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Android

NVIDIA's Tegra 3 Outruns Apple's A5 In First Benchmarks 390

Posted by timothy from the no-processor-left-behind dept.
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA's new Tegra 3 SoC (System on a Chip) has recently been released for performance reviews in the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime Android tablet. Tegra 3 is comprised of a quad-core primary CPU complex with a 5th companion core for lower-end processing requirements and power management. The chip can scale up to 1.4GHz on a single core and 1.3GHz on up to four of its cores, while the companion core operates at 500MHz. It makes for a fairly impressive new tablet platform and offers performance that bests Apple's A5 dual-core processor in more than a few tests. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime with optional keyboard dock and NVIDIA's Tegra 3 is set to be available in volume sometime around December 19th."
Patents

White House Responds To Software Patents Petition 276

Posted by Soulskill from the yes-we-can-maybe dept.
New submitter obliv!on writes "As previously discussed, the White House has started to reply to petitions on their 'We the People' website. They've now replied to the petition asking for an end to software patents. The response mentions the America Invents Act and encourages the use of the USPTO's open implementation website. Quoting: 'There's a lot we can do through the new law to improve patent quality and to ensure that only true inventions are given patent protection. But it's important to note that the executive branch doesn't set the boundaries of what is patentable all by itself. Congress has set forth broad categories of inventions that are eligible for patent protection. The courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have interpreted the statute to include some software-related inventions.' The response goes on to denote some open source and open data initiatives in government. It's nice to hear that the administration understands 'concerns that overly broad patents on software-based inventions may stifle the very innovative and creative open source software development community.' However, the overall response redirects action to the petitioners through participating in the open implementation site and contacting Congress, instead of a promise to prepare additional legislative measures for Congress to consider on behalf of the petitioners."
Programming

Ask Slashdot: Learning Dart Development? 107

Posted by timothy from the oh-dartlang-we-can't-go-on-like-this dept.
First time accepted submitter gmikeska07 writes "I have no computer science degree, but I took a Java class in college and greatly enjoyed it. I have some experience with Javascript and have done some perl programming as well. I would like to learn Google's forthcoming Dart language. My question is in three parts: a) Is there any chance that if I self-teach Dart, I can get a job in development without a CS degree, once companies begin using the language? b) Is it really worth installing Virtual Studio as per the dartlang docs, or should I wait for a dedicated IDE like the rumored 'Brightly'? Alternatively, are there any solid open development environments that are adding support? c) Do you know of any books that are out or on the way that I could buy? What programming series do you guys recommend? Hopefully I can learn in my spare time, and if I can't get a job in development I can at least have fun with it, and maybe make a few libraries for the Dart community!"
Japan

Fukushima's Fallout Worse Than Thought 308

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the usda-recommended-daily-dose-of-cs-137 dept.
gbrumfiel writes "A new study posted for open peer-review suggests that the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi released far more radiation than the Japanese government initially estimated. The study [PDF] uses global radioisotope and meteorological data to calculate the size of the release from the plant. Nature News reports that, contrary to official claims, the model shows that fuel being stored in a pool at unit 4 released a significant amount of cesium-137, a long-lived contaminant that has spread across the countryside. It also says that some Xenon-133 may have been released early on in the accident, suggesting that the plant was already damaged before it was hit by a tsunami. Overall, it estimates that Fukushima released about twice as much cesium-137 as the government claims and half as much as Chernobyl."
EU

EU Court Rules Against Exclusive TV Licensing Deal 115

Posted by timothy from the slightly-less-seekable-rent dept.
First time accepted submitter r5r5 writes "In possibly a ground-breaking rule, European Court of Justice ruled against exclusive rights to broadcast sporting events within a single member state. The motivation is that such an agreement would enable each broadcaster to be granted absolute territorial exclusivity in the area covered by its licence and would therefore eliminate all competition between broadcasters in the field of those services and would thus partition the national markets in accordance with national borders. Could this be the beginning of dismounting the legacy system of exclusive distribution rights awarded to one company in one state?"
Intel

Intel Gives Up On TV 89

Posted by Soulskill from the stick-to-your-strengths dept.
symbolset writes "Bloomberg is reporting that Intel, on the cusp of having low-power embedded chips that can do true HD in a flatscreen, has given up on getting its chips embedded in TVs. While many might say their efforts to date have been fruitless because of energy issues, Medfield might have had a chance in this field."
Portables

