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Communications

Google Announces "Open Phone" Coalition, No gPhone [Updated] 225

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "USA Today has an advance story on Google's plans to announce a new operating system, geared specifically for cellphones with partners that include Sprint, Motorola, Samsung and Japanese wireless giant NTT DoCoMo. Although details won't be released until later today the new G-system will be based on Linux overlaid with Java and Google hopes to have a branded device ready for worldwide shipment by spring. Mobile Web browsing is notoriously slow and Google plans to change that by providing easy access to the Internet at PC-type speeds. Google plans to basically give away the software developer tools, used by programmers to write new applications. "If you're a developer, you'll be able to develop (applications) for the new Google Phone very quickly," said Morgan Gillis of the LiMo Foundation. AT&T and Verizon Wireless are noticeably absent from the coalition not wanting to support a device that favors Google over other providers. Sprint, the No. 3 carrier, supports the coalition, but it hasn't formally agreed to make the Google Phone available to its 54 million subscribers." Update 1727 GMT by SM: It's official, Google is releasing the mobile "Android" OS in place of the Google branded mobile phone that many expected.
Robotics

Carnegie Mellon Wins Urban Challenge 153

Posted by Zonk from the go-nerd-racers-gooo dept.
ThinkingInBinary writes "The results from the Urban Challenge are in! Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing team came in first (earning a $2 million prize), followed by Stanford's Stanford Racing team in second (earning $1 mil) and Virginia Tech's Victor Tango in third (earning $500k). Cornell's Team Cornell, University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University's Ben Franklin Racing Team, and MIT, also finished the race in that order."
Power

Ultracapacitors Soon to Replace Many Batteries? 415

Posted by Zonk from the zap-zap-zazp dept.
einhverfr writes "According to an article in the IEEE Spectrun, the synergy between batteries and capacitors — two of the sturdiest and oldest components of electrical engineering — has been growing, to the point where ultracapacitors may soon be almost as indispensable to portable electricity as batteries are now. Some researchers expect to soon create capacitors capable of storing 50% as much energy as a lithium ion battery of the same size. Such capacitors could revolutionize many areas possibly from mobile computing (no worries about battery memory), electricity-powered vehicles, and more."
Graphics

Recreating Cities Using Online Photos 87

Posted by Zonk from the taking-a-walkabout dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "The billion of images available from a site like Flickr has stimulated the imagination of many researchers. After designing tools using Flickr to edit your photos, another team at the University of Washington (UW) is using our vacation photos to create 3D models of world landmarks. But recreating original scenes is challenging because all the photos we put on Flickr and similar sites don't exhibit the same quality. With such a large number of pictures available, the researchers have been able to reconstruct with great accuracy virtual 3D model of landmarks, including Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the Statue of Liberty in New York City."
Unix

DIY CPU Demo'd Running Minix 313

Posted by Zonk from the homebrew-is-darn-tasty dept.
DeviceGuru writes "Bill Buzbee offered the first public demonstration of the open-source Minix OS — a cousin of Linux — running on his homebrew minicomputer, the Magic-1, at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, Calif. The Magic-1 minicomputer is built with 74-series TTL ICs using wire-wrap construction, and implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA. Rather than using a commercial microprocessor, Buzbee created his own microcoded CPU that runs at 4.09 MHz, and is in the same ballpark as an old 8086 in performance and capabilities. The CPU has a 22-bit physical address bus and an 8-bit data bus."
Communications

Cell Phone Jamming on the Rise 942

Posted by CmdrTaco from the jerks-ruin-it-for-everyone dept.
netbuzz writes "It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone either, as the number of inconsiderate dolts who yammer away oblivious to the disruptions their yapping is causing those around them continues to rise. Pocket-sized cell jammers are becoming a hot item, while proprietors of restaurants and the like look to defend themselves as well. Yes it's illegal, but given that the rudeness is pretty close to criminal as well, it's unlikely to stop any time soon."
Software

Submission + - N.Y. Times to data mine customers for profit.

Submitted by pilsner.urquell
pilsner.urquell writes: The Village Voiceis running this story:

Having Won a Pulitzer for Exposing Data Mining, Times Now Eager to Do Its Own Data Mining.

Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits.
Handhelds

Submission + - Trusting Your Handheld GPS

Submitted by
thetan
thetan writes: "The Age reports that an Australian woman followed instructions from her handheld GPS to navigate some 200km — before getting horribly lost and bogged on a dirt track in heavy bushland at night. Frightened and distressed, she called emergency services but police had some difficulty in locating her. She explained that the GPS unit directed her late-model Toyota Corolla down the track, used only by tractors and motorbikes. In unfamiliar terrain, how would you know when to disregard directions from your navigation system and let your common-sense take over?"
PHP

Submission + - Definitive Guide to symfony Review

Submitted by
Siker
Siker writes: "Playing With Wire has a review of the book accompanying symfony's 1.0 release. Symfony is a PHP web development framework, similar to Ruby on Rails, and was recently made famous as Yahoo! used it for one of its services. One of the book's authors, François Zaninott, comments on the review in the comments section."
United States

Submission + - Big Brother's new tracking powers...

Submitted by
daffydory
daffydory writes: "In a recent story, The New York Times writes that "The bill would require the government to establish a public database of clinical trials and their results. Lawmakers said this would make it difficult for drug companies to hide evidence of safety problems, as they said some had done in the past. The database would also make it easier for patients to learn of clinical trials testing drugs that could save their lives."
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Now, I don't know if I found the new bill posted on http://thomas.loc.gov/ or not, Perhaps it's being updated becasuse it's so recently passed [such as my searches -vs- story info is dicy] but this one was disturbing enough, so it could be S. 1024 To improve the underlying science of drug safety decisionmaking and strengthen the ability of the Food and Drug Administration to assess, manage, and communicate drug safety information to patients and providers. IANAL, but it seems to indicate (to ME, mind you) that someone will be gathering all kinds of personal medical data and stick it in one searchable databse. Who exactly gets those keys to the kingdom? How is the data finding it's way there? How secure can you make something this large?

Now, do we actually have the processing power and storage, let alone the physical amount of people inputting time, to take on something this size? /.'ers thoughts?? AND THEN, the thought of "should they be able to have my psychiatrist's notes processed through some pencil dot test form submission available to cross correlate with DNA profiles?" Of course that's sounds like some almost disturbing Orwellian news from our Government" [possibly worse-case-scenario, granted] . Even if not, it still gives some weird power to The Powers That Be."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Project at Sun aims for a more Linux-like Solaris

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A project at Sun Microsystems code-named "Indiana", led by Debian founder now Sun employee Ian Murdock, aims to make Solaris more like Linux to appeal more to developers who use Linux.

From the article, "Sun has been trying for years to restore the luster of Solaris, a version of Unix that peaked in popularity in the late 1990s, but that since has faced a strong challenge chiefly from Linux. Sun has worked to reinvigorate Solaris by boosting its performance, offering it as a free download, making it an open-source project called OpenSolaris, and pushing a version that runs on servers using Intel's and AMD's mainstream x86 processors ... Sun wants to embrace some Linux elements so 'we make Solaris a better Linux than Linux,' Murdock said, quoting Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, whose latest start-up, Ning, uses Solaris."

Linux has strived to be POSIX-compliant and conform to the Single UNIX Specification, but now it looks like Sun has plans to make Solaris a better fit for Linux users as well.

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