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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 69 declined, 10 accepted (79 total, 12.66% accepted)

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Software

Submission + - Hardware is more reliable than software (economist.com)

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: What a hard time Toyota is having now. Rather than blaming over-expansion, The Economist is attributing their current woes to a shortening of product development cycles, and increasing reliance on electronics to do jobs that were previously done by mechanical parts:

But software is not hardware, and software “engineers”, despite their appropriation of the name, are a different breed from the sort that bash metal. Programming digital controllers is not one of Toyota’s core competences. Even with the most diligent of testing, bugs will always find their way into software. Right now, it seems Toyota is learning that lesson the hard way.


Patents

Submission + - An end to frivolous patents may be in sight (economist.com)

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: The Economist has high hopes that frivolous patents may become a thing of the past.

America’s Supreme Court is about to issue a ruling which, by all accounts, will make it difficult, if not impossible, to get a patent for a business process. And because most business processes are, at bottom, computer algorithms, the Supreme Court’s judgment could also bar all sorts of software patents in the process. As a result, a lot of patents for online shopping, medical-diagnostic tests and procedures for executing trades on Wall Street could be invalidated.


Submission + - ICANN to consider allowing non Latin domains (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: The internet is set to undergo one of its biggest changes, with the expected approval of plans to introduce web addresses using non-Latin characters. The board of the net regulator, Icann, will decide whether to allow domain names in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts at its annual meeting in Seoul. More than half of the 1.6 billion people who use the internet speak languages with non-Latin scripts.
Government

Submission + - Bill would double cap on H-1B visas (computerworld.com)

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: A bill introduced in the U.S. Congress would double the number of immigrant worker visas available each year under the H-1B program. "The Innovation Employment Act, introduced by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, (D-Ariz.), late Thursday, would increase the cap in H-1B visas from 65,000 a year to 130,000 a year. In addition, there would be no cap on H-1B applications for foreign graduate students attending U.S. colleges and studying science, technology and related fields. Currently, there's a 20,000-a-year cap on visas for graduate students in all fields."

I've been on my H1-B for about eight years and I'm still waiting for my green card. I wish someone would pass the "hurry up and gimme a god-damn visa number" bill.
Censorship

Submission + - Slashdot Stories (10) (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: British Member of Parliament Paul Farrelly had tabled (posed) a Parliamentary question about the oil traders Trafigura and its solicitors (lawyers) Carter-Ruck. London-based Trafigura is an oil trader connected with dumping toxic waste in Ivory Coast in 2006. A court injunction then prevented The Guardian newspaper from identifying the MP who had asked the question, what the question was, which minister might answer it, or where the question was to be found. In a twist the paper described as "Kafka-esque", it was also banned from telling its readers why it had been banned from doing so. But the story soon leaked out via Twitter and the gagging order was lifted after the lawyers dropped their claim. The BBC reports:

The social networking site Twitter was soon awash with posts deploring a threat to media freedom and the reporting of Parliament.... And the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg tweeted: "Really pleased Guardian ban has been lifted. This is a victory for freedom of speech and online activism".

The Guardian notes that after the blogosphere jumped on the bandwagon,the mainstream media caught up, with The Spectator pushing the story.

Earth

Submission + - Tokamak fusion experiment facing financial trouble (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: An international plan to build a nuclear fusion reactor is being threatened by rising costs, delays and technical challenges.

Emails leaked to the BBC indicate that construction costs for the experimental fusion project called Iter have more than doubled. Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome and that the development of fusion as a commercial power source is still at least 100 years away. At a meeting in Japan on Wednesday, members of the governing Iter council will review the plans and may agree to scale back the project.

Iter will be a Tokamak device, a successor to the Joint European Torus (JET) in England. Meanwhile, an experiment in fusion by laser doesn't seem to be running into the same high profile funding problems just yet.

Media

Submission + - Introducing "community-funded journalism" (nytimes.com)

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: You think your local water supply is polluted. But you're getting the runaround from local officials, and you can't get your local newspaper to look into your concerns. What do you do? A group of journalists say they have an answer. You hire them to investigate and write about what they find. The idea, which they are calling "community-funded journalism," is now being tested in the San Francisco Bay area, where a new nonprofit, Spot Us, is using its website to solicit ideas for investigative articles and the money to pay for the reporting from a large number of small donations.
Books

Submission + - The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: This is the kind of work that makes a body wish President Bush would read books. The author's point is that diplomacy is America's strength, and it should be used first with force held as a last resort, especially in a world where the US is not the only superpower anymore due to the growing influence of countries in the developing world.

'The Rise of the Rest' is what Mr Zakaria uses to refer to the economic and political growth in developing countries, principally (but not limited to) India and China. Globalization and the opening of international trade has generated great improvements in living standards lifting many millions of people out of poverty across the globe. India and China have been most noticeable because of their sheer size, accounting for over a sixth of the human race between them. India's and China's stories are, of course, slightly different. China has a lot of advantages (from their government's point of view) in that they can ride roughshod over the wishes of its people in the interests of achieving economic goals, whereas in democratic countries such as the UK, people have more freedom to object to development that will adversely affect their standard of living or property values. A proposed expansion of Heathrow Airport meets many obstacles in the form of objections from local residents, whereas in China it's possible for the government to just build an entire airport and sweep anyone out of the way who gets in it. India also has similar checks and balances as Western countries in that great public works projects are subject to objection from local people, and so their growth isn't quite at the same breathtaking pace as China's, but it is still impressive nonetheless.