Tablet Makers Try To Beat iPad's $500 Pricetag 338

Posted by timothy from the ok-this-time-you-can-say-value-proposition dept.
The iPad has sold extremely well at a starting price of $500 but "that kind of pricing doesn't work for many tablet vendors," says a story at CNET. And recent price drops reflect this. It's been a rough year for tablet makers, and it's not even Black Friday yet.
Iphone

Was the iPod Accessory Port Inspired By a 40-Year-Old Camera? 263

Posted by timothy from the danged-neat-even-if-coincidence dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While Samsung has been accused of repeatedly borrowing everything from Apple's hardware, to packaging and accessories, it appears that all current iDevices share a port which is very similar to one found on a forty-year-old Polaroid camera. It gets more interesting when you realize that camera was the 'supreme achievement' of a man Steve Jobs idolized. Edwin Land was the creator of the Polaroid camera and, if Steve Jobs obsessed over Land's devices the way many do with iPhones, etc. today, there's a chance this similarity is not a coincidence."
Android

Samsung Joins Ranks of Android Vendors Licensing Microsoft Patents 186

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the bill-gates-always-wins dept.
theodp writes "GeekWire reports that Microsoft and Samsung just announced a patent licensing agreement that gives Samsung legal coverage for its use of Google's Android OS in its smartphones. Under the deal, which covers both mobile phones and tablets, Microsoft says it will receive unspecified royalties for every Android device that Samsung sells. Microsoft previously struck a similar patent deal with HTC, under which Microsoft is reportedly receiving $5 for every Android handset that HTC sells. This latest deal leaves Motorola Mobility, with which Microsoft is currently in litigation, as the only major Android smartphone manufacturer in the U.S. without a license to Microsoft's patent portfolio."
Businesses

Groupon Loses COO, Drastically Cuts Reported Revenue 131

Posted by Soulskill from the how-not-to-prepare-for-an-ipo dept.
itwbennett writes "Groupon COO Margo Georgiadis has quit after just 5 months on the job and is returning to Google to be the company's president for the Americas. Groupon's founder, Andrew Mason, wrote in a blog post that the company has undergone a reorganization with Georgiadis' departure, and now sales, channels, international and marketing will report directly to him. In other bad Groupon news, the company revealed in an SEC filing Friday that it was reporting revenue before it paid fees to merchants using Groupon. 'The effect of the correction resulted in a reduction of previously reported revenues and corresponding reductions in cost of revenue in those periods,' according to the filing."
Canada

Justification For Canadian Copyright Reform Revealed 96

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the sanity-is-forbidden dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist has used the Canadian freedom of information act to obtain a secret ministerial document on Canadian copyright reform that provides the government position on virtually every controversial issue from last year's Bill C-32. The government has no good explanation for its DMCA approach and calls provisions requiring the destruction of course materials part of an 'essential balance.' On the U.S. piracy watch list, it says 'Canada does not recognize the validity of the Special 301 process and considers it to be flawed. The Report does not employ a clear methodology in its country ranking, as it relies on industry allegations rather than empirical evidence and analysis.'"
Businesses

Casio Paying Microsoft To Use Linux 262

Posted by Soulskill from the you-never-get-rid-of-the-dane dept.
theodp writes "Will Tux be a rainmaker for Microsoft? GeekWire reports that Microsoft has struck a deal with Casio to provide Casio's customers with coverage for their use of Linux in Casio devices. The agreement, which calls for Microsoft to receive payments of an undisclosed amount, is an implicit acknowledgment of Microsoft's longstanding claims that Linux violates its patents, an assertion that members of the open-source community have long disputed."
Cloud

30,000-Core Cluster On Amazon EC2 59

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the still-needs-a-few-more-cores dept.
Joining the ranks of accepted submitters, hooligun writes with an article in Ars Technica about a rather large cluster built on EC2. From the article: "The details are impressive: 3,809 compute instances, each with eight cores and 7GB of RAM, for a total of 30,472 cores, 26.7TB of RAM and 2PB (petabytes) of disk space. Security was ensured with HTTPS, SSH and 256-bit AES encryption, and the cluster ran across data centers in three Amazon regions in the United States and Europe."

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