Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Power

High-Tech Research Moving From US To China 426

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that American companies like Applied Materials are moving their research facilities and engineers to China as the country develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States. Applied Materials set up its latest solar research labs in China after estimating that China would be producing two-thirds of the world's solar panels by the end of this year and their chief technology officer, Mark R. Pinto, is the first CTO of a major American tech company to move to China. 'We're obviously not giving up on the US,' says Pinto. 'China needs more electricity. It's as simple as that.' Western companies are also attracted to China's huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers and the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies. Applied Materials decided to build their new $250 million research facility in Xi'an after the city government sold them a 75-year land lease at a deep discount and is reimbursing the company for roughly a quarter of the lab complex's operating costs for five years."

Comment Excite@Home (Why Google Needs a Trust) (Score 2, Interesting) 366

One of the biggest concerns about Google is that it would be another Excite@Home.

The @Home corporation took down Excite right about the time of the Tech Bubble Burst. If anyone remembers having an Excite email address, when Excite had all these free services to store some of your information online, you probably remember Excite having to delete all of your stuff as the company meltdown thanks to their business partners at @Home.

To call Google a company that is too big to fail would definitely be an understatement, especially if like Excite, they had no plan of action in the event the company collapses.

Companies like Google need some kind of living trust, much like a person who in the event of their death, can hold on to the property (physical or intangible), the data can be transfered to a smaller company that can take care of the data Google's customers asked them to hold on to.

Another Idea would be to create a government agency similar to the FDIC that instead of insuring money, insures data, either provides a backup of the data that you have posted online that you and only you can access it if the company you use to hold that data bellies-up, and provides compensation if that data is lost.

The only problem with having the federal government create such an agency is the fact that they are the Federal Government. There is information about yourself that they have that you can't access unless you are either a member of law enforcement or part of the agency that collects all that data about you. Which is stupid, considering if you want to know everything about yourself, including things that you don't know about that may prevent you from getting a loan or a job, you can never learn more about yourself to do anything positive or constructive that could offset the things in the past, or that you are doing, that can prevent you from living a better life that could help you be a better person.

If there is something about you that you want to know, it should never be a secret from you. And if there is stuff that you want to save, you shouldn't have to lose it because the company you entrusted to hold on to it was too big to fail.

Comment When the Internet Has to Come and Get You (Score 1) 134

The excuse of "We are trying to rid the Internet of Child Pornography" is a lie. Whenever someone claims that they are censoring or filtering the Internet, it is generally for one of the following reasons.
  1. Stifle Dissent. - If the government had any interest in censoring or filtering the Internet to remove child pornography in the first place, they would have arrested several members of the Recording Industry Association of America for uploading the illegal content on torrent sites and the Usenet. Possession is 9/10th of the law. More than likely, the people at Warner Records and the like have about 11/10ths worth. Did they actually believe that anyone on public file sharing networks would actually be interested in downloading such content, espeically if the subject header was "12 year old girl naked"?
  2. Corporate/Industrial Interest - You may not know this but in America, the Internet has already been filtered. Try finding a website that exposes the oil industry, or at least one that doesn't sound like some guy who stays up late listening to George Norry.
  3. C.Y.A. - From past experiences that we've seen in recent current events, we have seen that most people who are speaking for internet censorship and speaking out against network neutrality are the ones with blood on their hands. Someone at AT&T probably told old Ted Stevens that if the Internet was filtered, the public would not be able to find out about his house in Alaska. Likewise, when financial firms take advice from giant telecommunications conglomerates about how they can help them avoid Sunshine Laws and corporate accountability, business folks (who now have recently discovered that thanks to their wealth they can just about get away with murder), they can use their power to influence the free flow of information and now they can do the same with elected leadership thanks to a recent SCOTUS decision.
  4. Distraction - Much like the previous point. Only--HEY LOOK OVER THERE! [runs away]
  5. Astroturfing - Two words: Fox News. The media machine that Rupert Murdoch created to support the views of the Republican Party have now taken a radical and distorted perversion turn for the worse. The center-right viewpoints of the GOP have been substituted with the hard-right "Party of No" and the ideas to include a far-right view point to enabled the Tea Party, lead by racists leaders like Tom Tancredo who in there myopic self-centered beliefs want to bring back the Voting Literacy tests that were outlawed in 1965 by the Voting Rights Act. Nevermind that most immigrants know more about the American civics (including the U.S. Constitution) than most natural-born citizens do.

Control is the name of the game.

And if the Internet has to come out and get the people whose interest are not to prevent child pornography from spreading on the Internet (which they usually aren't), they will come and get them.

Slashdot.org

Slashdot Turns 100,000 443

This entry represents the 100,000th story posted on Slashdot. Technically this is a bit late since we're missing the first few months of stories from the DB, but there are now 100k items in the story database and I thought that milestone was worthy of sharing with the universe. We've come a long way in the last 12 years, and while the site isn't always exactly what I want it to be, I'm very proud of the work done by our thousands of submitters and by the editors our readers have "affectionately" referred to as "The Slashdot Janitors" for so many years. Special grats to timothy who is just short of his 17,000th story and is far and away the most prolific person here. The hall of fame has a few other bits of trivia.
GNU is Not Unix

Microsoft Finally Open Sources Windows 7 Tool 284

Jan writes "Microsoft has open sourced the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool by releasing it under the GPLv2 license. The code is now available on CodePlex, Microsoft's Open Source software project hosting repository, over at wudt.codeplex.com. The actual installer for the tool is now again available for download at the Microsoft Store (2.59MB). (Microsoft previously took responsiblity for the violation.)"

