onitzuka - Slashdot User

Submission + - BlueTooth helped me turn my Nokia into a nifty spy (eburcat.com)

Submitted by

Eitan Burcat

on Friday February 13, 2009 @06:11PM

Eitan Burcat writes: "In this post: How BlueTooth helped me turn my Nokia into a nifty spying machine — I explain how BlueTooth's unique IDs helped me, with Very little effort, turn my Nokia 6120 into a machine that tracks people, give me alerts about them, and how this can very easily get expanded into a collaborative tracking effort. This article demonstrates how BlueTooth's unique IDs are an often overlooked privacy concern. A working Python code is included."

Submission + - Open Source study included in US stimulus package

Submitted by gclef on Friday February 13, 2009 @05:44PM

gclef writes: Buried deep in the stimulus package details is an interesting provision that might go a long way to helping Open Source software break into the medical area. It says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services should study the availability of open source health technology systems, compare their TCO against proprietary systems and report, no later than Oct 1, 2010 on what they find. For the actual verbage, see page 488 of the second pdf. (Slashdotters may also be interested in the language that starts on page 553 of that pdf to see just what the final package says about broadband.)

Submission + - The E-Reading Devices Every Techie Should Know (crn.com)

Submitted by

C.B.

on Friday February 13, 2009 @05:44PM

C.B. writes: "Channelweb brings you all the e-book devices and apps you could ever want: http://www.crn.com/hardware/213403930

The E-Book Revolution?
The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that about 538,000 e-readers were shipped in 2008, representing 235 percent growth in the market from 2007. While this week's unveiling of Amazon's Kindle 2 makes the device the hot item in e-readers, the Kindle's hardly alone in the expanding market for e-reading devices and applications.

Channelweb.com saved you the trouble of rounding them all up by taking a long look at what's out there.

Amazon.com
DEVICE: Kindle 2 DEBUT: February 2009 PRICE: $359

THE SKINNY: You've seen it. You've heard about it. You've read the spec sheet again and again. Kindle 2.0 was unveiled on Monday in New York by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who turned up alongside author Stephen King for the big announcement.

SPECS: Kindle 2 weighs in at 10.2 ounces, downloads books in less than a minute and sports a 25 percent longer battery life than the original Kindle. It allows users to peek at newspapers from around the world, download up to 230,000 books and also access blogs and 22 magazine titles. Storage is greater than the earlier Kindle, with 2 GB overall (enough for 1,500 books) and 1.4 GB available for user content. Display-wise, Kindle 2 offers 16 shades of grayscale and has a "Read-to-Me" function that offers text-to-speech. Pages turn at a 20 percent faster rate than in the original Kindle.

Sony
DEVICE: PRS-700 Reader DEBUT: October 2008 PRICE: $399

THE SKINNY: According to a Wall Street Journal report in December 2008, Sony announced it had sold 300,00 units of its device since the first of three Sony Readers debuted in October 2006.

SPECS: The latest entry to Sony's family of eBook readers, the PRS-700, includes a touch-screen and virtual keyboard — something that was lacking in both the PRS-500 and PRS-505, the previous two Sony eReaders. Sony's PRS-700 is approximately 174.3 x 127.6 x 9.7 mm, weighs about 10 ounces, sports a 6-inch diagonal display with a 170 dpi/8-level grayscale resolution and contains 512 MB of memory. It uses a lithium-ion battery that allows 7,500 page turns per charge, and also has a built-in LED reading light. For Windows, Sony Reader contains Sony's proprietary Sony Connect (a.k.a. Sony eBook Library).

Jinke
DEVICE: HanLin eReader DEBUT: October 2007 PRICE:$299

THE SKINNY Jinke, a Tianjin, China-based electronics manufacturer that boasts of having 10 years of experience in e-reading device design, has produced several versions of its HanLin eReader. One of its most popular is the HanLin eReader V3, and another model, the V9t, sports a screen size of 10 inches diagonal.

