Quanticfx - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Coloured license plates to ID drivers (Score 1) 307

by Quanticfx on Friday February 17, 2012 @11:11AM (#39074413) Attached to: Nevada Approves Rules For Self-Driving Cars

Oh how I love the HOV lane on the 101 on a Friday afternoon, until non-HO vehicles mess it up.

An advanced driver lane would be cool and the testing every year sounds like a decent idea. I think the best way it would work was if the lane was completely separated from the rest, but that would require separate off ramps for exits so probably wouldn't make sense from a monetary or road engineering viewpoint.

Submission + - Unauthorized iPhone Apps Leak Private Data Less Than Approved Ones (forbes.com)

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution on Tuesday February 14, 2012 @03:34PM

Sparrowvsrevolution writes: In the wake of news that the iPhone app Path uploads users’ entire contact lists without permission, Forbes dug up a study from a group of researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the International Security Systems Lab that aimed to analyze how and where iPhone apps transmit users’ private data. Not only did the researchers find that one in five of the free apps in Apple’s app store upload private data back to the apps’ creators that could potentially identify users and allow profiles to be built of their activities. They also discovered that programs in Cydia, the most popular platform for unauthorized apps that run only on “jailbroken” iPhones, tend to leak private data far less frequently than Apple’s approved apps.

The researchers ran their analysis on 1,407 free apps in the App Store and in Cydia, the unofficial app market for jailbroken phones. Of those tested apps, 21 percent of official App Store apps uploaded the user’s Unique Device Identifier, for instance, compared with only four percent of unauthorized apps.

Submission + - As Cleanup Efforts Grind On, Giant New Earthquake Looms at Fukushima (vice.com)

Submitted by

pigrabbitbear

on Tuesday February 14, 2012 @03:29PM

pigrabbitbear writes: "The massive rumbling energy released in an earthquake is from built-up stress within the Earth’s crust. Aftershocks aside, one might expect that such a release would let grinding tectonic plates chill out for awhile. Unfortunately, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, seismic risk has increased since last March’s magnitude 9 earthquake. According to a report published in geoscience journal 'Solid Earth,' the massive quake actually reactivated a seismic fault near the plant."

Submission + - Hotmail's spam filter: the best in the business? (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by

Barence

on Tuesday February 14, 2012 @01:56PM

Barence writes: "Microsoft claims an "independent" report proves it has the best spam protection in the industry — an argument deconstructed by PC Pro. “Our own internal metrics, customer feedback, and even a recent third-party report confirms that no mail service offers better protection than Hotmail,” Microsoft's Dick Craddock wrote in a Windows Live blog post earlier this week.

What Microsoft’s Craddock and the 14-page report don’t tell you is that the research was commissioned and paid for by Microsoft. Microsoft chose the webmail services to be tested, Microsoft had right of veto over publication of the results. Indeed, in 2009 Microsoft commissioned the same research firm – Cascade Insights – to do a similar piece of research. Hotmail came second to Gmail. Did Microsoft publish the results? What do you think?"

Submission + - BitTorrent piracy has no impact on U.S. box office sales (bgr.com) 4

Submitted by zacharye on Monday February 13, 2012 @03:29PM

zacharye writes: Though box office revenues declined for the second consecutive year in 2011, a new study suggests that there is little if any correlation between United States box office revenues and illegal file-sharing facilitated by BitTorrent.

Submission + - GNOME 3 -Beauty to the Bone?

Submitted by __aamdvq1432 on Monday February 13, 2012 @03:25PM

__aamdvq1432 writes: According to the GNOME design crew, as reported by Allan over at As Far as I Know, GNOME 3 will represent A New Approach to GNOME Application Design. The design patterns being developed and employed may effect a new, prettier interface, but more importantly a new mindset about the entire project, a mindset intended to encourage greater deep beauty in the application layers below the user interface. Maybe...for now, I'm sticking to the sinking ship of KDE in the Ubuntu ocean.

Submission + - Stanford PoliSci Professor Builds Personal Surveillance Drone (the-american-interest.com)

Submitted by

HerbieTMac

on Monday February 13, 2012 @03:16PM

HerbieTMac writes: "Political science professor Francis Fukuyama builds and flies his own personal surveillance drones. His current model requires ground visibility but he is working on the HAM license that would allow fully remote operation. His YouTube videos (Link 1 , Link 2) are particularly impressive."

Submission + - Milky Way Humming with Microwave Mystery (discovery.com) 2

Submitted by

astroengine

on Monday February 13, 2012 @03:07PM

astroengine writes: "The European space observatory Planck has discovered something peculiar about our galaxy: it's humming in microwaves and, for the moment, the source of the "hard" radiation surrounding the galaxy's core is a complete mystery. Also, the Milky Way is home to previously unknown "islands" of cold carbon monoxide gas, helping astronomers uncover the distribution of star-forming regions."