Comment Not Enough Glittering Vampires to Appease People (Score 1) 479

To be quite honest, I haven't seen anything from any recent science fiction films to actually be technologically inspiring.

Surely there is a box full of ideas in some patent office that even though some corporation has them locked up, it can be used to foster the next generation of sci-fi technology novels or films.

Instead we are screwing around with effeminine vampires that glitter and shirtless teen idols who turn into werewolves that draw in gulliable 14 year old girls and mom's over 45.

Where's the science fiction in that? Lord of the Rings has more Sci-Fi inspiration.

I think it is time we try a different approach. Like a steampunk movie where a scientist discovers an alternative energy source that could take down the coal, oil, and natural gas industries. (Of course, that will never happen. Because the people at the coal, natural gas and oil (sorry, no link. corporate censorship) industries never do anything wrong.)
Businesses

Facebook Photos Lead To Cancellation of Quebec Woman's Insurance 645

No. 24601 writes "A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave, due to a diagnosis of depression, lost her health benefits after her insurance provider found photos of her on Facebook smiling and looking cheerful at parties and out on the beach. Besides all the obvious questions, how did the insurance company access her locked Facebook profile?"
Programming

Microsoft Open Sources .NET Micro Framework 320

An anonymous reader writes "Back in July, Microsoft announced it was making .NET available under its Community Promise, which in theory allowed free software developers to use the technology without fear of patent lawsuits. Not surprisingly, many free software geeks were unconvinced by the promise (after all, what's a promise compared to an actual open licence?), but now Microsoft has taken things to the next level by releasing the .NET Micro Framework under the Apache 2.0 licence. Yes, you read that correctly: a sizeable chunk of .NET is about to go open source."

Comment iDon't Support Democracy (Score 1) 158

Funny thing about China right now, is that in order to run a business in China, you must have a Chinse partner working with you. To which, the Chinese have big plans for foreigners looking for cheap labor (NSFW website! though story is very important!)

The question now is, do we still want to manufacture in china, if the Chinese government wants to force foreign companies (i.e. Motorola, Nokia, Sony, etc.) to hand over their Intellectual Property to the Chinese government?

Personally, I don't see why we should outsource goods to China when we can manufacture them here in the United States or at very least Mexico.

The chinese could very well install these programs on goods exported from China or posted in the App Store and Android Market.

Now would be a good time to bring manufacturing back to America especially with the 10.2% unemployment rate and China's intentions.

Of course, Apple won't do that. Apple would rather continue to manufacture a device that has be under lock and key so badly, people have died because someone lost the phone or some other moral implications. (Imagine if HTC or Motorola had this problem, their would be one hell of a controversy!)

But as long as Apple continues to appease the Chinese with a steady revenue from a device that despite being so popular is really becoming a social control, the status quo will prevail...more so since they sell iPhones at places like Walmart.
Security

China Expands Cyberspying In US, Report Says 186

An anonymous reader writes "A new report published by The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission wags a finger at the People's Republic of China for conducting Internet-borne espionage operations against United States high-tech companies. The paper, written by defense giant Northrop Grumman, provides a detailed case study of one such intrusion that moved large volumes of sensitive tech data out of a US firm in 2007. From a Wall Street Journal article, '"The case study is absolutely clearly controlled and directed with a specific purpose to get at defense technology in a related group of companies," said Larry Wortzel, vice chairman of the commission and a former U.S. Army attaché in China. "There's no doubt that that's state-controlled."' Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, criticized the commission as "a product of Cold War mentality" that was "put in place to pick China to pieces." He added: "Accusations of China conducting, or 'likely conducting' as the commission's report indicates, cyberspace attacks or espionage against the US are unfounded and unwarranted.'"
Media

Disney Close To Unveiling New "DVD Killer" 498

Uncle Rummy writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Disney is close to releasing a new system that will sell permanent, multi-device access to digital media. The system, dubbed Keychest, is being positioned as an answer to consumer concerns about purchasing digital media that are locked to a small number of devices, and thus as a way to finally shift media sales from an ownership model to an access model. They claim that such a service would reduce the risk of losing access to content as a result of a single vendor going out of business, as purchased content would remain available from other vendors. However, they do not seem to have addressed the question of what happens to customers' access to purchased content if the Keychest service itself is discontinued."
Television

Comcast In Deal Talks With NBC Universal 160

schwit1 sent us an LA Times article about another step in the seemingly unending media consolidation. This time it's Cable giant Comcast Corp. looking at NBC. NBC owns a slew of channels, including Bravo, USA and Syfy (who might have the single lamest rebranding since Spike). The article says that it would be far cheaper than the Disney deal Comcast tried to pull off 5 years ago.
Space

Cosmic Ray Intensity Reaches Highest Levels In 50 years 263

An anonymous reader writes "A NASA probe found that cosmic ray intensities in 2009 had increased by almost 20 percent beyond anything seen in the past 50 years. Such cosmic rays arise from distant supernova explosions and consist mostly of protons and heavier subatomic particles — just one cosmic ray could disable unlucky satellites or even put a mission to Mars in jeopardy."

Slashdot Top Deals

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson

Working...