SPECS: The V3 operates on a Linux OS and includes format support for pdf, doc, wolf, mp3, html, txt and plenty of others. It comes with a charger, USB cable, earphone, battery and hand band, according to Jinke's Web site. The V3 has a six-inch e-Ink display containing 800 x 600 pixels and it supports four levels of grayscale. The V3 has an SD card on top with memory extension of up to 4 GB, and connects to a PC or laptop via USB cable. Jinke clocks the battery life as high as a month based on an average use of 300 pages per day.

iRex Technologies
DEVICE: iRex iLiad DEBUT: July 2006 PRICE: $599

THE SKINNY: iRex is a Dutch company that rolled out the first version of its e-readers about two-and-a-half years ago. The company's three main offerings include the iLiad, which is designed for regular book readers, as well as the iRex iLiad 2nd Edition (which includes books, newspapers, documents and enabled Wi-Fi) and the iRex 1000 series (designed for business professionals who need to access a lot of digital documents). IRex's only North American dealer for its iLiad is eReader Outfitters.

SPECS: The iLiad is 8.5 by 6.1 by 0.63 inches, and sports a 768-by-1,024 resolution display and comes preloaded with 50 books, including canonical choices like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, works by Jane Austen, Dostoevsky, Voltaire, Cervantes, Dickens, Shakespeare and others. The diagonal electronic paper display is 8.1 inches and supports 16 levels of grayscale. The iLiad uses an Intel 400MHz XScale processor with 64 MB of RAM, and allows 256 MB of internal Flash memory (128 MB available to the user and expandable via USB, MMC or CF cards). Exclusive to PCs, it supports five languages (Dutch, English, German, French and Spanish) and supports pdf, html, txt, jpg, bmp, png and MobiPocket prc.

Netronix
DEVICE: EB-100 DEBUT: March 2008 PRICE: Not available

THE SKINNY: Taiwan-based Netronix, which is part-owned by e-ink display manufacturer PVI, has six eBooks listed through its product site, including a five-inch electronic version, a six-inch electronic version and four six-inch wireless versions. It also announced the six-inch EB-100 and 9.5-inch EB-300 in March 2008, but since then, American and international tech bloggers have had trouble nailing down both their availability in North America and MSRP.

SPECS: Netronix's EB-100 readers operate on Linux 2.6 (all of Netronix's EB readers do, except for the EB-300, EB-600 Swiftie and EB-611 models, which operate on WinCE 5.0). Some models enable touch-screen, 802.11g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G wireless connection, and offer between 8,000 and 16,000 page turns' worth of battery life. The EB-100 itself offers 800 x 600 pixel resolution with 170 dpi and four levels of grayscale. Storage is an SD card expandable up to 4 GB, and SDRAM is 32 MB. Memory size is 128 MB NAND type Flash.

Bookeen
DEVICE: Cybook Gen3 DEBUT: October 2007 PRICE: $350 ($450 deluxe version)

THE SKINNY: Bookeen's founders designed their first Cybook as far back as 1998, and created Bookeen itself in 2003.

SPECS: The Cybook is 4.7 by 7.4 by 0.3 inches, and weighs 6.13 ounces. The screen is a 6-inch E Ink Vizplex screen supporting 600 x 800 pixels, 166 dpi, four grayscale levels, no backlight, and portrait and landscape modes. The OS is embedded Linux, and its software suite includes Bookeen multiformat eBook reader and support for jpg, gif and png image formats. It expands with an SD card slot, has a rechargeable built-in Li-Polymer battery with 8,000 screen refreshes per battery life and a Samsung S3C2410 ARM 920T processor. ROM memory is 8 MB, RAM memory 16 MB and storage memory 512 MB.

Fujitsu
DEVICE: Fujitsu Frontech FLEPia DEBUT: Currently being tested PRICE: About $940

THE SKINNY: Fujitsu's electronic paper FLEPia solution is currently being tested with newspapers at restaurants in Japan, according to Japan's Nikkei daily and other news sources. Fujitsu's been working on the rollout for about four years.

