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Google

Submission + - Anyone Else Notice Search Engine Aggregators Exclude Bing?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have used Dogpile.com as my preferred search engine for years. It always used to submit queries to five or six search engines at a time, including both Bing and Google; Now it only lists three, and Bing is not one of them. Metacrawler is the same way.

On further investigation, Katapulco will not show bing and google results at the same time. Looks to me like Google is forcing aggregators to choose between them and Bing. Is this legal?
GNOME

Submission + - Gnome Extension Shows Ubuntu How To Do Shopping Lens Right (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: The year 2012 has not been very good for Canonical and Ubuntu. The end of the year saw harsh criticism of Ubuntu from bodies like EFF and FSF which accused the operating system of 'data leak', 'privacy invasion' and adding 'spyware' features. Now, Gnome Shell is also getting online shopping lens. Alen Bell has created a Gnome Shell extension which allows a user to conduct online shopping search right from Gnome's Dash. You can install the extension from this link. Once installed you can start searching for online shopping by hitting 'super' key and then enter your search term. One of the greatest differences between the implementations is who is in control. Gnome's Shopping lens shows how it should have been done in the first place as it puts the user in control and not the company whose OS you are using. Bell has explained it very well on his blog.

On the extension page, there is a settings option which allows a user to choose the shopper he/she wants to use. Not only that if I want to choose Amazon, I can also choose the Amazom for my region by simply changing the domain. Bell has explained the usage clearly on his blog, maintaing complete transparecny about the project unlike the Unity shopping lens.
United Kingdom

Submission + - NewsCorp/NDS spy network at Cambridge University (neilchenoweth.com)

Submitted by
Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: "One of the lesser known features of the ring of agents that former Scotland Yard Commander Ray Adams ran for NewsCorp/NDS was that he had an informant placed at Cambridge University to spy on its cryptology work.

The payroll for all these informants and the rest of NDS Operational Security in Britain came to more than £1 million for a six-month period. And that was only one part of the worldwide NDS OpSec operation. Agents or informants appeared on the NDS budget under “Consultancy”. Contacts was a highly elastic term. The largest expense was ADSR, Oliver Koemmerling’s company.

"
Your Rights Online

Submission + - New documents detail FBI,bank crack down or "terrorist" group Occupy Wall Street (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by jvillain
jvillain writes: The Guardian has up a story detailing the crack down on Occupy Wall Street. (OWS). It goes on to show how the FBI, DHS. Terrorist Fusion Centers and the banks all worked together to stifle descent.

"This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

I guess the next question is how many Americans are now listed as part of a "terrorist group" by the government for their support of OWS?
Earth

Submission + - 200 Lumen/Watt Production Power LEDs Introduced (cree.com)

Submitted by ndverdo
ndverdo writes: Cree just announced production power LEDs reaching 200 lumen/watt. Approximately doubling the previous peak LED light efficiency, the new LEDs will require less cooling. This should enable the MK-R series to finally provide direct no-hassle replacements to popular form-factors such as MR-16 spots and incandescent lighting in general. The LEDs are sampling and it is stated that "production quantities are available with standard lead times". Reaching a 1600 lm luminous flux light output these LEDs should bring a bright future indeed.
Power

Submission + - US Firms Race Fiscal Cliff to Install Wind Turbines

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "BBC reports that US energy companies are racing to install wind turbines before a federal tax credit expires at the end of this year which could be lost as congress struggles with new legislation to avoid the "fiscal cliff." "There's a lot of rushing right now to get projects completed by the end of the year," says Rob Gramlich, senior vice president at the American Wind Energy Association. "There's a good chance we could get this extension, it is very hard to predict, but the industry is not making bets on the Congress getting it done," Even if there is an extension there is likely to be a significant curtailment of wind installations in 2013. From 1999 to 2004, Congress allowed the wind energy production tax credit (PTC) to expire three times, each time retroactively extending it several months after the expiration deadline had passed but wind energy companies say they need longer time frames to negotiate deals to sell the power they generate. "Even if the tax credit is extended, our new construction plans likely will be ramped back substantially in 2013 compared with the last few years," says Paul Copleman. "So much time has passed without certainty that a normal one-year extension would not be a game-changer for our 2013 build plans.""
Privacy

