Comment Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score 1) 696
I wonder, do the engineers and techs working at Apple feel ashamed all this trolling?
Probably not, aren't they all indoctrinated when they start working for Apple?
Submission + - Stroller Recalled after Toddlers Get Fingers Chopped Off
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "CBS News reports that three children have accidentally chopped off a fingertip because of a fault with their stroller and two adults have reported smashing or cutting their fingers after they got a finger jammed in a hinge mechanism used to adjust handlebars on Kolcraft Contours Options products. The recall is similar to a recall of 1 million Maclaren strollers that was reissued last year after at least 37 more children have injured since the recall, including five who lose their fingertips, the US. Consumer Product Safety Commission said. The Maclaren recall highlights the continuing problem of consumers using strollers for an extended period of time, including buying them secondhand where it is typically harder to know a product has been recalled since the date of original purchase isn't usually known and the owner is less likely to know model numbers and place of purchase. The CPSC also says it knows of 30 deaths since 1980 of a child to getting trapped between a stroller's tray or grab bar and the seat bottom. The original recall was a nightmare for Maclaren. "Given the higher order of sensitivity, parents are much more diligent, They want to talk to friends, family and even strangers about their decisions. They'll go the extra distance." says Pete Blackshaw, a brand consultant for Nielsen Online adding that new mothers are three times more likely than others to use social media and start blogs. "Anything relative to child safety tends to be off-the-charts viral.""
Submission + - Eric Raymond on why Stallman is a dangerous fanatic (ibiblio.org)
Frosty Piss writes: According to Eric Raymond, 'RMS made an early decision to frame his advocacy as a moral crusade rather than a pragmatic argument about engineering practices and outcomes. While he made consequentialist arguments against closed source (and still does) his rhetoric and his thinking became dominated by terms like “evil”, to the point where he repeatedly alienated potential allies both with his absolutism and his demand that anyone cooperating with him share it.' Raymond goes on to say, 'By the late 1990s, after having observed RMS’s behavior for more than a decade, I had long since concluded that the Free Software Foundation’s moralistic rhetoric was serving us badly. The problem with it is the same problem with messianic religions in general; for people who are not flipped into true-believer mode by any given one, it will come off as at best creepy and insular, at worst nutty and potentially dangerous (and this remains true even for people attached to a different messianic religion).'
Submission + - Japan restarts two of their 50 nuclear reactors (go.com) 1
Darth_brooks writes: "Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda ordered the restart of two idle nuclear reactors Saturday, amid split public response. The Japanese government is trying to fill a summer power shortfall. According to the article, the two reactors supply power to the Kansai region near Osaka, where local officials were predicting a 15% shortfall in power capacity during July and August."
Submission + - Black Death Discovered In Oregon (ibtimes.com)
redletterdave writes: "The Black Death, a strain of bubonic plague that destroyed nearly a third of Europe's entire population between 1347 and 1369, has been found in Oregon. Health officials in Portland have confirmed that a man contracted the plague after getting bitten by a cat. The unidentified man, who is currently in his 50s, had tried to pry a dead mouse from a stray cat's mouth on June 2 when the cat attacked him. Days later, fever and sickness drove the man to check himself into Oregon's St. Charles Medical Center, where he is currently in "critical condition.""
Submission + - Will Sweden hand Julian Assange over to the United States? (digitaljournal.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Digital Journal has the following on the ongoing Assange case: 'Now that Julian Assange's appeal against extradition has failed, fears are that he will then be shipped on from Sweden to the U.S.A. [....] He is due to be extradited to Sweden in two weeks, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations of sexual assault and rape. It is feared that once in Sweden, he is likely to be sent on to the U.S.A. The U.S. Government has apparently issued a secret, closed indictment against Assange. Because of this he will be branded a terrorist and a fair trial seems very unlikely should he be sent to the U.S.A. [... ] STRATFOR's Fred Burton for example was caught writing the following about Assange in an internal email that Wikileaks got its hands on some time ago: "Assange is going to make a nice bride in prison. Screw the terrorist. He’ll be eating cat food forever." [...] The question all this raises is: Is there a planned effort underway to ship Assange to Sweden, and ship him right on to the United States, where he would then face serious charges ranging from "illegal espionage" to "leaking classified documents to the public" to "acts of treason committed against the United States"? To put it a bit more bluntly: is there an organized plan underway to send Assange to the U.S. via Sweden, and possibly put him behind bars for the rest of his life, and are the people who have drafted this plan now merely going through to the motions of moving Julian Assange from Point A (Britain) to Point B (United States), where a cruel fate awaits him?
