Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Science

Submission + - Enceladus moon may have salty, Earthlike sea (cosmosmagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The source of mysterious ice plumes that emanate from Saturn's moon Enceladus is very likely an ocean, according to a new study. And in one important respect this ocean is similar to those on Earth: the water is salty.
The Internet

Submission + - Cerf: Streaming Crunch? Throw Some Fat Pipe At It (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "While ISPs may fret about Netflix, Hulu and other streaming media services saturating their bandwidth, Internet forefather Vint Cerf has a simple answer for this potential problem: Increase bandwidth exponentially. With sufficient bandwidth, streaming video services of prerecorded content wouldn't be necessary, said the now-technology evangelist at Google. With sufficient throughput, the entire file of a movie or television show could be downloaded in a fraction of the time that it would take to stream the content. Cerf, speaking at Juniper Network's Nextwork conference, spoke about the company's decision to outfit Kansas City with fiber-optic connections that Google claims will be 100 times faster than today's services. The purpose of the project was 'to demonstrate what happens when you have gigabit speeds available,' Cerf said. 'Some pretty dramatic applications are possible.' One obvious application is greater access to high-definition video, he explained. 'When you are watching video today, streaming is a very common practice. At gigabit speeds, a video file [can be transferred] faster than you can watch it,' he said. 'So rather than [receiving] the bits out in a synchronous way, instead you could download the hour's worth of video in 15 seconds and watch it at your leisure.' He adds: 'It actually puts less stress on the network to have the higher speed of operation.'"
Television

Submission + - Apple to start making TVs, report says - CNN.com (cnn.com)

Submitted by timothy
timothy writes: 'Apple might want to sell you your next TV,' says this CNN report. Which makes a lot of sense, considering that Apple's razors-and-blades, vertical-marketplace model for iTunes (and the various iDevices) doesn't make as much sense with the world of TV, where your Sony, Samsung, or (egads!) Westinghouse TV set is just as happy with a Google TV box, or a Roku, or one of many other media devices, as it is with an Apple TV attached.

Submission + - Predicting Revolt with Bayesian Model Averaging (foreignpolicy.com)

Submitted by
feynmanfan1
feynmanfan1 writes: "Jay Ulfelder, a Political Scientist and SAIC refugee just wrote an article for Foreign Policy Magazine about using Bayesian Model Averaging to forecast popular uprisings like those during the 'Arab Spring.'

Quote from Jay Ulfelder's blog:
"What’s needed to do this particular analysis better is higher-resolution data on dynamics of nonviolent rebellion. That kind of data would allow us to differentiate more subtly between situations like Egypt’s and, say, Sudan’s. Some scholars are doing excellent work right now using software to turn news reports into event data that should enable kind of analysis, but to the best of my knowledge, we’re not there yet."

Also, if the country uses social networks on the internet, perhaps data from there or data from search engine queries and financial transactions would be useful. Getting some of this data can be difficult, for example look at the blog post entitled "SWIFT and asymmetric control of data" over at Marcy Wheeler's blog, Emptywheel. Swift is the main interbank communication network. Credit card transaction data might be useful. It's not like the U.S. military is new to the game of gaining access to cell phone records or listening in on calls. Financial companies have been automating the processing of financial news for quite some time too. Opens a pretty big Pandora's box but it has been opened by others for a long time now(google, Government Sachs, Goldman Sachs) yet no one seems to want to admit it. Perhaps forcing U.S. military intelligence to be a lot more transparent would help with the checks and balances (and fraud in defense contracting)."

Submission + - US House takes up major overhaul of patent system (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Bookworm09
Bookworm09 writes: WASHINGTON The House on Wednesday took up the most far-reaching overhaul of the patent system in 60 years, a bill that leaders in both parties said would make it easier for inventors to get their innovations to market and help put people back to work.

