timothy - Slashdot User

Faculty vote for open access policy at UC San Francisco-> 0

Submitted by Marian the Librarian on Thursday May 24, @11:11PM

Marian the Librarian writes "UCSF is among the first public institutions to adopt an open access policy and the largest scientific institution to have such a policy. The policy, voted unanimously by the faculty, will allow UCSF authors to put electronic versions of their published scientific articles on an open access repository making their research findings freely available to the public."
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Call for DOJ to reopen Google Wi-Fi spying investigation-> 0

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Thursday May 24, @11:08PM

angry tapir writes "Two U.S. lawmakers have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen its investigation into Google's snooping on Wi-Fi networks in 2010 after recent questions about the company's level of cooperation with federal inquiries. Representatives Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, and John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat, called on the DOJ to fully investigate Google's actions for potential violations of federal wiretapping laws. In light of a recently released U.S. Federal Communications Commission report on Wi-Fi snooping by Google Street View cars, the DOJ should take a new look at the company's actions, wrote the lawmakers in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder."
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Sound increases the efficiency of boiling-> 0

Submitted by

hessian

on Thursday May 24, @10:01PM

hessian writes "Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology achieved a 17-percent increase in boiling efficiency by using an acoustic field to enhance heat transfer. The acoustic field does this by efficiently removing vapor bubbles from the heated surface and suppressing the formation of an insulating vapor film."
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Radius of sun more accurately measured during eclipse-> 0

Submitted by

Anonymous Squonk

on Thursday May 24, @09:53PM

Anonymous Squonk writes "The measurement of the sun currently in use was actually calculated over 120 years ago, and is off by hundreds of kilometers. Thousands of ordinary Japanese citizens worked together to improve this estimate. By measuring the borders of the "ring of fire" effect of the recent eclipse, and using the known size and distance from the Earth of the sun, the radius of the Sun was measured as 696,010 kilometers, with a margin of error of only 20 kilometers."
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Facebook Releases Instagram Clone Two Months After Acquisition-> 0

Submitted by

redletterdave

on Thursday May 24, @08:53PM

redletterdave writes "Six days after the company's IPO and two months after it acquired photo-sharing app company Instagram for $1 billion, Facebook debuted a photo app of its own on Thursday, called Facebook Camera. The app is now available as a free download in the App Store, and it's currently only available for iPhone and iPod Touch owners. Facebook Camera is set up very similarly to Instagram and includes most of the same features (including photo filters), but Dirk Stoop, Facebook's product manager for photos, said Facebook was working on this application long before the Instagram acquisition on April 9."
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Can you patent a steak?-> 0

Submitted by DutchUncle on Thursday May 24, @08:22PM

DutchUncle writes "Someone at Oklahoma State University has "discovered" a new steak. By now I would have thought that every possible part of a cow was already discovered, not to mention used for something. I can understand trademarking a name for a particular cut of meat; I can understand copyrighting the published instructions on what to cut where; but can this be novel enough for a patent?"
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What The Final Decision On Oracle v. Google Really Means-> 0

Submitted by

snydeq

on Thursday May 24, @05:59PM

snydeq writes "The jury decided yesterday that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents related to Android. Fantastic news — but the wider view offers little comfort, writes Simon Phipps. 'While the specific news of the patent phase verdict is good news for most people, the case still tells a sad story about software patents. The complexity found by the jury shows why software patents fail to deliver on the contract with society that they should represent. Unlike real patents, software patents contain little of value to the programmer: no sample code, only stylized algorithms. Instead, they consist mainly of a list of ways a lawyer can assert that the patent has been infringed. Even then, they are linguistically complex, leaving juries scratching their heads to interpret.'"
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Fox sues DISH over "Auto Hop" feature-> 0

Submitted by

therealobsideus

on Thursday May 24, @05:58PM

therealobsideus writes "DISH recently announced Auto Hop, giving it's customers with the Hopper whole home DVR the ability to "hop" past commercial breaks on PrimeTime Anytime Recordings. In response, Fox has filed suit against DISH in US District Court seeking to block the technology."
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Security Expert Fools And Records Fake Antivirus Scammers-> 0

Submitted by ancientribe on Thursday May 24, @04:24PM

ancientribe writes "Phony AV scammers posing as Microsoft dialed the wrong number when they inadvertently phoned a security researcher at home. He lured them into a honeypot to study their actions, and posted the video online here. His main takeaway: they were "Stone Age" when it came to their tech know-how."
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New Jersey Mayor and Son arrested for nuking recall website-> 0

Submitted by phaedrus5001 on Thursday May 24, @04:00PM

phaedrus5001 writes "The mayor of West New York, New Jersey was arrested by the FBI after he and his son illegally took down a website that was calling for the recall of mayor Felix Roque (the site is currently down).
From the article: "According to the account of FBI Special Agent Ignace Ertilus, Felix and Joseph Roque took a keen interest in the recall site as early as February. In an attempt to learn the identity of the person behind the site, the younger Roque set up an e-mail account under a fictitious name and contacted an address listed on the website. He offered some "very good leads" if the person would agree to meet him. When the requests were repeatedly rebuffed, Joseph Rogue allegedly tried another route. He pointed his browser to Google and typed the search strings "hacking a Go Daddy Site," "recallroque log-in," and "html hacking tutorial."""
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