SPECS According to the Nikkei, FLEPia itself is a mobile information terminal that incorporates color electronic paper. A report in Fast Company says it uses full color e-ink and is about three times bigger than most e-book devices out there, including the Kindle, and is thus being targeted to consumers who want large-view reading of magazines and media bigger than book type. FLEPia contains Windows CE5, sports an SD slot for memory expansion, contains Wi-Fi and USB 2 capability, and can go for 50 hours on a single battery charge.

Foxit Software
DEVICE: eSlick reader DEBUT: December 2008 PRICE: $299

THE SKINNY: Foxit's eSlick Reader met rave reviews when it was released in December and shown at CES, and the first set of eSlicks sold out. The company is currently establishing OEM customers and reseller partners, who are invited to contact the company.

SPECS:: The eSlick has a built-in mp3 player and is 7.4 by 4.7 by 0.4 inches and weighs in at about 6.4 pounds. It connects via USB 2.0, operates on embedded Linux and supports pdf, txt and mp3 formats. Internal memory is 128 MB, storage memory includes an SD card slot and supports up to 4 GB (2 GB included), and it sports a Samsung S3C2400 ARM 400MHz processor.

Polymer Vision
DEVICE: Readius DEBUT: Announced February 2008, yet to hit the market PRICE: Unannounced

THE SKINNY: Polymer Vision, a Dutch company, bills Readius as the "world's first pocket eReader," and it offers a rollable ("foldable") display, with a five-inch screen that actually folds out from the body of the device. Readius doesn't have a specific launch date beyond sometime in 2009. Polymer Vision offers an e-mail sign up through the Readius Web site to receive updates on when, through which channels and in which countries Readius will be made available.

SPECS: The Readius offers 30 hours' worth of battery life (about 7,500 page refreshes), a five-inch display and 16 levels of grayscale. The diagonal display size is 5 inches and it refreshes at a rate of 0.5 seconds, with QVGA 320 x 240 resolution. It operates on Microsoft's WinCE, sports 128 MB of RAM, 256 MB of internal storage and offers a high-capacity micro SD for extendable storage.

Plastic Logic
DEVICE: Plastic Logic Reader DEBUT: Late 2009 (select partners), 2010 (general release) PRICE: Unavailable

THE SKINNY: According to a Feb. 9 article in the New York Times, Plastic Logic is a start-up and announced plans for a 10.7-inch diagonal electronic display e-reader that's larger than the screens of both the Kindle and the Sony Reader. Executives from the company told the Times that the device is intended less for mass consumption and more for business professionals.

SPECS: Beyond the 10.7-inch display, not much is known.

Endless Ideas BV
DEVICE: BeBook eReader DEBUT: May 2008 PRICE: $279

THE SKINNY: BeBook comes from Endless Ideas, BV, a Netherlands-based manufacturer of home and office electronics. BeBooks are purchased direct through the BeBook Web site. The company does offer reseller opportunities for BeBooks as well.

SPECS: BeBook champions are high on the fact that the reader supports a constellation of file formats (including pdf, txt, fb2, doc, html, gif, tif, rar, zip, mp3 and others) and has language support for English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Chinese, Russian, Greek, Japanese, Korean and five others. The BeBook includes 512 MB of internal memory and an SD card slot. It conforms to an open software standard and comes with a 1-year warranty. One battery charge gets you 7,000 page turns.

Shortcovers (Indigo Books & Music)
APP: Shortcovers DEBUT: February 2009 PRICE: Free download

THE SKINNY: Indigo Books & Music operates a chain of book stores in Canada, but its digital book platform, Shortcovers, has been tested for Apple's iPhone and is reportedly also being targeted for Microsoft mobile handsets, the Google Android smartphone and RIM's BlackBerry devices as an e-reader application.

Google
APP: Google Book Search DEBUT: October 2004 PRICE: Free

THE SKINNY: Google Book Search goes back arguably to the creation of Google in the mid-1990s, or at least 2002 when book digitization efforts like Project Gutenberg were underway. The former "Google Print" was renamed Google Book Search in 2005, and in its current incarnation uses optical character recognition to convert scanned Google books into readable text. Available items include 1.5 million public domain works and out-of-copyright items. Through using the Google Book Search, consumers turn iPhones, Androids and other smartphones into e-reading devices. Google Book Search was earlier this month upgraded to include a mobile-specific version.

