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Handhelds

Ask Slashdot: Tablet With Root Access By Default? 168

Posted by timothy from the oh-you-want-everything dept.
hweimer writes "I am looking for a small (7") tablet that comes with root access out of the box. I know, I could get one of the usual suspects and root it myself, but I don't want to waste my time in the process and end up voiding my warranty. Basically, I'd like to use it for web browsing, reading PDFs and accessing my e-mails via SSH (extra bonus for X11 forwarding). Any good suggestions, or should I wait for Tizen devices to hit the market?"
Government

Utah To Teach USA is a Republic, Not a Democracy 1277

Posted by CmdrTaco from the only-two-of-three-wives-agree dept.
0ryan0 writes "Utah lawmakers passed a bill today to force public school teachers to teach that the USA is a republic, not a democracy, because a 'Democracy' would have 'Democrat' in it." The good news must be that all issues of unemployment, finance and social service must be resolved in Utah for their legislature to spend time on this. It must be a utopia!
Power

Iceland Eyes Liquid Magma As Energy Source 215

Posted by samzenpus from the it's-a-little-warm-in-here dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists in Iceland have been studying and utilizing the power of geothermal wells for years. In 2009 one such study hit a standstill when a group ran into magma halfway into their dig. The roadblock has become a blessing in disguise, as recent research has shown that the magma can act as a potent new source of geothermal energy powerful enough to heat 25,000 to 30,000 homes."
Space

Extra-Galactic Planet Discovered In Milky Way 111

Posted by timothy from the just-visiting dept.
astroengine writes "Between six to nine billion years ago, the Milky Way collided with another galaxy. As you'd expect, this caused quite a mess; stars, dust and gas being ripped from the intergalactic interloper. In fact, to this day, the dust hasn't quite settled and astronomers have spotted an odd-looking exoplanet orbiting a metal-poor star 2,000 light-years from Earth. Through a careful process of elimination, the extrasolar planet (known as HIP 13044b) actually works out to be an extragalactic planet, a surviving relic of the massive collision eons ago."
Earth

Global Warming's Silver Lining For the Arctic Rim 582

Posted by Soulskill from the inspired-me-to-go-burn-some-tires dept.
Pickens writes "According to Laurence C. Smith, an Arctic scientist who has consistently sounded alarms about the approach of global warming, within 40 years the Arctic rim may be transformed by climate change into a new economic powerhouse. As the Arctic ice recedes, ecosystems extend, and minerals and fossil fuels are discovered and exploited, the Arctic will become a place of 'great human activity, strategic value and economic importance.' Sparsely populated areas like Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and the northern United States — the northern rim countries, or NORCs — will become formidable economic powers and migration magnets. Predictions in Smith's new book The Earth in 2050 include the following: New shipping lanes will open during the summer in the Arctic, allowing Europe to realize its 500-year-old dream of direct trade between the Atlantic and the Far East, and resulting in new economic development in the north; NORCs will be among the few place on Earth where crop production will likely increase due to climate change; and NORCs will become the envy of the world for their reserves of fresh water, which may be sold and transported to other regions."
Medicine

15-Year-Old Boy Fitted With Robotic Heart 241

Posted by Soulskill from the stay-away-from-nausicaans,-kid dept.
An anonymous reader writes "What do you do when a 15-year-old boy is close to death and ineligible for a heart transplant? If you're Dr. Antonio Amodeo you turn to an artificial solution and transplant a robotic heart, giving the boy another 20-25 years of life. The Italian boy in question suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which rapidly degenerates the muscles and eventually leads to death. Having such a disease renders the boy ineligible for a heart transplant, meaning almost certain death without an alternative solution. Dr. Amodeo found such an alternative in the form of a 90-gram, fully-robotic heart that took 10 hours to fit inside the boy's left ventricle. It is a permanent solution offering as much as 25 years of life and is powered by a battery worn as a belt."
Crime

Submission + - E-Crime Gangs Targeting Gamers and Social Websites (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: Phishing gangs have been increasing their efforts against brands in the social networking, online classifieds and online gaming industries, according to the APWG. n its assessment of the most targeted industry sectors, attacks focusing on brands in the online retail, auction and financial services sectors decreased while payment services increased more than 10 percent in Q1 2010. The category of “other” – social networking, online classifieds and online gaming industries – rose to an 18 percent proportion, however, from 13 percent in Q4 2009, an increase of more than 37 percent quarter over quarter.
Government

UK's Royal Mail Launches First Intelligent Stamps 69

Posted by Soulskill from the stamplons-were-created-by-man dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Royal Mail on Friday issued what it called the world's first 'intelligent stamps,' designed to interact with smartphones using image-recognition technology. The Royal Mail's latest special-issue stamps, devoted to historic British railways, are designed to launch specially developed online content when a user snaps them using an image-recognition application available on iPhone or Android handsets. 'This is the first time a national postal service has used this kind of technology on their stamps and we're very excited to be bringing intelligent stamps to the nation's post,' a Royal Mail spokesman said in a statement. 'Intelligent stamps mark the next step in the evolution of our stamps, bringing them firmly into the 21st century.'"
Bug

