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Patents

Boingo Awarded a Patent For Hotspot Access 105

Posted by kdawson from the pay-up-everyone dept.
Boingo has scored a patent for accessing a Wi-Fi hotspot by a mobile device. The patent, no. 7,483,984, was issued in January, but Boingo only started talking about it recently. The patent application was filed in December 2002. According to the company, the methods covered by the patent include: "...accessing wireless carrier networks by mobile computing devices, where a client software application hosted by the device accesses carrier networks using wireless access points. For example, when a computer — or netbook, smartphone or any other Wi-Fi-enabled device — is in a location where there are multiple signals, the patented technology looks at each signal and alerts the user which signal will work, showing the signal as an understandable name and ID for the user.The patent covers all wireless technologies and spectrums, as well as any mobile device that access wireless hotspots." The company is not saying anything about whether or how they will attempt to wield this patent.
Movies

Blu-ray Adoption Soft, More Still Own HD DVD 685

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this-is-still-going dept.
MojoKid writes "A new study by Harris Interactive notes that currently, one in ten Americans (10%) own an HD DVD player, while just 7% own a Blu-ray player. Crazy, right? More Americans own HD DVD right now than the 'winning' format, Blu-ray. If you think about it, that statistic isn't that shocking. When HD DVD was around, it was far and away the 'budget' format for high-def. The players were cheaper, the films were cheaper. In other words, it was a format more ready to thrive in a down economy. Blu-ray was always viewed as a niche format for those absorbed in A/V, not the common man's format. The survey also found that on average, consumers purchased approximately six standard format DVDs in the last six months, compared with one in HD DVD format."
Education

11-Year-Old Graduates With Degree In Astrophysics 648

Posted by CmdrTaco from the they-should-make-physics-harder dept.
Gotenosente writes "11-Year-Old Moshe Kai Cavalin has graduated from East Los Angeles Community College with a degree in astrophysics. 'At a time when his peers are finishing 6th grade, this only child of a Taiwanese mother and an Israeli father is trying on a cap and gown preparing to graduate with a 4.0 from community college.' The article continues with a quotation by the boy, hinting at his modesty, 'I don't consider myself a genius because there are 6.5 billion people in this world and each one is smart in his or her own way.' Daniel Judge, Cavalin's statistics professor, says, 'Most students think that things should be harder than they are and they put these mental blocks in front of them and they make things harder than they should be. In the case of Moshe, he sees right through the complications.'"

Comment Re:BSD? (Score 1) 153

by Praeluceo (#28203859) Attached to: KDE 4.2.4 Released
Well, it isn't really a "GNU" project, it is GPLed, but I think Gnome would be better called a GNU project. Afterall, Gnome exists because of KDE's non-GNU-friendly license.

So if any of the DEs were to be labeled as BSD, I'd say it's KDE.

Just sayin', there's a fun history here, and thinking of KDE as a GNU project is a funny thought.
Education

Keeping a PC Personal At School? 695

Posted by kdawson from the mine-mine-mine dept.
Berto Kraus writes "As one of the most tech-oriented students in my art-oriented institution, I'm usually the one with the laptop. This causes frequent requests from other students to read mail, check some site, or connect it to the projector to display a file from their Flash drive. For the sake of my privacy, the health of my laptop, and my own peace of mind, I'm reluctant. But telling my compatriots to go to our building supervisor and ask him for a desktop-on-a-cart, as they should do, is considered rude and unfriendly. Now, I could dual-boot Ubuntu, or carry around a Linux-on-a-stick. Or I could embed the computer in my skull. For many reasons, none of these solutions is ideal. So I'm asking you, insightful and funny Slashdotters, what would you do to keep your PC personal at school?"
IBM

How IBM Plans To Win Jeopardy! 154

Posted by Soulskill from the 011010-for-400-alex dept.
wjousts writes "Technology Review is reporting on IBM's plans to take on Trebek at his own game. The 'Watson' computer system uses natural-language processing techniques to break down questions into their structural components and then search its database for relevant answers. A televised matchup with Trebek is planned for next year. 'David Ferrucci, the IBM computer scientist leading the effort, explains that the system breaks a question into pieces, searches its own databases for "related knowledge," and then finally makes connections to assemble a result. Watson is not designed to search the Web, and IBM's end goal is a system that it can sell to its corporate customers who need to make large quantities of information more accessible.'"
Portables

