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Google

Submission + - Haiku OS Ported To Intel 64-bit Architecture (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The BeOS-compatible Haiku OS operating system has been ported to x86_64. As part of the Google Summer of Code, a student made a 64-bit port of the kernel and user-space and it's now working. However, not all of the BeOS apps and drivers are yet working in 64-bit mode.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - AT&T Cell Towers Interfering with Police Radios (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "AT&T has disabled GSM 850MHz service on 16 towers in Oakland, CA while it investigates reports that the cell phone towers were interfering with the city's emergency communications system. After police and firefighters complained of poor coverage, 'the city's and AT&T Wireless' engineering teams conducted joint testing and validation of the RF conditions taking place at one of their tower locations on East Ninth Street,' the city said in a statement. 'Both teams concluded that the AT&T 850MHz GSM cell site was causing significant interference to the City of Oakland's P25 System.'"

Submission + - Forensic Test Can Determine Person's Eye and Hair Color 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A forensic test that has been developed to help police nab perpetrators of crimes can predict a suspect's eye color, hair color, and ethnic origin. The test's ability and the science behind it has been outlined in Forensic Science International: Genetics. Developed by Susan Walsh and other researchers from the Netherlands, Greece, and Poland, the test uses phenotypes from DNA to determine a suspect's eye color, hair color, or place of ethnic origin.
Firefox

Submission + - Firefox 15 released. Add-on memory leaks are now a thing of the past (mozilla.org)

Submitted by mkraft
mkraft writes: Firefox 15 has been released and it includes fixes for add-on memory leaks as well as a number of other features such as background updates, a built in debugger, WebGL enhancements and more.

I've been using the Firefox 15 beta for months and it really does use less memory. I no longer have to periodically restart because Firefox's memory usage has ballooned up to 1 GB and stayed there. Now even with dozens of add-ons installed, including a few ones with known huge leaks, Firefox always returns back down to its starting memory size when tabs are closed.
IBM

Submission + - IBM mainframe running world's fastest commercial processor (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: IBM's new mainframe includes a 5.5-GHz processor, which may be world's fastest commercial processor, say analysts. This new system, the zEnterprise EC12, can also support more than 6-TB of flash memory to help speed data processing. The latest chip has six cores, up from four in the prior generation two years ago. But Jeff Frey, the CTO of the System Z platform, says they aren't trading off single-thread performance in the mainframe with the additional cores. There are still many customers who have applications that execute processes serially, such as batch applications, he said. This latest chip was produced at 32 nanometers, versus 45 nanometers in the earlier system. This smaller size allows more cache on the chip, in this case 33% more Level-2 cache. The system has doubled the L3 and L4 cache over the prior generation.
Apple

Submission + - Apple Seeks to Block Eight Samsung Products After Win (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "Apple asked a U.S. court to block sales of eight Samsung Electronics products on Monday, following the iPhone maker's victory in a patent lawsuit against Samsung on Friday. In a filing to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Apple asked for preliminary injunctions against seven smartphones carrying its Galaxy brand, plus the Droid Charge. It based the requests on a jury's ruling on Friday that Samsung had infringed several Apple patents. Apple said it wants the preliminary injunction pending a final injunction. Apple's requested injunction would cover the Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S2 AT&T, Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, Galaxy S2 T-Mobile, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G, Galaxy S Showcase, Galaxy Prevail and Droid Charge."

Submission + - World's first underwater wheelchair allows disabled to dive and swim freely (techtripper.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Artist Sue Austin has made an underwater wheelchair prototype. He is himself on wheelchair since 1996 and has made this chair with the help of diving professionals. The chair will be navigated with customized fin and acrylic strip using foot. It will be powered using dual propulsion vehicles. The funding for the exceptional project has been provided by Art’s Council’s Impact Scheme. All the modifications have been done on the NHS wheelchair and around two months were solely spent on fixing the buoyancy of the chair. Austin’s hopes are high and she says that the next model will be crafted using titanium to avoid rusting, which was the only downside of the present prototype.
Programming

