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Apple

Submission + - Does the iPhone's Closed Nature Foster Innovation? (nytimes.com)

Submitted by aussersterne
aussersterne writes: The heated debate over Apple's "walled garden" has ranged for years now, only growing more intense with the rise of iPhone apps and the recent release of the iPad. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, some are suggesting that Apple's particular approach to closedness has actually been a boon for innovation and egalitarianism in ways that few had previously thought possible. In a recent NYT article, Steven Johnson says, "I’ve long considered myself a believer in this gospel and have probably written a hundred pages of book chapters, essays and blog posts spreading the word. Believing in open platforms is not simple techno-utopianism. Open platforms come with undeniable costs. The Web is rife with pornography and vitriol for the very same reasons it’s so consistently ingenious. It’s not that the Web is perfect, by any means, but as an engine of innovation and democratization, its supremacy has been undeniable. Over the last two years, however, that story has grown far more complicated, thanks to the runaway success of the iPhone (and now iPad) developers platform — known as the App Store to consumers." Can a walled garden, as Johnson suggests, actually give rise to a "rainforest" if executed in Apple-like ways?

Submission + - China is cheating (skunkpost.com)

Submitted by crimeandpunishment
crimeandpunishment writes: If a lazy college student gets caught using a ghost-written or plagiarized paper, he might fail the course. But if a college professor or researcher gets caught doing it, it could have far-reaching implications. That's what could happen in China....where academic cheating is so widespread, it could seriously impact China's goal of world leadership in science.
Transportation

VisLab Sponsors Milan-to-Shanghai Driverless Trek 133

Posted by timothy from the with-a-bit-of-human-assistance dept.
incuso writes "VisLab announced the most advanced challenge so far ever organized for autonomous vehicles. Two driverless electric cars will perform a trip from Italy to China to demonstrate the feasibility of autonomous driving in real traffic conditions. Each vehicle will be equipped with five laser scanners, seven cameras, GPS, inertial measurement unit, three Linux PCs, and an x-by-wire driving system. The mission will start on July 10 in Milan, Italy, and will reach Shanghai, China, on October 10 (10/10/10) on a 13,000 km route though Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and finally China."
The Military

Scientists Turn T-Shirts Into Body Armor 213

Posted by timothy from the will-stick-with-the-regular-kind-for-now dept.
separsons writes "Scientists at the University of South Carolina recently transformed ordinary T-shirts into bulletproof armor. By splicing cotton with boron, the third hardest material on the planet, scientists created a shirt that was super elastic but also strong enough to deflect bullets. Xiaodong Li, lead researcher on the project, says the same tech may eventually be used to create lightweight, fuel-efficient cars and aircrafts."
Censorship

PayPal Freezes the Assets of Wikileaks.org 403

Posted by kdawson from the thought-money-was-speech dept.
matsh sends word that PayPal has frozen the assets of wikileaks.org. From their Web site: "Paypal has as of 23rd of January 2010 frozen WikiLeaks assets. This is the second time that this happens. The last time we struggled for more than half a year to resolve this issue. By working with the respected and recognized German foundation Wau Holland Stiftung we tried to avoid this from happening again — apparently without avail." The submitter adds: "Hopefully we can pressure PayPal to resolve this quickly, since this seems like a dangerous political decision."

Submission + - Crazy Firewall Log Activity by Country and Hour (youtube.com) 1

Submitted by arkowitz
arkowitz writes: I happened to have access to five days worth of firewall logs from a US state government agency. I wrote a parser to grab unique ip's out, and sent several million of them to a company called Quova, who gave me back full location info on every 40th one. I then used Green Phosphor's Glasshouse visualization tool to have a look at the count of inbound packets, grouped by country of origin and hour. And it's freaking crazy looking. So I made this video of it and I'm asking the Slashdot community: What the frak is going on?
Censorship

Submission + - PayPal freezes the assets of wikileaks.org (twitter.com)

Submitted by matsh
matsh writes: PayPal has frozen the assets of paypal.org. From their website, http://www.wikileaks.org/

"Paypal has as of 23rd of January 2010 frozen WikiLeaks assets. This is the second time that this happens. The last time we struggled for more than half a year to resolve this issue. By working with the respected and recognized German foundation Wau Holland Stiftung we tried to avoid this from happening again — apparently without avail."

Hopefully we can pressure PayPal to resolve this quickly, since this seems like a dangerous political decision.
Censorship

Submission + - Sourceforge Bans the "Evils" from Free Software 7

Submitted by
neo00
neo00 writes: "Syrians, Sudanese, N. Koreans, Cubans and Iranians will now be prohbitied from downloading or contributing to FOSS projects hosted by Sourceforge.net. According to sf.net terms of use, persons residing one of the countries on which the US government imposes sanctions, will be banned from accessing the site contents. An act that violates the Freedoms of Free Software and the "No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups" from the OSS definition.
US sanctions on these countries were initiated or hardened during the administration of Bush who called them the "Axis of Evil"."
Earth

