Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Power

Company Builds Fast Charging Station For Electric Cars 359

Posted by samzenpus from the fast-as-lightning dept.
thecarchik writes "Japanese based JFE Engineering has released its ultra-fast charge station. Designed to comply with the CHAdeMo standard developed by Tokyo Electric Power Company, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Toyota, the system is capable of charging a 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev from empty to 50% full in just three minutes. Even just three minutes plugged into the fast-charge station was enough to enable a standard 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev to travel a further 50 miles before further charging was required."
Google

Google's New Scheme To Avoid Unlicensed Music 213

Posted by samzenpus from the walk-the-thin-line dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Complaints about copyright infringement on YouTube keep Google busy. If you have any doubts, just look at the Viacom copyright suit. But the problems aren't just about uploaded videos, but sometimes the music accompanying the videos. A patent application shows that Google has worked on a system to automatically identify infringing music by comparing a digital signature of a soundtrack to signatures of existing music. Users who upload videos could opt to completely remove the video, swap the soundtrack for something approved, or to mute the video. Of course, there doesn't seem to be a provision if you're using existing music with permission."
Earth

Inside the Fake PC Recycling Market 320

Posted by samzenpus from the put-that-anywhere dept.
snydeq writes "OSNews' Howard Fosdick reports on the fake recycling market — one in which companies exploit cheap shipping, inexpensive labor, and a lack of safety and environmental law to export computers and other e-waste to China and Africa where it is 'recycled' with a complete lack of environmental and safety rules. 'This trade has become a thriving business. Companies called "fake recyclers" approach well-meaning organizations — charities, churches, and community organizations — and offer to hold a Recycling Day. The charity provides publicity, legitimacy, and a parking lot for the event. On the designated day, well-meaning residents drop off their old electronics for recycling. The fake recycler picks it up in their trucks, hauls it away for shipping, and makes money by exporting it to Chinese or African "recycling" centers. Nobody's the wiser,' Fosdick writes. Of course, the international community has, in fact, devised a set of rules to control e-waste disposal under the Basel Conventions, but the US — 'the international 'bad boy' of computer recycling — is one of four countries that have not ratified and do not adhere to these international agreements."
Open Source

Aquaria Goes Open Source 58

Posted by Soulskill from the come-on-in-the-water's-fine dept.
A post on the Wolfire blog yesterday announced that the source code for Aquaria has now been released. Aquaria, an action-adventure, underwater sidescroller from Bit Blot, was part of the Humble Indie Bundle, which was so successful that the developers of four games pledged to release them as open source. This marks the final release, following Lugaru, Gish, and Penumbra: Overture. The source code is available from a Mercurial repository.

Comment Initial costs are the only realistic problem (Score 1) 265

by wisenboi (#28318475) Attached to: First Floating Wind Turbine Buoyed Off Norway
I think someone mentioned this earlier, but the overall initial costs/building requirements will be the most expensive point in these turbines lifetime. Just like any major capital investment, the cost is static/ one time. After it's paid off in generating enough electricity at a given price, the long term results are more beneficial - yes this means less waste compared to nuclear reactors in service, also mitigating down potential hazards from previous known incidents and close calls. You can't ignore these measurable and discernible results and effects - they are part and parcel of the energy source. People need to remember that the long term and general picture of alternative energy sources is what needs to be considered - cost is irrelevant in that any new capital is expensive initially and that it gets paid off eventually through the function it serves (or functions).

Comment General Application Not Practical... (Score 2, Interesting) 103

by wisenboi (#28037697) Attached to: Europium's Superconductivity Demonstrated
From the article: "The researchers then cooled europium down to about 1.8 kelvins (â"271.35Â Celsius), a frigid temperature near absolute zero. At pressures around 80 gigapascals, or about 800,000 times the pressure exerted by the atmosphere at sea level, europium lost its magnetism. Electrons could flow freely through the metal without resistance." The closest thing the average person could conceive (or at least myself) in a) Pressure and b) freeze capability / something involving lasers? would be compactors and liquid nitrogen. I'm still having problems seeing this be generally applied for use. This isn't the first time yet another rare earth element/metal has had to be cooled down (and/or pressurized) to unnatural levels to unlock superconductivity. I thought the goals of such experiments was to figure out how to conventionally utilize superconductivity on a mass scale without the need for highly specific environmental conditions. Since this article also mentions most rare earth metals share this superconductive capability (at near-zero kelvin temperatures and/or massive unnatural Earth pressures), this isn't something new, still.
Security

Torpig Botnet Hijacked and Dissected 294

Posted by timothy from the why-would-you-want-to-get-rid-of-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team of researchers at UC Santa Barbara have hijacked the infamous Torpig botnet for 10 days. They have released a report (PDF) that describes how that was done and the data they collected. They observed more than 180K infected machines (this is the number of actual bots, not just IP addresses), collected 70GB of data stolen by the Torpig trojan, extracted almost 10K bank accounts and credit card numbers worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the underground market, and examined the privacy threats that this trojan poses to its victims. Considering that Torpig has been around at least since 2006, isn't it time to finally get rid of it?"
Biotech

