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Comment Re:Largest economy? (Score 1) 588

Are you so shallow enough not to buy a product or service from a company that could not speak English?
I live in Latin America. If we want to export to the US or some parts of Europe, we need to speak English.
If we want to do business with the Chinese, English helps, but Chinese can be better. If anything, speaking their language means you care enough about them particularly, enough to invest a significant part of your resources in them.

AI

Kinect-Based AI System Watches What You're Up To 87

mikejuk writes "Researchers from Cornell have used AI to create a system based on the Kinect that can recognize what you are doing — cleaning your teeth, cooking, writing on a whiteboard etc. In a smart home it could be used to offer help: 'Would you like some help with that recipe, Dave?' Or it could monitor patients or workers to make sure they are doing what they are told. The study also reveals that there is probably enough information in how activities are performed to recognize an individual — so providing yet more biometrics. There are clearly a lot more things that we can teach the Kinect to do with machine learning than just gesture recognition."
Data Storage

Ask Slashdot: Software To Organise a Heterogeneous Mix of Files? 254

BertieBaggio writes "I am a medical student at the end of an academic year trying to get my notes organised. I'm looking for a software document organisation system to organise a mix of text notes, journal articles, diagrams and scans. Ideally such a system would permit full-text and metadata search, multiple categorisations (eg tags), preserve the underlying files and be cross-platform (Linux/Windows/OS X). While I'm not averse to paying for such a complex solution, ideally the software would be FOSS so that extension or migration are possible if necessary. Desktop search (eg Google Desktop) probably does 90% of what I want apart from multiple categorisations, which is the feature I'm most interested in. Searching turned up a similar question over at 43folders which pointed me in the direction of Papers and DevonThink, but these are OS X only and seem to be aimed more at academic paper organisation. What recommendations does the Slashdot community have for categorising and organising a heterogeneous mix of files?"
GNU is Not Unix

Man Creates Open Source Flashlight 172

DeviceGuru writes "Not content with revealing the source code to his mom's banana bread, two-time BattleBots champion Christian Carlberg has developed an open source flashlight. Carlberg first achieved notoriety shredding competitors' robots with Minion's 14-inch saw blade on BattleBots. Now he's all fired up to begin shipping what they say could be the 'world's first open source flashlight.' But why in the world would you want a reprogrammable flashlight?"

Comment Re:No big secret here (Score 1) 235

Well, Tiananmen is a big issue when it comes to censorship.
The accepted fact is that we know the truth, and poor, oppressed Chinese people do not, due to censorship.
If it turns out we, free people, believed a lie all these years, it would mean our information is just as doctored as what the Chinese get.
That would mean that the rulers of the west are not better than the guys who build the Great Chinese Firewall, it would only mean that the West methods, mainly propaganda, are better than more direct ones.

Transportation

Integrating Capacitors Into Car Frames 189

necro81 writes "It has long been recognized that adding capacitors in parallel with batteries can improve the performance of hybrid and electric vehicles by accepting and supplying spikes of power, which reduces stress on the battery pack, extending range and improving cycle life. The challenge has been figuring out where to put them, when batteries already compete for space. A new research prototype from Imperial College London has integrated them into the body panels and structural frame of the vehicle itself. In their prototype, carbon fiber serves as both the structure for the vehicle and electrode for the energy storage sandwiched within."

Comment Re:Praise Xena (Score 1) 353

So I'd hate to see the upgrade treadmill end up causing myself and other to dump perfectly functioning machines not because of it not being able to do the job, but because Google don't want to support anything older.

Google is in this for business. Each browser they support costs them money, and adds a small amount of HTML and a possible point of failure.

The issues you talk about are due to the high cost of vendor lock in, when the vendor you choose is not the winner in the field, of just abandons products. It's not resonable to expect Google to pay for some of those costs.

choosing the wrong proprietary vendors is abandonment.

Google

Google WebRTC: Can It Replace Skype? 199

mikejuk writes "Google WebRTC, all open source, is part of the web revolution that allows one browser to talk directly to another without the need for a server getting involved. WebRTC is an API that used the new P2P web API to allow developers to implement audio and video communications using direct P2P links between browsers. This really is a game changer." And, while this feature doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of attention so far, Google Voice can call landline and cell phones for a small fee, just like Skype.
Technology

US Nuclear Power Enters the Digital Age 291

An anonymous reader writes "South Carolina's Oconee Nuclear Station will replace its analog monitoring and operating controls with digital systems, as part of a $2 billion plant upgrade by its owner, Duke Energy. It will become the first nuke plant in the US to use digital controls, and its upgrade may be quickly followed by others. The main driver for the move is cost savings; worries about reliability and hackers have been the reason digital systems haven't been adopted sooner."

Comment Re:For me it's GPL vs. BSD (Score 2) 215

It's easy.
The BSD license gives other distributors permissions to repackage your code, and give nothing back but a written mention.
The GPL does not allow that, distributors need to show code. If they fail to, they fall out of the license, and under simple copyright infringement.

There's nothing to prove, the GPL protects against freeloaders, and the BSD does not. By design.

Comment Re:...hmm interesting... (Score 1) 519

As for the morality of it? Meh - it could backfire on them (or maybe not... after all, what are *you* going to do about it? Call the cops? Launch a lawsuit based on the premise that the app you violated copyright on must always be safe? Hire a hitman?) OTOH, They didn't damage anything, and honestly, it got them some PR. If you got bit by it (not you in particular, the generic "you"), then be grateful. After all, the thing didn't immediately broadcast-email every photo on the chip to your entire contact list, brick the phone, or start surfing particularly vicious pop-up happy pr0n sites on your behalf at random times...

What they do is unacceptable. They are not trustworthy.
It's not reasonable to install a software in your phone, giving it access to your personal data and data plan, when you know that its publishers like to spend other peoples money, no matter the purpose.

It could be argued whether the victims deserve it or not, but the publishers are not to be trusted.

Comment Re:Traditional VPN? (Score 3, Informative) 198

I think the best advice would be...to stay as far the fuck away from any middle eastern country to begin with!!

There is a western, christian country, that is in the news at all times, known for seizing laptops at borders and keeping your data.
In fact, when I travel there, I don't carry my laptop or any personal/work data with me, that's how worried I am.

Why any sane person from the free part of the world would go over there....especially NOW...is beyond me.

There is no free part of the world. There are only shades of grey. There are places where you are safer and worse places, but enemies of freedom exist and act everywhere.
Add to that the fact that your definition of freedom probably doesn't match what some other people believe, and the whole "free world" concept becomes a dumb idea.

I mean, hell...I'd do just about anything for a dollar..but I'd not risk my life (and head) by going over there for any amount of money.

And you probably make enough. The world is full of people who risk their lives to make a dime. Otherwise, there would be no cops, no antenna installers, no tall buildings. That is because they can make a better living that way than staying safe.

Comment Re:I agree (Score 1) 596

When the customer finds a result for a search, whatever engine they used, Bing takes advantage of it.
You can complain about Microsoft violating the users privacy, but it's not taking anything from Google, just from the users.
It's bad, because users are not aware of this, but Google is no victim here. They don't own search results.

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