Submission + - dodgy battery life claims (apcmag.com)
webmonkey44 writes: This is a a classic case false marketing claims about battery life caused by the JEITA 'benchmark'.
Toshiba, sony, and Fujitsu are some of the offenders.
Submission + - Crater From 1908 Tunguska Blast Found
MaineCoasts writes: A team of scientists from the Marine Science Institute in Bologna claims to have found the crater left by the aerial blast of a NEO in 1908 in the Tunguska region of Siberia. The blast flattened 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest but to date, no remains or crater have been found. This has left open the question of what kind of object made the impact. The team believes that, contrary to previous studies, nearby Lake Cheko is only one century old and "If the body was an asteroid, a surviving fragment may be buried beneath the lake. If it was a comet, its chemical signature should be found in the deepest layers of sediments."
The team's findings are based on a 1999 expedition to Tunguska and appeared in the August issue of the journal Terra Nova.
Submission + - Ballmer rips on Android: just "a press release (computerworld.com.au) 1
Bergkamp10 writes: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tried to shoot Google's new mobile platform down in flames at a press conference in Tokyo. Ballmer called Android a mere 'press release' at present, and suggested the mobile platform market was 'Microsoft's world'.
Ballmer dodged requests to comment on specifics of the Android software platform, preferring instead to highlight the successes of the Windows Mobile platform which he said is on 150 different handsets and is available from over 100 different mobile operators.
"Well of course their efforts are just some words on paper right now, it's hard to do a very clear comparison [with Windows Mobile]," Ballmer said.
"Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they're welcome in our world," he added.
Submission + - Did 'crowdsourcing' impede Fossett search?
netbuzz writes: "The much-publicized participation of 50,000 amateur searchers using Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" project may have been more than futile, it may actually have gotten in the way of professionals trying to find Steve Fossett's airplane, according to an officer in the civil air patrol. "In hindsight, I wish (they) hadn't been there," she says at the very bottom of a Wired story that otherwise focuses on the feelings of the virtual searchers that they may have been wasting their time. Believers in the wisdom of crowds sometimes forget that even the best-intentioned of them can be unruly.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21640"
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21640"
Submission + - Microsoft Tries To Patent Saying 'Goodbye' (techdirt.com) 1
Techdirt writes: "Among Microsoft's latest patent applications is apparently one that is for adding an automatic "goodbye" message when someone leaves an instant messaging chat. Apparently, Microsoft's patent folks have never used IRC. Hopefully, someone at the Patent Office has, however, and will recognize the prior art."
Submission + - Universal Music Classics and Jazz goes DRM-free (guardian.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: With little fanfare seems Universal in the UK has made its classical and jazz catalog available DRM-free (Guardian story: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2206558,00.html actual site: http://www.classicsandjazz.co.uk/). That's 1000s of albums from what looks like a decent range of classical / jazz labels (Verve, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon etc.). Is this the beginning I hope?
Whose Laws Apply On the ISS? 344
Hugh Pickens writes "Whose laws apply if astronauts from different countries get into a fight, make a patentable discovery, or damage equipment belonging to another country while on the International Space Station? According to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, ratified by 98 nations, states have legal jurisdiction within spacecraft registered to them. When the space station was assembled from modules supplied by the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency (ESA), partners rejected an initial proposal that US law should prevail throughout the space station. "It was agreed that each state registers its own separate elements, which means that you now have a piece of the US annexed to a piece of Europe annexed to a piece of Japan in outer space, legally speaking," said Dr Frans von der Dunk of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at the University of Leiden. So what happens if a crime is committed in space? "If somebody performs an activity which may be considered criminal, it is in the first instance his own country which is able to exercise jurisdiction," Dr. von der Dunk added."
Submission + - Douglas Adams alive and well at Microsoft... (stanford.edu)
Oh my goodness... writes: Ever wonder why Microsoft's interfaces suck so, so badly? Here's a description that the main Microsoft interface fellow is giving at Standford.
I swear this description was written by Douglas Adams — there is no way to directly look at the text, it's like an optical illusion of nonsense.
In the old days of Microsoft, this guy wouldn't have lasted a week.
I swear this description was written by Douglas Adams — there is no way to directly look at the text, it's like an optical illusion of nonsense.
In the old days of Microsoft, this guy wouldn't have lasted a week.