The legislation, supported by the Obama administration and a broad range of business groups and high tech companies, aims to ease the lengthy backlog in patent applications, clean up some of the procedures that can lead to costly litigation and put the United States under the same filing system as the rest of the industrialized world.
Technology

Submission + - Lyto Camera Lets You Shift Focus After Shooting (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: For those of us who grew up with film cameras, even the most basic digital cameras can still seem a little bit magical. The ability to instantly see how your shots turned out, then delete the ones you don't want and manipulate the ones you like, is something we would have killed for. Well, light field cameras could be to today's digital cameras, what digital was to film. Among other things, they allow users to selectively shift focus between various objects in a picture, after it's been taken. While the technology has so far been inaccessible to most of us, that is set to change, with the upcoming release of Lytro's consumer light field camera.
Google

Submission + - Oracle Patent Case Against Google Weakening (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "If Oracle thought that they'd wave their vague Java patents around get licensing money from Google and other vendors in perpetuity, they may have another thing coming. The judge in the case seems skeptical of many of Oracle's claims, and indeed some of the patents at the heart of the suit are being re-examined — and rejected."
Power

Submission + - The World's First 24/7 Solar Power Plant (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by MikeChino
MikeChino writes: Torresol Energy has overcome one of solar energy’s biggest challenges: operating 24 hours of every day. The 19.9 MW Gemasolar Concentrated Solar Power Plant in Spain’s Andalucia province has two tanks of molten salt (MSES) that store heat energy generated throughout the day. Unlike normal plants that have less thermal storage or none at all, this stored energy enables Torresol to satisfy peak summer energy demand long after sunset.

Submission + - How to teach a beginning programmer? 2

Submitted by rjmx
rjmx writes: My 14-year-old grandson will be visiting us during the summer, and he wants me to teach him some programming. I think it's a good idea, and I think it'll be fun, but I'm not quite sure how to start. I've been at it so long that I don't recall much about how I learned (my first programming language was Algol-based, which should give you some idea). I don't even know how I do it myself these days: I just sit down in front of a computer and the programs write themselves, it seems.
So, how should I go about this? Any good, simple (preferably online) courses? And what language should I start with? BASIC's a little dated these days; I thought maybe perl, but anything you can suggest would help.
Spam

Submission + - Graphing Internet Interaction to spot Spammers (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Gunkerty Jeb
Gunkerty Jeb writes: Spammers, it turns out, aren't like everyone else: they have fewer friends. That, according to new research by Microsoft scientists who have developed a new method of distinguishing attacker-created spam email accounts from legitimate ones. The new finding, from researchers Yinglian Xie and Fang Yu of Microsoft is described as Social Graphs for Online Service Security. The two are using studies of legitimate and malicious social networks to spot bogus email accounts that are used to push spam, malware, and otherwise malicious links.

The researchers are analyzing natural social connections between users on the Web that are difficult for attackers or botnets to replicate. Spotting a spammer isn't hard, they say, when you look at his or her patterns of communication.
Government

Submission + - Why No Jail Time for 'Cramming'? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Last week the FCC announced it was proposing $11.7 million in penalties against four companies that 'that appear to have unlawfully billed tens of thousands of consumers for unauthorized charges.' But blogger Chris Nerney wants to know why no one's going to jail for what amounts to stealing from unwitting customers. 'If the feds really want to get serious about protecting consumers from being ripped off, we should start seeing some CEOs doing hard time,' says Nerney."
Chrome

Submission + - Google Browser Interception Plugin for Chrome (pcworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google has released a passive in-the-browser reconnaissance plugin, called the "DOM Snitch". By intercepting JavaScript calls to the browser infrastructure, it detects common cross-site scripting, mixed content and insecure DOM changes. The plugin displays the DOM modifications in real time so developers don't have to pause the application to run an outside debugger. It exports traces for easier collaboration and analysis.
Security

Submission + - WordPress.org Hacked, Plugin Repository Compromise

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Back in April hackers gained access to WordPress.com servers and exposed including passwords/API keys for Twitter and Facebook accounts. Now, hackers gained accessed to Wordpress.org and plugin repository was compromised. Malicious code found in several commits including popular plugins such as AddThis, WPtouch, or W3 Total Cache. Matt Mullenweg decided to force-reset all passwords on WordPress.org. This is a great remainder for all users not use the same password for two different services.

Comment "Flower Garden" electronic intelligence project (Score 0) 121

by feynmanfan1 (#36466764) Attached to: China Building World's Biggest Radio Telescope
Are radio astronomy dishes still used for military electronic intelligence? For example see the "Flower Garden" bi-static reflector project in the cold war. Maybe this is all done with satellites now adays but just thought I'd ask. Could the Chinese dish be targeted at this use too? See "secret history of silicon valley" for description of the "Flower Garden" project. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ

Slashdot Top Deals

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

Close