However strong their performance on the economic stage, it will be a long time before China or India reach the same levels of domination as the US has today. Nor do they seem to want to. China certainly has no interest in becoming the world's policeman. Ending centuries of self-imposed isolation, China's main interest for now is in securing its own borders, reining in runaway regions, and protecting its own interests. Similarly, India is more interested in continuing to build its own prosperity than imposing its own democratic values on the rest of the world. The USA is likely to remain the only major power wishing to export its values as well as its goods.

While international political structures are useful, some of them, like the UN Security Council, are hopelessly out of date. Japan and Germany are among the world's biggest economic powers but still don't have permanent seats on the council just because they were on the losing side in the second world war. Nevertheless, the USA remains the power that people go to in search of a diplomatic solution to international disputes, and that is likely to remain the case for quite some time.

Zakaria goes on to discuss the complexities of nuclear proliferation and to make suggestions on how to deal with this and other problems. The Iraq war is touched upon, remarking on how it is sign of America's unchecked power that it was able to launch an unprovoked war on Iraq and dupe other countries into helping it. The author approves of the end result of ousting of Saddam Hussein, but disapproves of the botched post-invasion occupation and the sheer incompetence of it.

The overall tone is non-partisan and contains none of the childish and heated conservative/liberal bombast that pollutes so much of the bookshelves these days. This writer doesn't fall neatly into the liberal/conservative pigeonholes that some commentators seem determined to push everyone into. The facts are there, the bibliography is extensive, and the case is made very well. If only work of this caliber were more widely read.
Businesses

Submission + - 2002 story resurfaces, decimates United stocks (usatoday.com)

Submitted by
fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: "A six-year-old Chicago Tribune article about United declaring bankruptcy in 2002 was mistakenly published online "as new" by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a newspaper owned by The Tribune Company. The journalist saw it on Google News, it didn't have a date assigned to it, he assumed it was new, published it on Bloomberg, and before long, millions of dollars were wiped off the value of United's stock. The Washington Post (free registration) writes "the light-speed wipeout is a powerful reminder of how quickly bad information can spread via the Internet to a trigger-happy Wall Street that is willing to dump millions in stock before checking the facts.""
Handhelds

Submission + - iPhone ad rapped as 'misleading' (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: The BBC is reporting that the UK Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that a television advert for the iPhone misled consumers. Two complaints to the watchdog noted that the advert said "all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone". But the ASA said because the iPhone did not support Flash or Java — the claim was misleading. Apple had argued its claim referred to availability of webpages, rather than their specific appearance.
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Apple quality going downhill?

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: I've been a Mac believer since the 1980s, but my latest experiences have made me truly question my beliefs. I got the first video iPod and found that watching a single TV episode would be enough to drain the battery almost completely. OK, I can live with that. But after spending $1400 on a new Macbook and finding a selection box of problems (basic tools like tar missing, mysql claiming to be running from the control panel but nowhere to be found in the terminal, sharp edges that hurt the wrists, etc.) I have to ask: has Apple lost its way?
Businesses

Submission + - Silicon Valley - the new Detroit? (mercurynews.com)

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: The San Jose Mercury News is speculating about Silicon Valley's potential for becoming the Detroit of a future electric car industry. Among the valley's strengths is an ability to adapt to rapidly changing business environments and develop new business models, something that the Big Three can hardly be accused of. On the downside, it's a capital-intensive business and isn't like raising $40 million and having an IPO. Apparently there are five companies in the valley already pursuing electric car technology, most notably Tesla.

Last week's announcement by Shai Agassi, a former SAP executive based in Palo Alto, that he's raised $200 million for a company that will try to revolutionize the electric car industry is the latest sign of this region's growing role in one of the hottest sectors of the automotive industry.

Google

Submission + - Inside Google

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: The Economist has an extensive article about Google. The main points are: the core advertising business is doing well, there are privacy concerns, they have built a massive infrastructure that allows them to easily launch new experimental products, creative employees have come up with cool products like GMail and Google News, but others have come through acquisitions like Google Earth and YouTube. There are satisfied employees who love the college atmosphere and disgruntled ex-employees who resent aspects of the regime, the concentration of geeks means a lot of clever people in the same place don't necessarily get along, and it'll be interesting to see how well it does when it faces a big crisis.
Media

Submission + - BBC broadband news now available overseas (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by fiannaFailMan
fiannaFailMan writes: The BBC is now making its broadband quality news service available to internet users outside the UK.

"We did not want the BBC's UK licence fee payers meeting this cost and in effect subsidising the service for people outside the UK. Now, with the help of our partners in BBC World, the BBC's commercially funded international TV news channel, we are making our broadband video news service available internationally."

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