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Submission + - Jailed for Trolling (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by igb
igb writes: A man with Asberger's who trolled Facebook and other social media about the deaths of several teenagers has been jailed, and given an ASBO (a legal order which it is a criminal offence to breach) warning him off social media for the next five years. It appears that he has a reputation for trolling elsewhere (for example, http://forums.readingfestival.com/m995896-print.aspx) which implies that it's been going on for some time.
Space

Submission + - NASA wants solar-powered spacecraft propulsion (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "NASA today said it picked five companies to begin exploring the feasibility of using solar electric propulsion to power future spacecraft.
According to NASA, multiple studies have shown the advantages of using solar electric propulsion to transport heavy payloads from low Earth orbit to higher orbits. The idea would be that traditional chemical rockets could deliver payloads to low Earth orbit and solar electric propulsion could then power a spacecraft to higher energy orbits."

Submission + - Best Buy's Net Income Down 30% (wsj.com)

Submitted by nauseum_dot
nauseum_dot writes: Best Buy has had decreased profit over the last year. It appears that its online strategy coupled with its Brick and Mortar stores is causing it to be no longer profitable. From the article "its signature stores are still struggling to adapt to the changes in the electronics market, and analysts worry many of them have become 'showrooms' for merchandise that consumers wind up purchasing online from competitors such as Amazon." Do you think Brick and Mortar can survive in the online only world? Without Best Buy, where can fellow Slashdotter's try it before they buy it?

Comment Re:Proof that the system is corrupt (Score 1) 524

by imjustmatthew (#37390930) Attached to: $300M To Save 6 Milliseconds

they only ever make money on the first share issue (or subsequent rights issues) and the current market value of their stock doesn't have any influence on the funds they have available to do business.

The corporation only makes money on the issues, but the executives make money from selling their stock options, which are generally the largest part of their compensation package.

Aside from that the corporation does have an interest in stock prices because the investor care about stock price, and the investor elect the board, who then appoint the executives. Why do you think Brian Moynihan is in such a panic over BofA's stock price crash?
Microsoft

Submission + - Picture Password Revealed in Windows 8 (everythingnew.net)

Submitted by
hasanabbas1987
hasanabbas1987 writes: "It is revealed that Microsoft have added a very simple but useful feature in their upcoming Windows 8 OS. Simply called the “Picture Password”, it is an option which lets you set a certain set of touch-drawn lines to an image and these lines are drawn correctlyVoila! you computer is unlocked. The example picture above shows how it really works. There are 4 persons in the above shown picture and what you do is draw a line starting from the face of 2nd person and drag it all the way to the face of the 4th person and that is it, your picture password is ready."
Google

Submission + - Google Adjusts GAE Pricing Terms Based on User Rea (infoq.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google has reacted to recent developments regarding the increase in GAE prices which took developers by surprise, making a number of adjustments to the pricing plan, the most important being: the new billing is delayed until November 1st and the number of free Instance-Hours is raised from 24/day to 28/day.
Open Source

Submission + - Is open source and the military compatible? 1

Submitted by Bomber16
Bomber16 writes: Is open source and the military compatible? I am a big open source fan. I use Fedora, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, and Firefox in my day to day home life. I never thought I would use open source in the military. Here in the military we mainly use Microsoft products. I tried to get our IT department to go with open source but they said there was no support for it and that we could only use things we purchase. I believe this is the wrong answer and when I had the chance, I took it. We had a project that was using COTS and was costing us an arm and leg in license fees. Initial costs was around $45k and $17k for the maintenance fees. I asked my contractors to consider the alternatives to the software and suggested going open source. It ended up taking 30 days to rewrite the software and port it to NASA Worldwind. It worked great. Also, we controlled all the source code and can distribute the software to anybody who needed it. So this extra 30 days of work for my contractors led to a huge cost savings. We are now working on developing software applications on Android.

So it open source and the military compatible? What are the risks? What are the benefits? Is it the right move?