Microsoft
APP: Microsoft Reader DEBUT: August 2000 PRICE: Free

THE SKINNY: Microsoft Reader is also a freebie, and enables Windows-based devices to display e-books downloaded from online stores. The application includes ClearType display technology, a search function, a notes function, variable font sizes and electronic bookmarks, a drawing function, landscape and portrait modes for tablet and pocket PCs, and other features.

eReader
APP: eReader DEBUT: 1998 PRICE: Free

THE SKINNY: EReader is a freeware program from electronic book publisher eReader.com that comes in versions for Palm OS handhelds, iPhone, iPod touch, Nokia smartphones, Symbian, Windows Mobile Pocket PC/Professional, Windows Mobile Smartphone/Standard, desktop Windows and Mac. It sports bookmark, footnote and e-book producing features like Dropbook. Consumers can purchase e-books through eReaders' Web site, which also offers a number of free books.

Samsung
THE SKINNY:: GottaBeMobile.com was one of the first mobile device blogs to shoot over some impressions and specs of Samsung's e-ink device, the Papyrus, which Samsung brought to its booth at CES in January. GottaBeMobile described the device as having "pen lag on note-taking" that was "vastly improved over the iRex iLiad," and "response was zippy and the built-in apps seemed to be reasonably intuitive." No word on price or availability, GottaBeMobile reported. The blogger guessed the screen to be about five or six inches.

Apple?
THE SKINNY Rumors have swirled that Apple would develop its own e-book reading device ever since Apple CEO Steve Jobs offered cryptic comments to the New York Times in a much-cited interview from January 2008. Plenty of e-book applications work on the iPhone, but a number of tech bloggers since Jobs' Times interview a year ago have repeatedly tried to nudge Apple on whether an Apple eBook reader is far off — or totally unfounded."

Submission + - Converting Lotus Notes apps for Lotus Notes 8 Java

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13, 2009 @05:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: This article describes how to convert a Lotus Notes application to a Java application, using the Personal Journal application as an example. You can apply this technique to convert other Lotus Notes templates so that they can have the look and feel of the Lotus Notes 8 personal information management, or PIM (Mail, Calendar, Contacts), applications.

Submission + - Dark Comets: Another Planetary Threat? (newscientist.com)

Submitted by

DynaSoar

on Friday February 13, 2009 @05:34PM

DynaSoar writes: "After passing through the inner solar system enough times, a comet loses most of its light gasses and water ice, leaving behind a body covered with dark carbonaceous and organic matter. Statistically there should be around 3000 of these but only 25 are known. Bill Napier at Cardiff University and David Asher at Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland claim that many comets could be going undetected. "There is a case to be made that dark, dormant comets are a significant but largely unseen hazard," says Napier. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126954.800-dark-comets-may-pose-threat-to-earth.html Evidence from observations of Comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock and Deep Space 1's visit to Comet Borrelly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19P/Borrelly support the existence of these bodies. Although they may reflect little visible light, the 'good' news is they would absorb light but re-emit it as infrared (heat), which would be visible to newer space telescopes such as Spitzer http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/ . Whether the IR sensing technology will be turned towards determining if such bodies exist in numbers enough to be a threat remains to be seen."

Submission + - Feds: H-1B fraud displaced American workers (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs on Friday February 13, 2009 @05:20PM

dcblogs writes: H-1B visa fraud, the U.S. alleged in indictments unsealed this week, is displacing American workers. The fraud worked like this: A company sets set up a branch office in Des Moines, for instance, where prevailing wages for programmers are estimated at $42,800 to $71,000. But the employee would actually work in a higher wage area, undercutting salaries. In Newark, NJ, for instance, prevailing wages for programmers range from $55,000 to $108,100. The feds arrested 11 people, running a variety of companies from New Jersey to California, as part of it

Submission + - Interactive Fiction Writing Month (instamatique.com)

Submitted by

vyrus128

on Friday February 13, 2009 @03:36PM

vyrus128 writes: "Everybody, geek or not, has a game they've always wanted to write; starting this Sunday you'll get your chance. Interactive Fiction Writing Month is exactly what it sounds like: a month-long shared journey in learning to write IF, much in the spirit of NaNoWriMo. It will run from February 15 to March 15 this year, and no experience is required: the first week will be spent learning to code in Inform, an interactive-fiction language designed to be easy for programmers and nonprogrammers alike. If you want to stay up to date on the festivities, you can also follow the IF Month blog."

