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Submission + - Man Accused of AT&T Breach Arrested on Drug Ch (theregister.co.uk)

ActionDesignStudios writes: Andrew Auernheimer, the man accused of the recent data breach related to AT&T iPad user data was arrested on Tuesday. The FBI executed a search warrant on Auernheimer's home and allegedly found cocaine, ecstasy and LSD. He faces four felony charges of possession of a controlled substance and one misdemeanor possession charge.

Submission + - iPad customers forced to buy unnecessary add-ons (smh.com.au) 1

CuteSteveJobs writes: Australian iPad buyers have been forced to buy all manner of unnecessary add-ons including screen protectors, docking stations, covers, chargers and extended warranties due to a reported Official Apple policy. Shoppers reported sales assistants said it was “company policy” or “Apple policy” to sell the devices only with accessories, or not at all. A store manager for Authorised Apple Reseller JB Hi-Fi said it was “a bad policy but it was Apple’s policy and they couldn’t sell one without it”. Other customers were told they must "buy a Telstra SIM because the iPad is locked to Telstra", even though it wasn't. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission and Consumer affairs are investigating the complaints.

What's the point of having Authorized Apple Resellers in this environment? Is it Official Apple policy? Don't look for any help from Apple; An Apple spokeswoman said "she could not comment on company policy", but did offer "consumers could buy iPads directly from us" without any add-ons.

Power

Submission + - From defibrillator batteries to a green revolution (buffalo.edu)

An anonymous reader writes: This month is the 50th anniversary of the first US cardiac pacemaker implantation in a patient (in Buffalo NY at the VA Hospital). The company that made the batteries for the pacemaker, Greatbatch Inc., also Buffalo-based, later went on to hire Esther Takeuchi, who in turn made the cardiac defibrillator possible by developing its tiny but powerful battery.

Now, Esther Takeuchi is seeking a green breakthrough. As a SUNY Distinguished Professor at the University at Buffalo, (btw, she has more patents than any other woman in the US and is a recent winner of the National Medal for Technology and Innovation) she is applying her expertise in battery breakthroughs to environmental technologies like electric cars and wind turbines.

UB's story and video about her (link is in story) are here: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/11424

Censorship

Submission + - Turkey has imposed an indefinite ban on Google

oxide7 writes: Turkey’s Telecommunications Presidency said it has banned access to many of Google IP addresses without assigning clear reasons. The statement did not confirm if the ban is temporary or permanent. Google’s translation and document sharing sites have also been banned indefinitely along with YouTube and Facebook in the country. Other services such as AppEngine, FeedBurner, Analytics etc have also been reportedly banned.

Submission + - Termite Networks are Architects of African Savanna (discovery.com)

reillymj writes: Termite mounds form a vast, evenly-spaced network throughout the African savanna. From satellite photos, scientists have found that the mounds are actually the underpinnings of the entire savanna ecosystem — from lions to giraffes down to geckos and plants, everything starts with the these mounds. And their spacing is important — researchers found that when they tried to randomly space the mounds in a controlled experiment, the whole thing fell apart. Somehow termites have engineered a vast complex natural system that's given rise to some of the world's most famous large beasts simply by building piles of nutrient-rich dirt in a specific pattern across the Serengeti.

Submission + - Warner loses rights, sues Lawyer who won (techdirt.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The lawyer who represented the Siegel estate, Marc Toberoff, has been pushing content creators and their estates to understand (and make use of) termination rights for a long time. Apparently, Warner Bros. (a frequent target of Toberoff) has had enough and has decided to sue Toberoff personally, claiming that... well... basically that he's a jerk and a savvy business person, which I didn't quite realize was illegal.
Science

Submission + - UC Berkeley Asking Incoming Students For DNA (ktvu.com) 1

peterofoz writes: What could possibly go wrong?

The students will be asked to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. The cotton swabs will come with two bar code labels. One label will be put on the DNA sample and the other is kept for the students own records.

Next: Police subpoena DNA records to identify possible terror suspects. News at 11:00

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Sues Salesforce.com Over Patents (cnet.com) 1

WrongSizeGlass writes: Cnet is reporting that Microsoft is suing Salesforce.com claiming it infringes on nine patents. "Microsoft has been a leader and innovator in the software industry for decades and continues to invest billions of dollars each year in bringing great software products and services to market" "We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard that investment, and therefore cannot stand idly by when others infringe our IP rights." Two of the patents in question are a "system and method for providing and displaying a Web page having an embedded menu" and a "method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display."
Science

Submission + - "Argonaut" Octopus Sucks Air Into Shell as Ballast (discovermagazine.com)

audiovideodisco writes: Even among octopuses, the Argonaut must be one of the coolest. It gets its nickname—"paper nautilus"—from the fragile shell the female assembles around herself after mating with the tiny male (whose tentacle/penis breaks off and remains in the female). For millennia, people have wondered what the shell was for; Aristotle thought the octopus used it as a boat and its tentacles as oars and sails.

