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Iphone

Submission + - IPhone 4S's Siri is a bandwidth guzzler (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Frankie70
Frankie70 writes: Siri’s dirty little secret is that she’s a bandwidth guzzler, the digital equivalent of a 10-miles-per-gallon Hummer H1.

A study by Arieso shows that users of the iPhone 4S demand three times as much data as iPhone 3G users and twice as much as iPhone 4 users, who were identified as the most demanding in the 2010 study.

In all, Arieso says that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S “appears to unleash data consumption behaviors that have no precedent.”
Microsoft

Submission + - Asus working on Kinect Windows 8 laptop (winbeta.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: New reports are appearing on the web today suggesting that Asus are working on a new laptop that will include Kinect gestures and will be compatible with Windows 8. What does this mean for the consumer? Portable gestures in Windows 8!
Education

Submission + - Gates Paying Murdoch for System to Track U.S. Kids

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Discussing U.S. education in his 2012 Annual Letter, Bill Gates notes the importance of 'tools and services [that] have the added benefit of providing amazing visibility into how each individual student is progressing, and generating lots of useful data that teachers can use to improve their own effectiveness.' Well, Bill is certainly putting his millions where his mouth is. The Gates Foundation has ponied up $76.5 million for a controversial student data tracking initiative that's engaged Rupert Murdoch's Wireless Generation to 'build the open software that will allow states to access a shared, performance-driven marketplace of free and premium tools and content.' If you live in CO, IL, NC, NY, MA, LA, GA, or DE, it's coming soon to a public school near you. Gates is also funding other billionaires' aligned initiatives and bankrolling astrotuf-likened school advocacy, raising concerns about undue influence and prompting a call for eliminating the charitable giving tax deduction. 'This year, governments may lose $50 billion because of tax deductions taken overwhelmingly by the rich for charitable givings intended primarily to enhance their status with their brethren or to attack the public sector,' writes David Morris. 'We can't stop the rich from using their money for their own purposes. But we should not add insult to injury by giving them huge amounts of public sums to attack the public sector.' Hey, what could go wrong?
Security

Submission + - FBI Building App to Scrape Twitter, Facebook (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The FBI is in the early stages of developing an application that would monitor sites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as various news feeds, in order to find information on emerging threats and new events happening at the moment. The tool would give specialists the ability to pull the data into a dashboard that also would include classified information that's coming in at the same time.

One of the key capabilities of the new application, for which the FBI has sent out a solicitation, would be to "provide an automated search and scrape capability for social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI/SIOC."

The FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center is looking to use the application to help it collect better open source intelligence for use in investigations and breaking events. The bureau's solicitation says that the app must be secure, lightweight and "have the ability to rapidly assemble critical information and open source information and intelligence that will allow the SIOC to quickly vet, identify and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats."

Submission + - Any tips on a self-taught skill that can be used t 1

Submitted by
ThatGamerChick
ThatGamerChick writes: "I'm a stay at home mom, but I'd like to be a work at home mom. I've done a few writing gigs, but I'm not a really good writer and cannot charge the fees needed for it to be worth my time. I'm just looking for something that I can teach myself in a few months and start taking small projects and working my way up from there.

I've found that PHP, HTML and CSS to be the most demanded skills on sites like Elance, but the talent pool is flooded with overseas workers and Americans with so much more experience than me. Even when I was offering writing and virtual admin services on Elance I was having a hard time against them.

So, I figured that I'd ask the good people at slashdot, because I think most of you may have a good insight on this type of thing as an employer of freelancers or as the freelancer themselves. Thanks in advance."
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Man who downloaded bomb recipes jailed for 2 years 2

Submitted by chrb
chrb writes: Asim Kauser, a 25 year old British man, has been jailed for 2 years and 3 months for downloading recipes on how to make bombs and the toxin ricin. Police discovered the materials on a USB stick that Asim's father gave to them following a burglary at the Kauser family home. Asim pled guilty and claimed that he only downloaded the materials because he was curious. A North West Counter-Terrorism Unit spokesman said "I also want to stress that this case is not about policing people's freedom to browse the Internet. The materials that were downloaded were not stumbled upon by chance — these had to be searched for and contained very dangerous information that could have led to an explosive device being built."

Submission + - Civ IV's Baba Yetu wins first grammy for video gam (on.net)

Submitted by quantumstream
quantumstream writes: Christopher Tin made video game history yesterday by winning a Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) for his song, Baba Yetu, featured prominently as the main theme song of Civilization IV. The composer, who wrote the song for his former Stanford University roommate Soren Johnson, has also seen the work featured at the largest choreographed water fountain in the world at the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai.

Comment Re:From a maintainer's perspective . . . (Score 1) 236

by TheReij (#35035170) Attached to: Challenger 25 Years Later
You're talking about two very well documented design/engineering failures, I'm talking about a maintenance perspective. Maintainers do not design the aircraft, they perform work on aircraft assigned to them. The guy that changes the tire, replaces the tiles or changes a light bulb has no say in what type of O-Ring is used or the application of foam on the external fuel tank.

I fail to see where my praising of the workers around makes me a NASA apologist. My statement tha there is no amount of planning/engineering/contingencies that will allow for recovery may have been interpreted by you as being apologetic to a design flaw. I'm sorry that I didn't get my style manual out to write my post on /.

Thank you.

Comment From a maintainer's perspective . . . (Score 4, Insightful) 236

by TheReij (#35034716) Attached to: Challenger 25 Years Later
this is my worst nightmare: something that I performed work on malfunctions and lives are lost. Mishaps occur. Sometimes, it is preventable. Sometimes, there is no amount of planning/engineering/contingencies that will allow for recovery. The amount of second-guessing and contemplation of "what could I have done?" can't be described in a number that I know of.

An earlier comment talked about remaining stoic at mission/launch control. It's the same for the knuckle-draggers on the ground as well. If anything, those directly involved with the launch have the hardest job. I personally don't think that I could have handled something like this the way that they did, so for that, I salute them and only hope that I can be half as awesome as they were on that day.

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