Submission + - Zero-Day exploit market sells mostly to US government (forbes.com)
mpol writes: "Forbes magazine published a profile of French exploit-selling firm Vupen last April. Now there's a blog article about a broker from South Africa, complete with a price-list of zero-day exploits and their platform. iOS is the highest valued here.
The article also claims most exploits are being sold to agencies of the US government.
It does raise a concern though. What if black-hats got more serious, and the US government would become a victim. When shit hits the fan, how will they react."
The article also claims most exploits are being sold to agencies of the US government.
It does raise a concern though. What if black-hats got more serious, and the US government would become a victim. When shit hits the fan, how will they react."
Submission + - Swedes Discover Spherical Object Embedded in Baltic Sea Floor (www.cbc.ca) 2
An anonymous reader writes: Swedish sea scavengers revealed a curious discovery — a disc-shaped object, roughly 60 metres in diameter, and rising about 4 metres out of the seabed, with a 400-metre trail leading to its position.
A lack of detailed photographs has caused speculation that this may be nothing more than a hoax, or information campaign, but there is a promise of more details, from the crew, as they uncover their find with better equipment.
A lack of detailed photographs has caused speculation that this may be nothing more than a hoax, or information campaign, but there is a promise of more details, from the crew, as they uncover their find with better equipment.
Kaspersky Calls For Cyber Weapons Convention 166
judgecorp writes with a synopsis of talk given by Kaspersky at CeBit "Cyber weapons are so dangerous, they should be limited by a treaty like those restricting chemical and nuclear arms, Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky has told a conference. He also warned that online voting was essential or democracy will die out in 20 years."
Dolby's TrueHD 96K Upsampling To Improve Sound On Blu-Rays 255
Stowie101 writes in with a story about your Blu-ray audio getting better. "The audio on most Blu-ray discs is sampled at 48kHz. Even the original movie tracks are usually only recorded at 48kHz, so once a movie migrates to disc, there isn't much that can be done. Dolby's new system upsamples that audio signal to 96kHz at the master stage prior to the Dolby TrueHD encoding, so you get lossless audio with fewer digital artifacts. The 'fewer digital artifacts' part comes from a feature of Dolby's upsampling process called de-apodizing, which corrects a prevalent digital artifact known as pre-ringing. Pre-ringing is often introduced in the capture and creation process and adds a digital harshness to the audio. The apodizing filter masks the effect of pre-ringing by placing it behind the source tone — the listener can't hear the pre-ringing because it's behind the more prevalent original signal."
Apple Blocks iOS Apps Using Dropbox SDK 356
Barence writes with an excerpt from PC Pro: "Dropbox's latest SDK has incurred the wrath of Apple, because users who don't have the Dropbox app installed on their iPhone/iPad are instead pushed to Dropbox's website via the Safari browser. Here, they can click a link to the desktop version of the service, which allows them to buy extra Dropbox storage without Apple taking its usual 30% cut."
Reportedly, Dropbox is attempting to strike a deal to resolve the problem.
Comment Re:Judgement (Score 1) 121
"Why do people believe that our current broadband speeds, both wireless and wired, would remain at ADSL2 and even LTE for much more than another 5 years? I mean, there is already VDSL2 tech (ironically, the NBN plans on using this in multi-story dwellings), and wireless has had and is projected to have a bandwidth growth profile that is just incredible."
Five years ago I was paying $120/mth for 60G of data. Now I'm paying $100/mth for 200G of data. Fixed on-a-good-day-5Mbps. It started as 8Mbps but as more people have built onto the copper network the speeds have dropped. Private industry of all flavours have done nothing to make the copper faster - its the same pathetic copper network that has been in the ground here since the suburb was built 20 years ago. Those data prices have only fallen recently because NBNCo has added extra backhaul into the city which cuts out Telstra and their gouging.
Wireless, through Telstra since they're the only ones who provide coverage here - 3km from the CBD - will sell me 20G of data for $100/mth. If the planets are in the right alignment, that might give me 4Mbps. My parents who are only another few kms away from me cannot get a phone line. So no ADSL. But they can get a NextG dongle from Telstra and get anywhere up to 1Mbps.
