Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Google versus the Amicus Briefs (groklaw.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday there were numerous amicus briefs filed all on the same day and all in support of Oracle against Google in Oracle's appeal at the Federal Circuit. None of the briefs are posted publicly yet, but they should be available soon.

Microsoft has filed one, together with EMC Corporation, and NetApp, Inc. Scott McNealy has filed one with Brian Sutphin. Can McNealy be a witness for Oracle at trial, which he was [PDF], and also file an amicus brief? Well, he has. The Picture Archive Council of America, Inc. has filed one with the Graphic Artists Guild. Also there's one from the BSA. And finally Eugene Spafford, Zhi Ding, and Lee A. Hollaar have filed an amicus in support of Oracle. Hollaar seems to file a lot of amicus briefs.

So why do these entities and individuals care about this Java API case, do you suppose?
Science

Submission + - Coal Plants Are Victims of Their Own Economics (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: During the presidential campaign last fall, a single message was repeated endlessly in Appalachian coal country: President Barack Obama and his Environmental Protection Agency, critics said, had declared a "war on coal" that was shuttering U.S. coal-fired power plants and putting coal miners out of work. Not so, according to a newly-presented analysis of coal plant finances and economics. Instead, coal is losing its battle with other power sources mostly on its merits.
Science

Submission + - Have We Been Miscounting Calories? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: When it comes to weight loss, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. That's been the mantra of nutritionists, dietitians, and food regulators in the United States and Europe for more than a century. But when it comes to comparing raw food with cooked food, or beans with breakfast cereals, that thinking may be incorrect. That was the consensus of a panel of researchers who listed the many ways that the math doesn't always add up correctly on food labels.

According to the panel, net caloric counts for many foods are flawed because they don't take into account the energy used to digest food; the bite that oral and gut bacteria take out of various foods; or the properties of different foods themselves that speed up or slow down their journey through the intestines, such as whether they are cooked or resistant to digestion.
Privacy

Submission + - Do Not Track ineffective and dangerous, says researcher (nadim.cc)

Submitted by Seeteufel
Seeteufel writes: Nadim Kobeissi, security researcher, describes the Do Not Track standard of the W3C as dangerous.

In fact, Google’s search engine, as well as Microsoft’s (Bing), both ignore the Do Not Track header even though both companies helped implement this feature into their web browsers. Yahoo Search also ignored Do Not Track requests. Some websites will politely inform you, however, of the fact that your Do Not Track request has been ignored, and explain that this has been done in order to preserve their advertising revenue. But not all websites, by a long shot, do this.

The revalations come as Congress and European legislators consider to tighten privacy standards amidth massive advertiser lobbying. "Do not track" received strong support from the European Commission.

Submission + - Oracle going after Google again (informationweek.com)

Submitted by bobthesungeek76036
bobthesungeek76036 writes: Oracle is not happy with Judge Alsup's May 2012 ruling in it's copyright infringment case against Google. This judge should rule over some copyright cases:

"So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API," Alsup wrote in his ruling. "It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical. Duplication of the command structure is necessary for interoperability."
Google

Submission + - Google Play privacy slip-up sends app buyers' personal details to developers (zdnet.com)

Submitted by NatasRevol
NatasRevol writes: Holy crap, this is bad.

"Without asking permission, Google sends developers the personal details of everyone who buys their app from Google Play.
According to Australian developer Dan Nolan, Google sends him the name, suburb and email address of consumers that his app — enough to "track down and harass users who left negative reviews".
Nolan discovered the trove of customer data on his "merchant account" recently while updating his seller payment details."
Science

Submission + - Genetics study claims to prove Bigfoot's existence (mongabay.com) 1

Submitted by terrancem
terrancem writes: A new study purporting to uncover DNA evidence for Bigfoot has been published today in DeNovo Scientific Journal. While Bigfoot-enthusiasts have long argued that the cryptic monster is an unidentified ape species, the new study says their genetic evidence shows the Sasquatch is in fact a hybrid of modern human females mating with an unidentified primate species 13,000 years ago. The only problem: the journal in which the study is published—DeNovo Scientific Journal—appears to have been created recently with the sole purpose to publish this study.
Science

Submission + - Gut Bacteria Conspired in Melamine Poisonings (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: In 2008, nearly 300,000 infants in China got sick from milk formula tainted with melamine, a plastics additive that was used illegally to bulk up the formula's apparent protein content. Now, a study in rats implicates bacteria living in the gut as unwitting accomplices in this mass poisoning. The bacteria convert some melamine to cyanuric acid, whichwas present in high concentrations in fatal kidney stones. The work helps clarify how melamine toxicity arises and also drives home the key role that gut bacteria play in human health.

Submission + - Source code for Photoshop 1.0 (computerhistory.org)

Submitted by
gbooch
gbooch writes: "With the permission of Adobe Systems, the Computer History Museum has made available the source code for Photoshop version 1.0.1, comprising about 128,000 lines code within 179 files, most of which is in Pascal, the remainder in 68000 assembly language.

This the kind of code I aspire to write.

The Computer History Museum has earlier made available the source code to MacPaint (which you'll find here http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/)."
Security

Submission + - Adobe Reader Zero Day is First Adobe Sandbox Escape (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: Researchers at Kaspersky Lab have confirmed that the zero-day exploit found in the wild targeting Adobe Reader and Acrobat is the first attack to successfully circumvent the sandbox in the ubiquitous Adobe products. Attackers are using malicious PDFs posing as an application for an international travel visa to exploit a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat, a researcher at FireEye said. The exploit is the first to escape the sandbox included in Reader X and above.
Programming

Submission + - Ask slashdot: spreadsheet with decent programming language?

Submitted by
slartibartfastatp
slartibartfastatp writes: "Spreadsheets are very flexible tools for data analysis and transformations, the obvious options being MS Excel and LibreOffice. However, I found increasingly infuriating to deal with the VBA--dialect functions or (even worse) its translated versions. Is there any spreadsheet that allows usage of a decent programming language in its formulae? I found PySpread intriguing, but still very beta (judging from its latest release version 0.2.3). Perl or even javascript would be better options than =AVERAGE(). The slashdot community knows any viable alternatives ?"
The Military

Submission + - The Black Hornet Is The $195,000 Spy Plane That Fits In Your Hand (gizmocrazed.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: The British have been using this little drone for about a year. It's called the Black Hornet Nano Unmanned Aircraft System, costs $195,000 and can fly for a total of 25 minutes. It is equipped with a small camera that can send back full video or still images to the soldiers screen, with range of up to 1000 meters. The device is 10 cm long and weighing 16 grams, with a 4 inch rotor span — think a little longer than your middle finger.

The British seem to really like this drone, it is powered by a small battery pack that enables it to fly at up to 10 m/s. What is really awesome about it is that it can be controlled via an 'autopilot' type mode where it goes to its destination via a GPS chip.

Slashdot Top Deals

"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android

Close