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Submission + - Vision-correcting display nixes your need for eyeglasses

Submitted by rlinke
rlinke writes: What would it be like if you didn't need your eyeglasses to clearly see your laptop screen or a text message on your smartphone?

Scientists at the University of California Berkeley are working on computer screens that would adjust their images to accommodate individual user's visual needs. Think of it as a display that wears the glasses so users don't have to.

Submission + - Ford, GM Sued Over Vehicles' CD-R Ability To Rip Music To Hard Drive (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: The Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies is suing Ford and General Motors for millions of dollars over alleged copyrights infringement violations because their vehicles' CD-Rs can rip music to infotainment center hard drives. The AARC claims in its filing that the CD-R's ability to copy music violates the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. The Act protects against distributing digital audio recording devices whose primary purpose is to rip copyrighted material. For example, Ford's owner's manual explains, "Your mobile media navigation system has a Jukebox which allows you to save desired tracks or CDs to the hard drive for later access. The hard drive can store up to 10GB (164 hours; approximately 2,472 tracks) of music." The AARC wants $2,500 for each digital audio recording device installed in a vehicle, the amount it says should have been paid in royalties.

Submission + - Intel Launches Self-Encrypting SSD 2500 Pro Solid State Drive (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Intel just launched their new SSD 2500 Pro series solid state drive, the follow-up to last year's SSD 1500 Pro series, which targets corporate and small-business clients. The drive shares much of its DNA with some of Intel's consumer-class drives, but the Pro series cranks things up a few notches with support for advanced security and management features, low power states, and an extended management toolset. In terms of performance, the Intel SSD 2500 Pro isn't class-leading in light of many enthusiast-class drives but it's no slouch either. Intel differentiates the 2500 Pro series by adding support for vPro remote-management and hardware-based self-encryption. The 2500 Pro series supports TCG (Trusted Computing Group) Opal 2.0 features and is Microsoft eDrive capable as well. Intel also offers an administration tool for easy management of the drive. With the Intel administration tool, users can even reset the PSID (physical presence security ID), though the contents of the drive will be wiped. The SSD 2500 Pro series of solid state drives will be offered in both 2.5" SATA (7mm Z-Height) and M.2 "gumstick" form factors, with capacities ranging from 120GB on up to 480GB. Sequential reads are rated at up to 540MB/s, sequential writes at up to 480MB/s, with 45K – 80K random read / write IOps.

Submission + - Jobs in Solar Inudstry Skyrocketing, But R&D Investments Plummeting (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: The number of jobs in the solar power industry now outnumbers those in the coal mining industry.. That's good news for renewable energy proponents, but investments in new solar technologies that could increase efficiency and spur sustainable growth is down — way down. Investors simply see R&D as too risky because of past start-up failures and because the price of current solar cells continue to drop precipitously because China has flooded the market, meaning there's less profit to be made in the technology. The only thing driving jobs now appears to be new, relatively inefficient solar power plants. The total global investment in renewable power (excluding large hydroelectric projects) fell for the second year in a row in 2013, reaching $214 billion worldwide — 14% lower than in 2012 and 23% below 2011 levels, when there was a record high in renewable energy investments

Submission + - DARPA Successfully Demonstrates Self-Guiding Bullets (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: A DARPA-funded project has successfully developed a .50 caliber sniper round capable of maneuvering during flight in order to remain on target. The self-guiding EXACTO bullet, as it's being called, is optically guided by a laser that must remain on target for the bullet to track. The EXACTO round is capable of accurately tracking a target up to 1.2 miles away, DARPA stated. The technology, which is being developed by Teledyne Scientific and Imaging, is targeted at helping snipers remain at longer distances from targets as well as improving night shots. While DARPA's tracking bullet is the first to use a standard, small-arms caliber round, in 2012 Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) successfully demonstrated a prototype self-guided bullet that was more like like a four-inch dart.

Submission + - Chinese Company "3D Prints" 10 Buildings in One Day (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: A company in China has used additive manufacturing to print 10 single-room buildings out of recycled construction materials in under a day as offices for a Shanghai industrial park. The cost: about $5,000 each. The company, Suzhou-based Yingchuang New Materials, used four massive 3D printers supplied by the WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co. Each printer is 20 feet tall, 33 feet wide and 132 feet long. Like their desktop counterparts, the construction-grade 3D printers use fused deposition modeling (FDM), where instead of thermoplastics layer after layer of cement is deposited atop one another. The cement contains hardeners that make each layer firm enough for the next. Yingchuang's technique builds structures off site in a factory one wall at a time. The structures are then assembled onsite. The technique is unlike U.S.-based Contour Crafting, a company whose 3D printing technology to form the entire outer structure of buildings at once, The Yingchuang factory and research center, a 33,000 square foot building, was also constructed using the 3D printing manufacturing technique. It only took one month to construct.

