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Submission + - Really Cisco, a Cius? Hey, I want a FlipPad! (trygstad.org)

Submitted by trygstad
trygstad writes: Cisco is coming out with a tablet, the Cius (what a crappy name). It looks to be much more complex than an iPad, it's another crappy 7 inch screen and not the 9.7 inch like the iPad, and it's targeted at business professionals and not consumers. It's also going to be about a thousand dollars. It fits Cisco's self image but frankly I think it's going to suck.

But many folks never notice that Cisco actually has one really great consumer product line: Flip video cameras . Here's where they should have positioned a killer consumer tablet: The FlipPad. It would have the whole Flip video camera ecology already installed as well as all the best in audio and video, which Cisco actually does pretty well. Think front AND back 720i video and a full 1024x768 10 inch screen. Built-in FlipshareTV connectivity. It would have all the hip cachet of the Flip, which is nearly ubiquitous among 20-somethings who want video a bit better than they can get from their phone. It could even have skins and the distinctive little pop-out USB connector like the Flip, since honestly, no one uses that without a USB extension cable anyway. Is it just me, or are they really missing the boat here? The FlipPad. I want one of these so bad.

Submission + - Mexican IP Agency Crowdsources to translate ACTA?

Submitted by josech
josech writes: In an epic twist of irony, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI), the mexican negotiator of ACTA for Mexico, may have enjoyed the benefits of crowdsourcing to translate and publish its spanish version of the ACTA (http://www.impi.gob.mx/work/sites/IMPI/resources/LocalContent/1891/22/Consolidated_Text_es_ok.pdf) from no other place than the PiratePad site (http://piratepad.net/UFMOMN6q15). Many redaction and style errors from both documents are suspiciously similar. As one of the collaborators from PiratePad noted on twitter: "Is it me or the IMPI just published as official translation the one that we did yesterday at Etherpad?" (http://twitter.com/tumbolian/status/26676099096). Fortunately, the IMPI may have not breached the intellectual property of the PiratePad collaborators, because they don't believe in plagiarism nor copyrights.
Idle

Submission + - Paleontologists Unearth Giant Fossilized Penguin 1

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "BBC reports that scientists have discovered the fossil of a penguin nearly five feet tall or twice the size of an Emperor Penguin, the largest living species, that lived 36 million years ago. "The heavier the penguin, the deeper it dives," says Julia Clarke, a palaeontologist at the University of Texas. "If that holds true for any penguins, then the dive depths achieved by these giant forms would've been very different." The bird, named Inkayacu paracasensis, or water king, lived during the late Eocene period and had a long, straight beak, much longer than that of its modern relatives but most surprisingly, the giant penguin's feathers were brown and grey, distinct from the black "tuxedo" look of modern penguins. "Insights into the colors of extinct organisms can reveal clues to their ecology and behavior," says Jakob Vinther of Yale University. "But most of all, I think it is simply just cool to get a look at the color of a remarkable extinct organism, such as a giant fossil penguin.""
Medicine

Submission + - Animal farms are pumping up superbugs

Submitted by oxide7
oxide7 writes: The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche once famously said, "That which does not kill me, makes me stronger." That may or may not be true for human beings. It is certainly true for bacteria. The superbugs are among us and they are not leaving. Indeed, they are growing stronger. "The incidence of drug-resistant infections is a national and global problem, in both the civilian and military world, and has grown dramatically over the past decade in civilian hospitals," said Rep. Vic Snyder, D-AK, at a House subcommittee hearing Wednesday on what the military is doing to deal with multi-drug resistant organisms, aka superbugs. The military, according to the military physicians who testified to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, has ramped up anti-infection measures over the past few years in the areas of prevention through standardized practices, detection through screenings and surveillance, and control through isolation, sanitization and the targeted use of antibiotics.
Google

Submission + - Google Releases WebP (google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google has released WebP, a lossy image format based on the image encoding used by VP8 (the video codec used in Google's WebM video format) to compress keyframes. According to the FAQ, WebP achieves an average 39% more compression than JPEG and JPEG 2000. A gallery on the WebP homepage has a selection of images which compare the original JPEG image with the WebP encoded image shown as a PNG. There's no information available yet on which browsers will support the WebP image format but I imagine it will be all the browsers which currently have native WebM support — Firefox, Chrome, and Opera.

Submission + - How do I start contributing to Numerical Library?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I am an Applied Math grad student who knows a bit of Mathematics and a bit of programming. C++ being my first programming language, I am decent at it. I wish to start contributing to a numerical library with two purposes — contribute to open source and develop my C++ skills at the same time. I looked at the Boost libraries and joined the developer list. However, I have no idea on how to start contributing. I'm not an expert in template programming, having written only toy programs to understand that concept. I've used some of the OOP constructs like inheritance, but that too only for very small projects.

Could slashdotters please give me tips on how to get started on the contribution? Are there any other emerging numerical libraries to which I can contribute? Are there any other avenues where I can contribute to open source and improve programming skills?
Games

Submission + - Blizzard tries Real ID again. (worldofwarcraft.com)

Submitted by tacarat
tacarat writes: The last time Blizzard mentioned their new Real ID system, a large backlash was created regarding privacy. After a period of time they backed down from the effort and little was heard about it since. Well, that just changed. Blizzard's spokescandle, Nethaera, broke the announcement today.

We'd like to make you aware of the new Real ID-related privacy options we've introduced to Battle.net. These options provide Real ID users with additional tools for customizing the service based on their preferences, enabling the ability to opt in or out of the Real ID "Friends of Friends" and "Add Facebook Friends" features or to turn off Real ID altogether. Real ID offers an optional, convenient way for keeping in touch with real-world friends you know and trust, whether they're playing World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, or one of our future games. The "Friends of Friends" and "Add Facebook Friends" features provide you with even more options to stay connected while you play by making it easier for real-life friends to locate each other on Battle.net. You can easily enable or disable these features through your Battle.net privacy settings by logging in to your Battle.net account at http://www.battle.net/.

Interfacing with Facebook seems to be the only probably issue, especially given the rise of social media exploits. Authenticators, anyone?

Submission + - Stuxnet Analysis Supports Iran-Israel Connections (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Paul-Threatpost
Paul-Threatpost writes: Speaking at the Virus Bulletin Conference in Vancouver, Liam O'Murchu of Symantec said that company's analysis of Stuxnet's code for manipulating PLCs on industrial control systems by Siemens backs up both the speculation that Iran was the intended target and that Israel was the possible source of the virus. As for Iran, O Murch merely pointed to Symantec data that show the country was the source of the most Stuxnet infections. Iran has since blocked communications to Stuxnet's command and control infrastructure. He said researchers also uncovered the reference to an obscure date in the worm's code, May 9, 1979: the date on which a prominent Iranian Jew, Habib Elghanian, who was executed by the new Islamic government shortly after the revolution.
Television

Submission + - Super Hi-Vision TV (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Thorfinn.au
Thorfinn.au writes: BBC News and NHK demonstrate.
Super Hi-Vision TV, 16 times sharper than HDTV, has been developed by Japanese public broadcaster NHK.
The standard could be used on giant public viewing screens, some of which may be in place for the 2012 Olympics.
NHK hope to broadcast in Super Hi-Vision by 2020, although no television currently exists that can fully show off the 7680-by-4320 pixel signal.
The "full HD" currently available means a display of 1920 by 1080 pixels — a quarter the number of pixels both vertically and a quarter horizontally.

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