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Communications

Submission + - USPS Losing Battle Against the E-mail Age (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An article in the NY Times explains how the United States Postal Service is in dire financial straits, and will need emergency action from Congress to forestall a shutdown later this year. Postmaster General Patrick Donahue said simply, 'If Congress doesn't act, we will default.' Labor agreements prohibiting layoffs are preventing one avenue for reducing costs, and laws forbidding postage rates from surpassing inflation rates keeps income down. On top of that, the proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services have contributed to a 22% reduction in snail-mail volume since 2006. They're currently hoping for legislation that would relax their economic requirements and considering an end to Saturday delivery.
Censorship

Submission + - Microsoft Helped Tunisian Regime Spy On Citizens (zdnet.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A document courtesy of the recent Cablegate leak reveals that Microsoft provided training to the Tunisian Ministries of Justice and the Interior in exchange for exemption from the country's open software policy. These Ministries would soon put the training to use by phishing for the social networking credentials of bloggers, reporters, political activists and protesters. Microsoft's assistance resulted in the sale of 12,000 software licenses to the Tunisian government.
HP

Submission + - HP moves WebOS from PC group: What is afoot? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
GMGruman
GMGruman writes: "Over the weekend, HP execs posted statements announcing the transfer of WebOS from the PC group that produced the now-killed TouchPad tablet and other mobile devices to HP's Office of Strategy and Technology. Is that a new lifeline for WebOS? Or, as analyst Trip Chowdhry suggested, is WebOS a pawn in a Shakespearean corporate game by HP CEO Léo Apotheker in a battle with "lazy" HP execs? The signals point to the latter."
User Journal

Journal Journal: First Journal entry

Journal by ggarron
This is going to be my "Hello World" /. journal post. I did not know about this, and that is kind of weird, as I am a /. reader since three years ago. I have even submitted some news to the stream. But that is old story, now I know it, I will try to share some of my thoughts here, and enter this great and exclusive community. Thanks Slashdot for the opportunity.
Social Networks

Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted 305

Posted by Soulskill from the lost-amid-breakfast-descriptions dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Social media is ill-suited to promoting real social change, argues Malcolm Gladwell in this article from The New Yorker magazine. He deftly debunks conventional wisdom surrounding the impact of Twitter, Facebook and other social media in driving systemic social change, comparing them to the organizational strategies of the 1960s civil rights movement. For example, the Montgomery bus boycott, he argues, was successful because it was driven by the disciplined and hierarchically organized NAACP. In contrast, a loose, social-media style network wouldn't have sustained the year long campaign. He concludes that social media promote social 'weak ties' which are not strong enough to motivate people to take big risks, such as imprisonment or attack, for social change."
Businesses

Amazon Building Its Own Android App Market? 165

Posted by Soulskill from the rekindling-their-handheld-hopes dept.
Thinkcloud writes "Speculation abounds that Amazon is planning their own storefront for selling Android apps, one in which they, not the developers, will set the price and decide which apps to feature (and which apps to exclude from the store all together). It's a shrewd move and smart strategy for Amazon, though its impact on app sellers is less certain."
Data Storage

Video Appliance For a Large Library On a Network? 516

Posted by timothy from the wants-it-all-in-one-place dept.
devjj writes "For the past year or so I have been trying (and failing) to figure out a reasonable solution for bringing my large media library to my living room. All of my media lives on an Ubuntu server that sits on my network. It's been very reliable and it's fast enough for streaming purposes. My content is exposed via SMB. It's the living room side where I keep running into problems. I am currently using Windows 7 and XBMC, but the case is too big and noisy, I don't particularly care for Windows, and the whole thing just seems overkill. What I want is a device that can present a decent UI that the non-Slashdot crowd would be able to use, but that is still powerful enough to stream full-fidelity 1080p. I dream of a small box that can transcode video over a network, but that's probably a pipe dream. The new Apple TV would be great if it could connect to network shares. What say you, Slashdot? Is what I'm looking for possible, or should I just give in to the iTunes/Amazon/whatever juggernauts?"
Portables

