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Intel

Submission + - Andy Grove to Industry: Get off your Ass

Submitted by lousyd
lousyd writes: Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel and present instructor at Stanford Business School, has a message for industry. He believes that health care and energy, especially, could learn a lesson from computing's innovative and relatively government-free history. He asks students to imagine if mainframe vendors had asked government to prop them up in the same way that General Motors has recently had. On the issue of computer patents, he insists that firms must use their patents or lose them: "You can't just sit on your ass and give everyone the finger."
Security

Submission + - Cybercitizens to Hunt Down Hackers

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Business Week reports that security experts plan to recruit victims and other computer users to help them go on the offensive and hunt down hackers. "It's time to stop building burglar alarms to keep people out and go after the bad guys," says Rowan Trollope, senior vice-president for consumer products at Symantec, the largest maker of antivirus software. Symantec will ask customers to opt in to a program that will collect data about attempted computer intrusions and then forward the information to authorities. Symantec will also begin posting the FBI's top 10 hackers and their schemes on its Web site, where customers go for software updates and next year the company will begin offering cash bounties for information leading to an arrest. The strategy has its risks as hackers who find novices on their trail may trash their computers or steal their identities as punishment. Citizen hunters could also become cybervigilantes and harm bystanders as they pursue criminals but Symantec is betting customers won't mind being disrupted if they can help snare the bad guys. "I'm convinced we can clean up the Internet in 10 years if we can peel away the dirt and show people the threats they're facing," says Trollope."
Power

Submission + - Mixing Coal and Solar to Produce Cheaper Energy (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
Al
Al writes: "It might not please many environmentalists, but a major energy company adding solar-thermal power to a coal plant and says this could be the cost-effective way to produce energy while lowering CO2 emissions. Abengoa Solar and Xcel Energy, Colorado's largest electrical utility, have begun modifying the coal plant, which is based near Grand Junction, Colorado. Under the design, parabolic troughs will be used to preheat water that will be fed into the coal plant's boilers, where coal is burned to turn the water into steam. Cost savings comes from using existing turbines and generators and from operating at higher efficiencies, since the turbines and generators in solar-thermal plants are normally optimized to run at the lower temperatures generated by parabolic mirrors."
The Internet

Submission + - How 136 people became "7m illegal file-sharers (pcpro.co.uk) 5

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "The British Government's official figures on the level of illegal file sharing in the UK come from questionable research commissioned by the music industry. The Radio 4 show More or Less examined the Government's claim that 7m people in Britain are engaged in illegal file sharing. The 7m figure actually came from a report written about music industry losses for Forrester subsidiary Jupiter Research — that report was privately commissioned by none other than the music trade body, the BPI. The 7m figure had been rounded up from an actual figure of 6.7m, gleaned from a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, 11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software — in other words, only 136 people. That 11.6% was adjusted upwards to 16.3% "to reflect the assumption that fewer people admit to file sharing than actually do it." The 6.7m figure was then calculated based on an estimated number of internet users that disagreed with the Government's own estimate. The wholly unsubstantiated 7m figure was then released as an official statistic."
Cellphones

Submission + - Cell phone cost calculator killed in Canada (thestar.com)

Submitted by inject_hotmail.com
inject_hotmail.com writes: Internet and law genius Michael Geist writes about some shinanigans by the cell phone carriers and the Canadian government in his column in The Star. Canadian tax payers funded a "Cell Phone Cost Calculator" so that the average person could theoretically wade through the disjointed and incongruent package offerings just to have to yanked a couple weeks before launch. Michael Geist suggests that the major cell carriers lobbied the appropriate public officials to have the program nixed because it would bite into their profit if the general people could make sense out of pricing and fees. Geist continues "Sensing that [Tony] Clement (Industry Minister) was facing pressure to block the calculator, Canadian consumer groups wrote to the minister, urging him to stick with it.". Moving forward Michael makes a novel suggestion, one that would show an immense level of understanding by the government — "With public dollars having funded the mothballed project, the government should now consider releasing the calculator's source code and enable other groups to pick up where the OCA (Office of Consumer Affairs) left off."
Space

Submission + - Kepler believed to be able to discover exomoons! (redorbit.com)

Submitted by
Lord Northern
Lord Northern writes: "According to several news sources, Kepler mission is said to be able to detect habitable moons orbiting planets on other solar systems.
Kepler is a NASA space telescope designed to detect exoplanets. It'll be on its mission orbiting the sun for 3.5 years at the end of which we'll be able to tell which of our neighboring stars actually have planetary systems around them.
However, apparently we will be able to detect not only exoplanets, but also exomoons orbiting those exoplanets. The Kepler team came to that conclusion after running a computer simulation, which found that the telescope was sensitive enough to detect gravitational pull of an orbiting moon which means that the data expected by the end of the mission is going to be very rich as it is said that moons as small as 0.2 times the mass of earth could be detected."
Security

Submission + - Code-breaking quantum algorithm on a silicon chip

Submitted by
Urchin
Urchin writes: "Shor's quantum algorithm, which offers a way to crack the commonly used RSA encryption algorithm, has been demonstrated on a silicon chip for the first time. The algorithm was first demonstrated on large tabletop arrays 3 years ago, but the photonic quantum circuit can now be printed relatively easily onto a silicon chip just 25 mm long. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17736-codebreaking-quantum-algorithm-run-on-a-silicon-chip.html"
Businesses

Submission + - Appropriate interviewing for a worldwide search.

Submitted by jellomizer
jellomizer writes: I am a manger of a small Software Development department, looking to hire some more developers. By edict of the CEO the search must be made globally. So we are dealing with different cultures and different ideas of truth and embellishments, etc... To try to counteract we give the potential employees tests where I watch what they do, to see if they actually know what they say they know. However it seems a lot of applicants drop out when mention that this test is mandatory. Is this a sign that we caught them in a lie, or are we weeding out good people where we shouldn't be? Would you be willing to take a test as part of the interview, if so is there any type of heads up you would like to know beforehand to make a decision to take the test easier?
Transportation

Submission + - Love Child of a Penny Farthing and a Big Wheel

Submitted by RainbowBrite
RainbowBrite writes: The YikeBike is the invention of a New Zealander aiming to alleviate city congestion. "It might look like a collision between a praying mantis and a child's scooter, but it's the result of five years of work to reinvent the wheel, with one important addition: an electric motor. It's a bicycle, but not as we have come to know it. For a start, you sit upright and steer with your hands at your side."

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