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Iphone

Apple Acknowledges iPhone 5 Camera Flaw 472

Posted by Soulskill
from the it's-not-a-bug-it's-a-feature dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Many iPhone 5 users are complaining that its camera is adding a purple flare to their photos. Speculation is that it's caused by the new sapphire lens cover that Apple touted as 'thinner and more durable than standard glass with the ability to provide crystal clear images.' Apple's response to those who've complained? 'The purple flare in the image provided is considered normal behavior for iPhone 5's camera.'"
Google

The Patent Mafia and What You Can Do To Break It Up 205

Posted by Soulskill
from the he-sends-one-of-yours-to-east-texas-you-send-one-of-his-to-norcal dept.
colinneagle sends this quote from an article about the ever-growing patent racket in the tech industry: "The lawsuits are raging all across the tech world. Oracle sues Google, Yahoo sues Facebook, they counter-sue. Others threaten, others buy more patents and the circle goes round and round. Don't be fooled by the lawsuits between these tech titans though. The real cost that the patent mafia extracts from the tech world is on the smaller companies who can't afford to battle the Apples and Microsofts of the world. Their choices are far simpler. They can abandon their innovations or they can choose to pay and allow the Mafiosos to wet their beaks. Also, don't be fooled about who the real losers are here. The the real losers are you and me. ... So what do do? Here is my opinion. I would make it just as expensive for the offensive patent prosecutors. Just as the government put in the RICO act to combat organized crime, I would put a similar law in place on patents. RICO calls for treble damages. I would have treble awards of costs and legal fees. If a patent holder sues another entity for patent violation and that suit fails, the plaintiff who brought the suit should pay treble damages to the defendant. Three times what the defendant paid to defend."
Education

Yahoo CEO Wrongly Claimed To Have Degree In Computer Science 363

Posted by samzenpus
from the was-that-wrong? dept.
jmcbain writes "Scott Thompson, Yahoo!'s CEO who was hired on January 4 of this year, was found to have lied about his CS degree from Stone Hill College. Investigation from an activist shareholder revealed that his degree was actually in accounting, and apparently Thompson had been going with this lie since the time he served as president of PayPal's payments unit."
Data Storage

30 Blu-ray Discs In a 1.5TB MiniDisc-Like Cassette 247

Posted by Soulskill
from the answering-a-question-nobody-asked dept.
MrSeb writes "Hot on the heels of the most successful storage mediums of all time — MiniDisc and Zip disks — Sony has announced the Optical Disc Archive, a system that seems to cram up to 30 Blu-ray discs into a single, one-inch-thick plastic cassette, which will have a capacity of between 300GB and 1.5TB. As far as I can tell, the main selling point of the Optical Disc Archive is, just like MiniDisc, the ruggedness of the cassettes. Optical discs themselves are fairly resistant to changes in temperature and humidity, and the cassettes are dust and water resistant. What is the use case for these 1.5TB MiniDiscs, though? In terms of pure storage capacity, tape drives are still far superior (you can store up to 5TB on a tape!) In terms of speed and flexibility, hard drives are better. If you're looking for ruggedness, flash-based storage is smaller, lighter, and can easily survive a dip in the ocean. The Optical Disc Archive might be good as extensible storage for TV PVRs, like TiVo and Sky+ — but as yet, we don't even know the cost of the system or the cassettes, and I doubt either will be cheap."
Businesses

Ask Slashdot: Recommendations For Linux Telecommuting Tools? 212

Posted by timothy
from the skype-works dept.
First time accepted submitter rodrix79 writes "Hi all. I am trying to move from Windows to Linux (Ubuntu, but maybe to Mint). The problem is I telecommute full time and I am having a hard time trying to find the right tools to keep communication flowing with my clients (which are mostly on Windows / Mac). Any good recommendations from Linux telecommuters?"
Businesses

Ask Slashdot: What Is the Best Note-Taking Device For Conferences? 300

Posted by samzenpus
from the good-notes dept.
First time accepted submitter Duncan J Murray writes "I will be attending a 3-day science conference soon, consisting mainly of lectures, and was wondering what people thought would be the ultimate hardware/software combo note-taking device, taking into account keyboard quality, endurance, portability, discretion & future ease-of-reference. Is a notepad and pen still king? What about an Ipad? N900? Psion 5mx? A small Thinkpad X-series? And if so which OS? Would you have a GUI? Which text-editor?"
Politics

Scientists Say People Aren't Smart Enough For Democracy To Flourish 1276

Posted by samzenpus
from the you-voted-for-who? dept.
cold fjord writes "The inability of the incompetent to recognize their own limitations is a story that has been covered before on Slashdot. But, what happens when you apply that finding to politics? From the article: 'The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. The research shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. If people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments...democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."'"
Transportation

