HavanaF - Slashdot User

Submission + - Nokia Windows Phone Revealed (cnet.com)

Submitted by DMiax on Thursday June 23, 2011 @07:42PM

DMiax writes: Nokia's controversial CEO Elopjust revealed the prototype of the next WP7 handset. The CEO asked the journalists present to turn off the cameras because the new was "super confidential". Did he really expect them to comply? After all he must know that this has the potential to hurt the sales of the recently released N9, the last non windows smartphone. He would never want to do that, right?

Submission + - LulzSec Posts First Secret Document Dump (zeropaid.com) 1

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds on Thursday June 23, 2011 @07:34PM

Dangerous_Minds writes: LulzSec has been vowing to expose government secrets for the last few days. Now they have delivered. According to ZeroPaid, LulzSec has posted secret documents about the Arizona Law Enforcement. The release has been posted to file-sharing website ThePirateBay. LulzSec says the release is because they are "against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police
state that is Arizona".

Submission + - Draft Horses Used to Lay Fiber-Optic Cable (vtdigger.org)

Submitted by

mysqlrocks

on Monday May 23, 2011 @02:29PM

mysqlrocks writes: "In Vermont, FairPoint Communications has enlisted draft horses to help lay fiber-optic cable in remote locations. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin has pledged to bring bring broadband to every last mile by 2013, including many remote areas that have been neglected in the past. Private companies have been unwilling to invest in the expensive infrastructure needed to reach these areas. However, Vermont's congressional delegation helped to secure $410 million in federal money earmarked for broadband development and Vermont has partnered with private companies, like FairPoint, to bring high-speed Internet access to all Vermonters.

From the article:
The difficulty of getting cable to "every last mile," is where Fred, the cable-carrying draft horse, comes in.

"Hopefully it pays off," says Hastings.

"We could maybe get a four-wheeler in here," he continues, gesturing to the cleared swath of boggy, fern-studded terrain that he's working in today. But definitely not a truck, and Fred's impact is nearly invisible. Residents rarely complain about a draft horse tromping through their yards.

"

Submission + - Say what?! US fancies a huge metaphor repository (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Monday May 23, 2011 @12:38PM

coondoggie writes: "Researchers with the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity want to build a repository of metaphors. You read that right. Not just American/English metaphors mind you but those of Iranian Farsi, Mexican Spanish and Russian speakers. Why metaphors? "Metaphors have been known since Aristotle as poetic or rhetorical devices that are unique, creative instances of language artistry (for example: The world is a stage; Time is money). Over the last 30 years, metaphors have been shown to be pervasive in everyday language and to reveal how people in a culture define and understand the world around them," IARPA says."

Submission + - New laser data transfer rate record set at 26 Tbps (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by MasterPatricko on Monday May 23, 2011 @06:09AM

MasterPatricko writes: Scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany have published a technique to push optical data transfer rates to new levels.
"We demonstrate an optical fast Fourier transform scheme that provides the necessary computing power to encode lower-bitrate tributaries into 10.8 and 26.0 Tbit s-1 line-rate data streams ... To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest line rate ever encoded onto a single light source."
Slashdot readers may find it useful to know that 26Tbps is approximately 0.1 Libraries of Congress per second.
Original paper in Nature Photonics

Submission + - Cooperative cars battle it out in Holland (gcdc.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23, 2011 @03:22AM

An anonymous reader writes: The first cooperative platooning competition, where vehicles use radio communication in addition to sensors, was held in Helmond, Holland a week ago. By using wireless communication the awareness range of each vehicle is extended, enabling vehicles to travel closer together which increases road capacity while at the same time avoiding the shockwave effects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave) responsible for traffic jams. The Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge distinguishes itself from earlier platooning demos (e.g. the PATH project, http://www.path.berkeley.edu/nahsc/) by having a completely heterogeneous mix of vehicles and systems built by multiple researcher and student teams. Using wireless communication to coordinate vehicles raises concerns about the safety of such systems, would you trust WiFi to drive your car?

Submission + - MasterCard transactions to be mined for CO2 data (mastercard.com)

Submitted by

seamus1abshere

on Thursday May 12, 2011 @05:40PM

seamus1abshere writes: "In the latest twist from Big Data, MasterCard and Brighter Planet today announced that cardholder transaction data will be mined for clues about CO2 emissions. Initial coverage will be of flights, car rentals, hotels and other purchases for which the credit card company stores extra metadata. Interestingly, the science behind the offering is all open source."

