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Comment Re:Some Middle Ground (Score 2) 566

According to an episode of This American Life suicides often inspire other suicides except in situation where it has somehow gone wrong and has led to a gruesome death or mutilated corpse or something similar. In Norway, where I live, there is a policy of not commenting on suicides if it can be avoided. So, whenever a random 18 year old boy or girl kills him/herself it goes without notice in the media. If a minister kills himself it is of course reported upon. I think the media in your town has gotten it right.

Comment Re:More Patents (Score 2) 260

I think there are uses for non-newtonian fluids. My wife's car uses such fluids to power the 4x4 drive. When there is a difference in speed on the front and back axial the fluids tense up and block, delivering power of the rear axial. A very simple and robust solutions that works fairly well.
Your Rights Online

Submission + - WURFL founders fire off DMCA takedown against the (shkspr.mobi)

An anonymous reader writes: ScientiaMobile, the company formed behind the open source library WURFL, an API used to do mobile device detection for web applications, has issued a DMCA takedown notice against the OpenDDR project on Github. ScientiaMobile claims that OpenDDR is "ripping them off" by forking their database, which used to licensed under a liberal licence. Newer versions of the device database are licensed under restrictive licenses which does not allow any modification or redistribution. Can ScientiaMobile retroactively alter the distribution terms for the older versions of their database?

Comment Who uses app engine? (Score 1) 66

I think this is a good thing, but I'm still baffled by people actually using it. AFAIK there is no escape hatch, no way of getting a little special component to run. Say, your app suddenly needs Stunnel, Varnish or HA-Proxy, what do you do? I'm guessing you don't want to tie the app down across two data centers. Anyone ever used App Engine that might supply us with some actual experience?

Comment Re:Too pricey. (Score 1) 395

I can get an extra SIM on for my unlimited data plan for 20-25 NOK per month (~3-4 USD). I'd gladly pay that to have unlimited data on my tablet. However, I'm a bit more hesitant shelling out at least 1000 NOK (190 USD with todays currency) extra to have the 3G chips there in the first place.

Comment Re:Lots of reasons (Score 1) 336

The rest of the world gets Android code when Google feels like releasing it.

The open source world has TONS of excellent APIs, no sense in not using them.

What sort of APIs are your talking about? Much of what existed pre Android was software built primarily for desktop use, disregarding things like battery and memory usage and implementing a feature set far greater then what is needed on a phone - like the X window system. Nokia tried porting a true GNU system to a phone with Maemo, but it looks like it wasn't much of a success.

Science

Morphing Metals 121

aarondubrow writes "Imagine a metal that 'remembers' its original, cold-forged shape, and can return to that shape when exposed to heat or a magnetic pulse. Like magic out of a Harry Potter novel, such a metal could contract on command, or swing back and forth like a pendulum. Believe it or not, such metals already exist. First discovered in 1931, they belong to a class of materials called 'shape memory alloys (SMA),' whose unique atomic make-up allows them to return to their initial form, or alternate between forms through a phase change."

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