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Government

Submission + - Congress, at Last Minute, Drops Requirement to Obtain Warrant to Monitor Email (allgov.com) 1

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: Before passing the Video Privacy Protection Act Amendments Act, the Senate dropped an amendment which would require the feds to get warrants before looking at mail older than 6 months that is stored on a 3rd-party server.

This means the status quo, dating from the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, remains.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to convince a bank to use FOSS in non-critical mission stuff?

Submitted by Uthark
Uthark writes: We are a small software company that develops applications for customer service. From our beginning we've always used free software to build our products, making sure to contribute with donations, translations (we are a Latin American company) and support contracts from projects that offer them.

We understand how reluctant some companies can be to use free software, so our approach has always been to offer trial periods before purchase. However, we found a bank (non-US) that, despite the trial periods, demands that we remove all free software and replace them with products from Microsoft and Oracle, arguing regulatory compliance.

We have other banks among our customers that never asked for that change, so we suspect it may be a whim or a deal under the table with these suppliers. Since this client can be a very good business opportunity for our company, how I should address the issue, while keeping our product as it is, since changing it to use Microsoft / Oracle products would be time consuming, very expensive, requires helpdesk training and does not add significant value to our products?.
Math

Submission + - New Structures Self-Assemble in Synchronized Dance (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by patella.whack
patella.whack writes: Researchers from the University of Illinois and Northwestern University have demonstrated tiny spheres that synchronize their movements as they self-assemble into a spinning microtube. Such in-motion structures, a blending of mathematics and materials science, could open a new class of technologies with applications in medicine, chemistry and engineering. "It's spontaneous. We don't force it to form," ... "We saw that during the self-assembly process, the synchronization also happens. If you look at the spheres, every one is doing a different thing. Only when they come in close contact will they do something cooperatively." Very cool 2 min video here.
Politics

Submission + - U.N. Recognizes Palestine as "Non-Member Observer State" (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by TechnoGeist
TechnoGeist writes: With a vote of 138 yeas, 9 nays and 41 abstentions, the United Nations General Assembly has approved Palestine as a "non-member observer state". The resolution occurs 65 years to date, after the partitioning of Palestine into two states. Palestine will now join the Holy See as one of only two members bearing similar status.

Opposition came most prominently from the United States and Israel, with Hillary Clinton referring to the resolution as "unfortunate and counter-productive", and the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu making the following comment: "By going to the UN, the Palestinians have violated the agreements with Israel and Israel will act accordingly,".
Lord of the Rings

Submission + - NY Daily News Breaks Review Silence with Hobit review. (nydailynews.com)

Submitted by
flogger
flogger writes: "The world Premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has come and gone in Wellington, NZ. But because of a "Review Blackout," Stateside Tolkien fans are starving for first impressions of the film: Loyalty to the book, 48 Frames a second, 3d, etc. NY Daily has posted their review early. They love the visuals of the higher frame rate, they enjoy the light-hearted tone of the movie (similar to the source material), but the review warns of a Jar-Jar Binks like character."
Nintendo

Submission + - Hackers Discover Wii U's Processor Design and Clock Speed (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Early, off-the-record comments from game developers indicated that the Nintendo's Wii U console horsepower was on par with, or a bit behind the Xbox 360 and PS3, which raised questions about just how "next-generation" the Wii U would be. Now, Wii and PS3 hacker Hector Martin (aka Marcan) has answered some of these questions and raised a few others. According to his findings, the Wii U's CPU is a triple-core design clocked at 1.24GHz. Marcan identifies the base design as a PowerPC 750, which makes sense. Nintendo used PowerPC 750-derived processors in both the GameCube and the Wii. Retaining that architecture for the Wii U would simplify backwards compatibility and game development. Now factor in the GPU, which is reportedly clocked at 550MHz. Some have favored the Radeon HD 4000 series as a basis for the part; I still think a low-end Radeon 5000, like Redwood Pro, makes more sense. That GPU was built on 40nm, measured 104mm sq, clocked in at 649MHz, and had a 39W TDP. The die size discrepancy between the Wii U and Redwood Pro would account for the 32MB of EDRAM cache we know the Wii U offers. Nintendo may have propped up a relatively weak CPU with considerably more GPU horsepower."
Biotech

Submission + - Paralyzed Dogs Walk Again After Cell Transplant (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "British researchers successfully restored the ability to walk in paralyzed dogs. Special cells taken from the dogs’ noses and transplanted to injured areas caused regrowth of neurons. Within six months the dogs amazingly regained used of their hind legs and were able to use a treadmill, some without a harness. The researchers hope the procedure might one day lead to a cure for humans with spinal cord injury."
The Internet

