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Software

MIT Grad To Make Digital "SixthSense" Open Source 151

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the enhanced-reality-is-the-only-way-to-roll dept.
yuveraj writes to mention that Pranav Mistry, the brain behind the innovative "SixthSense" application demoed earlier this year, plans to open source the technology in order to get this to the streets faster. "Mistry’s decision has meaning beyond Sixth Sense. The desire of inventors is always to get their work into the market as quickly as possible. Usually this means waiting for it to be turned into a useful, profitable invention. Mistry is bypassing this by going straight to open source. There is no report on which license he will use, but whichever one he does choose he has put paid to the canard that open source and innovation are incompatible, for all time."
Communications

GMail Experiences Serious Outage 408

Posted by timothy from the works-here-never-mind dept.
JacobSteelsmith was one of many readers to note an ongoing problem with Gmail: "As I type this, GMail is experiencing a major outage. The application status page says there is a problem with GMail affecting a majority of its users. It states a resolution is expected within the next 1.2 hours (no, not a typo on my part). However, email can still be accessed via POP or IMAP, but not, it appears, through an Android device such as the G1." It's also affecting corporate users: Reader David Lechnyr writes "We run a hosted Google Apps system and have been receiving 502 Server Error responses for the past hour. The unusual thing about this is that our Google phone support rep (which paid accounts get) indicated that this outage is also affecting Google employees as well, making it difficult to coordinate."
Math

New Company Seeks to Bring Semantic Context To Numbers 264

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the quick-create-another-standards-body dept.
A new company, True#, is seeking to bring extensive semantic context to numbers to give them obvious meanings just as certain words have obvious meanings to most readers. "Most of us can probably recognize 3.14159 and the conceptual baggage it carries, but how many of us would recognize 58.44? (That's a mole of sodium chloride, in grams, for the curious.) And the response that would work for words — look it up — doesn't work so conveniently for numbers. Only one of the top-10 hits in Google refers to salt, and Bing fails entirely (though it does offer 'Women's Sexy Mini Skirts by VENUS'). Clearly, we haven't figured out how to make the Web work for numbers in the same way it does for words."
The Media

Inside the AP's Plan To Security-Wrap Its News Content 138

Posted by timothy from the one-of-the-greatest-diagrams-ever dept.
suraj.sun writes with an excerpt from this story at Ars Technica that the "Associated Press, reeling from the newspaper apocalypse, has a new plan to 'wrap' and 'protect' its content though a 'digital permissions framework.' The Associated Press last week rolled out its brave new plan to 'apply protective format to news.' The AP's news registry will 'tag and track all AP content online to assure compliance with terms of use,' and it will provide a 'platform for protect, point, and pay.' That's a lot of 'p'-prefaced jargon, but it boils down to a sort of DRM for news — 'enforcement,' in AP-speak."
Robotics

Robot Warfare Going Open Source 105

Posted by kdawson from the my-flag-robot-said-to-your-flag-robot dept.
destinyland writes "Peter Singer, author of the new book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, says 'You can build your own version of the Raven drone, which is a widely used military drone, for about $1,000.' Singer argues that 'just like software, warfare is going open source.' He warns that, ultimately, robot warfare may even expand beyond the military using more DIY and off-the-shelf systems. In addition to 43 countries now working on military robots, there are 'non-state actors ranging from Hezbollah to this militia group in Arizona to a bunch of college kids at Swarthmore... One person's hobby — such as the hobbyist who flew a homemade drone from North America to Great Britain — can be another person's terrorist strike option.'"
Security

Investigators Replicate Nokia 1100 Banking Hack 181

Posted by timothy from the could-be-an-ebay-scam-rumor dept.
Ian Lamont writes "Investigators have duplicated an online banking hack using a 2003-era Nokia mobile phone. Authorities had been aware for some time that European gangs were interested in buying the phone, and were finally able to confirm why: It can be used to access victims' bank accounts using "special software written by hackers." The hack apparently works by letting criminals reprogram the phones to use someone else's phone number and receive their SMS messages, including mTANs (mobile transaction authentication numbers) from European banks. However, the only phones that work are 1100 handsets (pictures) made in a certain factory. Nokia had claimed last month it had no idea why criminals were paying thousands of euros to buy the old handsets."
Data Storage

Forensics Tool Finds Headerless Encrypted Files 374

Posted by timothy from the sir-there's-an-anomaly-here dept.
gurps_npc writes "Forensics Innovations claims to have for sale a product that detects headerless encrypted files, such as TrueCrypt Dynamic files. It does not decrypt the file, just tells you that it is in fact an encrypted file. It works by detecting hidden patterns that don't exist in a random file. It does not mention steganography, but if their claim is true, it seems that it should be capable of detecting stenographic information as well."