Swine Flu Genetics Suggest a Vaccine Is Possible 116

Posted by timothy from the shhh-no-one's-calling-it-that-any-more dept.
Kristina at Science News writes "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced findings May 1 from genetic studies of swine flu virus from six different countries. A strong similarity from country to country suggests all the infections are from one strain, making a vaccine a strong possibility. It will be several months at least before such a vaccine would be developed, though."
The Courts

Italy May Hold Its Own Pirate Bay Trial 120

Posted by timothy from the keeping-up-with-the-johannsens dept.
hyanakin writes with an excerpt from TorrentFreak: "Following the Swedish verdict, Italy is now considering starting its own trial against the people involved with The Pirate Bay. This would be the first criminal prosecution against the Pirate Bay 'founders' outside their home country." Funny thing: almost 20 years ago, CD stores in Germany all seemed to be full of bootleg concert CDs pressed in Italy.
Operating Systems

No Russian Operating System, At Least For Now 105

Posted by timothy from the nichyego-for-now dept.
Elektroschock writes "The project by 27 Russian parties to develop a National Operating System for Russia has not taken off, yet (Russian). Ilya Ponomarev, the responsible technology committee chair in the Duma, received a negative response from the government. The government argues that the project and Open Standards would not impact the society and economy. Parliament members regret the setback for Russia's digital independence. Ponomarev wants to find other interested partners in the Government now." The Google translation makes it tough to tell whether this project is actually dead, or just shelved for the moment. Any Russian speakers out there who can parse it with greater clarity?
The Courts

MN Supreme Court Backs Reasoned Requests For Breathalyzer Source Code 199

Posted by Soulskill from the if-you-work-for-it dept.
viralMeme writes with news that the Minnesota Supreme Court has upheld the right of drunk-driving defendants to request the source code for the breathalyzer machines used as evidence against them, but only when the defendant provides sufficient arguments to suggest that a review of the code may have an impact on the case. In short: no fishing expeditions. The ruling involves two such requests (PDF), one of which we've been covering for some time. In that case, the defendant, Dale Underdahl simply argued that to challenge the validity of the charges, he had to "go after the testing method itself." The Supreme Court says this was not sufficient. Meanwhile, the other defendant, Timothy Brunner, "submitted a memorandum and nine exhibits to support his request for the source code," which included testimony from a computer science professor about the usefulness of source code in finding voting machine defects, and a report about a similar case in New Jersey where defects were found in the breathalyzer's source code. This was enough for the Supreme Court to acknowledge that an examination of the code could "relate to Brunner's guilt or innocence."
The Internet

Think-Tank Warns of Internet "Brownouts" Starting Next Year 445

Posted by timothy from the malthus-was-right dept.
JacobSteelsmith writes "A respected American think-tank, Nemertes Research, reports the Web has reached a critical point. For many reasons, Internet usage continues to rise (imagine that), and bandwidth usage is increasing due to traffic heavy sites such as YouTube. The article goes on to describe the perils Internet users will face including 'brownouts that will freeze their computers as capacity runs out in cyberspace,' and constant network 'traffic jams,' similar to 'how home computers slow down when the kids get back from school and start playing games.' ... 'Monthly traffic across the internet is running at about eight exabytes. A recent study by the University of Minnesota estimated that traffic was growing by at least 60 per cent a year, although that did not take into account plans for greater internet access in China and India. ... While the net itself will ultimately survive, Ritter said that waves of disruption would begin to emerge next year, when computers would jitter and freeze. This would be followed by brownouts — a combination of temporary freezing and computers being reduced to a slow speed.'"
The Courts

Can Avatars Make Contracts? 134

Posted by Soulskill from the +1-tax-ledger-of-smiting dept.
edadams sends in a story about the legal questions that are starting to crop up over property disputes in virtual worlds. A lawsuit in March 2008 that stopped one Second Life user from selling a virtual product created by another user marked the beginning of a significant amount of casework for several law firms, in large part due to the way Second Life's currency interacts closely with real money. (And yes, apparently the product in that particular case was for cybersex — did you have to ask?) "As transactions grow in volume, it's inevitable that disagreements will crop up. Linden says that although it will enforce its terms of service, including its ban on violating other users' intellectual property, it can't settle most disputes for users." A lawyer for one intellectual property firm handled a case in which the co-ownership of virtual real estate had to be determined, ending with a financial settlement given to two users who helped a virtual land developer run a group of Second Life islands. As virtual worlds get more popular and their business models more directly affect real-life finances, we can expect these legal issues to become more common as well.

Slashdot Top Deals

Happiness is twin floppies.

Close