Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re:One Space for Me (Score 1) 814

by e-ignite (#33143338) Attached to: Sentence Spacing — 1 Space or 2?
I used to do two spaces every time until I started posting stuff online (Wordpress blogs, online forms etc) when I found that the one space worked better / made more sense and I made an effort to use single spaces only. However, since getting a new phone and finding the double-tap on the keyboard gave a full stop followed by a space, I've found my old double-spacing habit has come back. I guess your own use pattern dictates your habits, but if you've typed with a double space for years, it's a pretty hard habit to break.
Piracy

Sony Joins the Offensive Against Pre-Owned Games 461

Posted by Soulskill from the saddle-up dept.
BanjoTed writes "In a move to counter sales of pre-owned games, EA recently revealed DLC perks for those who buy new copies of Mass Effect 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Now, PlayStation platform holder Sony has jumped on the bandwagon with similar plans for the PSP's SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3. '[Players] will need to register their game online before they are able to access the multiplayer component of the title. UMD copies will use a redeemable code while the digital version will authenticate automatically in the background. Furthermore ... anyone buying a pre-owned copy of the game will be forced to cough up $20 to obtain a code to play online."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Contest to hack Brazilian voting machines

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Brazilian elections have gone electronic many years ago with very fast results but a few complaints from losers, of course. Next month 10 teams that accepted the challenge will have access to hardware and software for the time they asked for (from one hour to four days). Some will try to break the vote secrecy and some will try to throw in malicious code to change the entered votes without leaving traces. TFA (in portuguese) is here.
Medicine

Submission + - How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes , paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and "frisk" people at distance. That's not to mention the great potential they have in medical imaging. Because terahertz photons are not energetic enough to break chemical bonds or ionise electrons, it's easy to dismiss fears over their health effects. And yet the evidence is mixed: some studies have reported significant genetic damage while others, although similar, have reported none. Now a team led by Los Alamos National Labs thinks it knows why. They say that although the forces that terahertz waves exert on double-stranded DNA are tiny, in certain circumstances resonant effects can unzip the DNA strands, tearing them apart. This creates bubbles in the strands that can significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. With terahertz scanners already appearing in airports and hospitals, the question that now urgently needs answering is what level of exposure is safe.
Google

Submission + - LA City goes Google Apps (with Microsoft cash) (cio.com.au)

Submitted by Dan Jones
Dan Jones writes: Los Angeles City Council has approved a US$7.25 million, five-year deal with Google in which the city will adopt Gmail and other Google Apps. Interestingly, just over $1.5 million for the project will come from the payout of a 2006 class action lawsuit between the City and Microsoft (Microsoft paid $70 million three years ago to settle the suit by six California counties and cities who alleged that Microsoft used its monopoly position to overcharge for software). The city will migrate from Novell GroupWise e-mail servers. For security, Google will provide a new separate data environment called 'GovCloud' to store both applications and data in a completely segregated environment that will only be used by public agencies. This GovCloud would be encrypted and 'physically and logically segregated' from Google's standard applications. Has cloud computing stepped up to prime time?
Programming

Submission + - Speech-to-Speech Translator Developed for iPhone

Submitted by
Ponca City, We love you
Ponca City, We love you writes: "Dr. Dobbs reports that Alex Waibel, professor of computer science and language technologies at Carnegie Mellon University, has developed an iPhone application that turns the iPhone into a translator that converts English speech into Spanish, or vice versa. Users simply speak a sentence or two at a time into the iPhone and the iPhone will respond with an audible translation. "Jibbigo's software runs on the iPhone itself, so it doesn't need to be connected to the Web to access a distant server," says Waibel. Waibel is an leader in speech-to-speech translation and multimodal speech interfaces, creating the first real-time, speech-to-speech translator for English, German and Japanese. "Automated speech translation is an expensive proposition that has been supported primarily by large government grants," says Waibel. "But our sponsors are impatient to see this technology become more widely available and we, as researchers, are eager to find new revenues that will help us extend this technology to more of the 6,000 languages now spoken worldwide.""
Desktops (Apple)

Submission + - Review: Psystar's Rebel EFI Hackintosh Tool (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: While the world focused on Microsoft's launch of Windows 7, Florida-based Psystar quietly launched Rebel EFI, a software product that should worry Apple a lot more than Microsoft's latest operating system. Rebel EFI allows users to run Apple's flagship operating system, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, on non-Apple hardware. Computerworld test drove the making a Hackintosh out of a generic PC with company's new software package and found a product that has a lot of homework still to do. Reviewer Frank Ohlhorst's final analysis: "Psystar's Rebel EFI [ a free trial is available ] is an interesting tool, but it is very limited when it comes to the selection of hardware that you can use. The company really needs to create a compatible hardware list and post that on its Web site — and it also needs to create some usable documentation. As it stands right now, you can use Rebel EFI to build a Mac clone, but unless you stick to relatively generic hardware, you will be disappointed."
NASA