Submission + - Indictments Tell How H-1Bs Used To Undercut Wages (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

CWmike

on Friday February 13, 2009 @02:25PM

CWmike writes: "Federal agents said on Thursday that they arrested 11 people in six states in a crackdown on H-1B visa fraud and unsealed documents that detail how the visa process was used to undercut the salaries of U.S. workers. Authorities allege that in some cases, H-1B workers were paid the prevailing wages of low-cost regions and not necessarily the higher salaries paid in the locations where they worked. By doing this, the companies were "displacing qualified American workers and violating prevailing wage laws," said federal authorities in a statement announcing the indictments. Meanwhile, Perot Systems, founded by 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot, a critic of NAFTA who described its after-effect as a "giant sucking sound" of jobs going over the border, has said it will raise the amount of work it offshores to 50%. "We will move more work to locations like India. Many of our clients who have resisted offshoring before will be more receptive now," James Champy, Perot's chairman of consulting, told Reuters."

Submission + - Navy Fighters grounded by Windows virus (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by

toby

on Friday February 13, 2009 @01:14PM

toby writes: "UK Telegraph reports more fallout from Conficker:

The virus attacked the non-secured internal French navy network called Intramar and was detected on 21 January. The whole network was affected and military staff were instructed not to start their computers.

According to Liberation newspaper, two days later the chiefs of staff decided to isolate Intramar from the military's other computer systems, but certain computers at the Villacoublay air base and in the 8th Transmissions Regiment were infected. Liberation reported that on the 15 and 16 January the Navy's Rafale aircraft were "nailed to the ground" because they were unable to "download their flight plans". The aircraft were eventually activated by "another system".

We're not learning yet, are we ... that mission critical systems do not belong on Microsoft products. It is astonishingly stupid that non-US militaries are choosing Microsoft at all."

Submission + - SPAM: UC Berkeley lab defines cloud computing obstacles

Submitted by alphadogg on Friday February 13, 2009 @01:04PM

alphadogg writes: UC Berkeley researchers have outlined their view of cloud computing, which they say has great opportunity to exploit unprecedented IT resources if vendors can overcome a litany of obstacles. "We argue that the construction and operation of extremely large-scale, commodity-computer datacenters at low-cost locations was the key necessary enabler of Cloud Computing," they write. The paper [spam URL stripped] outlines 10 obstacles to cloud computing: 1. Availability of service 2. Data lock-in 3. Data confidentiality and auditability 4. Data transfer bottlenecks 5. Performance unpredictability 6. Scalable storage 7. Bugs in large distributed systems 8. Scaling quickly 9. Reputation fate sharing 10. Software licensing
Link to Original Source

Submission + - JOFfree (\"free\" Java Object Formatter) (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by SF:soloha on Friday February 13, 2009 @12:52PM

