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Comment Re:Sponsorships? Really? (Score 1) 332

by mossy the mole (#38303718) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Is Your Data Safe In the Cloud?

Note to slashdot: It'll be hard to maintain whatever shred of journalistic veneer and integrity you have left if you start posting advertisements for sister websites as 'sponsorships' of semi-legitimate discussions or stories. The fact that everyone else does it is still no excuse.

While the whole sponsored ask slashdot does seem a bit off, at least the posts from the sponsors are clearly marked. As long as that continues maybe it wont be too bad. (On the assumption that they dont allow sponsorship from any really evil companies)
Oracle

Submission + - Oracle Demos New SPARC T4 Processor (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Oracle is publicly demonstrating its new T4 processor today and is shipping beta test systems to selected partners. The new
T4 chip is a major departure from previous designs. The T4 offers a maximum of eight cores per physical chip and keeps the T3's eight-threads-per-core limitation. The T4 compensates for its lower maximum theoretical throughput in several ways. First, the T4 is an out-of-order processor with an enhanced branch predictor. Its maximum speed is said to be at least 3GHz, nearly double that of the 1.67GHz T3. Oracle claims the chip's single-threaded performance has been significantly boosted, and expects T4 to deliver a 2x-7x speed increase in single-threaded workloads compared to T3."
United States

Submission + - Apple Denied Trademark for Multi-Touch (macrumors.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: In a decision handed down by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Apple has been denied an application for a trademark on Multi-Touch. Apple originally applied for the trademark on January 9, 2007, the day the iPhone was introduced.

A lawyer for the USPTO denied Apple's initial trademark application and the company appealed to the Appeal Board. The board upheld the initial refusal to grant the trademark.

For trademarks, "the greater the degree of descriptiveness the term has, the heavier the burden to prove it has attained secondary meaning." The trademark attorney pointed out that the term "multitouch" has taken on generic meaning, being used by a wide variety of publications to describe the touchscreen technology on Android phones, tablets, and notebooks.

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/26/apple-denied-trademark-for-multi-touch/
Oracle

Submission + - Oracle may "fork itself" with MySQL moves (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by packetrat
packetrat writes: Ars Technica analyzes the recent commercial additions by Oracle to MySQL Enterprise and the additional unrest it's added to the community. Oracle may be throwing itself out of the community as it pushes more customers to look at fully open-source alternatives.
AI

Submission + - MAVIS brings search to audio (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: The Microsoft Research Audio Video Indexing System (MAVIS) has been running on a trial basis for a while and it extends search to audio material. It uses speech recognition to transcribe audio sources and then indexes them for use by standard search engine.
Not only does this let you search audio recordings but video sound tracks as well. There is also an API that means it can be built into other applications.
Of course being able to index audio files is just one step away from being able to index phone calls in the same way....
Crime

Submission + - RSA Admits SecurID Tokens Have Been Compromised (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: RSA has finally admitted publicly that the March breach into its systems has resulted in the compromise of their SecurID two-factor authentication tokens. The admission comes in the wake of cyber intrusions into the networks of three US military contractors: Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications and Northrop Grumman — one of them confirmed by the company, others hinted at by internal warnings and unusual domain name and password reset process.
Censorship

Submission + - Alarm over EU 'Great Firewall' proposal (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Broadband providers have voiced alarm over an EU proposal to create a “Great Firewall of Europe” by blocking “illicit” web material at the borders of the bloc, while anti-censorship campaigners compared the plan to China’s notorious system for controlling citizens’ access to blogs, news websites and social networking services.
Security

Submission + - Siemens SCADA Flaws To Be Disclosed at Black Hat (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "In May, NSS Labs Researcher Dillon Beresford pulled out of a Dallas hacking conference at the last minute when Siemens was unable to fix problems he'd found in the firmware of its S7 programmable logic controller. Now NSS Labs CEO Rick Moy says Beresford is rescheduled to deliver his talk at Black Hat, which runs Aug. 2-3. Beresford has discovered six vulnerabilities in the S7 that 'allow an attacker to have complete control of the device,' Moy said. Devices like the S7 do things such as control how fast a turbine spins or open gates on dams."
Microsoft

Submission + - Malware scanner finds 5% of Windows PCs infected (winbeta.org) 1

Submitted by
BogenDorpher
BogenDorpher writes: "According to statistics generated by Microsoft's new free malware scanning and scrubbing tool, Safety Scanner, one in every twenty Windows PCs were infected with malware.

Microsoft's Safety Scanner was downloaded 420,000 times in just one week of availability and it cleaned up malware or signs of exploitation from more than 20,000 Windows PCs, according to statistics generated by Microsoft's Malware Protection Center. This resulted in an infection rate of nearly 5%."

Submission + - A better solution to CAPTCHAs? (ottawacitizen.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Ottawa Citizen's article on HIVE's alternative to CAPTCHAs. No more mangled words you can't read and annoying typing in of text you think might be right if you are lucky! (Slashdot software devs, take note!) You can take a test drive at http://www.hive-secure.com/. It's still not an invisible authentication that you aren't a bot, but its better than the current method by a big bit.

Subby notes that he had to prove himself with just such an annoying text cap to submit this story!
Apple

Submission + - Alaska Airlines Jettisons Paper Manuals (engadget.com)

Submitted by fullymodo
fullymodo writes: "Alaska Airlines has become the first major US airline to hop on board the paperless bandwagon. While it's not quite ready to ditch paper navigation charts just yet (though that is under consideration), the airline has announced that it will be replacing its traditional flight manuals with iPads, which will be loaded up with the GoodReader app and PDFs of 41 different manuals and other materials."
So explain why I have to shut off my non-wi-fi-capable ebook reader during take-off and landing?

Submission + - Lodsys after pay wall websites

Submitted by denizb
denizb writes: We are a small company with a website offering paid membership to access our own produced reality show type videos. Non members are able to preview trailers, and then if they like what they see, can purchase a monthly membership to watch our shows via streaming on desktop and mobile platforms.

We have just received the same Infringement notice from Lodsys as the app developers.

They are claiming that they basically invented the internet by asserting that anything that allows for a user to access its content from his or her current physical location, and stores information about said user, and offers a way to sell that user a membership, or product (where the product is full access to the content), is infringing on their patent.

Basically they are claiming to have invented commerce on the internet.

What do?
Science

Submission + - Massive storm erupts on Saturn (cosmosmagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A giant early-spring storm in Saturn's northern hemisphere — so powerful that it stretches around the entire planet — has been detected.

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