Did the Titanic Sink Due To an Optical Illusion? 166

Posted by samzenpus
from the that's-no-iceberg dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "According to new research by British historian Tim Maltin, records by several ships in the area where the Titanic sank show atmospheric conditions were ripe for super refraction, a bending of light that caused a false horizon, concealing the iceberg that sank the Titanic in a mirage layer, which prevented the Titanic's lookouts from seeing the iceberg in time to avoid collision. According to the new theory, Titanic was sailing from Gulf Stream waters into the frigid Labrador Current, where the air column was cooling from the bottom up. This created a thermal inversion, with layers of cold air below layers of warmer air, creating a superior mirage. The theory also explains why the freighter Californian was unable to identify the Titanic on the moonless night, because even though the Titanic sailed into the Californian's view, it appeared too small to be the great ocean liner. The abnormally stratified air may also have disrupted signals sent by the Titanic by Morse Lamp to the Californian to no avail. This is not the first time atmospheric conditions have been postulated as a factor in the disaster that took 1,517 lives. An investigation in 1992 by the British government's Marine Accident Investigation Branch also suggested that super refraction may have played a role in the disaster (PDF, see page 13), but that possibility went unexplored until Maltin mined weather records, survivors' testimony and long-forgotten ships' logs."
Canada

Outgoing CRTC Head Says Technology Is Eroding Canadian Culture 404

Posted by samzenpus
from the one-of-us-one-of-us dept.
Patchw0rk F0g writes "Canada's outgoing CRTC head, Konrad von Finckenstein, has some choice words for his successor: Internet and wireless technology has disarmed federal regulators of their weapons to protect cultural identity. The retiring Finckenstein cites over-the-top broadcasting, new Internet technologies and (perhaps most importantly) the fact that the CRTC is antiquated and can't keep up with these emerging technologies as factors in the (still)-growing culture-loss of Canada to the U.S. 'We have now moved into an era where the consumer is in control, and where thanks to the Internet and mobile devices, you cannot control access any more,' he said in one of his last interviews."
Microsoft

New Remote Flaw In 64-Bit Windows 7 284

Posted by samzenpus
from the hole-in-the-wall dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "Researchers are warning about a new remotely exploitable vulnerability in 64-bit Windows 7 that can be used by an attacker to run arbitrary code on a vulnerable machine. The bug was first reported a couple of days ago by an independent researcher and confirmed by Secunia. In a message on Twitter, a researcher named w3bd3vil said that he had found a method for exploiting the vulnerability by simply feeding an iframe with an overly large height to Safari. The exploit gives the attacker the ability to run arbitrary code on the victim's machine."
Censorship

Coders Develop Ways To Defeat SOPA Censorship 449

Posted by Soulskill
from the causing-the-law-to-break dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Atlantic reports that one developer who doesn't have much faith in Congress making the right decision on anti-piracy legislation has already built a workaround for the impending censorship measures being considered, and called it DeSOPA. Since SOPA would block specific domain names (e.g. www.thepiratebay.com) of allegedly infringing sites, T Rizk's Firefox add-on allows you to revert to the bare internet protocol (IP) address (e.g. 194.71.107.15) which takes you to the same place. 'It could be that a few members of Congress are just not tech savvy and don't understand that it is technically not going to work, at all,' says T Rizk. 'So here's some proof that I hope will help them err on the side of reason and vote SOPA down.' Another group called 'MAFIAAFire' decided to respond when Homeland Security's ICE unit started seizing domain names, by coding a browser add-on to redirect the affected websites to their new domains. More than 200,000 people have already installed the add-on. ICE wasn't happy, and asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet."

Comment: Re:Body Language (Score 1) 348

by el_gordo101 (#38231828) Attached to: MIT Algorithm Predicts Red Light Runners

Interesting to me is when I am in traffic and I think "That guy wants to cut me off" or "This guy wants to get the jump on me when the light turns green". Sometimes I can point to a behavior and say 'there's the tip-off', but often as not I just get a feel that they're driving aggressively. The automotive body language is (perhaps) emitted and read unconsciously.

Some info about that would have been interesting.

Ya, me too. The usual tip off for me is that they are driving a Nissan Maxima or Ultima. I don't know what it is about these two cars that turn normal law-abiding people into road-rage inducing jerks.

Government

California Going Ahead With Bullet Train 709

Posted by Soulskill
from the not-an-actual-bullet dept.
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the NY Times: "[California state leaders] have rallied around a plan to build a 520-mile high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, cutting the trip from a six-hour drive to a train ride of two hours and 38 minutes. And they are doing it in the face of what might seem like insurmountable political and fiscal obstacles. The pro-train constituency has not been derailed by a state report this month that found the cost of the bullet train tripling to $98 billion for a project that would not be finished until 2033, by news that Republicans in Congress are close to eliminating federal high-speed rail financing this year, by opposition from California farmers and landowners upset about tracks tearing through their communities or by questions about how much the state or private businesses will be able to contribute."
Science

EU Scientists Working On Laser To Rip a Hole In Spacetime 575

Posted by samzenpus
from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong? dept.
astroengine writes "Those pesky physicists are at it again; they want to build a laser so powerful that it will literally rip spacetime apart. Why? To prove the existence of virtual particles in the quantum vacuum, potentially unravel extra dimensions and possibly find the root of dark matter. The $1.6 billion Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility (known as ELI) will be built somewhere in Europe by the end of the decade and physicists are hoping the ten high-powered lasers — delivering 200 petawatts of power at a target for less than a trillionth of a second — will turn up some surprises about the very fabric of the Universe."

"I think it is true for all _n. I was just playing it safe with _n >= 3 because I couldn't remember the proof." -- Baker, Pure Math 351a

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