Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Input Devices

Submission + - Apple Files Patent for Display Mouse (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by astrodoom
astrodoom writes: AppleInsider has posted a story detailing a new patent application by apple that hints at the possibility of adding a touchscreen to the company's magic mouse. At a basic level this could mean things like customizable colors or artwork displayed on the user's mouse, but the possibilities extend much farther to fully customizable mouse layouts and program controls. Apple Insider comments on the possibilities: "The display on the mouse would change according to what the user may be doing on their Mac. As an example, the application describes displaying a number of icons for quickly selectable options when a user is running Apple's Pages word processing application. Switching over to the spreadsheet software Numbers would reconfigure the buttons on the screen to allow for commands in that respective application."
Apple

Submission + - The Case of Apple's Mystery Screw 1

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "Network World reports that in the past if you wanted to remove the outer case on your iPhone 4 to replace the battery or a broken screen, you could use a Phillip screwdriver to remove two tiny screws at the base of the phone and then simply slide off the back cover. But now Apple is replacing the outer screw with a mysterious tamper-resistant "pentalobular" screw across its most popular product lines, making it harder for do-it-yourselfers to make repairs. What about existing products in the field? Pentalobular screws might find their way into them, too. "Apple's latest policy will make your blood boil," says Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit. "If you take your iPhone 4 into Apple for any kind of service, they will sabotage it by replacing your Phillips screws with the new, tamper-resistant screws. We've spoken with the Apple Store geniuses tasked with carrying out this policy, and they are ashamed of the practice." Of course only Apple authorized service technicians have Pentalobular screwdrivers and they're not allowed to resell them. "Apple sees a huge profit potential," says Wiens. "A hundred dollars per year in incremental revenue on their installed base is a tremendous opportunity.""
Image

Sharks Seen Swimming Down Australian Streets 210

Posted by samzenpus from the we're-going-to-need-a-bigger-sidewalk dept.
As if the flood waters weren't bad enough for the people of Queensland, it now appears that there are sharks swimming in the streets. Two bull sharks were spotted swimming past a McDonald’s in the city of Goodna, Butcher Steve Bateman saw another making its way past his shop on Williams street. Ipswich councillor for the Goodna region Paul Tully said: "It would have swam several kilometres in from the river, across Evan Marginson Park and the motorway. It’s definitely a first for Goodna, to have a shark in the main street."

Submission + - Creating an efficient social site? (mydbuddy.com) 1

Submitted by Twisted64
Twisted64 writes: After the Australian floods, a few sites have popped up, attempting to get flood victims in touch with their would-be saviours in the shortest time possible.These include qldfloods.org, floodaid.com.au, wikifloods.com.au, ozfloodhelp.org and mydisasterbuddy.com.

The sites use different methods to get people to register their needs or areas where they can provide assistance. Floodaid is a basic list for people to search through, wikifloods provides a bulletin board, and My Disaster Buddy is a basic networking site, requiring registration (but after registration it automates the searching process, matching users based on their preferences).

What do you think is the best approach to getting people in contact with each other, with the minimum of fuss? It's clearly too late after the fact to throw together a website and expect it to be a polished production, but there is clearly a need that is being answered in several differing ways. Disasters will continue to happen, and plenty of people with a mobile phone have enough internet access to make these projects worthwhile.

Comment I smell a lawsuit or a fraud (Score 2) 295

by jtnix (#34793766) Attached to: Facebook's Revenues Leaked

Let's see... very wealthy customer receives NDA covered financial document over a recent lunch and decides to violate the NDA he/she signed and publicly disclose it.

I can't imagine it will be very hard for Facebook to track down this customer and use their $500 million profits from this year to sue this customer out of their 'very wealthy' status, perhaps permanently and or sue Goldman Sachs for disclosing the information publicly.

IF that does not happen, I would be very suspicious of the validity of the document for both the lack of details (how the money was spent) and lack of lawsuit.

I am going with the latter option. Sounds like a planted document, if you ask me.

Submission + - Bee population drops 96%, baffles scientists (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by jcgam69
jcgam69 writes: The abundance of four common species of bumblebee in the US has dropped by 96% in just the past few decades, according to the most comprehensive national census of the insects. Scientists said the alarming decline, which could have devastating implications for the pollination of both wild and farmed plants, was likely to be a result of disease and low genetic diversity in bee populations.
Science