Thanks

MAJ Paul Nix, USA
Staff Group Charlie
China

Submission + - Chinese Students Are Storming US Grad Schools (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "Chinese students with plenty of brains and money are invading US universities at an astounding rate. For the past 6 years China has shown a double digit increase in applicants to US universities! According to the Institute of International Education the number of Chinese students enrolled in US undergraduate and graduate schools increased almost 30 percent in the 2009-2010 academic year. But whatever competitive concerns Americans might have about an international overload, by the time they stop wanting to come here there’ll be a lot of other things to worry about."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - HTC exec: iPhones for old farts (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Martin Fichter, HTC America's acting president, claims that Apple's iPhone is becoming too uncool for school. Speaking at the Mobile Future Forward event in Seattle this week, Fichter is quoted by Geekwire http://www.geekwire.com/2011/htc-boss-windows-phone-7-patents-iphones-cool-anymore as saying: "Apple is innovating. Samsung is innovating. We are innovating. Everybody is innovating. And everybody is doing different things for the end consumers. I brought my daughter back to college — she's down in Portland at Reed — and I talked to a few of the kids on her floor. And none of them has an iPhone because they told me: ‘My dad has an iPhone.' There's an interesting thing that's going on in the market. The iPhone becomes a little less cool than it was. They were carrying HTCs. They were carrying Samsungs. They were even carrying some Chinese manufacturers' devices. If you look at a college campus, MacBook Airs are cool. iPhones are not that cool anymore. We here are using iPhones, but our kids don't find them that cool anymore."
Science

Submission + - GE Unveils Fridge-Recycling Behemoth (gereports.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It wouldn't be out of place at a monster truck rally. Forty feet tall and capable of eating up and breaking down 150,000 used refrigerators annually, the new UNTHA Recycling Technology (URT) system at the Appliance Recycling Centers of America's (ARCA's) facility in Philadelphia is an engineering marvel. At an event there this morning, GE and ARCA announced that the URT system is ready to go to work on its first old fridge (as are the facility’s 50 new employees, whose new green jobs were supported by ARCA’s $10 million investment in URT and other new capital equipment).
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8: full details revealed (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: Microsoft has released the first full details of Windows 8, with an all-or-nothing approach to touchscreen technology. All versions of Windows 8 — whether used on a touchscreen device or not — will use the operating system's new Metro interface, which was first developed for Windows Phone 7 devices. The advent of Windows 8 sees Microsoft introduce a new style of application, dubbed Metro Style apps, and its own app store. The company also claims to have boosted Windows 8 performance with fast boot/shutdown times, a new Task Manager and the option to Refresh a PC with a clean install of the OS with apps and setting still left intact.
China

Submission + - China Poised to Launch Test for First Space Statio (space.com)

Submitted by Medevilae
Medevilae writes: China, a burgeoning power in the world space community, is poised to launch a test module for its first space station. The question is, when?

The liftoff was initially expected to take place in the fall. However, the Aug. 19 failure of an unmanned Chinese satellite to enter orbit has delayed the rollout of the module, named Tiangong-1 ("Heavenly Palace" in Chinese).

The space station precursor module is slated to launch on a Chinese Long March 2F rocket, similar to the Long March 2C booster that doomed the experimental SJ-11-04 satellite in August. Chinese space officials have put a hold on the Tiangong launch until the issue with the rocket is resolved.

China is developing its first full-fledged space station, called Tiangong (Heavenly Palace). Early tests of China’s skills at rendezvous and docking, shown in this artist's illustration, are set to begin in 2011.

When China does succeed in launching Tiangong-1, it will mark the first in a series of steps toward the nation's goal of building its own 60-ton space station by the year 2020. An unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft would launch a couple of months after Tiangong-1 and dock with it, in a demonstration of the autonomous docking technology necessary for assembling the station.

"The ability to do that robotically is going to certainly be a technological step forward for them," said Joan Johnson-Freese, chairwoman of the Department of National Security Studies at the Naval War College in Newport, R. I. "Some people have compared this to where we were at with Gemini. But we were doing it with people. If they can do it with robotics, it's a demonstration of a technological step forward."

China launched one astronaut on its first manned spacecraft, Shenzhou 5, in 2003. Since then it has sent five more men into space and performed the nation's first spacewalk.

Though these achievements come decades after the United States and Russia performed the same feats, they are enough to make China a force to be reckoned with in the future of human spaceflight, experts say.

"They have clearly established themselves in the top tier of spacefaring countries," Johnson-Freese told SPACE.com. "There are only three countries in the world who have the ability for human spaceflight, and China's one of them. If it were easy, there would be more countries that would have done it."
The Internet

Submission + - $300M to save 6 milliseconds? (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by whoever57
whoever57 writes: A new transatlantic cable (the first in 10 years) is going to be laid at the cost of $300M. The reason? To shave 6ms off the time time to transmit packets from London to New York. The Hibernian Express will reduce the transit time of 65 milliseconds by a mere 6 ms, however the investors believe that the financial community will be lining up to pay premium rates to use the new cable. The article suggests that a a one millisecond advantage could be worth $100M per year to a large hedge fund.

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