Submission + - Renewable Energy Saves Fortune 100 Companies $1.1B Annually (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: A new report authored by several environmental groups say data shows more than half of Fortune 100 companies collectively saved more than $1.1B annually by reducing carbon emissions and rolling out renewable energy projects. According to the report, 43% of Fortune 500 companies, or 215 in all, have also set targets in one of three categories: greenhouse gas reduction, energy efficiency and renewable energy. When narrowed to just the Fortune 100, 60% of the companies have set the same clean energy goals. Some of the companies leading the industry in annual clean energy savings include UPS ($200M), Cisco ($151M), PepsiCo ($121M) and United Continental ($104M).

Submission + - White Shark Devours Research Site's Servers (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Katherine, a 14-foot, 2,300lbs. Great White Shark has become so popular with visitors to a research site tracking her daily movements that the site's servers have crashed and remained down for hours. The shark, one of dozens tagged for research by the non-profit global shark tracking project OCEARCH, typically cruises very close to shore up and down the Eastern Seaboard. That has attracted a lot interest from the swimming public. Currently, however, she's heading from Florida's west coast toward Texas. OCEARCH tags sharks with four different technologies to create a three-dimensional image of a shark's activities. On average, we're collecting 100 data points every second — 8.5 million data points per day.

Submission + - After 47 years, Computerworld ceases print publication (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: In June 1967, a weekly newspaper called Computerworld launched. Almost exactly 47 years later, it's calling it quits in print form to focus on its website and other digital editions. The move isn't the least bit surprising, but it's also the end of an era--and I can' t think of any computing publication which had a longer run. Over at Technologizer, I shared some thoughts on what Computerworld meant to the world, to its publisher, IDG, and to me.

Comment Warning: Snarky comment (Score 2) 75

by Lucas123 (#47248321) Attached to: Artificial Pancreas Shows Promise In Diabetes Test
Over the past four decades, we've seen squat in the form of treatment for diabetes other than improving the delivery of insulin delivery for diabetics, which has been around since the 1920s. Honestly, it almost seems as if the insulin market is just too lucrative to allow a real cure for Type 1 diabetes. We march on continuing to watch little children struggle with this disease through adulthood and often succumb to an early death because of it. C'mon scientific community. Get your collective heads our of your arses and curse this.

Submission + - Starbuck's Wireless Charging Stations Won't Won't Work On Nearly All Devices (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Starbucks today announced that after beta-testing wireless charging in several locations, it will roll it out to all of its cafes in the U.S. Unfortunately, the Powermat wireless chargers they chose to use doesn't support the overwhelming number of mobile devices that are enabled for wireless charging using the Qi standard. Of the 20 million consumer devices estimated to have shipped in 2013 with wireless charging capabilities, nearly all were built with the Qi specification, according to IHS. The majority of the Qi technology was built into devices such as the Google Nexus 4 and 5 smartphones, Google's Nexus 7 second-generation tablet and a number of models in Nokia's Lumia smart phone range. The battle between the three wireless charging consortiums is expected to continue to adversely impact adoption of the technology.

Submission + - Credit Card Breach at P.F. Chang's (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Nationwide chain P.F. Chang’s China Bistro said today that it is investigating claims of a data breach involving credit and debit card data reportedly stolen from restaurant locations nationwide.

On June 9, thousands of newly-stolen credit and debit cards went up for sale on rescator[dot]so, an underground store best known for selling tens of millions of cards stolen in the Target breach. Several banks contacted by KrebsOnSecurity said they acquired from this new batch multiple cards that were previously issued to customers, and found that all had been used at P.F. Chang’s locations between the beginning of March 2014 and May 19, 2014.

Submission + - Theater chain bans Google Glass (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: A cinema chain announced Tuesday that it is now barring patrons from wearing Google Glass at its movie houses across the US in a bid to clamp down on piracy.

Alamo Drafthouse, which runs theaters in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, Virginia, and soon in California, is among the first US chains to ban Google's computerized eyewear.

"Google Glass is officially banned from @drafthouse auditoriums once lights dim for trailers," the chain's chief executive, Tim League, tweeted. The decision comes as Google has made the eyewear readily available to the general public, and it follows a slew of incidents in which wearers of Google Glass have had brushes with the law.

Submission + - What It's Like To Train The H-1B Visa Worker Who Replaces You

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: In a company where 220 IT jobs have been lost to offshore outsourcing over the last year, one IT worker recounts what it was like to actually train the H-1B worker who replaced him. "I think once we learned about it, we became angrier toward the U.S. government than we were with the people that were over here from India... because the government is allowing this," said the worker in an interview with Computerworld. The employee, whose real name was not used, said the IT workers at his firm first learned of the offshore outsourcing threat through rumors. Later, the IT staff was called into an auditorium and heard directly from the CIO about the plan to replace them, but the process still took months after that. Many younger IT workers found jobs and left. Mainframe workers were apparently in demand and also able to find new jobs. But older workers with skills in open systems, storage and SAN faced a harder time.

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