neutrino38 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Nano safety worries scientists more than public (presscue.com)

Submitted by

Nanotech Coward

on Monday November 26, 2007 @10:01AM

Nanotech Coward writes: "The unknown human health and environmental impacts of nanotechnology are a bigger worry for scientists than for the public, according to a new report published today (Nov. 25) in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The new report was based on a national telephone survey of American households and a sampling of 363 leading U.S. nanotechnology scientists and engineers. It reveals that those with the most insight into a technology with enormous potential — and that is already emerging in hundreds of products — are unsure what health and environmental problems might be posed by the technology."

Submission + - QR Codes coming to North America

Submitted by on Monday November 26, 2007 @07:05AM

An anonymous reader writes: Luna Development today announced the introduction to North America of Luna Blitzkap, a set of Quick Response (QR) code applications for devices based on Windows Mobile® software. QR codes are two-dimensional images similar to barcodes that allow mobile device users to capture a variety of information directly from a printed source with their camera-equipped mobile phone. The information can provide a link to a website or online service, automatically dial a phone number, exchange a business card, or run an application all by simply taking a picture.

Submission + - Bad Web Design Proves a Problem for Blind Internet (dw-world.de)

Submitted by

Ron Paul Dennis Kucinich

on Monday November 26, 2007 @02:15AM

Ron Paul Dennis Kucinich writes: "The combination of the Internet and computer screen reader software means blind people now have more access to written information than ever before. But bad Web design is making accessibility difficult."

Submission + - First Evidence of Another Universe? 2

Submitted by blamanj on Sunday November 25, 2007 @10:37PM

blamanj writes: Three months ago, astronomers announced the discovery of a large hole at the edge of our universe. Now, Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton thinks she knows what that means. (Subscription req'd at New Scientist site, there's also an overview here.) According to string theory, there are many universes besides our own. Her team says that smaller universes are positioned at the edge of our universe, and because of gravitational interactions, they can be observed, and they're willing to make a prediction. The recently discovered void is in the northern hemisphere. They contend another one will be found in the southern hemisphere.

Submission + - New Government, New Network?

Submitted by

renegadesx

on Sunday November 25, 2007 @09:56PM

renegadesx writes: "Australia has a new government lead by Kevin Rudd and the center-left Labor party in a landslide victory Saturday night. For months Mr Rudd has promised if elected he intends on bringing Australia up-to-date broadband capacity in establishing a Fiber to the Node (FTTN) infastructure nation wide.

What challenges await the new PM in establishing this? Telstra, who of course want to retain their monopoly over Australia's infastructure. Can Rudd and Telstra play nice in the interests of bringing Australia out of the stone age of DSL capabilities?

Time will tell, the Howard Government and Telstra did not get along at all. http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/15505/1086/"

Submission + - EU agrees to publicly fund Galileo satellite proje (itwire.com)

Submitted by

WirePosted

on Sunday November 25, 2007 @06:18AM

WirePosted writes: "The Galileo positioning system, which is a European Union project, that, when completed, will be a global navigational satellite system and, thus, a competitor of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS). It will be funded with public funds after private investors refused to further fund the project."

Submission + - Is google not keeping a cached copy anymore ?

Submitted by

izzix

on Sunday November 25, 2007 @05:27AM

izzix writes: "Why almost always when you access a google cached page it shows the current version of the page and the sniplet on the search page shows the correct(old) version of the page, Probably that one google crawled. And shows a message like: "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page" Why Is google not keeping anymore this kind of data ? Are they using this wasted space to host another space hungry google services, like gmail, youtube ?"

Submission + - NYTimes Editorial Says Science Is a Religion (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by jeffporcaro on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:12PM

jeffporcaro writes: Paul Davies writes a guest editorial in the NYTimes (sorry, but that's where it is) in which he shares his opinion that science is no better/no different than religion, since it forces its adherents to take items on faith. Examples he gives of faith-based science include our belief that the laws of physics will not change tomorrow and the idea that there are multiple universes — both are non-falsifiable and therefore no better than religious faith. Similarly, the fact that fundamental concepts are not fully explained (Why are the laws that regulate motion the way that they are? Who/what made them that way?) proves to him that science is based on a faulty, "deeply anti-rational" foundation. See here for full story.

