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Businesses

Ask Slashdot: Open Vs. Closed-Source For a Start-Up 325

Posted by samzenpus from the better-like-this-or-better-like-this dept.
atamagabakkaomae writes "Together with a friend, I am starting up a company in Japan that develops sensors used in motion capture. For these sensors we develop hardware and software. Part of the software development is an open-source toolkit called openMAT. We have some special purpose algorithms that we developed ourselves and that are better than our competitor's technology. I first wanted to publish everything open-source to spark interest in our company and to do development in collaboration with the community. My company partner disagreed and said that we will lose our technological advantage if we open-source it. So I eventually published only a part of the toolkit open-source and closed the most interesting code. How do you guys think that open-sourcing your code-base affects a company's business? Is it wrong for a small company to give away precious intellectual property like that or will it on the contrary help the development of the company?"
Earth

Is the Earth Special? 745

Posted by Soulskill from the i-think-captain-kirk-disproved-this dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Planetary scientists say there are aspects to our planet and its evolution that are remarkably strange. In the first place there is Earth's strong magnetic field. No one is exactly sure how it works, but it has something to do with the turbulent motion that occurs in the Earth's liquid outer core and without it, we would be bombarded by harmful radiation from the Sun. Next there's plate tectonics. We live on a planet that is constantly recycling its crust, limiting the amount of carbon dioxide escaping into the atmosphere — a natural way of controlling the greenhouse effect. Then there's Jupiter-sized outer planets protecting the Earth from frequent large impacts. But the strangest thing of all is our big Moon. 'As the Earth rotates, it wobbles on its axis like a child's spinning top,' says Professor Monica Grady. 'What the Moon does is dampen down that wobble and that helps to prevent extreme climate fluctuations' — which would be detrimental to life. The moon's tides have also made long swaths of earth's coastline into areas of that are regularly shifted between dry and wet, providing a proving ground for early sea life to test the land for its suitability as a habitat. The 'Rare Earth Hypothesis' is one solution to the Fermi Paradox (PDF) because, if Earth is uniquely special as an abode of life, ETI will necessarily be rare or even non-existent. And in the absence of verifiable alien contact, scientific opinion will forever remain split as to whether the Universe teems with life or we are alone in the inky blackness."
Android

Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Print From an Android Tablet? 203

Posted by timothy from the print-an-emailed-scan-of-a-polaroid dept.
KowboyKrash writes "Does any Slashdotter know how to print from an Android tablet? I have read about Google Cloud Print, but will it work from all (or at least most) apps? Is there a better solution? A little background: With my laptop being four years old, and the battery failing, I want to replace it with a device with 10 hours of battery. I am purchasing an Asus Transformer Prime after Christmas as a gift to myself; my plan is to replace my laptop completely for portable computing. I've already selected several apps that should meet my needs, including Polaris Office, and TeamViewer to remotely access my desktop. So are there any printing solutions for Android? Printing to my network printer at home is good enough."
Government

Gov't Funded Electric Car Company Goes Out of Business 195

Posted by Soulskill from the money-well-flushed dept.
thecarchik writes "Consider yesterday's collapse of electric car company Green Vehicles an object lesson in why it's a bad idea for cities to invest in the risky business of start-up car companies — perhaps especially start-up electric car companies. Even such companies with a viable product have seen their fair share of financial troubles, but Green Vehicles did not even have a product to sell off at a fire sale. The city of Salinas, California learned that lesson as Green Vehicles shut its doors, costing the city more than $500,000."
Image

Bug With "Singing Penis" Is World's Loudest Screenshot-sm 117

Posted by samzenpus from the animal-idol dept.
sciencehabit writes "The world's loudest animal relative to its size has been revealed to be a tiny bug with a big organ. The water boatman, Micronecta scholtzi, rattles its penis along grooves in its abdomen to produce a chattering song—that registers at 99.2 decibels—about the volume of a loud orchestra heard from the front row. Even though the water boatman does its 'singing' from the bottom of rivers to attract mates, humans walking along the riverbank can clearly hear it. The area along its abdomen that the bug uses to make the noise is only about the width of a human hair, and researchers aren't sure exactly how it produces so loud a song."
Image

30 Creative 404 Error Pages Screenshot-sm 166

Posted by samzenpus from the creative-technical-difficulty dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's frustrating when you explore the web and encounter the famous message: 404 Error – Page Not Found. What could make it a little better is a customized 404 message. Here are some really good ones that should inspire other web designers."
Earth