Submission + - Oliver Stone: "The US has become an Orwellian State" (rt.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Americans are living in an Orwellian state argue Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick, as they sit down with RT to discuss US foreign policy and the Obama administration’s disregard for the rule of law. Both argue that Obama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and that people have forgiven him a lot because of the “nightmare of the Bush presidency that preceded him.” “He has taken all the Bush changes, he basically put them into the establishment, he has codified them,” Stone told RT. “It is an Orwellian state. It might not be oppressive on the surface, but there is no place to hide. Some part of you is going to end up in the database somewhere.” According to Kuznick, American citizens live in a fish tank where their government intercepts more than 1.7 billion messages a day. “That is email, telephone calls, other forms of communication.”
Science

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: CS degree while working full time?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: First, some quick background: I am 26 years old and I have been working for a large software development company with more than 50,000 employees for about 5 years now. My actual title is Senior Software Engineer, and I am payed well considering I have no degrees and all of the programming languages I have learned (C, C++, C#, Java) are completely self taught. The only real reason I was able to get this job is because I spent a year or so in a support position and I was able to impress the R&D Lead Developer with a handful of my projects. My job is secure for the time being, but what really concerns me is the ability to find another job in the field without 95% of companies discarding me for lack of formal education.

I started looking into local community colleges and universities, and much to my dismay, they offer neither nighttime or online courses for computer science. Quitting the job to pursue a degree is not an option, especially considering they will compensate me up to $10,000/yr for going back to school.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Does anyone know of any accredited colleges and universities that offer a CS degree through online courses? Obviously excluding the scam 'colleges' such as Univ. of Phoenix and DeVry.

Submission + - White House Petition to Support FOSS in Schools (lwn.net)

Submitted by
Rozzin
Rozzin writes: "OK, making the White House respond to `the Death Star Question' was fun, but can a nerd political petition with actual relevance get the same number of signatures? A new White-House petition for the federal government to promote use of Free Software in schools is up on the whitehouse.gov site. How do FOSS and education compare to Death Stars on your list of priorities?"
Open Source

Submission + - 5 Key Forces Driving Open Source Today (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Simon Phipps discusses the 15-year evolution of the open source movement, outlining the five key forces driving open source forward today. 'Today's open source movement is more mature, and the trends underlining it are more nuanced and widely engaged. The revolution has had a meaningful impact, and to treat open source as if it is still about saving a few bucks on a software license or socking it to Microsoft is to misunderstand how far the open source movement has come. The following five trends are key drivers of today's open source communities and projects. From governance to emerging revenue models, they paint a picture of an industry evolving to see the value of the freedoms at the heart of the open source movement.'"
EU

Submission + - EU Authorities To Demand Reversal Of Google Privacy Policy (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "Google's privacy mechanism, which combines personal data from around 60 products, and gives users only one opportunity to opt out, was rolled out in March against requests from privacy regulators in Europe. Now they want the policy reversed, and user data from the different Google products, including Gmail, Search and Youtube, to be separated. The EU attack is lead by French regulator CNIL, which has historically taken a tough line on privacy matters."

Submission + - India Patent Authority Has Big Pharma Worried (law.com) 2

Submitted by dgharmon
dgharmon writes: When the government of India revoked U.S. drug maker Pfizer Inc.’s local patent for its cancer drug Sutent last week, it marked yet another loss for Big Pharma in an escalating patent war between multinational pharmaceutical companies and the governments of developing nations.

Submission + - How do I get back into IT after a five year absence?

Submitted by boredemt
boredemt writes: I know this kind of question is asked ad nauseum, but I can't think of a better place to ask. I used to work in IT. Mostly Windows administration and support. Typical corporate stuff. I was laid off in 2007 and, out of a need to pay the bills, I took my volunteer hobby (Emergency Medical Services) and started doing it full time. Fast forward five years and I'm sort of stuck in EMS. To add to it I was recently injured at work and it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to go back. I've been applying to some IT jobs but it seems that my hiatus from the field has made me a dinosaur. I actually had a hiring manager tell me that directly. So, Slashdotters, what's my best route back with an (extremely) limited budget?

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