Submission + - Obama Budget Asks for 1% Boost in Research (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit on Monday February 13, 2012 @03:00PM

sciencehabit writes: One of the big three research agencies appears to be lagging behind its doubling peers in the president's 2013 budget request released this morning. The $4.9 billion budget of the Department of Energy's Office of Science would rise by 2.4%, to $5 billion. In contrast, the National Science Foundation would receive a nearly 5% boost, to $7.37 billion, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology a hike of 13%, to $860 million. These three agencies were originally singled by President George W. Bush in 2006 for a 10-year budget doubling, a promise that President Barack Obama and Congress have repeatedly endorsed despite the current tough economic times.

Submission + - Global Christianity and the Rise of the Cellphone

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Friday February 10, 2012 @01:25PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Alan Jacobs writes in the Atlantic about "Every Tribe Every Nation" (ETEN) an organization whose mission is to produce and disseminate Bibles in readable mobile-ready texts for hundreds of languages including Norsk, Potawatomie, Bahasa Indonesia, and Hawai'i Pidgin as the old missionary impulse is being turned towards some extremely difficult technical challenges. The Bible is a large, complicated text containing three quarters of a million words and the typesetting is quite complex because of the wide range of literature types found in scripture and the need for several types of note. "For all the issues that are still to be solved, ETEN is trying to do things that the world's biggest tech companies haven't cracked yet, such as rendering minority languages correctly on mobile devices," says Mark Howe. "There's a unity among Bible translators and publishers that stands in stark contrast to the fractured, fratricidal smartphone industry." But once these technical challenges are met, it won't be only Bibles only that people can get on their mobile devices: but whole textual worlds will open up for them. "So whatever your views about the Christian missionary enterprise, it's safe to say that insofar as people like Howe succeed in solving these problems, some of the world's smaller "heart languages" will stand a better chance of surviving, and maybe even thriving, in an increasingly digitized world," writes Jacobs. "And that's pretty cool.""

Submission + - Pilot Plant Converts Fruit and Veggie Waste Into Natural Gas for Cars (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula on Friday February 10, 2012 @11:10AM

Zothecula writes: Some readers might remember the Mr. Fusion unit in "Back to the Future" that Doc Brown fills with household garbage, including a banana peel and some beer, to power the iconic time-traveling DeLorean. While we're still some way from such direct means of running our cars on table scraps, researchers at Fraunhofer have developed a pilot plant that ferments the waste from wholesale fruit and veg markets, cafeterias and canteens to make methane, which can be used to power vehicles.

Submission + - 7-inch iPad again said to be nearing launch (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye on Friday February 10, 2012 @11:05AM

zacharye writes: Apple is once again rumored to be going against the wishes of late co-founder Steve Jobs as it prepares to launch a 7-inch version of its popular iPad tablet...

Submission + - SharedSolar and how software-driven energy services aid in rural electrification (nyud.net)

Submitted by

superfast-scooter

on Friday February 10, 2012 @10:52AM

superfast-scooter writes: "I wanted to let the community know of a research project I've been fortunate to be part of — it's a rural electrification project called SharedSolar at the Modi Research Group at Columbia University. The project has 17 pilot sites in sub-Saharan Africa to-date, providing prepaid energy services to over 3000 people who did not have access to electricity — a fraction of the over 1.3 Billion worldwide. The lab has been developing custom software applications to integrate off-the-shelf hardware components, and also provide the operational and management mechanisms needed. Communications with the sites are over the mobile networks. Consumers can recharge their accounts using either cellphones, or visit a designated local vendor who can do it at the site using an Android app. Software residing locally makes each site autonomous, and the online platform allows for remote visibility, localized consumer interactions and integration with payment solutions. And we're planning on deploying soon in Haiti and Kenya."

Submission + - After Rewrites, Google Wallet Still Has Holes (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Friday February 10, 2012 @10:47AM

itwbennett writes: "A report from viaForensics makes clear that, despite efforts by Google to tighten up security after a poor evaluation in December, Google Wallet still stores data in too many places and could make it available too easily to be a secure way to make purchases using smartphones."

Submission + - Can You Hear Us Now: The Growing Canadian Copyfight (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 10, 2012 @10:40AM

An anonymous reader writes: As the public outrage SOPA effectively killed SOPA and tens of thousands of Europeans take to the streets to protest ACTA, Canadians need to do their part to counter the inclusion of SOPA-style reforms into their copyright bill and to demand changes to its restrictive digital lock rules. Michael Geist highlights the growth of the copyfight in Canada and urges Canadians to speak out, write, email or tweet at the ministers and your MP providing their views on Bill C-11.

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