Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Cellphones

"Subconscious Mode" Could Boost Phone Battery Life 85

cylonlover writes "University of Michigan researchers have proposed a new power management system for smartphones that could dramatically improve battery life. The system, known as E-MiLi, or Energy-Minimizing Idle Listening, addresses the energy waste that occurs when 'sleeping' phones are looking for incoming messages and clear communication channels. E-MiLi slows down the clock of a phone's WiFi card by up to 1/16 its normal frequency in order to save power, but then kicks it back up to full speed when information is coming in. The phone uses the header of the incoming message to wake itself up from its 'subconscious mode,' so the clock is at full speed to receive the main message. For users on the busiest networks, it could extend battery life by up to 54 percent."
Music

Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement 151

An anonymous reader writes "Celebrated online music player Spotify just entered the US market a few weeks ago, and already it's being sued for patent infringement. Welcome to America! The patent in question is a very very broad patent on distribution of music in a digital form, which basically describes how anyone would ever distribute digital music. The company suing, PacketVideo, has no competing product. It just wants money from the company that actually innovated."

Comment Re:Build it (Score 1) 117

It might take a while to get 1Gbs+ Internet to most homes, but for LAN i feel GbE as a bottleneck today.
When I use DLNA to stream HD content to 3 TV's (one in kitchen, one in living room and 1 or 2 in kids rooms) and use N spec wifi at the same time, the DLNA lags sometimes. By calculations there should be some bandwith left over but not much. The lagging is probably caused by unexpected overheads and GbE switches preforming at "GbE in theory" speeds, but with the world moving towards a phase where every single gadget/device is connected to LAN/Internet this will become a large problem shortly.
Cellphones

Nokia Outsources Symbian OS Work 179

angry tapir writes "Nokia will outsource its Symbian software activities to Accenture, transferring 3,000 employees to the company in the process, as it moves its focus to making phones running on Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. The Finnish phone manufacturer will also close some of its research and development sites and eliminate a further 4,000 jobs by the end of next year. Last week Nokia announced the signing of a definitive agreement regarding their global mobile ecosystem partnership."

Comment Isn't 100mbps too slow by the time of completition (Score 2) 62

The project will likely take 5 or more years to complete.
I remember having 4mbps/512kbps ADSL line 5 years ago and there is no way i would call that "usable" today.

I've had 150mbps/100mbps cable for a year now, this seems fine at the moment but in 5 years? considering how technology keeps on advancing and using up more-and-more bandwidth i really doubt there will be that many users for 100mbps net in 5 years.

In my opinion they should take the money, invest it in backbone networks and let local telco's compete on rented cables (take Stockholm for example, similar scenario resulted in 4$/mo 100mbps net for the whole city 2 years ago)

Comment Re:It's a very valid model for some games (Score 1) 90

There are two huge problems with this kind of subscription system:
1. How do would they charge you?
- They could book the maximum possible amount ($15.95) up-front but that would result in constant booking on your CC
- They could charge you every time you enter the next level in payment structure, but this would increase the payment overhead fivefold
- They could charge after a period of playing but that would result in massive number of botters/farmers using fake CC details

2. This is exactly the kind of subscription model that APB had and was one of the main reasons for their failure.
People don't like to be presented with options like: "will you be playing 1-10, 10-20 or 20+ hours this month?". MMO's are supposed to be entertainment for free time. Planning ahead "10-20" hours of entertainment will make it feel like work.
It is much more fun to pay $15 and play as much as you like than to constantly worry if I'm going to loose money by playing too little or too much.
Technology

Submission + - New Laser Blinds Heat-Seeking Missiles (discovery.com)

disco_tracy writes: A new laser-based missile defense system emits a multitude of wavelengths — all in the infrared range. Just as infrared light from the summer sun warms up the Earth, the infrared light from the lasers warms an incoming missile — or more precisely, it warms the heat-sensor the missile uses to lock onto an aircraft's engine and the exhaust.
The infrared lasers mask the signature of those heat sources by making everything look like a heat source. "It's like throwing sand into the eyes of the missile," said Mohammed Islam. If the pilot turns sharply while the missile is blinded, he or she should should be able to evade the projectile and escape.

Submission + - OpenX Vulnerability leaves sites open to attack (techeye.net)

bossanovalithium writes: An OpenX vulnerability is leaving legitimate and popular websites wide open to malware attacks — by getting into the nuts and bolts and tinkering with the advertising.

Tucows, the popular download site, confirmed that it's part of an OpenX server vulnerability. "We detected the intrusion, patched the vulnerability in OpenX and resolved the issue quickly," said general manager Andy Walker.

The code is being loaded in from external domains. When planted on a website it hosts a downloadable exploit from advertising servers which will put the Bredolab trojan onto a computer.

Submission + - Flash Player 'Square' Adds Native 64bit Support

An anonymous reader writes: Adobe Flash Player 'Square' is a preview release that enables native 64-bit support on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows operating systems, as well as enhanced support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 beta. We have made this preview available so that users can test existing content and new platforms for compatibility and stability."

Submission + - Knight Rider chip could see well enough to drive (pcpro.co.uk)

Barence writes: Eugenio Culurciello of Yale’s School of Engineering & Applied Science has developed a supercomputer on a chip that he claims has enough power to navigate through busy streets. Dubbed NeuFlow, the system takes its inspiration from the mammalian visual system, mimicking its neural network to quickly interpret the world around it. “One of our first prototypes of this system is already capable of outperforming graphic processors on vision tasks,” Culurciello said. “The complete system is going to be no bigger than a wallet, so it could easily be embedded in cars and other places.” According to the scientists, the system could also be used to improve robot navigation, to provide 360-degree synthetic vision, or in assisted living environments to call for help should an elderly person fall, for example.

Comment This is not a new thing (Score 1) 525

I was part of a team that created similar (but a lot simpler) algorithms over 5 years ago.
15 years ago you could create a algorithm and let it run for years and it still would be profitable.
5 years ago the same algorithm stayed profitable for about a minute. After that "someone" started guessing your actions and cutting your profit, in few minutes your algorithm would only generate losses, while profiting others.
Initially our program traded with options and futures and most strategies were based on correlation of different goods/markets, a bit later on we had a pool of algorithms running in paralel, with constant reevauluation of profitability of each algorithm. In the end the most profitable algorithms were the ones that acted against all logic and should have generated imense losses in "classic" market. It was all about guessing what others will guess what you will do next and acting against it.
The company ended it's operations 3 years ago since it couldn't keep up with time (By then it was all about latency and proximity to ex datacenters).

We did consider building a high-frequnecy trading datacenter next to ex datacenter but the plan was shelved due to uncertanty what our competitors would do. (HF trading is really simple.. you don't need any complicated algorithms... just wait for any buyer to send an order to market, with market price and huge quantity (near or orver current cap for given level) and since ex will take few ms. to allocate the order you can, within that time place 2 smaller orders one for buying at given price and one for selling at next level. If your quantity is 10% or less of the clients quantity and you can act within 1-2ms (incl. latency) there is a good chanse that your order will be prefered over the larger order...)

Slashdot Top Deals

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

Working...