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Apple

Submission + - Prior Art Can Make Apple's iPad Design Invalid (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: The heart of the issue is the 'generic/broad' design of a tablet that Apple got approved as EC community design. One may wonder how such a generic design, which cover an entire range of product and overlaps with other already existing products be patented to one single company?

I lot of bloggers like Ken Hess and Apple fans are defending Apple. Ken has defended Apple for patenting the iPad design. The question is how unique is the iPad's design, are there prior arts?

Muktware has gather prior art examples which may make the iPad design patent invalid.

Submission + - New tool lets police find porn on WiFi (katu.com)

Submitted by katarn
katarn writes: The article is a little scant on details, but is touting http://www.flukenetworks.com/enterprise-network/network-testing/AirCheck-Wi-Fi-Tester as a device for police to use in finding WiFi setups engaged in the transfer of child porn. The article tries to give the impression this tool is some great new thing which can singlehandedly track down child porn, but backtracks to state that the police need “a lead on a child predator”, so assuredly the transfer of porn has already been verified by other means, and all the device does is narrow down the location of the device in use. Not to pass this article along as a free advertisement for fluke, but my question to those in the networking field who have used this device is: The writeups present this device as a no-brains method of finding child predators. How easy would it be for someone with actual networking knowledge to trick the device into falsely implicating someone else? There is always the concern that police/judge/jury may blindly accept the apparent evidence presented by a tool like this, even though the details may be more complex than indicated.
Intel

Submission + - Sandy Bridge-E CPUs too hot for Intel? (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Intel’s next consumer CPUs — the Sandy Bridge-E — will ship without a heatsink and fan. These new chips, which will feature up to 15MB of L3 cache and integrated four-channel DDR3 and 32x PCI 3.0 controllers will run very hot — potentially up to 180W TDP. Is Intel unable to cool these extreme chips, or is there another reason for the shift? Curiously, Intel will still offer "sold separately" own-brand cooling solutions for the new chips — so is this merely Intel trying to cut costs for enthusiasts who don't need a stock cooler — or is this the beginnings of Intel branching out into the cooling business?"
Hardware

Submission + - HP Holds Navy Network Hostage for $3.3 Billion (wired.com)

Submitted by Tootech
Tootech writes: military An anonymous reader writes "From the This could only happen to the Gov't Dept: Someday, somehow, the U.S. Navy would like to run its networks — maybe even own its computers again. After 10 years and nearly $10 billion, many sailors are tired of leasing their PCs, and relying on a private contractor to operate most of their data systems. Troops are sick of getting stuck with inboxes that hold 150 times less than a Gmail account, and local networks that go down for days while Microsoft Office 2007 gets installed in 2010. But the Navy just can’t quit its tangled relationship with Hewlett-Packard. The admirals and the firm recently signed another $3.3 billion no-bid contract that begins Oct. 1st. It’s a final, five-year deal, both sides promise, to let the Navy gently wean itself from its reliance on HP. But that’s what they said the last time, and the time before that.

It’s become a Washington cliché that the military and the intelligence community rely too much on outside contractors. Everyone from President Obama to Defense Secretary Robert Gates has promised to cut back on Pentagon outsourcing. But the Navy’s ongoing inability to separate itself from Hewlett-Packard – after years of trying – shows how difficult that withdrawal is going to be.

Just to make sure its core networks keep running – to make sure marines and sailors can keep e-mailing each other on Oct. 1st — the Navy is paying Hewlett Packard $1.788 billion. (Booz Allen Hamilton, another outside contractor, handled the negotiations with Hewlett-Packard for the military.) The service will spend another $1.6 billion to buy from HP the equipment troops have worked on for years, and to license the network diagrams and configuration documents, so that the Navy can begin to plan for a future in which they’re not utterly reliant on HP for their most basic communications. In essence, the Navy is paying to look at the blueprints to the network it has been using for a decade.

“HP is holding the Navy hostage, and there isn’t a peep about it,” one Department of the Navy civilian tells Danger Room. “We basically had two recourses: pay, or send in the Marines.”"

Submission + - A Quiet Sun (journalofcosmology.com)

Submitted by guigue
guigue writes: Although NASA revealed this week a spectacular movie of a Solar Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that produced intense geomagnetic activity on Earth, including aurorae, some scientists believe that the Sun entered a long Quiet phase that will last at least 100 years. Similar long calm periods are known in the past history of the Sun, and are called "Grand Minima". It is expected that during the maximum of the current solar cycle, late in 2013, the Sunspot Number will be no greater than 55, a value less than one third smaller than the one registered during the previous solar maximum in 2001, and the smallest during the last century.
Politics

Submission + - Weblogger questioned by police for retweeting (webwereld.nl)

Submitted by Halueth
Halueth writes: Dutch weblogger Bert Brussen is suspect in a case where he used a screenshot of a tweet done by a radical muslim leader. That muslim leader sent out a death threat to Geert Wilders and Bert Brussen linked to that tweet in order to let the world see what is going on (Dutch article here: http://www.bbrussen.nl/2010/03/03/wilders-met-de-dood-bedregen-doe-je-zo/. Now the Dutch justice department is not only considering that muslim leader a suspect, but also the weblogger linking to it. Police will question him later this month.
Microsoft

Submission + - RMS: Apple Is More Evil And Restrictive Than MS (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents translated a quote from an interview Richard Stallman (RMS) recently gave to Spanish newspaper El Mundo: "Apple is more evil and much more restrictive than Microsoft because it even limits our right to run applications." That says something, considering that RMS said in the same interview that Microsoft should not exist either. Florian's article explains why he believes Microsoft's use of patents isn't a threat to open source projects and companies. So far at least.
The Military

Submission + - This It How It Feels to Be Under a Nuclear Attack (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "We're used to see atomic bombs images. From afar, they even look beautiful. But when one explodes near you, that immaculate light will burn your skin and make you bleed spontaneously. 65 years ago today, this is how that horrible flash felt." These are some truly amazing testimonies from the kids and adults who survived the Hiroshima attack.
Movies

Submission + - Films that were rumoured to be ghost-directed (denofgeek.com)

Submitted by brumgrunt
brumgrunt writes: Just because a director gets credit on a film, that doesn't necessarily mean they did the work. For in Hollywood, ghost directors are at work, it seems, and Den of Geek has picked up on ten examples of where that may have been the case... http://denofgeek.com/movies/469105/10_films_that_were_rumoured_to_be_ghostdirected.html
Apple

Submission + - Apple to buy ARM? (thisislondon.co.uk)

Submitted by gyrogeerloose
gyrogeerloose writes: An article in the London Evening Standard claims that Apple has made an $8 billion offer to acquire ARM Holdings. For those few Slashdotters who don't already know, ARM makes the processor chips that power Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. However, ARM processors are also used by other manufacturers, including Palm and, perhaps most significantly, companies building Android phones. This explains why Apple might be willing to spend so much on the deal--almost 20% of it's cash reserves. Being able to control who gets to use the processors (and, more importantly, who doesn't) would give Apple a huge advantage over it's competitors.

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