Unknown Lamer - Slashdot User

Submission + - Ancient Languages Reconstructed by Computers (halls-of-valhalla.org)

Submitted by

halls-of-valhalla

on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @08:18AM

halls-of-valhalla writes: "Researchers have developed a new software which can be used to reconstruct dead, ancient languages using probabilistic models of sound change.

This new software was tested by taking 637 Austronesian languages currently spoken in Asia and the Pacific, and attempting to reconstruct the ancient languages they're based on. The system was found to have provided a relatively accurate, large-scale automatic reconstruction of the protolanguages. A language believed to be roughtly seven thousand years old was reconstructed using a database of 142,000 words.

When compared to the results of linguists specializing in Austronesian languages, more 85% of the system's reconstructions were found to be within one character of the manual reconstruction. These are very promising results, however a linguist is still able to produce a higher accuracy, so this will be likely to become a tool used by linguists rather than a replacement for them."

Submission + - Obama Administration Asks Supreme Court To Not Hear Jammie Thomas Case (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Jane Q. Public on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @05:19AM

Jane Q. Public writes: The Jammie Thomas-Rasset case has been in the news for years now. As of the last court ruling, she has been ordered to pay $222,000 for sharing 24 songs. Her attorney argues that you can buy the same songs on iTunes for $24, and imposing a penalty of almost 10,000 times as much is "excessive and oppressive". The case has been appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Obama Administration has asked the Supreme Court to not review the case. Is this another example of this administration pandering to the copyright tro... I mean corporations, rather than The People they are supposed to represent?

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What is your favorite monitor for programming?

Submitted by BadassFractal on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @04:00AM

BadassFractal writes: I'm in the market for a new large desktop monitor (or two) which I intend to use almost exclusively for programming and all sorts of software development-related work. I'm trying to keep the cost down reasonable, and I do enjoy as large of a resolution as possible. What do people "in the know" out there use these days for that purpose? I'm thinking a 1920x1200 24" would be good, unless there's an affordable 2560xFoo option out there. I keep hearing about nameless Korean 27" screens, any thoughts on that one?

Thanks!

Submission + - Jeri Ellsworth and Valve Part Ways (engadget.com)

Submitted by jollyrgr3 on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @01:30AM

jollyrgr3 writes: Self taught Electrical Engineer and designer of the Commodore 64 in a Joystick Jeri Ellsworth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth) announced her firing from Valve on Tuesday via this Twitter Tweet https://twitter.com/jeriellsworth/status/301521067816669184. Jeri had been working on hardware designs rumored to be Steambox controllers for games. Details were not available as of this time.

Submission + - Did dinosaurs produce milk for their young? (australiangeographic.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @05:44PM

An anonymous reader writes: A controversial study suggests dinosaurs may have produced a milk-like substance to feed rapidly growing hatchlings... 'The dinosaur milk could have been loaded with growth hormone, antioxidants, calcium and minerals to boost growth. As a bonus, both parents can do it, says Paul. The problem now is finding fossil evidence for this theory, which "is going to be hard," he says.'

Comment Re:Better one standard than a dozen shitty ones. (Score 1) 290

by Unknown Lamer on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @02:11PM (#42873437) Attached to: W3C Declares DRM In-Scope For HTML

Here's the thing with having a dozen crappy proprietary solutions: divide and conquer. Let them try, and watch them fail I say.

Submission + - DARPA's new 1.8-gigapixel camera is a super high-resolution eye in the sky (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @04:17AM

cylonlover writes: DARPA recently revealed information on its ARGUS-IS (Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System), a surveillance camera that uses hundreds of smartphone image sensors to record a 1.8 gigapixel image. Designed for use in an unmanned drone (probably an MQ-1 Predator), from an altitude of 20,000 ft (6,100 m) ARGUS can keep a real-time video eye on an area 4.5 miles (7.2 km) across down to a resolution of about six inches (15 cm).

