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Science

Submission + - Greenland Ice Sheet Melts At Record Rate in 2010 (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: A study using satellite and ground-based data is showing the Greenland ice sheets are setting a record for the areas exposed to melting and the rate at which they are doing so. NASA says 2010 was a record warm year, and temperatures in the Arctic were a good 3 degrees C over normal. While the Greenland ice sheets aren't going to disappear int he next few years, they could still contribute to sea level rise and there is the possibility that the rate of melting is nonlinear — that feedbacks will accelerate the disappearance of the ice.
The Internet

Submission + - The end of the net as we know it (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: Britain’s leading ISPs are attempting to construct a two-tier internet, where websites and services that are willing to pay are thrust into the “fast lane”, while those that don’t are left fighting for scraps of bandwidth or even blocked outright. Asked directly whether ISP TalkTalk would be willing to cut off access completely to BBC iPlayer in favour of YouTube if the latter was prepared to sign a big enough cheque, TalkTalk’s Andrew Heaney replied: “We’d do a deal, and we’d look at YouTube and we’d look at BBC and we should have freedom to sign whatever deal works.” Britain's biggest ISP, BT, meanwhile says it could "absolutely could see situations in which some content or application providers might want to pay BT for a quality of service above best efforts." PC Pro asks if it's the end of the net as we know it.
Businesses

Submission + - Obama: What's Good for GE is Good for the USA 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: If you doubted that President Obama was going corporate, writes Joe Weisenthal, just look at who's been tapped to replace Paul Volcker as head of Obama's recovery panel. By naming General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as his chief adviser on how to help U.S. companies create more jobs, Obama sent another signal that he wants to work more closely with big business. Joined by Immelt in Schenectady, a city once defined by GE, Obama toasted the creation of an estimated 350 jobs at the site of an under-construction GE battery plant, which was made possible with a reported $25.5 million Federal tax credit, $15 million in state funds, and wage concessions. Turning to Immelt to save the American worker is certainly outside of the box thinking. In 2004, Immelt boasted that 'Gecis [now Genpact] pioneered and set the standard' for offshore outsourcing as General Electric picked up a check for $500 million from VCs anxious to partner with GE in the lucrative global BPO business. Genpact has continued to lay golden eggs for GE — $100MM in 2007 and $300MM in 2010. And last tax season, even Forbes seemed aghast at how GE used overseas operations to pay nothing to Uncle Sam on $10.3 billion in pretax income. So it's no surprise that news of Immelt's appointment has drawn some skepticism. Still, in a 2009 speech, Immelt did do a turnabout of sorts, questioning the conventional wisdom of relying so heavily on off-shoring, which Immelt reiterated in his Washington Post Op-Ed on Friday. But whether Immelt will walk the talk remains to be seen. After all, less than a year ago, now-incorporated-in-Bermuda Genpact announced that GE has re-upped with its BPO creation through 2016, promising that 'Genpact will continue to have the first opportunity to provide new business process management services to GE.'

Submission + - Motorola sticks to guns on locking down Android (androidcentral.com)

Submitted by jeffmeden
jeffmeden writes: "These aren't the droids you're looking for" proclaims Motorola, maker of the popular Android smartphones such as the Droid 2 and Droid X. At least, not if you have any intention of loading a customized operating system, according to Motorola's own Youtube channel used to show off upcoming products. Motorola:"@tdcrooks if you want to do custom roms, then buy elsewhere, we'll continue with our strategy that is working thanks." The strategy they are referring to is a feature Motorola pioneered called "e-fuse", the ability for the phone's CPU to stop working if it detects unauthorized software running. More information available via a story at Android blog site AndroidCentral

Comment Re:Just plain incompetence (Score 1) 147

by lexidation (#34890906) Attached to: French ISP Throttles Direct Download Website
My connection must be coming through your territory, then :-) Youtube started getting throttled in this country (CZ) in mid-November. My ISP is a three-man show and they swear they know nothing about it. I believe them. Therefore it must be upstream somewhere. I used to get 400, now youtube maxes at around 50.

