Lucas123 writes "When you're paying $30,000 for a PCIe flash card, it had better demonstrate an ROI. While users are still struggling with why solid state storage cost so much, when they target the technology at the right applications, the results can be staggering. For example, when Dan Marbes, a systems engineer at Associated Bank, deployed just three SSDs for his B.I. applications, the flash storage outperformed 60 15,000rpm Fibre Channel disk drives in small-block reads. But when Marbes used the SSDs for large-block random reads and any writes, 'the 60 15K spindles crushed the SSDs,' he said,"

jfruhlinger writes "'If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.' So said Bill Gates in the 1980s. Now, of course, Microsoft is one of the biggest software patent holders around. And that's the key to the problem of software patent reform: the companies that had the most incentive to face the problem found it cheaper and easier to buy up patent war chests instead. And Congress won't act unless big stakeholders (read: big companies) make a stink."

jmobley6030 writes with a bit in Gamer Gaia about Sony pulling out the big guns for their security infrastructure. Quoting: "Months after the great PlayStation network attack things are starting to get back to normal around the gaming world. While it doesn't seem like another hack attempt will take place anytime soon Sony is fearful that it could happen again. Sony announced today via their corporate news feed that they have hired Philip R. Reitinger, a former Homeland security official, as Chief Information Security Officer at Sony."

ge7 writes "A recently leaked confidential diplomatic cable reveals Russia's growing interest in shutting down copyright infringing websites. 'Russia's Deputy Minister of Economic Development said that not only do U.S. sites continue to offer pirated Russian movies, but that YouTube and Google should be shut down for not respecting local laws'. The U.S. government has previously attacked torrent and link sites hosted elsewhere in the world, extradited foreign nationals for piracy and provided training on how to shut down piracy websites. 'Voskresenskiy went on to state that, in his opinion, no country in the world is prepared to fight Internet piracy. He argued that all existing laws, including laws in the U.S., are antiquated and do not address new technological trends. As an example, [Voskresenskiy] stated that YouTube and Google (as YouTube's owner) should be shut down because they do not conform to current Russian IPR laws. He admitted that this was not feasible, but continued to emphasize that these entities need to follow local laws, even if the laws are outdated,' the cable adds."

CWmike writes with an article in Computerworld about Google axing yet another product. From the article:"Google has decided to retire Desktop, an application it first launched in 2004 that is designed to let people search for files and data stored in their computers' hard drives. It was one of the first products Google aimed against Microsoft and was intended to improve upon the native search functionality found in Windows. Desktop search became an area of competition, as Microsoft responded to the challenge and others such as Yahoo launched their own products. However, Google has decided that, with the popularity of cloud computing and users' increasing comfort with Web apps, the time has come to decommission Desktop, it said in a recent blog post. As of September 14, Google will also end support for Desktop APIs, services, plug-ins and gadgets." From the looks of it the announcement implies that Google Gadgets are getting the axe too, which a few more people might be using.

An anonymous reader writes "New research shows that the TDSS/TDL-4 botnet, widely considered one of the largest and most sophisticated, can be rented via a Web storefront available to all comers. Researchers from Kaspersky found that the latest version of TDSS installs a file that sets the machine up as a proxy for anonymous browsing, and then phones home to awmproxy.net, which rents the proxies for rates from $3 per day to $300 a week. The curators of this service even created a Firefox add-on to help customers. 'Interestingly, AWMproxy says it accepts payment via PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa.'"

sighted writes "Sharp new images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites in amazing detail, including the last foot trails left by astronauts on the lunar surface." These pictures were grabbed after the LRO dropped its orbit from 50km above the surface to 25km.

mikejuk writes with a light piece in I Programmer about a neat Kinect and gigantic projector hack. From the article: "If you remember Breakout — rows of blocks a the top of the screen and a paddle to bounce a ball into them to destroy a block — then you might not feel nostalgic about it. After all, it was a very limited sort of game. However, take one Kinect and one building and you have something quite different when you use it to create a Breakout game. The bricks, ball and paddle all projected onto an old building and the player moves from side-to-side to control the paddle. The player's position is being detected by a Kinect, is there no end to the fun you can have with this gadget. The really clever bit, and you might not notice it unless you look closely at the video, is that the ball bounces off real architectural features of the building — like the windows, for example."

sciencehabit writes with a writeup of a French research paper in Science. From the article: "They're not quite psychic yet, but machines are getting better at reading your mind. Researchers have invented a new, noninvasive method for recording patterns of brain activity and using them to steer a robot. Scientists hope the technology will give 'locked in' patients ... the ability to interact with others and even give the illusion of being physically present ... with friends and family." The really interesting thing here is that people who had not used their limbs in years were able to learn how to control the robot (as well as the control group did) after being trained only an hour a week for six weeks.

zacharye writes with a news post in BGR. From the article: "Sprint ... announced that it has filed a lawsuit with a federal court in the U.S. District of Columbia in an effort to block AT&T's planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom. The suit is related to the Department of Justice's lawsuit, which was filed on August 31st. 'Sprint opposes AT&T's proposed takeover of T-Mobile,' Sprint's vice president of litigation Suzan Haller said. 'With today's legal action, we are continuing that advocacy on behalf of consumers and competition, and expect to contribute our expertise and resources in proving that the proposed transaction is illegal.'"