Mediterranean Might Have Filled In Months 224

Posted by kdawson from the white-water-to-die-for dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A new model suggests that the Mediterranean Sea was filled in a gigantic flood some 5.3 million years ago. According to Daniel Garcia-Castellanos' paper in Nature, the sill at the Straight of Gibraltar gave way rather suddenly, with 40 cm of rock eroding and the water level rising by 10 m per day at its peak. They imagine a shallow, fast-moving stream of water (around 100 km/hr) several kilometers wide pouring into the basin with a flow greater than a thousand Amazon rivers — that's about 100,000,000 cubic meters per second." The flood would have dropped worldwide sea levels by 9.5 meters, probably triggering climate changes. In this model the Mediterranean filled in anywhere from a few months to two years at the outside.
Power

Nanotech Ink Turns Paper Into a Low-Cost Battery 129

Posted by kdawson from the power-your-wallet dept.
jangel writes "Stanford University researchers have demonstrated a way to turn ordinary paper into a battery, which may be crumpled or pressed into any form. It's said the technology promises greater durability, higher efficiency, and faster energy transfer than traditional batteries. The technique uses special ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires. Thanks to the small diameters of these materials, the ink sticks strongly to the fibrous paper, allowing the battery to be extremely durable. The paper battery could last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles — at least an order of magnitude more than lithium batteries. According to the researchers, the paper batteries will be low-cost, may be crumpled or folded, and can even be soaked in acidic or basic solutions, yet their performance does not degrade. 'We just haven't tested what happens when you burn it,' one of the researchers quipped." This is the same Stanford research team, lead by Yi Cui, whose work with nanotechnology for battery applications we have discussed before. We've also delved into alternate routes to the holy grail of the ultra-thin battery.
Mars

Mars Express Captures Phobos and Deimos 84

Posted by Soulskill from the holding-for-ransom dept.
westtxfun writes "The Mars Express Orbiter captured a very cool movie of Phobos and Deimos on Nov 5. Besides the 'wow factor,' the images will be used to refine models of the moons' orbits. The orbiter has also captured high resolution images of Phobos back in July. 'The images were acquired with the Super Resolution Channel (SRC) of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The camera took 130 images of the moons on 5 November at 9:14 CET in a span of 1.5 minutes at intervals of 1s, speeding up to 0.5-s intervals toward the end. The image resolution is 110 m/pixel for Phobos and 240 m/pixel for Deimos — Deimos was more than twice as far from the camera. '"
Social Networks

Facebook Axes "Beacon," Donates $9.5M To Settle Suit 71

Posted by kdawson from the all-your-data-are-you-know-the-rest dept.
alphadogg sends in a Network World piece that begins "Facebook has agreed to shut down a program that sparked a lawsuit alleging privacy violations, and set up a $9.5M fund for a nonprofit foundation that will support online privacy, safety, and security. The lawsuit centers around Facebook's Beacon program, which let third-party Web sites distribute 'stories' about users to Facebook. Beacon was launched in November 2007 and less than a year later plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit 'alleging that Facebook and its affiliates did not give users adequate notice and choice about Beacon and the collection and use of users' personal information.' ... Facebook never admitted wrongdoing but as part of a proposed settlement the company began sending notices to Facebook users this week. The settlement provides no compensation directly to users who receive the notice. Facebook users can opt out of the settlement, and should do so if they wish to pursue further legal action against Facebook related to the Beacon program. 'If you choose to do nothing and remain in the settlement class, you will be legally bound by the settlement,' a FAQ on the settlement Web site says. "By doing nothing, you will be giving up the right to sue Facebook and the other Defendants over claims related to or arising out of the Beacon program.'" Other defendents included Blockbuster, Fandango, Overstock.com, Zappos.com, and Gamefly. Neither the article nor the settlement site mentions what part, if any, they play in the settlement.
Privacy

Questionable "Best Effort" Copyright Enforcement 123

Posted by kdawson from the when-best-is-not-good-enough dept.
pmdubs writes "Princeton University Professor Michael Freedman, creator of CoralCDN, discusses how he received around 100 pre-settlement letters in one month from various copyright agencies after invalid BitTorrent tracker requests were issued through CoralCDN's proxies. Interestingly, the participating agencies made no effort whatsoever to verify that the Coral nodes were actually running BitTorrent, which they weren't! He questions just how much effort agencies take to reduce false positives when it comes to DMCA notices. Considering the credence that network operators give to such notices (they'll often cut your service upon receipt), it would seem that the answer is 'not enough.'"
Spam

US No Longer Leading the World In Spam 96

Posted by kdawson from the we're-number-two dept.
darthcamaro writes "America is no longer the spam king. According to Cisco, US-originated spam dropped by over two trillion messages — American-based IP addresses sent about 6.2 trillion spam messages. The new world leader is Brazil at 7.7 trillion messages. 'I'm not completely surprised to see US falling to number two in the spam stats, but I didn't expect it to happen yet,' said Cisco Fellow Patrick Peterson. 'I was really gratified to see the actual spam volume decrease, not just ranking, but we [also] decreased the amount of spam that is pouring out of the United States.'" The drop in US spam might have had something to do with the temporary shutdown of the McColo spam ISP.

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