Submission + - Building a Next-Gen Electronic Medical Record

Submitted by JoshMD
JoshMD writes: I am a Family Physician that is completely frustrated with the fact that 99% of all electronic medical records are built for and around insurance billing. This is ultimately hurting the patient and the doctor because of how awful and cumbersome the software is. I need someone to build software from the ground up that can help doctors communicate by email, webcam, skype, txt/mss messages, home visits, work visits, traditional office visits. I need it to be able to manage inventory for our wholesale medications, medical supplies and lab tests. I need ecommerce to monitor all of the transactions to help show the patient how much the doctor is helping/saving them. Preferably cloud based and scalable. Most of all, I need your help to get going in the right direction. Salesforce? Heroku? API's onto existing systems? Where do we begin? Doctors and Patients are in need of a much better next-gen system that is moving at the speed of life, not the speed of insurance third party billing...
Microsoft

Submission + - Jupiter - the new way for Windows development (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Jupiter could represent Microsoft's latest enhancement to the Windows development framework giving it better graphics and making it more suitable for slate and tablet machines. If you can remember back to "Active Desktop" then it might all sound very familiar. The idea is to put a XAML based layer into Windows which can be used to create smooth animations and graphics right on the desktop... er yes that's XAML not HTML5 which would seem a more logical choice of desktop markup language...but then Microsoft have been down this road before in the form of Active Desktop which used Dynamic HTML in the same role.

Comment Re:I wonder who they forgot to bribe? (Score 3, Insightful) 203

by lexidation (#34802796) Attached to: Google Broke the Law, Say South Korean Police
Where exactly does the dividing line between "spends millions on lobbying and campaign contributions" and "bribes politicians outright" get drawn? I don't mean this as a rhetorical question. It seems to me there's something broken in the system, something which will never get fixed because it underwrites the ambitions of the people in power.
United States

Submission + - Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans 1

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "CBS News reports that the Obama administration is currently drafting the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which will be released by the president in the next few months. "We are not talking about a national ID card," says Commerce Secretary Gary Locke whose department will be in charge of the program. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities." Although details have not been finalized, the "trusted identity" may take the form of a smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions. White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt says that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to," says Schmidt. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this.""

Submission + - Wikileak supporters twitter accounts subpoenaed. (boingboing.net)

Submitted by HJED
HJED writes: The U.S. Justice Department has served Twitter with a subpoena for the personal information and private messages of Wikileaks supporters.
There's a copy of the subpoena here[PDF] and boing boing has a detailed article about it here.
Twitter has 3 days to turn over the information.
Transportation

Submission + - Storm Delays Worsened by Airline Efficiency Drive

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Bloomberg reports that the US aviation system’s struggles to recover from snowstorms that closed New York’s airports this week reflect the unintended consequences of airlines' efforts to squeeze out costs with flights so full and scheduled so tightly that there is no room for quick recovery when airports are closed. “When your planes are all 90 percent full and you cancel a flight, it’s going to take you another 10 flights to re- accommodate all those passengers,” says aviation analyst Darryl Jenkins. Airlines have reduced seating capacity by 9.1 percent and full-time equivalent employment by 14 percent in the past five years and the capacity reduction and increased passenger demand, as the economy improves, have created the airline industry’s highest load factors since World World II. “We deregulated the industry to improve the efficiency of the industry and the airlines responded to that in spades,” says David Swierenga, president of aviation consultant AeroEcon."
Crime

Submission + - 2010: The Year We Lost Free Use of Our Money (frontwave.eu)

Submitted by frontwave
frontwave writes: I can’t believe that in a free society we can no longer use our money to support an organization that promotes free speech and abhors secrecy.

I’m really concerned with the public complacency about the recent blocking of donations to Wikileaks by the biggest bank in the US: Bank of America, one of the leading credit card companies: Mastercard and the largest online payment provider: PayPal.

I don’t completely agree with Wikileaks' actions but, as of today, no lawsuit has been filed against the organization in any court of law, it has not been declared by any country or international organization as a terrorist group, and there is no court order anywhere in the world to freeze their bank accounts. But if I try to go to BoA with my money, and I ask them to make a wire transfer to Wikileaks account in Switzerland, they will refuse to do it.

Their PayPal account has been suspended, and Mr. Osama Bedier, a PayPal Vice President, explaining his company’s decision, said, “on Nov. 27, the State Department — the U.S. government, basically — wrote a letter saying the WikiLeaks activities were deemed illegal in the United States.” However that letter from the State Department did not argue that publication of the documents by WikiLeaks, or any media organization, would be illegal. Instead, it says that the documents “were provided in violation of U.S. law” to WikiLeaks, which means that the State Department considered the original leak of the documents to Mr. Assange’s organization to have been a criminal act.

"We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty." — John F. Kennedy

Submission + - VOIP now technically illegal in China (people.com.cn)

Submitted by ironfrost
ironfrost writes: A recent ruling by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has declared that VOIP services are illegal, except for the ones operated by state-owned telecom operators China Telecom and China Unicom. According to the article, "the decision is expected to make Skype, UUCall and other similar services unavailable in China", and is widely seen as a way to protect the traditional telecom operators' profits. Here's a more in-depth story in Chinese (Google Translate version).

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