Princeton Student Finds Bug In LHC Experiment 243

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the peer-review dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A Princeton senior has found a bug in the hardware design for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the hardware used to record and capture events in the LHC, she discovered errors that were leading to the appearances of double images because of particle streams known as jets. 'Xiaohang Quan '09 was working on her senior thesis when she found a miscalculation in the hardware of the world's largest particle accelerator. Quan, a physics concentrator, traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, last week with physics professors Christopher Tully GS '98, Jim Olsen and Daniel Marlow for the annual meeting of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). This year, however, they also came to discuss Quan's discovery with the designers of the hardware for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, which, as part of the Large Hadron Collider, has the potential to revolutionize particle physics.'"
Mars

Strange Globs Could Signal Water On Mars 186

Posted by timothy from the growing-merging-dripping dept.
Joshua.Niland writes "Strange globs seen on the landing strut of the Phoenix Mars lander could be the first proof that modern Mars hosts liquid water. Images from the robotic craft show what appear to be liquid droplets growing, merging, and dripping on the lander's leg over the course of a Martian month. Just when is NASA going to fix that leaking roof on the backlot?"
Programming

A Look At Successful Game Mods 287

Posted by Soulskill from the what-no-rocket-arena? dept.
Parz writes "Mods have been an important part of gaming for well over 15 years. Not only have they provided plenty of additional free gaming to players, but they've acted as a launch pad for independent and amateur programmers to show off their skills to potential employers. This Gameplayer article highlights the programmers who are doing it best, and what mods have made biggest and most enjoyable impact on gaming. The article not only provides details for each game, but also links to the downloads, and is a great resource for those interesting in getting up-to-date with this exciting scene." Obviously, this list will seem incomplete to anyone whose favorite mod was omitted. What mods contributed most to your enjoyment?

Oil-Immersion Cooled PC Goes To Retail 210

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the next-up-hot-grits dept.
notthatwillsmith writes "Everyone's seen mods where someone super-cools a PC by submersing it in a non-conductive oil. It's a neat idea, but most components aren't designed to withstand a hot oil bath; after prolonged exposure materials break down and components begin to fail. Maximum PC has an exclusive hands-on, first look at the new Hardcore Computer Reactor, the first oil-cooled PC available for sale. Hardcore engineered the Reactor to withstand the oil, using space-age materials and proprietary oil. The Reactor's custom-manufactured motherboard, videocards, memory, and SSD drives are submersed in the oil, while the dry components sit outside the bulletproof tank. The motherboard lifts out of the oil bath on rails, giving you relatively easy access to components, and the overall design is simply jaw-dropping. Of course, we'd expect nothing less for a machine with a base price of $4000 that goes all the way up to $11k for a fully maxed out config."
Science

Fungus Fire Spores With 180,000 G Acceleration 69

Posted by timothy from the easy-at-that-size dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Although a variety of spore discharge processes have evolved among the fungi, those with the longest ranges are powered by hydrostatic pressure and include 'squirt guns' that are most common in the Ascomycota and Zygomycota. In these fungi, fluid-filled stalks that support single spores or spore-filled sporangia, or cells called asci that contain multiple spores, are pressurized by osmosis. Because spores are discharged at such high speeds, most of the information on launch processes from previous studies has been inferred from mathematical models and is subject to a number of errors, but now Nicholas Money, an expert on fungi at Miami University, has recorded the discharges with high-speed cameras at 250,000 frames-a-second and discovered that fungi fire their spores with accelerations up to 180,000 g, calling it 'the fastest flight in nature.' Money and his students, in a justified fit of ecstasy, have created a video of the first fungus opera."
Science

LHC Shut Down By Transformer Malfunction 293

Posted by timothy from the it's-only-broken-if-you-look dept.
Ortega-Starfire writes "A 30-ton transformer in the Large Hadron Collider malfunctioned, requiring complete replacement on the day the LHC came online. No one at CERN reported any problems, and they only released this data once the Associated Press sent people to investigate rumors of problems. I guess it's hard to just sweep a 30-ton transformer breaking under the rug."
America Online

AOL In Talks With Microsoft to Merge Online Divisions, Says WSJ 143

Posted by timothy from the aol-needs-some-friends-at-smart-tech dept.
Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft executives are reportedly meeting with their AOL counterparts to discuss combining the two companies' online divisions. No one from either side is willing to comment, nor has the structure of the supposed deal been worked out. The original unconfirmed report comes from the Wall Street Journal (password-protected). A few months ago there was talk about AOL teaming up with Yahoo, but that never materialized." The free excerpt at the WSJ link above seems to say about as much as this Bloomberg wire report which refers to it, and the above-linked story at The Standard; this Reuters story indicates that AOL is still courting or being courted by Yahoo!, too.
The Internet

In Japan, a 900 Gigabyte Upload Cap, Downloads Uncapped 368

Posted by timothy from the no-such-luck-in-tennessee dept.
Raindeer writes "While the Broadband Bandits of the US are contemplating bandwidth caps between 5 gigabyte and 40 gigabyte per month, the largest telco in Japan has gone ahead and laid down some heavy caps for Japan's broadband addicts. From now on, if you upload more than 30 gigabyte per day, your network connection may be disconnected. Just think of it ... if you're in Japan and want to upload the HD movie you shot of yesterday's wedding, you soon might hit the limit. The downloaders do not face similar problems."

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