65333195
submission
alphadogg writes:
Even though use of handheld devices while driving has become a dangerous and growing epidemic in the US, many states still have not enacted nor enforce a usage ban. Engaging in visual-manual subtasks — such as reaching for a phone, dialing and texting — associated with the use of hand-held phones and other portable devices triples the risk of getting into a crash, according to a study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. Yet talking on a hand-held cellphone while driving is banned in only 14 states and the District of Columbia, according to The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Says Russ Rader, senior vice president for communications at IIHS: “It’s an easier task politically to enact a texting ban. There aren’t very many powerful constituencies that oppose a texting ban.”
65304117
submission
alphadogg writes:
A rundown of open source, free software and freeware projects that have been killed off so far this year
65295635
submission
alphadogg writes:
A startup called Antumbra run by 5 college students is looking to throw a little soothing light on this situation: People who hunker down in front of their computers until the wee hours, until it feels like their eyes might fall out. Antumbra's open-source-based Glow, which launches in a limited beta of 100 $35 units on Thursday, is a small (1.5" x 1.5"x 0.5") doohickey that attaches to the back of your computer monitor via USB port and is designed to enhance your work or gaming experience — and lessen eye strain — by spreading the colors from your screen onto the wall behind it in real time. The idea is to reduce the contrast in colors between the computer screen and the background area.
65139757
submission
alphadogg writes:
Computer scientists who made breakthroughs in areas such as software architectures and database management systems were among those named National Medal of Technology and Innovation winners today by President Barack Obama. These awards, along with the National Medal of Science, are the nation's highest honors for achievement and leadership in advancing the fields of science and technology. Overall, 18 medalists were named.
65137323
submission
alphadogg writes:
Here’s some payback for everyone who has felt gouged by hotel charges for Wi-Fi service: Marriott International has to pay $600,000 following a probe into whether it intentionally blocked personal Wi-Fi hotspots in order to force customers to use its own very pricey service. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission looked into allegations that employees of Marriott’s Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville used signal-blocking features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system to prevent customers from connecting to the Internet through their personal Wi-Fi hotspots, the regulator said in its consent decree. The hotel charged customers and exhibitors $250 to $1,000 per device to access Marriott’s Wi-Fi network.
65092849
submission
alphadogg writes:
The Xen Project has revealed the details of a serious vulnerability in the Xen hypervisor that could put the security of many virtualized servers at risk. The security vulnerability, which is being tracked as CVE-2014-7188 and was privately disclosed to major cloud providers in advance, forced at least Amazon Web Services and Rackspace to reboot some of their customers’ virtualized servers over the past week.
65090013
submission
alphadogg writes:
Late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel doesn't fit the profile of McAfee's usual Most Dangerous Cyber Celebrity, most often in recent years a female celebrity whose online images can frequently lure Web surfers to sites rife with spyware, viruses and other malware. But indeed, the comedian has somehow become the most dangerous celebrity to search for online, with one in five searches on Kimmel's name potentially landing you on an infected site, according to McAfee's latest research.
65041995
submission
alphadogg writes:
Cisco on Monday said it is expanding on its Intercloud multi-cloud service provider initiative with another $1 billion investment, designed to lead to more products, data centers and partners. Announced six months ago, Intercloud is a global interconnection of public, private and hybrid clouds. Cisco launched Intercloud with an initial $1 billion dollar investment, and hails it and its Application Centric Infrastructure product line as the foundational elements of the Internet of Everything.
64876521
submission
alphadogg writes:
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is taking its first major step toward opening up the skies for commercial drone use, allowing six TV and movie production companies to use drones to shoot video. Commercial flight of drones has been effectively banned by the FAA as it grapples with how to integrate drone traffic into controlled airspace while not compromising the safety of existing air traffic. But as the months have passed, it has come under increasing pressure from U.S. companies to make a ruling.
64862999
submission
alphadogg writes:
The Metro Ethernet Forum this week announced intentions to define parameters for Ethernet network-as-a-service (NaaS), an effort Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe hailed as “a new network paradigm.” The so-called Third Network initiative builds on the Forum’s Carrier Ethernet 2.0 specifications for service expansion, application oriented class-of-service, interconnect attributes and manageability. For businesseses, Third Network should result in faster, more reliable global Ethernet service delivery with connectivity that does not violate service-level agreements with carriers.
64837521
submission
alphadogg writes:
Within hours of releasing an iOS 8 update to address assorted bugs in the new iPhone and iPad operating system Apple has been forced to pull the patch, which itself was causing iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users grief. Reports filled Apple support forums that the iOS 8 update was cutting off users' cell service and making Touch ID inoperable. The Wall Street Journal http://blogs.wsj.com/personal-... received this statement from Apple: "We have received reports of an issue with the iOS 8.0.1 update. We are actively investigating these reports and will provide information as quickly as we can. In the meantime we have pulled back the iOS 8.0.1 update."
64795985
submission
alphadogg writes:
Ray Ozzie, the man who created Lotus Notes and later went on to become Microsoft's chief software architect after selling the company his collaboration company called Groove, is back with a startup called Talko that on Tuesday introduced its first product — an iPhone app designed to encourage people to start using their cellphones again for voice conversations. The app mixes text and voice messaging, voice calling, image sharing and more, and is designed for delivering more meaningful group conversations.
64738091
submission
alphadogg writes:
The release of Delve, the first application to use Microsoft’s Office Graph machine learning engine, will be remembered years from now as either the genesis of a revolutionary technology or as a fireworks-style launch that dazzled everyone only for a brief moment. Whatever the future holds for Delve and the Office Graph, the stakes are sky high for Microsoft, its rivals and its current and prospective customers. So it’s important to pay attention to how Microsoft further develops the technology, how customers adopt it, how competitors respond to it and how enthusiastically—or timidly—partners choose to support it, if at all.
64643633
submission
alphadogg writes:
The IEEE is embarking on an ambitious effort to build a overarching architecture for the Internet of Things, spanning a multitude of industries and technologies. IEEE P2413, which the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers officially started work on in July, would form a framework for interoperability among connected devices and related applications in home automation, industrial systems, telematics and all other sectors that are expected to use IoT in the coming years. While leaving room for differences across those industries, the standard would allow for sharing of data across IoT systems, according to Oleg Logvinov, chair of the IEEE P2413 Working Group.
64613729
submission
alphadogg writes:
UPDATE: The wacky annual science award winners were revealed tonight at Harvard University and they included an experiment in curing serious nosebleeds with salted pork, research determining whether reindeer behaved differently around humans in polar bear costumes and a discovery about dogs arranging their hindquarters based on the Earth’s magnetic fields.
