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Submission + - The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is:

Submitted by hcs_$reboot
hcs_$reboot writes: - heading towards an airport, as usual
— heading towards a hangar
— heading towards an airport, by road
— heading towards a sea (pick one)
— Much Ado About Nothing
Linux

Submission + - Linux promoted on the local news by Montana TV reporter (kulr8.com)

Submitted by
lannocc
lannocc writes: "Tonight during the regular monthly Billings LUG meeting we were visited by the local TV news crew to shine some light on what Linux is all about and how it is a real alternative to Windows and Mac. It was great to see the local media take a real interest in Linux and offer to share what it's all about with the community. With companies like Valve pushing to provide a Linux client to their Steam platform, and the pervasiveness of Linux usage across devices from servers to smartphones and tablets, could 2013, finally, be the year of Linux on the Desktop? In Billings, Montana, all signs point to YES! Video with interviews with the local LUG attendees is linked in the article."

Submission + - NEC completes 1Tb/s superchannel transmission over a trans-oceanic distance

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NEC recently performed the world’s first successful trial of real-time 1Tb/s super-channel transmission using 100GbE subcarriers over a trans-oceanic distance. With 100 GB/s technologies now commercially deployed, the focus of recent development is turning to high capacity channels, beyond 100Gb/s, with more efficient bandwidth utilization. As part of this movement, NEC has proposed optical superchannels to increase fiber capacity in both terrestrial and submarine networks. Optical superchannels are based on advanced technologies such as parallel high-speed transceivers, advanced modulation formats and advanced pulse shaping.
Crime

Submission + - For U.S. Attorney Ortiz, JSTOR is an Entitlement 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: As a college dropout, Aaron Swartz was not entitled to freely download JSTOR documents, so his doing so would constitute "stealing". Got it? But as a George Washington University graduate, fair-and-reasonable U.S. Attorney General Carmen Ortiz is, in fact, entitled to freely download JSTOR documents (thanks to the 'generous support' of GWU alums and the GWU Libraries), so her doing so would NOT constitute "stealing." Capiche? And that, ironically, is a great example of the type of inequity Aaron railed against with the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto ('Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves...'), a document Ortiz's office cited as evidence that Swartz was a knowledge-sharing menace to society.

Submission + - The idea of "meritocracy" causes depression and kills people (dreamwidth.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The idea of "meritocracy" causes depression and kills people

And so whenever I see people glorify it, I know right away that to the degree that they take this belief seriously I'm looking at a good ol' boys' network with preordained winners and losers. Where people they like and consider worthwhile get rewarded and get away with anything, and people they dislike get blamed for their "failures" and punished.
Privacy

Submission + - Scientists show genetic privacy of research participants is at risk (boston.com)

Submitted by kcurtis
kcurtis writes: According to a Boston Globe Article, team of Cambridge scientists reported Thursday that they used Internet searches and genealogy websites to discern the names of nearly 50 people who had anonymously provided genetic samples listed in a publicly-accessible research database, demonstrating that like credit card and bank account numbers, genetic information is vulnerable to hacking.
Security

Submission + - Genomes May Be Donated for Medical Research, But Not Anonymously

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Dozens of volunteers who anonymously donated their genomic data to a public database for medical research have been identified by a team led by Yaniv Erlich, a former computer security researcher turned geneticist. Erlich's team matched Y chromosomal markers in genomes compiled by the 1000 Genomes Project with non-anonymous genomic databases, for example some assembled from contributions by family tree enthusiasts. After finding a match on a presumed relative of the study participant, the researchers pieced together the relative's family tree through search engines and the like, until they were able to identify the participant based on gender, age, place of birth, and other supposedly "non-identifying" information associated with the genome. The names of the identified participants have not been released.
Moon

Submission + - NASA Beams Mona Lisa to the Moon (nasa.gov) 1

Submitted by EngnrFrmrlyKnownAsAC
EngnrFrmrlyKnownAsAC writes: Communicating with lasers is becoming (has become?) the hot new thing. While most researchers are seeking faster throughput, NASA set its sights in a different direction: the moon. Today they announced the first successful one-way laser communication "at planetary distances." What did they send? An image of the Mona Lisa, of course. Read more.
Games

