prestigious IEEE ASONAM conference. A copy of the paper is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4431. Further info on this new algorithm can also be found at http://blog.netsciwestpoint.org/2012/05/30/online-social-networks-can-be-tipped-by-as-little-as-0-8-of-their-population/.
Windows

Submission + - Build your own supercomputer (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "PC Pro has a feature explaining how a home-brew approach can provide a usable measure of supercomputing power at a comparatively realistic price. The feature explores how it's possible to create 16-core and upward home computers with clustering, even using a hotchpotch of systems including netbooks, laptops, workstations and high-performance servers.

"Windows-based clusters can be assembled quite easily using the Windows HPC Server 2008 operating system, and Microsoft provides guidelines for creating 'cluster-aware' applications that will make use of cluster resources when run on such a system," the feature explains. "Alternatively, there are various free Linux distributions that are designed for clustering, such as openMosix and ClusterKnoppix. These provide a user-friendly experience that makes it almost effortless to set up a cluster of any size using the popular Beowulf system.""
Australia

Submission + - What is a patent troll? (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by schliz
schliz writes: Australian tech publication iTnews is defining ”patent trolls" as those who claim rights to an invention without commercializing it, and notes that government research organization CSIRO could come under that definition.

The CSIRO in April reached a $220 million settlement over three US telcos’ usage of WLAN that it invented in the early 1990s. Critics have argued that the CSIRO had failed to contribute to the world’s first wifi 802.11 standard, failed to commercialize the wifi chip through its spin-off, Radiata, and chose to wage its campaign in the Eastern District courts of Texas, a location favored by more notorious patent trolls.
Businesses

Submission + - Worst Design Ever? Plastic Clamshell Packaging 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Rebecca Rosen writes that iIf you've recently opened up — or, more specifically, tried to open up — an CFL light bulb, you can sympathize with the question posted on Quora last year, "What is the worst piece of design ever done?" to which the site's users have given resounding support to one answer: plastic clamshell packaging. "Design should help solve problems" — clamshells are supposed to make it harder to steal small products and easier for employees to arrange on display — but this packaging, says Anita Schillhorn, makes new ones, such as time wasted, frustration, and the little nicks and scrapes people incur as they just try to get their damn lightbulb out. The problem is so pervasive there is even a Wikipedia page devoted to "wrap rage," "the common name for heightened levels of anger and frustration resulting from the inability to open hard-to-remove packaging." Amazon and Wal-Mart are prodding more manufacturers to change their packaging to cut waste. “We’ve gotten e-mails from customers who’ve purchased scissors in a clamshell, which would require another pair of scissors to open the package,” says Nadia Shouraboura, Amazon’s vice president of global fulfillment. Other worthy answers to the Quora question include the interfaces on most microwaves, TV remotes, New York City's parking signs, and pull-handles on push-only doors, but none gained even close to the level of popular repudiation that clamshells received."

Submission + - House Appropriators want to limit public availability of pending bills (washingtonexaminer.com)

Submitted by Attila Dimedici
Attila Dimedici writes: The House Appropriations Committee is considering a draft report that would forbid the Library of Congress to allow bulk downloads of bills pending before Congress. The Library of Congress currently has an online database called THOMAS (for Thomas Jefferson) that allows people to look up bills pending before Congress. The problem is that THOMAS is somewhat clunky and it is difficult to extract data from it. This draft report would forbid the Library of Congress from modernizing THOMAS until a task force reports back. I am sorry that I cannot write a better summary of these articles, but I think this is an important issue about improving the ability of people to understand what Congress is doing. I am pretty sure that the majority of people on slashdot agree that being able to better understand how the various bills being considered by Congress interact would be good for this country.

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