Submission + - Top surprises for a new programmer (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "In a blog post last week, Swedish developer Henrik Warne listed a handful of things that surprised him when he started his first job as a software developer. The first two on the list: all the talking and all the writing (writing of words, not code). Phil Johnson has picked up the theme and added to the list: coming into the office during regular working hours for a regular work week. What's on your list?"
Media

Submission + - FreeCulture.org urges Creative Commons to drop proprietary clauses in CC 4.0 (freeculture.org)

Submitted by TheSilentNumber
TheSilentNumber writes: FreeCulture.org (Students for Free Culture) has just published a thorough and detailed post calling for the retirement of the non-free clauses, NoDerivatives (ND) and NonCommercial (NC). They state, "The NC and ND clauses not only depend on, but also feed misguided notions about their purpose and function." and that "Instead of wasting effort maintaining and explaining a wider set of conflicting licenses, Creative Commons as an organization should focus on providing better and more consistent support for the licenses that really make sense."
Patents

Submission + - Voice Control Patent Should be Buried in Potter's Field (patexia.com)

Submitted by
ericjones12398
ericjones12398 writes: "In 2004, research and design company SRI International filed for a patent on "Accessing network-based electronic information through scripted online interfaces using spoken input", citing the '569 patent. Three years later, SRI spun off this development as a separate consumer focused company called Siri, which in another three years was acquired by Apple. We all know the rest; Siri became the high-profile centerpiece of the iPhone 4S, crystallizing the voice trend among mobile device companies.
SRI's citation may be a critical element in Potter's case, in that it's virtually the only evidence that the '569 patent played any role whatsoever in the long quest for the holy grail of voice-integrated computing."
Cloud

Submission + - ownCloud replaces MS Exchange and Dropbox (itworld.com)

Submitted by inkscapee
inkscapee writes: I know, we're all sick of hearing cloud this and cloud that. As the story says, ownCloud is already exceptionally easy to use and puts control of your data firmly in your own hands. This article is a collection of tips on setting up shared calendaring and contacts (good-bye to the awful Windows/Exchange/Outlook triumverate), file sharing, accessing your music collection from anywhere, desktop sync clients, and other useful stuff.
Security

Submission + - IT's Nine Biggest Security Threats (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Over the years, hacking has evolved from a one-person crime of opportunity to an open market of sophisticated malware backed by crime syndicates and money launders. When describing a typical hacking scenario, these days you must begin well before the hack or even the hacker, with the organization behind the attack. Today, hacking is all crime, all the time, complete with bidding markets for malware, crime syndicates, botnets for hire, and cyber warfare gone amok. Here are the nine biggest threats facing today's IT security pros."
Yahoo!

Submission + - Yahoo "dumbs down" news sections (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yahoo has now removed the "Health", "Business", "US", "World", "Politics" and "Sports" summary news sections at the bottom of the page and now only has: "Science", "Technology", "The Sideshow", and "The Ticket" (I'm uncertain what these last two categories represent). While the other sections appear to be accessible via the top-level menus, this appears to be a step back in usability, ie: what used to be on the home page now requires a few clicks to get to. Some readers have already begun voicing their discontent: http://feedback.yahoo.com/forums/168859-news/suggestions/3108420-what-has-happened-to-the-new-yahoo-news-format-w
Hardware

Submission + - The History of the Floppy Disk (hp.com)

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "Ready for a nostalgic trip into the wayback? We had floppy disks long before we had CDs, DVDs, or USB thumb-drives. Here’s the evolution of the portable media that changed everything about personal computing.

According to another story from Jimmy Adkisson, a Shugart engineer, “Jim Adkisson and Don Massaro were discussing the proposed drive's size with Wang. The trio just happened to be doing their discussing at a bar. An Wang motioned to a drink napkin and stated 'about that size' which happened to be 5 1/4-inches wide.”

"
Apple

Submission + - Is your iPad keeping you up at night? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Researchers have discovered that relatively little exposure to tablets and other electronics with backlit displays can keep people up at night by messing with their circadian rhythms. The study from the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute showed that a 2-hour exposure to electronic devices with such displays causes suppression of the melatonin hormone and could make it especially tough for teens to fall asleep. The study, funded by Sharp Laboratories of America, simulated usage of such devices among 13 people using special glasses/goggles and light meters

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