Nimatek - Slashdot User

Submission + - Boy, 12, told by iPhone 'Shut the f*** up, ugly t* (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by Frankie70 on Sunday January 01, 2012 @12:47PM

Frankie70 writes: A 12-year-old boy got a shock when he tried out the new iPhone 4S in a shop it answered: 'Shut the f*** up, ugly t***.'

Charlie Le Quesne had been trying out the new gadget's Siri voice assistant system in a Tesco branch in Coventry when it came out with the string of profanities.

The obscene response came after he had asked the phone: 'How many people are there in the world.'

Submission + - The Computer Science of Insecurity (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk on Thursday December 29, 2011 @10:47AM

mikejuk writes: After security by obscurity we now have security by computer science! The idea explained at this year's 28th Chaos Computer Congress (28C3) by Meredith Patterson was simply that, if you build input languages and protocols that are too powerful, from the point of view of grammar, then you deserve all you get. If a protocol is Turing-complete then recognizing valid input is formally undecidable. Only by reducing the sophistication to context free or regular grammars can we protect against "creative" uses of software. See the video of the presentation — you wont be bored.

Submission + - China reveals its space plans up to 2016 (google.com)

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid on Thursday December 29, 2011 @09:04AM

PolygamousRanchKid writes: China plans to launch space labs and manned ships and prepare to build space stations over the next five years, according to a plan released Thursday that shows the country's space program is gathering momentum. China's space program has already made major breakthroughs in a relatively short time, although it lags far behind the United States and Russia in space technology and experience. The country will continue exploring the moon using probes, start gathering samples of the moon's surface, and "push forward its exploration of planets, asteroids and the sun."

Some elements of China's program, notably the firing of a ground-based missile into one of its dead satellites four years ago, have alarmed American officials and others who say such moves could set off a race to militarize space. That the program is run by the military has made the U.S. reluctant to cooperate with China in space, even though the latter insists its program is purely for peaceful ends.

Submission + - Brazilian economy overtakes UK's (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by GreatBunzinni on Tuesday December 27, 2011 @09:13AM

GreatBunzinni writes: According to projections, Brazil's economic growth continues the trend of emergent economies overthrowing "old world" countries as the top economic engines of the world. The same predictions point that by 2020 the US will be the only western country included in the top 5 economies. Is this a side effect of globalization or does this sign the stagnation, or even regression, of the west?

Submission + - A 40-year-old puzzle of superstring theory solved (physorg.com) 1

Submitted by

astronasty

on Friday December 23, 2011 @09:57PM

astronasty writes: "This pretty much seems too good to be true. The potential breakthroughs that they say this could lead to wraps up a HELL of a lot of longstanding problems in physics and cosmology. I'm suspicious that this is found thus far only on PhysOrg. Then again PhysOrg is pretty quick with their news."

Submission + - Apple Files Patent for Fuel Cell Laptops (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22, 2011 @04:15PM

An anonymous reader writes: Apple Insider reports that Apple recently filed two patents for a new breed of fuel cell-powered laptop computers. The devices would eschew lithium ion batteries in favor of fuel cells that are capable of running for weeks without requiring a recharge. The patents are entitled “Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device” and oeFuel Cell System Coupled to a Portable Computing Device.

Submission + - Scientists Model Brain to Teach Computers to Recog (fellowgeek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21, 2011 @10:05PM

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chatham University, and Emory University created a neural network with a slightly different structure than what is usually used in research. You can think of neural networks as being separated into layers. Most neural network research involves wiring artificial neurons from one layer to others in another layer. This gives the network some ability to recognize patterns, but they haven’t been truly successful with vision, yet.

In this case, the researchers decided to wire some neurons to other neurons in the same layer, creating lateral connections. while it might seem a little counter-intuitive, doing so gave the neural network a greater ability to recognize things than other neural networks.

Submission + - Linux Mint developer forks Gnome 3 (webupd8.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21, 2011 @05:31PM

An anonymous reader writes: Clement Lefebvre, the Linux Mint founder, has forked Gnome 3 and named it Cinnamon. Mint has experimented with extensions to gnome in the latest release of their operating system but in order to make the experience they are aiming for really work, they needed an actual fork. The goal of this fork is to use the improved Gnome 3 internals and put a more familiar Gnome 2 interface on it.

