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Politics

Submission + - A Digital Direct Democracy for the Modern Age (whitehouse.gov) 1

Submitted by lordofthechia
lordofthechia writes: One month ago the White House created an online petition system by which constituents could directly voice any grievances and concerns to the US Goverment. Any petition that reaches 25,000 signatures (5,000 originally) is promised an official reply.

This weekend the first petitions will be closing and already many have far exceeded the required number of signatures. Is this the way for the voice of the electorate to gain more weight in modern politics or is it the web version of a placebo button? Will the President's office really consider the top pleas which include petitions to Legalize and Regulate Marijuana, Forgive Student Loan Debt, and Abolish the TSA?
Privacy

Submission + - Researchers ID Skype, BitTorrent Users (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Researchers have figured out a way to link online Skype users to their activity on peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent. The team was able to sift out the nodes through which Skype calls are routed and determine the user's real IP address by sniffing the packets. To correlate the identified Skype users with files shared on BitTorrent, the researchers built tools to collect BitTorrent file identifiers, a BitTorrent crawler to collect IP addresses on the network and a verifier to match an online Skype user with an online BitTorrent user. 'As soon as the BitTorrent crawler detects a matching IP address, it signals the verifier, which immediately calls the corresponding Skype user and, at the same time, initiates a handshake with the BitTorrent client,' they wrote."

Submission + - Nasdaq intrusion spreads to listed companies

Submitted by
SpzToid
SpzToid writes: "Nasdaq's Directors Desk is a program sold to listed and private companies, whose board members use it to share documents and communicate with executives. Apparently Directors Desk was infected during a breach widely publicized earlier this year. It has now become known that hackers were able to access confidential documents and communications of the corporate directors and board members who received this infected application, said Tom Kellermann, chief technology officer with security technology firm AirPatrol Corp. It is unclear how long the Directors Desk application was infected before the exchange identified the breach, according to Kellermann and another source."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Early Speed Tests For Windows 8

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: You often hear in the software industry that performance optimization is one of the last steps in the software development process. That bodes well for Windows 8, considering at the early stage of Developer Preview—even before we've seen an actual beta—the nascent operating system is getting widespread praise for its performance, particularly in startup times. Anecdotal evidence is always encouraging, but PCMag decided to run some very early tests on the OS to see if the reports were wishful thinking or if there was a real, measurable boost in speed. Along with startup and shutdown times, they used several standard industry benchmarks to compare Windows 8 performance with that of Windows 7 running on the same machine.
Android

Submission + - Android 4.0 Source Code Coming 'Soon' (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Good news today for those of you who have been waiting for news about whether Google would be opening up the ICS source and for those of you who thought it was gone for good. Android engineer Dan Morrill revealed new information in the Android Building Google group yesterday evening, saying that Google plans 'to release the source for the recently-announced Ice Cream Sandwich soon, once it's available on devices.'"
Businesses

Submission + - Revealed – the capitalist network that runs (newscientist.com)

Submitted by
webhat
webhat writes: "New Scientist is running an article that scientists have discovered the capitalist network that runs the world . The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations — a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships."
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Submission + - Google Surrenders in the "Nymwars" (eff.org)

Submitted by derGoldstein
derGoldstein writes: According to the EFF blog: "Proponents of pseudonymity scored a major victory today, when Google executive Vic Gundotra revealed at the Web 2.0 Summit that social networking service Google+ will begin supporting pseudonyms and other types of identity."
Science

Submission + - Quantum Locking and Levatation (escapistmagazine.com)

Submitted by
CorvisRex
CorvisRex writes: "We have all seen videos of Superconductors hovering above magnets, really physics 101 class these days., By the Escapist recently posted a video and axplaination of quantum locking during quantum levetation demonstrated at the recent ASTC conference by the folks at Israel's Tel Aviv University. Really one of the coolest Science Videos I have seen in a while. The demonstyrators also created a webpage explaining the phenomenom, at http://www.quantumlevitation.com/levitation/The_physics.html. The effect not only allows the supercunducting wafer to levetate, but locks in spacially in three dimentions, even upsidedown."
Iphone

Submission + - Who are the jailbreakers?

Submitted by chrb
chrb writes: IOS jailbreakers gathered last month in London for MyGreatFest — the first conference dedicated to the jailbreaking scene. In a BBC article, the young jailbreakers discuss how they got into the scene, and what they are doing now. One reveals that, at 17 years old, he was too young to become an official iPhone developer, so he sold his apps in an app store for jailbroken phones, making over $100k.

Submission + - CCP to lay off 20% of its staff, refocus on EVE (eveonline.com)

Submitted by zergl
zergl writes: CCP games just announced that 20% of its staff will be laid off due to their overextension on developing three titles at the same time while bleeding subscribers on their flagship title EVE Online. The World Of Darkness MMO will be put on the back burner while remaining resources will be put towards EVE and getting Dust 514 launched successfully.
This comes as not much of a surprise considering the financial situation CCP was in with liquid assets about to run out well before the Dust launch next year which was discovered when the 2010 financial report was analyzed on a community forum.
Bitcoin

Submission + - bitcoin value implodes (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apparently unbeknownst to slashdot's editors and in spite of their relentless promotion of bitcoin a few months ago, bitcoin value has completely tanked in the few short months since June. Is it still too late to return those mining GPUs we've bought to Best Buy?
Microsoft

Submission + - Ballmer: We're lucky Microsoft didn't buy Yahoo in (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer feels intensely fortunate that his company's $44 billion bid for Yahoo back in 2008 never materialized. "Sometimes you're lucky," he said with a smile at Web 2.0 Summit, responding to a question from conference co-chair John Battelle. Careful not to offend his search market partner, Ballmer put his comment in context, saying that any CEO would feel grateful for not making a major acquisition in the months prior to the global financial collapse that started in the second half of 2008.

Comment Re:This is a very interesting experiment (Score 3, Interesting) 59

by gnalle (#37759514) Attached to: Winged Robots Hint At the Origins of Flight

The wings only help because the robot was designed poorly. When the robot moves without wings the body of the robot jumps up and down and it rotates along a vertical axis, and that makes it hard for the robot to move. The wings stabilize the motion of the body and presses it towards the ground, and that allows the robot to move faster.

Real beetles don't have this problem because they move their legs in a more controlled fashion. I am sure that the sameis true for the dinasaurs that turned in to birds. Therefore this experiment does not prove a lot. The team is asking the right question, but they did not come up with a denifite answer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V1631-Vcm4
Biotech

Submission + - New Vaccine Halves Malaria Risk (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to a report in Reuters, scientists are celebrating the end of a clinical trial which found a malaria vaccine reduces infection risk by half in children. From the article: 'While scientists say it is no "silver bullet" and will not end the mosquito-borne infection on its own, it is being hailed as a crucial weapon in the fight against malaria and one that could speed the path to eventual worldwide eradication. Malaria is caused by a parasite carried in the saliva of mosquitoes. It kills more than 780,000 people per year, most of them babies or very young children in Africa. Cohen's vaccine goes to work at the point when the parasite enters the human bloodstream after a mosquito bite. By stimulating an immune response, it can prevent the parasite from maturing and multiplying in the liver. ... Cohen said that if all goes to plan, RTS,S could be licensed and rolled out by 2015.'

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