11706358
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
NASA has released the first photos from it's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. Launched this past February and currently in orbit approximately 22,000 miles above the Earth, the SDO is "the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun." Judging by the photos alone, this would be damning the craft with faint praise. If all goes well, we can look forward to five years of awesome photographs of our neighborhood star.
11672652
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
An article in the London Evening Standard claims that Apple has made an $8 billion offer to acquire ARM Holdings. For those few Slashdotters who don't already know, ARM makes the processor chips that power Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. However, ARM processors are also used by other manufacturers, including Palm and, perhaps most significantly, companies building Android phones. This explains why Apple might be willing to spend so much on the deal--almost 20% of it's cash reserves. Being able to control who gets to use the processors (and, more importantly, who doesn't) would give Apple a huge advantage over it's competitors.
11655110
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
A report at Daily Finance examines whether Gawker Media's possession of the iPhone constituted possession of stolen property or left it open to civil charges due to misappropriation of trade secrets.The key aspect of the question is whether the person who found the phone made the "reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him," that are required by California law. While Gizmodo claims that the iPhone's finder apparently "asked around" at the bar where the device was found and attempted to call several Apple support numbers the following day, the finder failed to take some of the most basic steps to reunite the device with its owner, including speaking to the bar management (who stated that the engineer who lost it called "numerous times" looking for it) or contacting the Redwood City Police Department.
11502966
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
While Apple has sourced it's microprocessors solely from Intel since it's switch to the x86 architecture, AMD executives and sales reps have been seen on the company's campus recently giving rise to speculation that Apple may be considering using AMD chips in future offerings. Various theories have been put forth for this, including issues of limited availability of certain Intel chips and new chipset designs from Intel which have interfered with Apple's partnership with NVida to develop a standardized graphics chipset design that could be used across it's entire line. There is also speculation that the talks with AMD may amount to nothing more than something to be used as a bargaining chip in Apple's negotiations with Intel.
11287788
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
In it's most recent SEC filing, Adobe acknowledges that the restrictions against Flash on recent Apple products--iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad--could hurt it's business over the long term. According to a Business Week article, "earlier SEC filings from Adobe contained language noting that it wished to work with Apple on the iPhone platform but required cooperation from Apple in order to do so."
10749212
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
According to Gizmondo, a leaked internal Apple corporate document states that iPhones are now available for purchase without proof of an existing AT&T contract. While his makes it possible for users to unlock their phones for use on Verizon's network, AT&T remains the only U.S. carrier that will support all of the iPhone's features, such as visual voice mail.
10189836
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
A French amateur radio operator who built his own ground station using equipment from an abandoned telecom uplink site has listened in on the ESA's Mars Express space probe. While his antenna is too small to allow him to download actual data, he was able to record and convert the signal of the probe's X-Band transmitter into an audio file, which can be heard here.
9655052
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
In a recently-published paper in the magazine Science, researchers have demonstrated a radio-frequency graphene transistor with the highest cut-off frequency achieved so far for any graphene device — 100 GHz, roughly four times faster than any previous transistor. Graphene is a single atom-thick layer of carbon atoms bonded in a hexagonal honeycomb-like arrangement. This two-dimensional form of carbon has unique electrical, optical, mechanical and thermal properties and its technological applications are being explored intensely.
9327338
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
The FCC is concerned that the iPad will overburden already slow wireless networks. In a a blog posted on an FCC Web site, Phil Bellaria and John Leibovitz likened the iPad's potential impact to "the congestion dialup users experienced following AOL’s 1996 decision to allow unlimited internet use." They propose solving the problem by allocating more of the RF spectrum to cellular networks. Given the finite nature of the RF spectrum, this means taking bandwidth away from current users, Bellaria and Leibovitz say, stating "spectrum can no longer remain attached solely to uses deemed valuable decades ago."
9153192
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
At an Apple Town Hall meeting last week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs acknowledged that Google is now a competitor in the smart phone market. "We did not enter the search business", Jobs said. "They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them." He also said that Google's "Don't be Evil" mantra is "Bullshit."
On Adobe, "they are lazy," Jobs says. "They have the potential to do amazing things but they don't." And he explained why Flash won't ever be supported on the iPhone or iPad: "It's buggy," he said. "Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5."
9153154
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
At an Apple Town Hall meeting last week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs acknowledged that Google is now a competitor in the smart phone market. "We did not enter the search business", Jobs said. "They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them." He also said that Google's "Don't be Evil" mantra is "Bullshit."
On Adobe, "they are lazy," Jobs says. "They have the potential to do amazing things but they don't." And he explained why Flash won't ever be supported on the iPhone or iPad: "It's buggy," he said. "Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5."
9067136
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
In an event eerily reminiscent of Cisco's suit over Apple's use of the "iPhone" name, Japanese firm Fujitsu is consulting it's attorneys in preparation for going to court over Apple's use of "iPad" for it's latest computing device. Quoted in a New York Times news story, Masahiro Yamane, director of Fujitsu’s public relations division, said “It’s our understanding that the name is ours.”
Fujitsu’s application to trademark the iPad name stalled because of an earlier filing by another company and The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office listed Fujitsu’s application as abandoned in early 2009, but the company revived its application in June. Apple, which has applied for an international trademark on "iPad" through a proxy company, has filed a number of requests with the U.S. Patent Office for more time to oppose Fujitsu’s application.
8532968
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
A test published by MOTO labs comparing the accuracy and sensitivity of smartphone touchscreens among various makers gave the iPhone top marks ahead of HTC’s Droid Eris, the Google-branded Nexus One and the Motorola Droid. The test was conducted within a drawing program using a finger to trace straight diagonal lines across the screens and then comparing the results. While it's not likely that a smart phone user is going to draw a lot of lines, the test does give some indication of which phones are most likely to properly respond to clicking on a link in a Web browser.
7607658
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
Sixty-eight years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, intelligence agencies trying to prevent another unpleasant surprise are still stymied by the same thing: how to sort all the data they've collected in a timely manner. Although there was evidence to suggest that the Japanese navy was up to something in December 1941, that information was scanty and came too late. Today's intelligence agencies have another problem altogether--more information than they can deal with, and computers aren't helping as much as one might expect for reasons that will be familiar to Slashdot readers: computers can crunch numbers faster and more accurately than humans but they're still easily baffled by language as it is commonly used in the real world. Metaphor, slang and simple figures of speech can confuse the best algorithm and, as quoted in an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune , 'A system that takes a week to discover a bombing will occur in a day isn't very useful.'
7566650
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
During it's last mission, astronauts from the Space Shuttle Atlantis installed an Automatic Identification System (AIS) antenna on the outside of the International Space Station that will allow astronauts aboard the ISS to monitor signals from the AIS transmitters mandated to be installed most large ocean-going craft. Although these VHF signals can be monitored from the Earth's surface, their horizontal range is generally limited to about 75 km (46 mi), leaving large areas of the ocean unwatched. However, the signals easily reach the 400 km (250 mi) orbit of the ISS.
The ESS sees this experiment as a test platform for a future AIS-monitoring fleet of satellites that will eventually provide worldwide coverage of sea traffic.