Submission + - Sky's botched Google migration (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24, 2007 @04:00PM

An anonymous reader writes: Rupert Murdoch-owned British ISP Sky is migrating their customers to the Google Apps platform, and the customer experience is terrible. Their 1m customers were told that they need to change their client settings to enable SMTP Authentication and other settings on a certain date — but not to do it before then or their e-mail would break; but if you don't do it on the date your e-mail will also break. Oh, and if you're a POP user you also need to enable that manually in the 'Skoogle' interface, as seemingly they chose not to run a system-wide command to allow it for all users. In addition, if you want help then you're pretty much on your own. One user has made 7 support calls and still not been able to access his e-mail since the migration. Hardly surprising that the story has made the papers with their helpdesk in meltdown. It does make you wonder why they simply didn't put proxy servers in place to proxy the new service by modifying the old settings in the network and give their customers time to switch over without their e-mail breaking in the meantime. Or even a simple ActiveX tool to help out the less technical users. Apparently the move is all about a greater customer experience for their users. An interesting way of showing it.

Submission + - Content filtering for free wi-fi 5

Submitted by Munk on Saturday November 24, 2007 @11:04AM

Munk writes: My in-laws own a truckstop and want to start offering free wi-fi to their customers. Since the wi-fi would cover the restaurant and other public areas, they don't want folks surfing porn where other customers could see it. And as a side benefit, I would also like to be able to block P2P traffic that would use excessive bandwidth. Does anybody have an suggestions for a setup to handle this sort of thing? I would obviously like to use linux and other free software if possible.

Submission + - EU Agrees to Finance Galileo Navi SatelliteProject (techluver.com)

Submitted by

Tech.Luver

on Friday November 23, 2007 @09:38PM

Tech.Luver writes: "The European Union's troubled Galileo satellite navigation system will be financed from leftover EU funds, EU ministers decided Friday, after Germany and three other countries that had opposed the arrangement relented. Most of the 2.4 billion ($3.56 billion) the EU says is needed to complete the project will come from unspentfunds originally earmarked for agriculture, officials said. Some 300 million (US$445 million) was also earmarked to launch the EU's new technology and innovation institute, meant to rival the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The decision means Galileo — which nearly folded after a consortium of private companies tasked with developing it failed to make progress — will be completed. It is to give Europe its own satellite navigation, ending its dependency on the U.S.-run Global Positioning System. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/23/eu-lawmakers-agree-2008-budget-to-include-galileo-satellite-project-financing/ )"

Submission + - France plans to cut off P2P filesharers (ft.com)

Submitted by CryptoKiller on Friday November 23, 2007 @10:14AM

CryptoKiller writes: French President Nicolas Sarkozy is set to propose new laws to cut off Internet access to P2P filesharers with a "three-strikes-and-you're-out" policy. The proposals have been drawn up by an independent review headed by Denis Olivennes, the chairman of Fnac, a French entertainment retailer. Reporting from the Financial Times.

Submission + - SFLC Sues Two Companies for GPL Violations (zdnet.co.uk)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @10:55AM

eldavojohn writes: "The folks who wrote BusyBox & released it under the GPLv2 are being vindicated by the Software Freedom Law Center again this time, against TWO companies. You may recall BusyBox being discussed here before or the original lawsuit against Monsoon Media and its quick resolution. From the article: 'The plaintiffs are two programmers — Erik Andersen and Rob Landley — who wrote BusyBox, software covered by GPLv2, often used in conjunction with the Linux operating system in embedded devices. The suit was filed against Xterasys and High-Gain Antennas; both companies manufacture wireless communications hardware.' The Wikipedia page for BusyBox reveals how embedded hardware companies are falling into this bad pattern: 'Originally written by Bruce Perens in 1996, the intent of BusyBox was to put a complete bootable system on a single floppy that would be both a rescue disk and an installer for the Debian distribution. It has since then become the de facto standard for embedded Linux devices and Linux distribution installers. Since each Linux executable requires several kilobytes of overhead, having the BusyBox program combine over two hundred programs together can save considerable space.' That sounds exactly what one would desire for a low resources real time system! These companies just have to remember that they need to release the source for GPL'd code (and any modifications to that code) if they release a binary to customers!"

Submission + - A New Theory of Everything?

Submitted by goatherder on Thursday November 15, 2007 @05:20PM

goatherder writes: The Telegraph is running a story about a new Unified Theory of Physics. Garrett Lisi has presented a paper called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" which unifies the Standard Model with gravity — without using string theory. The trick was to use E8 geometry which you may remember from an earlier Slashdot article. Lisi's theory predicts 20 new particles which he hopes might turn up in the Large Hadron Collider.

Submission + - Cameraphone performs rapid image searching 1

Submitted by

willatnewscientist

on Thursday October 25, 2007 @11:29AM

willatnewscientist writes: "Cellphone technology that lets a video-equipped handset visually identify objects has been developed by researchers at Accenture Labs in France. A live video feed from the phone is transmitted to a remote server, which then performs rapid image recognition using an algorithm called Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT). A video accompanying the story shows the system being used to identify different food products, book covers and even circuit boards."

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