Why Published Research Findings Are Often False 453

Posted by samzenpus from the race-to-publish dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Jonah Lehrer has an interesting article in the New Yorker reporting that all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings in science have started to look increasingly uncertain as they cannot be replicated. This phenomenon doesn't yet have an official name, but it's occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology and in the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only anti-psychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants. 'One of my mentors told me that my real mistake was trying to replicate my work,' says researcher Jonathon Schooler. 'He told me doing that was just setting myself up for disappointment.' For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process. 'If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved?' writes Lehrer. 'Which results should we believe?' Francis Bacon, the early-modern philosopher and pioneer of the scientific method, once declared that experiments were essential, because they allowed us to 'put nature to the question' but it now appears that nature often gives us different answers. According to John Ioannidis, author of Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, the main problem is that too many researchers engage in what he calls 'significance chasing,' or finding ways to interpret the data so that it passes the statistical test of significance—the ninety-five-per-cent boundary invented by Ronald Fisher. 'The scientists are so eager to pass this magical test that they start playing around with the numbers, trying to find anything that seems worthy,'"
Google

Submission + - Beware of using Google or Open DNS for iTunes (joemaller.com)

Submitted by Relayman
Relayman writes: Joe Mailer wanted to download an iTunes movie recently and his Apple TV told him it would take two hours. When he switched his DNS resolver settings, the download time dropped to less than 20 seconds. Apparently, iTunes content is served by Akamai which uses geolocation based on the IP address of the DNS request to determine which server should provide his content. When you use Google or Open DNS to resolve the Apple domain name, all the requests to Akamai appear to be coming from the same location and they're all directed to the same server pool, overloading that pool and causing the slow downloads. The solution: Be wary of using Google or Open DNS when downloading iTunes files or similar large files. Use your own ISPs DNS servers instead or run your own resolving DNS server (This is /., is it not?).
Communications

Submission + - 'Zombie' Satellite Returns to Life (space.com)

Submitted by realperseus
realperseus writes: The American telecommunication satellite, Galaxy 15, has been brought under control after spending most of the year traversing the sky, wreaking havoc upon its neighbors. The satellite is currently at 98.5 west (from 133 west). An emergency patch was successfully uploaded, ensuring that the conditions which caused it to "go rogue" will not occur again. Once diagnosis and testing have been completed, Intelsat plans to move the satellite back to 133 west."
Security

Submission + - Scientists find TSA scanners may tear apart DNA (cnn.com) 3

Submitted by Terrence Aym
Terrence Aym writes: Los Alamos scientist Boian Alexandrov and his team discovered is that the resonant effects of the terahertz (THz) waves bombarding humans unzips the double-stranded DNA molecule. This ripping apart of the twisted chain of DNA creates bubbles between the genes that can interfere with the processes of life itself: normal DNA replication and critical gene expression.

Comment MySQL Workbench and Open Office Base (Score 1) 263

by jtnix (#34583172) Attached to: Oracle Releases MySQL 5.5

While you are largely correct at this point in time, I suspect a combination of OpenOffice 'Base' the Access equivalent (recently acquired by Oracle) and MySQL Workbench, a consolidation of several open source MySQL tools from Sun which has, since acquisition, been on a solid 2 week release schedule. Gee, I wonder if Oracle management had anything to do with that.. I suspect both Base and Workbench to be continually developed and marketed to fill the open source, whiz-bang Access gap to further erode M$.

And then Look Out, because we'll have an order of magnitude more crazy DB driven apps that 'just work' developed by Ubuntu outfitted mom-and-pops and non-profits the world wide. And that's good business for me, because it will be a hell of a lot easier to optimize those apps given it's MySQL underpinnings than any Access abomination.

Submission + - Antikythera mechanism recreated in Lego (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Exciting news for archaeologists and Lego-philes alike:
"Two years ago, a paper was published in Nature describing the function of the oldest known scientific computer, a device built in Greece around 100 BCE. Recovered in 1901 from a shipwreck near the island of Antikythera, this mechanism had been lost and unknown for 2000 years. It took one century for scientists to understand its purpose: it is an astronomical clock that determines the positions of celestial bodies with extraordinary precision. In 2010, a fully-functional replica was constructed out of Lego"

Submission + - TSA Told To Tell Children That Groping Is A Game (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Marc Desrochers
Marc Desrochers writes: Apparently TSA agents are being told that one way to handle the new groping pat downs for children is to try to make it out to be some sort of "game." This is apparently horrifying some sex abuse experts who point out that a common tactic in abuse cases is to tell the kids that they're just "playing a game." The TSA has said that the newer patdowns will not apply to children under 12, but the rules have been somewhat unclear — leading to the statement from a TSA director, James Marchand:

        "You try to make it as best you can for that child to come through. If you can come up with some kind of a game to play with a child, it makes it a lot easier."

He also said that the idea of making it a game would become a part of the TSA's training. Ken Wooden, who runs an organization to try to stop sex abuse of children was not pleased:

        "How can experts working at the TSA be so incredibly misinformed and misguided to suggest that full body pat downs for children be portrayed as a game?" Wooden asked in an email. "To do so is completely contrary to what we in the sexual abuse prevention field have been trying to accomplish for the past thirty years."

Slashdot Top Deals

Intel CPUs are not defective, they just act that way. -- Henry Spencer

Close