Submission + - Ultra cool NASA App for iPhone released today (nasa.gov)

Submitted by lenehey
lenehey writes: A new free iPhone app provided by NASA was released today. The iPhone app lists each of NASA's missions, and allows you to see a brief description, latest news updates, images, videos, etc. corresponding to that mission. A timer is also provided for each mission, logging the days, hours, and seconds until, or since, the mission launched.
Patents

Submission + - Apple seeks patent on operating system advertising (ipwatchdog.com)

Submitted by patentpundit
patentpundit writes: On April 18, 2008, Apple Computer applied for a patent relating to an "invention" that allows for the showing of advertisements within an operating system. The first named inventor on the patent application is none other than Steve Jobs, the CEO and co-founder. The patent application published and became available for public inspection on October 22, 2009. If implemented the invention would make it possible for advertisements to be displayed on a variety of devices, including a desktop computer, cell phones, PDAs and more. In one alarming aspect, the device could be disabled during the running of advertisements, thereby forcing users to not be able to use the device and be forced to let the advertisement run its course before the system would unlock and allow further use. In an even more invasive version explained in the patent application the user could be required to do something, such as click to continue, in order to verify that they are actively watching the advertisement and haven't simply walked away to let the ad run its course. Whether Apple would implement such an invention is unknown, but it is possible that they think there are others out there who might want to implement such invasive advertising. It is possible Apple wanted to get ahead of the curve and file this patent so that if an company is silly enough to engage in Big Brother advertising they will have to be paid a royalty. I sure hope this is not the future of advertising.

Submission + - Patent case ruling against Microsoft overturned (theage.com.au)

Submitted by
some_guy_88
some_guy_88 writes: "The $338 million verdict against Microsoft disucssed here previously for violating a patent held by Uniloc has been overturned. Ric Richardson, who divides his time between NSW, Australia and California, is the founder of Uniloc, which sued Microsoft in 2003 for violating its patent relating to technology designed to deter software piracy."
Privacy

Submission + - Police Can't Place GPS on Autos without Warrant

Submitted by
pickens
pickens writes: "EFF reports that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has held in Commonwealth v. Connolly that police may not place GPS tracking devices on cars without first getting a warrant reasoning that the installation of the GPS device was a seizure of the suspect's vehicle. Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime. According to the decision "when an electronic surveillance device is installed in a motor vehicle, be it a beeper, radio transmitter, or GPS device, the government's control and use of the defendant's vehicle to track its movements interferes with the defendant's interest in the vehicle notwithstanding that he maintains possession of it." Although the case only protects drivers in Massachusetts, another recent state court case, People v. Weaver in the State of New York, also held that because modern GPS devices are far more powerful than beepers, police must get a warrant to use the trackers, even on cars and people traveling the public roads. "Massachusetts and New York are in the forefront of protecting their citizens' right to location privacy against technological encroachment," writes Jennifer Granick, Civil Liberties Director at the EFF. "Federal courts should do the same under the Fourth Amendment. For the Constitution to have continued relevance in a technological world, it should protect the privacy that individuals reasonably anticipate as we move through the world, and that means no pervasive, remote, suspicionless, wholesale tracking by GPS or other device.""
Android

Google Serves a Cease-and-Desist On Android Modder 336

Posted by kdawson from the doubleplus-ungoogly dept.
Several readers sent in word that Google has served a Cease and Desist order to Cyanogen, one of the most prolific Android modders: his CyanogenMod is enjoyed by 30,000 users. The move is puzzling. Gizmodo wonders what Google's game is, and Lauren Weinstein calls the move "not of the high 'Googley' caliber" that one would expect of the company.
Privacy

Submission + - ISP mistakenly emails customer database to thousan (pcpro.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "British ISP Demon Internet has mistakenly sent out a spreadsheet containing the personal details of more than 3,600 customers with one of its new ebills. The spreadsheet contains email addresses, telephone numbers and what appears to be usernames and passwords for the ebilling system. It was attached to an email explaining how to use the new system. Police forces and NHS trusts are among the email addresses listed in the database. A spokesman for Demon Internet confirmed that the company "was aware this happened this morning"."
Mozilla

Submission + - Firefox to replace menus with Office Ribbon (pcpro.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Mozilla has announced that its plans to bring Office 2007's Ribbon interface to Firefox, as it looks to tidy up its "dated" browser. "Starting with Vista, and continuing with Windows 7, the menu bar is going away," notes Mozilla in its plans for revamping the Firefox user interface. "[It will] be replaced with things like the Windows Explorer contextual strip, or the Office Ribbon, [which is] now in Paint and WordPad, too." The change will also bring Windows' Aero Glass effects to the browser."

Slashdot Top Deals

My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells down by the seashore.

Close