Submission + - New Remote Flaw in Windows 7 x64 Found (threatpost.com) 2

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @01:12PM

Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers are warning about a new remotely exploitable vulnerability in 64-bit Windows 7 that can be used by an attacker to run arbitrary code on a vulnerable machine. The bug was first reported a couple of days ago by an independent researcher and confirmed by Secunia.

In a message on Twitter, a researcher named w3bd3vil said that he had found a method for exploiting the vulnerability by simply feeding an iframe with an overly large height to Safari. The exploit gives the attacker the ability to run arbitrary code on the victim's machine.

Submission + - Russians Put New "Satan" Nuke Into Play (inquisitr.com) 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @12:40PM

An anonymous reader writes: Russia, frustrated with anti-nuke talks with the United states has decided to put an end to the talks and move forward with its plans to upgrade its nuclear defensive and offensive systems, including the construction on a new and more powerful Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Nicknamed “Satan” by Western intelligence, the new missile carries a 100-ton warhead. This giant ICBM will take its place at the head of an already impressive missile arsenal which includes the Yars, Topol-M and Bulava-class ballistic missiles sometime in 2015.

This announcement come on the heels of a US announcement that its last B-53 nuclear weapon has been dismantled. The B-53 was the largest bomb in the US arsenal.

Russian president Dimitri Medvedev walked out of talks with the United States back in November over US plans to set up a missile defense system in Europe. The European Phased Adaptive Approach plan is a intricate array of sea and land based missiles which were designed to be used against a missile attack from Iran. The US says that cooperation from Moscow is needed to help the shield work. Moscow on the other hand claims the talks were useless because the US refused to guarantee the missiles would not be aimed at Russia. At that point, Moscow decided to end their participation in the talks and shortly after announced it plans to build the Satan Nuke.

Submission + - Is Jupiter Eating Its Own Heart? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit on Monday December 19, 2011 @10:50AM

sciencehabit writes: Jupiter is the victim of its own success. Sophisticated new calculations indicate that our solar system's largest planet, which weighs more than twice as much as all of the others put together, has destroyed part of its central core. Ironically, the culprit is the very hydrogen and helium that made Jupiter a gas giant, when the core's gravity attracted these elements as the planet formed. The finding suggests that the most massive extrasolar planets have no cores at all.

Submission + - Square Enix Possibly Compromised (square-enix-europe.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16, 2011 @10:27PM

An anonymous reader writes: Just received this alarming email from Square Enix. It appears that they recently were compromised. Preliminary reports state that there was no compromised user data. They are now allowed to join the list that includes the PSN and Steam. Lets hope they don't shut down servers.

Submission + - Fukushima Reches Cold Shutdown Milestone (cnn.com)

Submitted by ExE122 on Friday December 16, 2011 @08:46AM

ExE122 writes: Japan's PM announces that the Fukushima nuclear power plant damaged in an earthquake and tsunami earlier this year has finally been stabilized. Although this is good news, according to experts, 'it will take years — perhaps decades — to fully clean up the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.' Health and safety is still a concern in an area where over 80,000 people were evacuated after food and soil was found to contain radioactive contamination.

Submission + - Universal claims right to remove any YouTube video (extremetech.com)

Submitted by

MrSeb

on Friday December 16, 2011 @08:26AM

MrSeb writes: "It turns out that when Universal Music Group (UMG) got YouTube to pull the Megaupload music video, it wasn't using some arcane clause of the DMCA — it was in fact using powers that were granted by an agreement with YouTube in 2009. This agreement, which was signed back when Vevo launched, allows UMG to block or remove any video, irrespective of whether it infringes on Universal's copyrights or not."

Submission + - Grady Booch Documenting Computers to Chart (techzwn.com)

Submitted by jjp9999 on Thursday December 15, 2011 @11:33AM

jjp9999 writes: Computer scientist Grady Booch, an original creator of the Unified Model Language, hopes to do for computing what Sagan did for the universe with ‘Cosmos.’ By presenting the history and state of global computing, both the good and the bad, he hopes to help society ‘be intentional how about how we will shape the future of computing as well as how we might choose to be shaped by it It is as if we have created a new world, and chose to step inside it,’ he said. This will be done through a transmedia documentary series, ‘Computing: The Human Experience.’ According to Booch, ‘We will set the stage, we will pose the questions, but our audience can draw their own conclusions.as well as hopefully be inspired to be part of creating that future.’

Slashdot Top Deals