Submission + - Does Even Amazing Partisan Tech Deserve Applause? 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The press has been filled with wide-eyed articles about how Obama’s tech team pulled out the stops in their race against the Republicans. But as exciting as some of the new techniques dreamed up may be, Tom Steinberg points out it's important to reflect on the difference between choosing to use tech skills to win a particular fight, versus trying to improve the workings of the democratic system, or helping people to self-organize and take some control of their own lives. 'I am still filled with an excitement about the prospects for non-partisan technologies that I can’t muster for even the coolest uses of randomized control trial-driven political messaging,' writes Steinberg. 'The reason why all comes down to the fact that major partisan digital campaigns change the world, but they don’t do it in the way that services like eBay, TripAdvisor and Match.com do. What all these sites have in common – helping people sell stuff they own, find a hotel, or a life partner – is that they represent a positive change in the lives of millions of people that is not directly opposed by a counter-shift.'
Games

Submission + - Gameplay: the Missing Ingredient In Games (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Game designer Tadhg Kelly has an article discussing where the games industry has gone over the past several years. Gaming has become more of a business, and in doing so, become more of a science as well. When maximizing revenue is a primary concern, development studios try to reduce successful game designs to individual elements, then simply seek to add those elements to whatever game they're working on, like throwing spices into a stew. Kelly points out that indie developers who are willing to experiment often succeed because they understand something more fundamental about games: fun. Quoting: 'The guy who invented Minecraft (Markus “Notch” Persson) didn’t just create a giant virtual world in which you could make stuff, he made it challenging. When Will Wright created the Sims, he didn’t just make a game about living in a virtual house. He made it difficult to live successfully. That’s why both of those franchises have sold millions of copies. The fun factor is about more than making a game is amusing or full of pretty rewards. If your game is a dynamic system to be mastered and won, then you can go nuts. If you can give the player real fun then you can afford to break some of those format rules, and that’s how you get to lead rather than follow the market. If not then be prepared to pay through the nose to acquire and retain players.'
GNOME

Submission + - GNOME 3.8 To Scrap Fallback Mode (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Via LXer, an article at Phoronix tells of GNOME's plans to eliminate "fallback mode" (GNOME classic) in the 3.8 release.
Security

Submission + - 35% Of Americans Would Wear "Electric Shock Bracelet" in Order to Fly (infowars.com) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Infowars.com reports: 'A survey commissioned by Infowars and conducted by Harris Interactive has found that 35% of American adults would be willing to wear an electric shock bracelet in order to fly, another startling example of how many Americans are willing to give up their rights in the name of safety. The idea of mandating travelers to wear an electric shock bracelet sounds like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, but the proposal was seriously considered and very nearly implemented by the Department of Homeland Security back in 2008. As the linked Youtube video highlights, not only would the bracelets have been used to deliver incapacitating electric shocks to suspected terrorists, they would also have contained tracking technology to spy on the wearer.
Android

Submission + - Why You Can't Build Your Own Smarthphone: Patents (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "In the mid-00s, more and more people started learning about Android, a Linux-based smartphone OS. Open source advocates in particular thought they could be seeing the mobile equivalent of Linux — something you could download, tinker with, and sell. Today, though, the Android market is dominated by Google and the usual suspects in the handset business. The reason nobody's been able to launch an Android empire from the garage is fairly straightforward: the average smartphone is covered by over 250,000 patents."
Science

Submission + - Scientists Study "Frictional Ageing" - Standing Objects Becoming Harder to Move (bbc.com) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The BBC reports: 'Have you ever had the impression that heavy items of furniture start to take root – that after years standing in the same place, they’re harder to slide to a new position? Do your best wine glasses, after standing many months unused in the cabinet, seem slightly stuck to the shelf? Has the fine sand in the kids’ play tray set into a lump?

If so, you’re not just imagining it. The friction between two surfaces in contact with each other does slowly increase over time. But why? A paper by two materials scientists at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA, suggests that the surfaces could actually be slowly chemically bonding together.

There are already several other explanations for this so-called “frictional ageing” effect. One is simply that two surfaces get squashed closer together. But a curious thing about friction is that the frictional force opposing sliding doesn’t depend on the area of the contacting surfaces. You’d expect the opposite to be the case: more contact should create more friction. But in fact two surfaces in apparent contact are mostly not touching at all, because little bumps and irregularities, called asperities, prop them apart. That’s true even for apparently smooth surfaces like glass, which are still rough at the microscopic scale. It’s only the contacts between these asperities that cause friction.'

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