Canonical Demos Early Stage Android-On-Ubuntu 165

Posted by kdawson from the source-code-soon dept.
An anonymous reader notes Ars Technica's report from the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona, where Canonical has unveiled a prototype Android execution environment that will allow Android applications to run on Ubuntu and "potentially other conventional Linux distributions." "Android uses the Linux kernel, but it isn't really a Linux platform. It offers its own totally unique environment that is built on Google's custom Java runtime. There is no glide path for porting conventional desktop Linux applications to Android. Similarly, Java applications that are written for Android can't run in regular Java virtual machine implementations or in standard Java ME environments. This makes Android a somewhat insular platform. Canonical is creating a specialized Android execution environment that could make it possible for Android applications to run on Ubuntu desktops in Xorg alongside regular Linux applications. The execution environment would function like a simulator, providing the infrastructure that is needed to make the applications run. Some technical details about the Android execution environment were presented by Canonical developer Michael Casadevall... They successfully compiled it against Ubuntu's libc instead of Android's custom libc and they are running it on a regular Ubuntu kernel."
Security

White House To Appoint "Internet Czar" 205

Posted by timothy from the with-enough-czars-all-things-are-possible dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post reports that President Obama is set to appoint a 'Cybersecurity czar with a broad mandate': 'The adviser will have the most comprehensive mandate granted to such an official to date and will probably be a member of the National Security Council but will report to the national security adviser as well as the senior White House economic adviser, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are not final. The announcement will coincide with the long-anticipated release of a 40-page report that evaluates the government's cybersecurity initiatives and policies. The report is intended to outline a "strategic vision" and the range of issues the new adviser must handle, but it will not delve into details, administration officials told reporters last month.' Cynics are expecting the appointee to be a lawyer for the RIAA."

Comment I guess I just don't like reboots (Score 1) 461

by Praeluceo (#28015691) Attached to: Special Effects Lessons From JJ Abrams' Star Trek
I guess I just don't like reboots.
  • The new 007 "James Bond" isn't suave or debonair, let alone imposing.
  • The new Indiana Jones was a joke, and I don't look forward to seeing Shia LaBeouf wielding a whip and Fedora.
  • The new Batman, although intensely entertaining, just wasn't Batman anymore.
  • And of course, JJ Abram's gratuitous lens-flare, "rapid-zoom", and "camera shake" tour de force was best left on the cutting room floor and I doubt I'll watch another Star Trek: Cloverfield Edition coming from his portfolio.

Get off my lawn!
Education

MS Word 2010 Takes On TeX 674

Posted by timothy from the math-journals-won't-be-switching-anytime-soon dept.
alphabetsoup writes "Office 2010 Technology preview was leaked a few days back. With its leak, a feature which was rumored to be present can now be confirmed. Office 2010 finally adds support for Advanced Typographic features (ligatures, number forms, alternates, etc.) of OpenType, allowing one to create documents so far possible only in TeX or InDesign. Between this, the new equation editor and styles, what are the chances of Word replacing LaTeX as the editor of choice in academia?"
Science

Scientists Discover Common Ancestor of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans 391

Posted by Soulskill from the your-n-mother-had-a-lengthy-tail dept.
reporter writes "According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, scientists have discovered the common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and Slashdotters. The 47 million year old fossils were discovered in Germany. The ancestor physically resembles today's lemur. Quoting: 'The skeleton will be unveiled at New York City's American Museum of Natural History next Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and an international team involved in the discovery. According to Prof. Gingerich, the fossilized remains are of a young female adapid. The skeleton was unearthed by collectors about two years ago and has been kept tightly under wraps since then, in an unusual feat of scientific secrecy. Prof. Gingerich said he had twice examined the adapid skeleton, which was "a complete, spectacular fossil." The completeness of the preserved skeleton is crucial, because most previously found fossils of ancient primates were small finds, such as teeth and jawbones.'"
Games

Submission + - Sony PS3 Unit Sales Flat Lining and Trending Down (bnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The latest numbers from Sony show not only that the company's game division is losing money, but that the trend for PS3 unit sales is flattening and actually turning down through the rest of this year. Sony still loses money on every unit, and software sales aren't enough to push the division into profitability, as Sony projects another loss in games through the coming fiscal year that ends in March 2010. That raises the question of how long Sony can afford to stay in the game console business.
Biotech

Scientists Create RNA From Primordial Soup 369

Posted by timothy from the that's-notional-primordial-soup-to-you dept.
Kristina at Science News writes "The RNA world hypothesis proposed 40 years ago suggested that life on Earth started not with DNA but with RNA. Now a team of scientists bolsters this hypothesis, having assembled RNA in the lab from a mixture that resembles what was likely the primordial soup. 'Until now,' Science News reports, 'scientists couldn't figure out the chemical reactions that created the earliest RNA molecules.' The new work started the RNA assembly chemistry from a different angle than what earlier work had tried."

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