Politically biased? No, biased against stupidity. One party's idea of broadband under the OPEL program was 12Mbps. They haven't changed their minds since 2007, they still think that 12Mbps should be fast enough for everyone. Except the rich. For the rich suburbs they'll be quite happy to spend the chunk of the 10-20B pork barrel to give them speeds of up to 100Mbps, delivered by a hodge-podge of cable and FTTN whilst maintain the horrendous regulatory environment that pretty much gives Telstra the power to do what-ever they wish whilst their competitors have to take all of the complaints to the regulator who can take months to make a decision. More of the "private industry doing it better" (where it = screwing over consumers and other companies).
NBNCo are working towards giving most Australians access to a fibre network with a regulatory environment that favours no single provider. That is a good thing. They are actively fixing broadband blackspots and providing a single, common price for bandwidth be it wireless or fixed. That is a good thing. They are doing what no private company will do (replacing copper with fibre) and doing it in a fair manner. That is a good thing too. They've also planned to make the network profitable, which is also a good thing.
Most importantly, suggesting that FTTH is overkill for Australia is down-right obnoxious. Australia can afford to do it. Australian's deserve the best solution for the money our Government is spending. Spending the money now means that future generations have the opportunity to put the network to uses that we haven't even dreamed of yet, much like the workers spreading the copper network 80 years ago had no idea that one day we'd be arguing about ripping it up because we can't get enough bandwidth out of it.
Comment Re:Judgement (Score 4, Insightful) 121
I'd like to apologise for the ill-informed comments from the "Aussies" above who think that Australia's current telecommunications infrastructure is "good". When areas 5kms from the cities CBD can't get broadband because of the incumbant telco, or are forced to use wireless that drops out when it rains, or aren't in the big three cities so there is no chance of broadband delivered by the cable network, or
The NBN is already delivering benefits. They've significantly altered the backhaul networks around Australia so anyone who doesn't live in Sydney or Melbourne have the chance of receiving ADSL at a competitive rate (for the non-Aussies, and people who live in Sydney/Melbourne, Australia is more than just those two cities). They've managed to get the incumbant telco to agree to seperate their wholesale and retail arms and hand over infrastructure to NBNCo. More importantly they are actually building infrastructure that will be used for generations and will offer a return to successive Governments.
The Coalition's plan is to sell off what has been built already (because private industry can do it better, the same private industry that sat on their hands for the last 20 years..) to deploy wireless to some places (and do nothing about the gouging which the private companies do with wireless data whilst offering blistering fast speeds of up to 12Mbps) and a combination of FTTN/DSL/Cable to marginal electorates. Spending anywhere from $11 - 20b in the process.
Comment Re:What Sa has over Au ? (Score 5, Informative) 117
"I don't mean to be patronizing - but I just can't see how Sa can win over Au in term of safety"
I think its more likely Australia's poor record at developing and capitalising on high-tech R&D.
Australia doesn't do high-tech. Look at Government policy for the last 20 years. Look at which companies in Oz actually do R&D. The poster child for Australian R&D is the CSIRO, and really they're the poster child because there is no-one else.
Then there is our Universities that are churning out business-types and lawyers but fewer and fewer scientists. So even if we wanted to start doing anything remotely high-tech, we don't have the people to do it - we'd need to import them. And there is a madness around these parts about letting immigrants into the country, fanned by the right-wing Opposition.
This isn't meant to be dismissive of the Australian proposal; it was very good and by all accounts so was the SA one. The plans for the supporting infrastructure was very impressive. But Australia has a reputation of only being interested in what we can dig out of the ground, not what we can use our brains for.
I think its more likely Australia's poor record at developing and capitalising on high-tech R&D.
Australia doesn't do high-tech. Look at Government policy for the last 20 years. Look at which companies in Oz actually do R&D. The poster child for Australian R&D is the CSIRO, and really they're the poster child because there is no-one else.
Then there is our Universities that are churning out business-types and lawyers but fewer and fewer scientists. So even if we wanted to start doing anything remotely high-tech, we don't have the people to do it - we'd need to import them. And there is a madness around these parts about letting immigrants into the country, fanned by the right-wing Opposition.
This isn't meant to be dismissive of the Australian proposal; it was very good and by all accounts so was the SA one. The plans for the supporting infrastructure was very impressive. But Australia has a reputation of only being interested in what we can dig out of the ground, not what we can use our brains for.
Comment Good news everybody! (Score 1) 537
Now Apple will sue anyone who else that makes a tablet with a 2048x1536 screen..