San Francisco Considers Ban On All Pet Sales 733

Posted by samzenpus from the no-kitty-for-you dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that the Humane Pet Acquisition Proposal is on its way to the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco. It would ban the sale of any animal that walks, flies, swims, crawls or slithers — unless you plan to eat it. Representatives of the $45-billion to $50-billion-a-year pet industry call the San Francisco proposal 'by far the most radical ban we've seen' nationwide and argue that it would force small operators to close. Animal activists say it will save small but important lives, along with taxpayer money, and end needless suffering. 'From Descartes on up, in the Western mindset, fish and other nonhuman animals don't have feelings, they don't have emotions, we can do whatever we want to them,' says Philip Gerrie, coauthor of the proposal. 'If we considered them living beings, we would deal with them differently.'"
DRM

Capcom Announces Unreplayable Game 535

Posted by timothy from the unreplayable-not-yet-a-scrabble-word dept.
Hatta writes "Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS will be an experience that can be completed once per customer. Using a single, unwipable save slot Capcom ensures that a second hand customer gets a second rate experience. If you buy this game used, you will be stuck with the previous owner's progress, unable to start the game fresh."
Security

LulzSec Announces That It Is Done 412

Posted by timothy from the oh-they-all-say-that dept.
MaxBooger writes "LulzSec, the notorious hacker group that's been on a rampage, just announced that it's disbanding. This follows 50 days' chaos during which time it took down several websites (including CIA.gov at one point), exposed passwords, exposed documents of the Arizona penal system, and at one point threatened to hit Too Big To Fail banks. Obviously, it's possible that the group will not abide by its promise to quit. Nobody knows."
Medicine

Researchers Design Memory-Strengthening Implant 72

Posted by Soulskill from the i'd-like-to-order-another-two-braindimms-please dept.
Antipater writes "Researchers at Wake Forest University have created a brain implant that can imitate signals through the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory retention. Rats implanted with the device were able to remember information even after their hippocampus was shut down, reports the New York Times. Though still in its infancy, this technology could hopefully be used to help treat dementia or stroke victims."
Biotech

Japanese Scientist Creates Meat Substitute From Sewage Screenshot-sm 417

Posted by samzenpus from the I'm-going-to-need-another-slice-of-cheese dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Hold on to your hamburgers — Japanese scientist Mitsyuki Ikeda at the Environmental Assessment Center in Okayama has invented an artificial meat substitute made from human feces. The unseemly meal is made by extracting protein and lipids from 'sewage mud.' The lipids are then combined with a reaction enhancer and whipped into 'meat' in an exploder. Ikeda makes the 'meat' more palatable by adding things like soy protein."
Government

Crowdsourcing Analysis of the Palin Email Trove 284

Posted by timothy from the hey-baby-I-love-your-corpus dept.
itwbennett writes "Surely you've got better things to do this weekend than read 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's email. But just in case you don't, the NY Times is looking for volunteers to help 'identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight.' And, for your easy reference, MSNBC has posted the complete collection online."

Comment Re:oblig (Score 2) 766

by DrSpock11 (#35897464) Attached to: Microsoft Counts Down To XP Death

So Microsoft has the responsibility to continue to support (a process which costs them a lot of $$$) XP forever simply because some customers paid for it 10 years ago and refuse to upgrade?

If you know of a car sold with 10 years included free maintenance, I'd certainly like to hear about it.
United States

Why Does the US Cling To Imperial Measurements? 2288

Posted by samzenpus from the my-car-gets-40-rods-to-the-hogshead dept.
PhunkySchtuff writes "As one of only three countries on Earth that hasn't converted to a metric system of units and measurements, there is a huge amount of resistance within the US to change the status quo. Whilst the cost of switching would be huge, there is also a massive hidden cost in not switching when dealing with the rest of the world (except for Liberia & Burma, the only other two countries that don't use the metric system) With one of the largest organisations in the US, the military, using metric units extensively, why does the general public in the US still cling to their customary system of units?"
Transportation

Lasers To Replace Sparkplugs In Engines? 351

Posted by samzenpus from the lift-the-hood-and-avert-your-eyes dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For more than 150 years, spark plugs have powered internal combustion engines. Automakers are now getting close to being able to replace this long-standing technology with laser igniters, which should enable cleaner, more efficient, and more economical vehicles. Price and size have been issues holding up such an advance, but a Japanese team is set to announce they've overcome those hurdles."

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