First time accepted submitter (and Slashdot coder) cogent writes "Wicked Lasers, famous for last year's 1000mW handheld blue laser, and infamous for its handling of six-month-long backorders, is now selling a green version. There are three power levels, each priced at $1/mW (300mW, 500mW, 1000mW). Since the eye is far more sensitive to green than to blue, this is pretty much the state of the art in putting-dots-on-stuff technology. Wicked Lasers sent out an email promising to handle backorders much better this time." Adds reader whitedsepdivine: "There is currently no disclaimer that this is not a lightsaber on their site, so we can only assume that this version is."

kkleiner writes "A new report documents the prodigious rate at which the world's population is growing. It was just 1999 when we reached 6 billion. And now within the next month or two we will have surpassed 7 billion. What does the continued increase in world population mean for humanity and for the the planet?"

MrSeb writes "LED headlamps are only just trickling onto the market — mostly on high-end cars — but now it seems a certain German automaker has plans for laser headlamps. 'Laser light is the next logical step in car light development ... for series production within a few years in the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid,' says BMW. Lasers have the potential to be simultaneously more powerful, more efficient, and smaller than other headlamp types. Before you get too excited, though: the output of laser headlights will be modulated for safety."

Kevin Kelly ("Senior Maverick for Wired Magazine," among many other things) is back with answers to a selection of the questions posed to him by Slashdot readers. Read on below for his take on travel, the Long Now Foundation (including the 10,000-year clock — clocks! — that is among the foundation's projects), the future of fusion, and what to do about inevitable widespread suckage.

fangmcgee writes "What did people from 1930s think we'd be wearing today—an electrical belt that adapts to climate changes, headlights to 'find an honest man,' jumpsuits with integrated telephones and radios? Find out what they got wrong, and sorta right."

First time accepted submitter shortyadamk writes "I just started a new job where I will have to visit many high school science classes and have the students participate in 1-3 day projects regarding sustainable energy and environmental sciences (in order to promote the regional universities' programs). I've looked at a number of the boxed projects available online and many of them are solar projects; my biggest issue with that is that we are in rural Alaska and much of the time I'll be visiting classes will be in the winter (when we have very little sunlight — and even if we did it would be too cold to go and play in). I'm curious if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for demonstrations and projects that can be done in the classroom and do not require sunlight. One other catch is that the project has to be small enough to fit in a suitcase or plastic tote; we don't have any roads connecting the villages so I will have to fly the project from school to school with me."

First time accepted submitter Lyrdor writes "The Terms of Service for the Stanford Artificial Intelligence class points to how the free class this fall will be used for 'developing and evaluating the Online Course prior any commercial release of the Course' by a startup called KnowLabs. Although all of the press accounts so far have pointed to how the course would be a new example of Open Educational Resources from Stanford, the terms of service point to something else going on. On the LinkedIn page of David Stavens, Co-Founder and CEO at Know Labs, the startup is described on his profile as an 'angel funded startup to re-envision and revolutionize education using the social web and mobile apps. We launched www.ai-class.com and attracted over 130,000 students in 190+ countries.'"

arglebargle_xiv writes "At the risk of burning people out on the topic of PKI fail, someone claiming to be the Diginotar hacker has come forward to claim responsibility: It's the ComodoGate hacker. He also claims to 0wn four more 'high-profile' CAs, and still has the ability to issue new rogue certificates, presumably from other CAs that he 0wns." Whether this claim turns out to be truthful or not, what led to the breach in the first place? Reader Dr La points to an interim report commissioned by the Dutch government (PDF), according to which "a) No antivirus software was present on Diginotar's servers; b) 'the most critical servers' had malicious software infections; c) The software installed on the public web servers was outdated and not patched; and d) all servers were accessible by one user/password combination, which was 'not very strong and could easily be brute-forced.'"

judgecorp writes "The UK government has promised to favour open source systems in its procurement (and made those promises repeatedly). However, freedom of information requests have shown it is doing nothing of the sort. It is giving contracts to the same large suppliers as before."

An anonymous reader writes "An article in the NY Times explains how the United States Postal Service is in dire financial straits, and will need emergency action from Congress to forestall a shutdown later this year. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said simply, 'If Congress doesn't act, we will default.' Labor agreements prohibiting layoffs are preventing one avenue for reducing costs, and laws forbidding postage rates from surpassing inflation rates keep income down. On top of that, the proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services have contributed to a 22% reduction in snail-mail volume since 2006. They're currently hoping for legislation that would relax their economic requirements and considering an end to Saturday delivery."