Linux X.org Critical Security Flaw Silently Patched 259

Posted by CmdrTaco from the pay-no-attention dept.
eldavojohn writes "On June 17th, the X.org team was notified by Invisible Things Lab of a critical security flaw (PDF) that affected both x86_32 and x86_64 platforms. The flaw deals with escalated privileges of a user process that has access to the X server. The founder of ITL said of the flaw, 'The attack allows a (unpriviliged) user process that has access to the X server (so, any GUI application) to unconditionally escalate to root (but again, it doesn't take advantage of any bug in the X server!). In other words: any GUI application (think e.g. sandboxed PDF viewer), if compromised (e.g. via malicious PDF document) can bypass all the Linux fancy security mechanisms, and escalate to root, and compromise the whole system.' This has apparently been a security flaw since kernel 2.6 was released. From the article, 'On 13 August, Linus Torvalds committed an initial fix, but several patches were added afterward for various reasons. The problem has been addressed in versions 2.6.27.52, 2.6.32.19, 2.6.34.4 and 2.6.35.2 of the kernel.'"
Government

Legislation To Make Web Devices Accessible To Disabled Users 274

Posted by Soulskill from the we'll-tell-the-robotic-overlords-to-speak-up dept.
pgmrdlm writes "In an effort to make web devices accessible to the disabled, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (H.R. 3101), submitted by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA) passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 348 to 23. The related Senate bill has been introduced by Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR). Quoting Representative Markey's website: 'We've moved from Braille to Broadcast, from Broadband to the Blackberry. We've moved from spelling letters in someone's palm to the Palm Pilot. And we must make all of these devices accessible.' The Washington Post coverage notes, 'Some broadcasters put videos on the Internet with captions, but not all. That can make inaccessible everything from the political videos that are now common on the Web to pop culture clips that turn viral.' As someone who has 20/200 vision with my glasses on, I completely agree that the web has not been kind to individuals with various disabilities. But due to the size of the web, and the large number of different devices that access it, is it even possible to legislate something of this nature? Or should we rely on education and peer pressure on the various manufacturers?"
Education

US Students Struggle With Understanding of the 'Equal' Sign 1268

Posted by Soulskill from the confusing-parallel-lines dept.
bickerd--- writes with news of research out of Texas A&M which found that roughly 70% of middle grades students in the US don't fully understand what the 'equal' sign means. Quoting: "'The equal sign is pervasive and fundamentally linked to mathematics from kindergarten through upper-level calculus,' Robert M. Capraro says. 'The idea of symbols that convey relative meaning, such as the equal sign and "less than" and "greater than" signs, is complex and they serve as a precursor to ideas of variables, which also require the same level of abstract thinking.' The problem is students memorize procedures without fully understanding the mathematics, he notes. 'Students who have learned to memorize symbols and who have a limited understanding of the equal sign will tend to solve problems such as 4+3+2=( )+2 by adding the numbers on the left, and placing it in the parentheses, then add those terms and create another equal sign with the new answer,' he explains. 'So the work would look like 4+3+2=(9)+2=11.'"
Government

Why Recordings From World War I Aren't Public Domain 329

Posted by samzenpus from the that-old-timey-sound dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While Disney and others have done a great job pushing the end date for works entering the public domain ever further forward, most people have assumed that anything from before 1923 is in the public domain. However, it turns out that this is not true for sound recordings, in part due to an accidental quirk in copyright law history — in that Congress, way back in 1909, believed that sound recordings could not be covered by copyright (they believed the Constitution did not allow recordings to be covered), and thus, some state laws stepped up to create special copyrights for sound recordings. A court ruling then said that these state rules were not overruled by federal copyright law. End result? ANY recorded work from before 1972 (no matter how early it was recorded) won't go into the public domain until 2049 at the earliest."
Input Devices

Sentence Spacing — 1 Space or 2? 814

Posted by CmdrTaco from the how-about-none dept.
An anonymous reader noted an epic battle is waging, the likes of which has not been seen since we all agreed that tab indenting for code was properly two spaces. He writes "Do you hit the space bar two times between sentences, or only one? I admit, I'm from the typewriter age that hits it twice, but the article has pretty much convinced me to change. My final concern: how will my word processor know the difference between an abbr. and the end of a sentence (so it can stretch the sentence for me)? I don't use a capital letter for certain technical words (even when they start a sentence), making it both harder to programmatically detect a new sentence and more important to do so. What does the Slashdot community think?"
The Media

$200B Lost To Counterfeiting? Back It Up 283

Posted by kdawson from the pulled-from-some-orifice dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Over the weekend, the NY Times ran a story about how the recession has impacted product counterfeiters. In it, the reporter regurgitates the oft-repeated claim that counterfeiting 'costs American businesses an estimated $200 billion a year.' Techdirt's Mike Masnick asks the Times reporter to back up that assertion, noting two recent reports (by the GAO and the OECD) that suggest the actual number is much lower, and quoting two reporters who have actually looked at the numbers and found (a) the real number is probably less than $5 billion, and (b) the $200 billion number can be traced back to a totally unsourced (read: made-up) magazine claim from two decades ago."
Earth

Global Warming 'Undeniable,' Report Says 1657

Posted by CmdrTaco from the they-can't-fool-pudge dept.
BergZ writes "Scientists from around the world are providing even more evidence of global warming. 'A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record,' the annual State of the Climate report declares. Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, including Canada, the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its analysis of 10 indicators that are 'clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.'"

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