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Comment Why is this significant? (Score 2, Interesting) 229

by romit_icarus (#29423793) Attached to: Most Detailed Photos of an Atom Yet
The ability to directly measure electron density is quite an old technique. STMs and AFMs have been doing this since the very beginning.. I agree with the researcher's quote in the article that it's good to develop a complementary technique(FEEM) abd at best that's its contribution. I'd be happy to hear what else it contributes. though I don't quite agree with his or the editors spelling! ;) "it's always good to have complimentary approaches,"
Security

A Vision For a World Free of CAPTCHAs 168

Posted by Soulskill from the is-that-an-oh-or-a-zero dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Slate argues that we're going about verifying humans on the Web all wrong: 'As Alan Turing laid out in the 1950 paper that postulated his test, the goal is to determine whether a computer can behave like a human, not perform tasks that a human can. The reason CAPTCHAs have a term limit is that they measure ability, not behavior. ... the random, circuitous way that people interact with Web pages — the scrolling and highlighting and typing and retyping — would be very difficult for a bot to mimic. A system that could capture the way humans interact with forms algorithmically could eventually relieve humans of the need to prove anything altogether.' Seems smart, if an algorithm could actually do that."
KDE

Submission + - Beyond "KDE vs. GNOME" (earthweb.com) 1

Submitted by
jammag
jammag writes: "Setting aside the now tired debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the "better" Linux desktop, Bruce Byfield compares their contrasting development approaches and concludes that KDE is moving far ahead. "In the short term, GNOME's gradualism seems sensible. But, in the long-term, it could very well mean continuing to be dragged down by support for legacy sub-systems. It means being reduced to an imitator rather than innovator." In contrast, "you could say that KDE has done what's necessary and ripped the bandage off the scab. In the short term, the result has been a lot of screaming, but, in the long-term, it has done what was necessary to thrive." If the phrase 'no pain, no gain,' applies to development, KDE is leaving the staid GNOME in the dust."
Censorship

Submission + - Graphic Artists Condemn UK Ban on Erotic Comics

Submitted by mdwh2
mdwh2 writes: Graphic artists, publishers and MPs have condemned the UK's Coroners and Justice Bill, which will criminalise possession of sexual depictions that appear to show someone under 18 (the age of consent is 16 in the UK), as well as adults where the "predominant impression conveyed" is of someone under 18, and even if they are merely drawn as being present whilst sexual activity took place between adults. The definitions could include Lost Girls, Watchmen, and South Park. The Comic Book Alliance has launched a Petition against the law.
Censorship

Submission + - UN Attacks Free Speech (newsblaze.com) 1

Submitted by
newsblaze
newsblaze writes: "The UN Human Rights Council Assaulted Free Expression today, in a 23-11 vote that urges member states to adopt laws outlawing criticism of religions. The proposal came to the UN from Pakistan, on behalf of the Organization for the Islamic Conference. There were 13 abstensions. South Korea, Japan, India, Mexico and Brazil, all strong democracies, allowed this to pass by abrogating their responsibility. While the resolution doesn't mention the online world, where does this subject get mentioned most, if not online."
Security

Submission + - Google Voice fixes security flaw, almost (voxilla.com)

Submitted by
gardel
gardel writes: "Google appears to have fixed a significant security hole in its two-week-old Voice calling service though some vulnerabilities remain. Until about 7pm PDT Tuesday, an unauthorized party could use a SIP device to spoof a phone number attached to a Google Voice account to call the Google Voice number, giviing the spoofer access to greetings and voicemail, and the ability to make outbound calls, including expensive international calls. Though spoofing via SIP is no longer possible, continued existence of some vulnerability was still apparent Tuesday night. Voxilla was able to set the caller ID of a PBX extension to a mobile number attached to Google Voice account and call in, using a business VoIP trunk, to gain access. (Note: posted by a Voxilla editor)"
Music

Submission + - Last.fm to start charging international users (mashable.com) 2

Submitted by
tdobson
tdobson writes: "The popular online radio service, Last.fm, has announced that users outside of the UK, USA and Germany will need to start paying 3.00 (about $4.40 USD/£2.80 GBP) per month to continue streaming music on their service.

Last.fm doesn't offer much of a reason as to the change, other than writing on their blog that "There will be a 30 track free trial, and we hope this will convince people to subscribe and keep listening to the radio"

Already, there appears to be quite a backlash in responses so far, amongst subscribers and non-subscribers of all nationalities — has this killed Last.fm's appeal, globally?"
Microsoft

Submission + - In India, MS losing out on xbox 360 profits

Submitted by
romit_icarus
romit_icarus writes: "In India, the duty for imported xbox 360s is set at a high 54%. So what did the Indians do? They waited until a supply route of hacked xbox 360s was set up from China. The result: xbox360s at real prices and pirated game DVDs for little over USD 3!

Read the story here: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Xbox_360_sales _on_the_rise/articleshow/1697086.cms"
Google

Google to Blur Sensitive India Sites 194

Posted by Zonk from the they-can't-see-you dept.
theodp writes "Citing unnamed officials, the Times of India is reporting that Google Earth has agreed to blur and distort Indian locations identified by the government after security concerns were voiced by the country's president. This includes total blurring of locations like government buildings, as well as the outlines/building plans of key facilities. This came about after a recent meeting between Google technicians and Indian officials."
Security

Submission + - Meeting the Swedish bank hacker

Submitted by
Hades1010
Hades1010 writes: "For the price of 3,000 dollars, our reporter was offered his personal bank Trojan. In an interview with Computer Sweden, the hacker behind the recent Internet frauds against Sweden's Nordea bank claims responsibility for more intrusions. "99 percent of all bank intrusions are kept secret," he insists. http://computersweden.idg.se/2.139/1.93344"
Google

Submission + - Dotcoms snap up best real estate on Google Maps

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google organized a flyover of Sydney, Australia last Friday for Australia Day. The images taken on the day will be posted to Google Maps in a few weeks. A number of dotcoms spent hours making huge signs that would be visible from the air. It will be interesting to see whether Google will repeat the event in other cities. If they do, get prepared early. What sign would you make?
Software

Submission + - Open Source marketing model

Submitted by
Tim Ward
Tim Ward writes: "Twice in the last few weeks I've come across open source projects where the software download is, as expected, free of charge, but no documentation is available. In both cases these appears to mean "no documentation has ever been written, but you can hire us to give you technical support".

In other words, as the companies can't make money charging for the software, they make money instead charging for support. Which sounds fair enough but ... these are "pre-sales enquiries" we're talking about where I'm trying to learn enough about the product to evaluate whether it has some chance of doing the job I need done or not.

Nobody in the commerial world charges you for pre-sales support at this level! — sure, if you want the vendor to scope out and design a system for you you pay for that, but that's not what I'm talking about — you don't pay for information at the level of basic product brochures and specifications!!

No problem, you might say, just download the software and try it out. Er, yes, and that costs how much, exactly, at my charge-out rate, reverse engineering some undocumented downloaded software to try to work out whether or not it will do what my client needs done? I don't think so.

I'm afraid that I'm much more likely to say to my client: "There's this commercial product, which in my professional judgement will do the job, and it will cost you $x, or there's this open source product, but I'm afraid that I haven't a clue whether it will do the job, and it will cost money to find out, and there isn't any documentation so any time we have a basic simple question about the product it will cost more money. Which would you like me to buy for you?"

You can guess the answer. "I'll have something that works that costs $x, please, not something that may or may not work and isn't documented and I don't have a clue how much it will cost me".

So my Ask Slashdot question is:

How come these open source vendors have managed to come up with such a broken business model? Aren't they even trying to compete?"

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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