Now scientists who managed to study Argonauts in the wild confirm a different hypothesis: that the octopus sucks air into its shell and uses it for ballast as it weaves its way through the ocean like a tiny submarine. The researchers' beautiful video and photographs show just how the Argonaut pulls off this trick. The regular (non-paper) nautilus also uses its shell for ballast, but the distant relationship between it and all octopuses suggests this is a case of convergent evolution.

Comment Re:hang on slashdot (Score 1) 357

No, millimeter waves are at least 10 to 100 times shorter in wavelength than the other items you mentioned.

Millimeter waves, by definition, have a wavelength between 1mm and 10mm. A microwave oven, wireless router, or cell phone all have a wavelength of around 125mm or longer. So the energy in each photon of millimeter wave radiation is 10 to 100 times greater than the energy in each photon from a wireless router.

It is possible, therefore, that it could be sufficient to trigger adverse effects in living cells. And it is just common sense and basic respect for human rights and dignity to investigate the long term health effects of repeated exposure to millimeter waves, before irradiating hundreds of millions of innocent people every year.
Oracle

Submission + - SAP Buying Sybase (forbes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: SAP is buying Sybase as a response to Oracle's encroachment into the ERP market. While Sybase probably only holds 3-4 percent of the enterprise data base market, SAP integration may make it the preferred solution for many SAP customers, who will only have to hear music on hold from one vendor.

Comment Re:Atom (Score 1) 199

That's amazing that you are able to encode, do motion detection, and write to disk, 25fps * 8 channels = 200fps in real time on a low power Atom based system! I would never have imagined that the Atom could do that.

I would appreciate it if you would post the details of the motherboard, encoding card, and storage system that you're using to achieve these results.

Comment TFA commits fatal logical fallacy - non sequitor (Score 3, Insightful) 692

Regardless of one's views on supernatural experiences, religion, or life after death, the arguments presented in the linked article must be rejected, because they are illogical, and very embarrasingly so for their authors, and also for their publishers.

In essence, they argue from the premise that the mere fact that a perception of having an experience can be triggered by an artificial stimulus to the brain, implies that the experience itself is never caused by anything in objective reality, and is entirely a product of subjective internal biochemical processes. But that conclusion doesn't follow logically, at all.

For example, we know that visual hallucinations can be triggered by artificial stimuli, but from that observation, it does not follow that light does not exist, and that those of us who claim to see things, such as this text on the screen, must be imagining it.

We also know from experiments conducted by electrically stimulating the brains of patients undergoing brain surgery, that vivid memories of childhood experiences can be evoked, having such clarity and vividness that they seem to the patient as if they were happening right then and there on the operating table, at the time of the experiment. But from these observations it does not follow that those experiences never really took place at all, or that the persons claiming to have had those childhood experiences were merely hallucinating when they were four years old, and thought that they were playing with their father.

Comment Re:Not everyone is an Apple whore (Score 1) 532

just like most people hadn't owned a smart phone before getting the iPhone.

Hahahahahaha! No wait, that wasn't a joke - you seriously believe that, don't you?

Most people don't own an Iphone full stop. Nokia have 40% share - and Apple have not very much. Perhaps it was the first smart phone for most Iphone users, but that tells us little - it may well be true that most Nokia owners got a Nokia as their first smart phone, and same for all other makes.

But "revolutionary to most Iphone users" isn't "revolutionary to most people". Since the Iphone has less than 5% market share, this is clearly true. At least, it would be if you relied on market facts, rather than making it up as you go along.

And can you give me a definition of smart phone that included the original Iphone, but doesn't include most feature phones? Thought not.

You seriously base your logic on "Most people haven't owned a tablet PC, therefore the Ipad will be revolutionary"? That's absurd logic. The same reasoning would apply to any non-Apple tablet too. Sorry, you don't get to be revolutionary when you're not first. The popularity argument is dubious anyway (was Windows and IE revolutionary, because it was most people's first experience?), but it's laughable to claim it to a vaporware product that isn't even released, and isn't remotely near being something that most people use.

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