12820134
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
Most of us know about the sun's eleven-year activity cycle. However, relatively few other than scientists (and amateur radio operators) are aware that the current solar minimum has lasted much longer than expected. The last solar cycle, Cycle 24, bottomed out in 2008 and Cycle 25 should be well on it's way towards maximum by now but the sun has remained unusually quiescent with very few sunspots. While solar physicists agree that this is odd, the explanation remains elusive.
12782200
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
According to Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, a portion of Steve Jobs' keynote has been set aside for--wait for it--Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft! Ballmer will reportedly be talking about Microsoft's Visual Studio 2010 development package. According to Chowdhry, the new version of Visual Studio will allow developers to write native applications for the iPhone, iPad and Mac OS. Currently, developers may only create iPhone and Mac OS applications from within Apple's own Xcode development suite which only runs on Macs.
12736906
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
John Gruber of Daring Fireball has suggested the possibility that Apple will announce a new extension archtecture for it's Web browser. In his latest blog, Gruber made this sly comment: '[one] big thing that's missing is a proper extension API. If only Apple had an imminent developer conference where they could unveil such a thing.' If this is true, it will be a great boon to Mac users who like Safari's page rendering performance and compliance with Web standards but would like to be able to take advantage of the types of plug-ins available for Chrome and Firefox.
12420588
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
The same judge who issued the warrant to search Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's apartment has ordered it unsealed, ruling against the San Mateo County (California) district attorney's office which had argued that unsealing the documents may compromise the investigation. Several media organizations have sought to have the documents unsealed in order to determine whether the county had a legal basis for the warrant, stating "Otherwise, there is no way for the public to serve as a check on the conduct of law enforcement officers, the prosecutors and the courts in this case."
12350596
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
Mac users can now download the Steam client software. Unfortunately, the Steam game download service itself is still in closed beta and not yet available to the general public. Hopefully, the wait will not be long--service for Mac was scheduled to go online today.
12125324
submission
gyrogeerloose writes:
Robert Reich, former secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, has gone on record in his blog opposing any federal anti-trust action against Apple, Inc. Stating that 'Our future well being depends [...] on people like Steve Jobs who invent real products that can improve our lives,' he suggests that the effort required to investigate Apple would be better spent going after the investment banking industry.
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."