Submission + - How Bin Laden Email System Prevented US Detection 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Thursday May 12, 2011 @05:32PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Christian Science Monitor reports that Osama bin Laden was a prolific writer who put together a painstaking email system that thwarted the US government's best eavesdroppers despite having no Internet access in his hideout. Holed up in his walled compound in northeast Pakistan with no phone or Internet capabilities, bin Laden would type a message on his computer without an Internet connection, then save it using a thumb-sized flash drive that he passed to a trusted courier, who would head for a distant Internet cafe. At that location, the courier would plug the memory drive into a computer, copy bin Laden's message into an email and send it. Reversing the process, the courier would copy any incoming email to the flash drive and return to the compound, where bin Laden would read his messages offline.It was a slow, toilsome process but it was so meticulous that even veteran intelligence officials have marveled at bin Laden's ability to maintain it for so long. Intelligence officials are wading through thousands of the email exchanges after around 100 flash drives were seized from the compound by U.S. Navy Seals in last week's raid in which bin Laden was killed."

Submission + - Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters (makezine.com) 1

Submitted by

ptorrone

on Thursday May 12, 2011 @01:13PM

ptorrone writes: "Earlier this week at Google I/O, Google announced the Android Open Accessory kit which uses the open source hardware platform, Arduino. MAKE magazine has an in-depth article about why Google choosing the Arduino matters, why Google picked Arduino and some predictions about what's next for Apple's "Made for iPod" as well and what Microsoft/Nokia/Skype should do to keep up."

Submission + - Newt Gingrich's Amazon Book Reviews (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by

lee1

on Thursday May 12, 2011 @12:03PM

lee1 writes: "Newt Gingrich has written 156 book reviews on Amazon, at one point becoming ranked in the site's top 500 list. Most of the books are cheesy political thrillers, but the newly announced presidential candidate is also trying to learn about quantum physics, and shows good taste, 'strongly recommending' Richard Feynman’s QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter."

Submission + - Scientists Develop iPhone Tickling Transmission (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Thursday May 12, 2011 @11:47AM

itwbennett writes: "Last week, a video circulated of how Japanese scientists were working on a machine that lets you kiss over the Internet. Now, the same team is working on a project that would let two iPhone users tickle each other's palms (or, presumably, other body parts) across the Internet."

Submission + - A Fourth Domain of Life? (economist.com)

Submitted by ecesar on Thursday March 24, 2011 @06:41PM

ecesar writes: The Economist is reporting on a recent paper published in the Public Library of Science, which suggests there might be at least one other, previously hidden, domain of life (besides eukaryotes, bacteria and archaea). Using DNA sequence data generated directly from environmental samples, the authors found sequences not yet seen in any cultured organism.

Submission + - Microsoft buys 666,000 IP addresses (internetgovernance.org) 1

Submitted by

RabidMonkey

on Thursday March 24, 2011 @01:51PM

RabidMonkey writes: "Microsoft has managed to purchase 666,624 IP addresses from the bankrupt Canadian company Nortel for $7.5 million. This works out to $11.25/ip. An exact list of blocks isn't available yet. There has been a lot of discussion on NANOG about whether this allowed or not, and what the implications to the dwindling IPv4 pool may be. Is this the first of many such moves as IPv4 address space has run out? Will ARIN step in and block the sale/transfer? How long will such measures drag out the eventual necessity of IPv6?"

Comment Seniors like curated computing (Score 1) 331

by HavanaF on Saturday May 15, 2010 @03:45AM (#32217954) Attached to: Shall We Call It "Curated Computing?"

Five years ago the simpc was launched in The Netherlands. Many seniors love the basic, "curated computer", with a $12 per month subscription. It offers mail, browsing, chat, skype, open office, a photo album, some games, full support, security, automatic backup and a lifetime guarantee, including replacement if the computer might ever fail. That seems to be enough for most people.

Submission + - FCC to make move on net neutrality (thehill.com)

Submitted by GrApHiX42 on Wednesday May 05, 2010 @05:35PM

GrApHiX42 writes: The FCC will announce on Thursday it plans to pursue a "third way" forward in the fight for tough net neutrality rules, opening a new front in an ongoing legal battle that could come to define the commission under Chairman Julius Genachowski. A senior FCC official said Wednesday that the chairman "will seek to restore the status quo as it existed" before a federal court ruled it lacked the authority to regulate broadband providers and set rules that mandate open Internet. The goal is to "fulfill the previously stated agenda of extending broadband to all Americans, protecting consumers, ensuring fair competition, and preserving a free and open Internet," the FCC official said.

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