Submission + - SimCity gets Instagrammed: Maxis adds a stack of visual filters (playerattack.com)

Submitted by dotarray
dotarray writes: SimCity is shaping up to look pretty goshdarn amazing, and now Ocean Quigley, the game's ultra-stylish art director, has offered us a quick glimpse at how you can customise that look. Want more tilt shift? Add more tilt shift. Want to view your city through a sepia-tinted lens? Apply a clever filter or two.
Censorship

Submission + - Thailand jails dissident for what people thought he would have said (nytimes.com) 3

Submitted by
patiwat
patiwat writes: "A Thai court has convicted a man for censoring himself. In a 2010 anti-government rally, Yossawarit Chuklom said that several people were against the dissolution of Abhisit Vejjajiva's government. He mentioned a few names, and then put his hand over his mouth and said he wasn't brave enough to continue. A court ruled that he would have mentioned King Bhumibol Adulyadej — thus earning him a conviction for insulting the King, who is constitutionally banned from any political role."
AMD

Submission + - Driver update addresses Radeon frame latency issues (techreport.com)

Submitted by
crookedvulture
crookedvulture writes: "AMD has begun addressing the Radeon frame latency spikes covered previously on Slashdot. A new beta driver is due out next week, and it dramatically smooths the uneven frame times exhibited by certain Radeon graphics processors. The driver only tackles performance issues in a few games, but more fixes are on the way. In the games that have been addressed, the new driver delivers more consistent frame times and smoother gameplay without having much of an impact on the minimum or average FPS numbers. Those traditional FPS metrics clearly do a poor job of quantifying the fluidity of in-game action. Surprisingly, it seems AMD was largely relying on those metrics when testing drivers internally. The company has now pledged to pay more attention to frame latencies to ensure that these kinds of issues don't crop up again."
Crime

Submission + - Aaron's Law - Rein in prosecutorial abuse (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by Freddybear
Freddybear writes: Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren proposes a change to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) which would remove the felony criminal penalty for violating the terms of service of a website and return it to the realm of contract law where it belongs. This would eliminate the potential for prosecutors to abuse the CFAA in pursuit of criminal convictions for simple violations of a website's terms of service.
Medicine

Submission + - Australian scientists discover potential aids cure

Submitted by smi.james.th
smi.james.th writes: Several sites report that Australian researcher David Harrich and his team have potentially discovered a way to stop HIV becoming AIDS and ultimately cure the disease. From the article: "What we've actually done is taken a normal virus protein that the virus needs to grow, and we've changed this protein, so that instead of assisting the virus, it actually impedes virus replication and does it quite strongly." This could potentially hail one of modern medicine's greatest victories.
Science

Submission + - "Superomniphobic" nanoscale coating repels almost any liquid (gizmag.com) 1

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: A team of engineering researchers at the University of Michigan has developed a nanoscale coating that causes almost all liquids to bounce off surfaces treated with it. Creating a surface structure that is least 95 percent air, the new "superomniphobic" coating is claimed to repel the broadest range of liquids of any material in its class, opening up the possibility of super stain-resistant clothing, drag-reducing waterproof paints for ship hulls, breathable garments that provide protection from harmful chemicals, and touchscreens resistant to fingerprint smudges.
BSD

Submission + - A tiny C++ library for POSIX systems (sourceforge.net) 2

Submitted by
c1oud
c1oud writes: "OnPosix is a tiny library to abstract POSIX mechanisms to C++ developers.

Most features offered by this library can be found either inside the Boost library or in a library compliant with the C++11 standard. Unfortunately, however, for some embedded Linux devices, these libraries cannot represent viable solutions, due to the lack of memory space (for the Boost libraries) and the lack of a new C++ compiler (e.g., on Xilinx MicroBlaze). On these platforms, the OnPosix library represents a good and cheap solution to have object-oriented POSIX mechanisms.

The library offers support for threads, mutual exclusion, sockets, logging, timing, etc.

The library is licensed under version 2 of the GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE (LGPL)."

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