Submission + - Email Domain Protection Effort Gains Traction (darkreading.com)

Submitted by

CowboyRobot

on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @04:03AM

CowboyRobot writes: "An industry effort to protect corporate brands from email domain spoofing has been adopted by Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft, as well as major Russian and Chinese email providers in the past year, bringing the trusted email standard Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) to 60 percent of email users worldwide and 80 percent of U.S. consumers. Facebook messaging engineer Michael Adkins says large and small domains from various vertical markets are adopting DMARC. "I've been working on email-related abuse issues for close to 10 years now. The standards, [such as] DKIM, sort of sit there and nothing happens," Adkins says. "But with DMARC, this is the end of a very long road for a lot of people in the industry. We're finally seeing everything click into place""

Submission + - Building a community-based cell phone network in Mexico (indiegogo.com) 1

Submitted by

ciaby

on Monday February 11, 2013 @11:51PM

ciaby writes: "We are a small group of hackers, media makers and community organizers who's mission is to increase access to mobile telecommunications to the over 2 billion people without affordable coverage and the 700 million with none at all.
We are now trying to raise enough money to buy the first GSM base station and do the initial test run. There is a Indiegogo campaign going on, and every help is very much appreciated."

Submission + - Raspberry Pi Gets A $25 Camera (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk on Monday February 11, 2013 @07:54AM

mikejuk writes: Raspberry Pi seems to be developing into a complete system for DIY. Now we have a video camera to add to the list of goodies — and it's only $25. The slightly bad news is that it is only 5 mega pixels, but this is reasonable for such a low-cost module and for the computing powers of the Pi — it's still more than 1080p Hi-Def video for example. It is directly interfaced to the GPU via a special connector on the board, i.e. not the GPIO, with a bandwidth good enough for video. The module is expected to be available in about a month — there is some work to do on the drivers.

Comment Re:14 LY from earth? (Score 2) 132

by Unknown Lamer on Wednesday February 06, 2013 @05:51PM (#42813999) Attached to: Kepler: Many Red Dwarfs Have Earth-SIzed Planets Too

Well, if an inhabited planet were only 15 or 30 light years away... there's a chance for some form of communication... a "hey we're a technological society" beacon at least. Having any evidence of another technological civilization in our neighborhood would be incredible, and might even inspire humanity to do things like colonize the solar system.

Comment Re:Do Not Want (Score 5, Informative) 384

by Unknown Lamer on Wednesday February 06, 2013 @01:08PM (#42809975) Attached to: Experience the New Slashdot Mobile Site

There's no evil conspiracy here (see the permissions the facebook "app" requests for example: just your name and email address); we just wanted to make it easier for people to login. I personally wouldn't use it (but I'm in the set of people who only grudgingly use facebook in the first place since everyone else is doing it), but folks immediately started using it, even without us mentioning that it existed.

Luckily, it's just an option, and will never supersede the native account system. Different strokes for different folks and insert other appropriate cliches here.

Submission + - Silent Circle releases apps for secure file transfer (slate.com)

Submitted by dreegle on Wednesday February 06, 2013 @05:09AM

dreegle writes: Phil Zimmerman's Silent Circle had previously released an app for secure phone calls. "Now, the company is pushing things even further—with a groundbreaking encrypted data transfer app that will enable people to send files securely from a smartphone or tablet at the touch of a button. (For now, it’s just being released for iPhones and iPads, though Android versions should come soon.) That means photographs, videos, spreadsheets, you name it—sent scrambled from one person to another in a matter of seconds."

Submission + - KDE 4.10 Released, The Fastest KDE Ever (muktware.com) 1

Submitted by sfcrazy on Wednesday February 06, 2013 @02:33AM

sfcrazy writes: The KDE team has announced the 4.10 releases of KDE Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. It brings many improvements, features and polishes the UI even further, which already is one of the most polished, stable and mature desktop environments. With 4.10 KDE users can experience a much more sane global-menu like implementation without interrupting their workflow. A list of improvements is available here.

Submission + - Evasi0n iOS Jailbreak Exploits Five Unique Zero-Day Bugs (forbes.com)

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution on Wednesday February 06, 2013 @01:47AM

Sparrowvsrevolution writes: In the escalating chess match between Apple's security team and the jailbreakers who work to disassemble the restrictions on its devices, the exploit for every device ends up being more complex than the last. So it's no surprise that the latest, for iOS 6.1, has reached practically a grand master level of technological complexity.

David Wang, a developer for the hacker team that calls themselves the evad3rs has broken down the workings of the team's new iOS jailbreak, evasi0n, in an interview. He explains how the exploit chains together five distinct new bugs in iOS to escalate from a minor vulnerability in the device's mobile backup system into a series of tricks that defeat both the device's code-signing restrictions and its Address Space Layout Randomization to gain the ability to write persistent changes to the kernel. The step-by-step description of the process highlights just how much work and innovation went into evasi0n--and how hard Apple is working to raise the bar for jailbreakers.

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