SF:soloha writes: The JOFfree library converts a JSON string to Java object, or the reverse. So, why another JSON/Java parser? In short, a Java project I was working on was using JSON and I tried many of the libraries out there and all of them could either not be used on this project without unpleasant workarounds, or lacked needed features. This library is the result of my attempt to address those things I had problems with. I have tried to make it as simple as possible to use and extend, but am open to (and hope for) suggestions or patches. See the end of this overview for a code example. Currently, built in support is included for: All Java Primitive types Any class that implements java.util.Collection An class that implments java.util.Map java.util.Date, or any of it\'s subclasses java.lang.Float java.lang.Integer java.lang.Long java.lang.String The parser will first look for a converter that is an exact match for the object being parsed. If it cannot find one, It will check to see of there are converters for any of the Objects\'s super-classes, or any Interfaces it implements. If that fails, it will gracefully fail for just that Object (some libraries I\'ve used would produce no output at all on any failure). Users may also register their own conversion objects to handle classes that are not handled by default, or override default functionality, by implementing JOFfreeConverter. Proxy objects created by http://cglib.sourceforge.net/apidocs/index.htm are supported. CGLIB is used by many projects including Hibernate and iBatis for their lazy load objects. Built in support for many more Object types, as well as abstracting the code that handles proxy objects so it can be extended to handle any proxy object is planned for the near future, as well as many other features (feel free to suggest any). Sample code: JOFfreeParser parser = new JOFfreeParser(); /* register a custom JOFfreeConverter */ SQLTimestampConverter converter = new SQLTimestampConverter(); parser.registerConverter(converter); /* to JSON */ String json = parser.unmarshall(myObject); /* to Java */ /* an existing MyObject may be used also, and the parser will * \"fill in the blanks\", or override values depending on what\'s * in the JSON string */ MyObject myObject = new MyObject(); myObject = (MyObject)parser.marshall(json, myObject);

Submission + - IBM Files Patent for Bullet Dodging Bionic Armor

Submitted by on Friday February 13, 2009 @12:41PM

An anonymous reader writes: IBM has filed a patent for Bionic Body Armor, that could essentially allow us to dodge bullets like Neo in The Matrix. The armor would scan areas for incoming projectiles and when one is detected the system would deliver a shock to the muscles causing a swift reflexive action away from the projectile. The patent claims "The projectile may be detected in the detecting step by emitting an electromagnetic wave from a projectile detector and receiving the electromagnetic wave after the electromagnetic wave has been reflected back toward the projectile detector by the projectile."

Submission + - How to Self-Publish... Reasonably

Submitted by nametaken on Friday February 13, 2009 @12:27PM

nametaken writes: When it comes to DRM my views are much like any other /. reader. However, one of my family members has recently asked me about self-publishing written works (class materials and tests) in an electronic format that protects it from being copied freely. Naturally I don't want to recommend anything draconian, but I have to respect the authors wish to use some kind of protection. What options exist in the way of a reasonable middle-ground between fairness to the user and protection from willy-nilly copying?

Long-Term PC Preservation Project? 465

Posted by timothy on Saturday January 24, 2009 @05:43PM from the solid-state-drives-perhaps dept.

failcomm writes "I've been talking with my son's (middle-school) computer lab teacher about a 'time capsule' project. The school has a number of 'retirement age' PCs (5-6 years old — Dells, HPs, a couple of Compaqs), and we've been kicking around the idea of trying to preserve a working system and some media (CDs and/or DVDs), and locking them away to be preserved for some period of time (say 50 years); to be opened by students of the future. The goal would be to have instructions on how to unpack the system, plug it into the wall (we'll assume everyone is still using 110v US outlets), and get the system to boot. Also provide instructions on how to load the media and see it in action; whether it is photos or video or games or even student programs — whatever. So first, is this idea crazy? Second, how would we go about packing/preserving various components? Lastly, any suggestions on how to store it long term? (Remember, this is a school project, so we can't exactly just 'freeze it in carbonite'; practical advice would be appreciated.)"

Senator Prods Microsoft On H-1B Visas After Layoff Plans 574

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 24, 2009 @09:18AM from the checking-their-priorities dept.

CWmike writes "US Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) told Microsoft this week that US citizens should get priority over H-1B visa holders as the software vendor moves forward on its plan to cut 5,000 jobs. 'These work visa programs were never intended to allow a company to retain foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American workers, when that company cuts jobs during an economic downturn,' Grassley wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The letter asked Microsoft to detail the types of jobs that will be eliminated and how those cuts will affect the company's H-1B workers." Reader theodp adds, "On Friday, Microsoft coincidentally announced it would postpone construction of a planned $500 million data center in Grassley's home state of Iowa, although work on data centers in Chicago and Dublin will continue."

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