Asus Budget Ultraportable Notebook Sold Sans OS 263

Posted by timothy from the utterly-completely-impossible dept.
EconolineCrush writes "Tired of paying the Windows tax on notebooks? Asus's Eee PC 1201T budget ultraportable comes without a traditional operating system and sells for only $380. The 12-inch system has promising specifications, sporting an Athlon Neo processor, Radeon HD 3200 graphics, Bluetooth, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. It weighs just 3.2lbs with a 6-cell battery and can even handle light gaming duties. However, battery life in Ubuntu is considerably shorter than it is under Windows. Are there any better options for would-be laptop Linux users?"
Earth

How Bad Is the Gulf Coast Oil Spill? 913

Posted by Soulskill from the exxon-who dept.
Dasher42 writes "Claims are circulating on the Internet that the Coast Guard fears the Deepwater Horizon well has sprung two extra leaks, raising fears that all control over the release of oil at the site will be lost. The oil field, one of the largest ever discovered, could release 50,000 barrels a day into the ocean, with implications for marine life around the globe that are difficult to comprehend. So, considering that losing our oceanic life, with subsequent unraveling of our land-based ecosystems, is a far more possible apocalyptic scenario than a killer asteroid — what do we do about it?" Other readers have sent some interesting pictures of the spill. One set shows the Deepwater Horizon rig as it collapsed into the ocean. Others, from NASA, indicate that the spill's surface area now rivals that of Florida. The US government has indicated that it intends to require BP to foot the bill for the cleanup. And the Governator has just withdrawn support for drilling off the California coast.
Software

Rest In Peas — the Death of Speech Recognition 342

Posted by Soulskill from the yale-in-ox-boom-i-crows-off dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Speech recognition accuracy flatlined years ago. It works great for small vocabularies on your cell phone, but basically, computers still can't understand language. Prospects for AI are dimmed, and we seem to need AI for computers to make progress in this area. Time to rewrite the story of the future. From the article: 'The language universe is large, Google's trillion words a mere scrawl on its surface. One estimate puts the number of possible sentences at 10^570. Through constant talking and writing, more of the possibilities of language enter into our possession. But plenty of unanticipated combinations remain, which force speech recognizers into risky guesses. Even where data are lush, picking what's most likely can be a mistake because meaning often pools in a key word or two. Recognition systems, by going with the "best" bet, are prone to interpret the meaning-rich terms as more common but similar-sounding words, draining sense from the sentence.'"
Image

St. Louis Museum Offers Thrills, Chills, and Lawsuits 140

Posted by samzenpus from the everything-fun-is-dangerous dept.
theodp writes "Despite the whiff of danger, or perhaps because of it, the WSJ reports that the City Museum is one of St. Louis's most popular attractions. Housed in a 10-story brick building, the City Museum shows none of the restraint or quiet typical of most museums. It boasts a five-story jungle gym with two real-life jets kids can climb on, an enclosed Monster Slide that drops riders the length of three staircases, and a rooftop Ferris wheel. Sure, there are the occasional severed fingers and skull fractures, but museum founder Bob Cassilly contends that it is as safe as it can be without being a bore. 'They [lawyers] are taking the fun out of life,' says Cassilly, adding that 'when you have millions of people do something, something's going to happen no matter what you do.'"
Open Source

Why Linux Is Not Attracting Young Developers 742

Posted by Soulskill from the beards-are-going-out-of-style dept.
judeancodersfront writes "Jonathan Corbet recently pointed out at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit that the Linux kernel team was getting older and not attracting young developers. This article suggests the Linux kernel no longer has the same appeal to young open source developers that it did 10 years ago. Could it be that the massive code base and declining sense of community from corporate involvement has driven young open source programmers elsewhere?"
Privacy

Submission + - Google backs Yahoo in privacy fight with DOJ (cnet.com)

Submitted by PatPending
PatPending writes: Does e-mail stored in the cloud have the same level of protection as the same information stored by a person at home?

No, according to the Obama administration's Assistant U.S. Attorney Pegeen Rhyne, who wrote in a government motion filed last month, "Previously opened e-mail is not in 'electronic storage.' This court should therefore require Yahoo to comply with the order and produce the specified communications in the targeted accounts." (The Justice Department's position is that what's known as a 2703(d) order--not as privacy-protective as the rules for search warrants--should let police read e-mail.)
IBM

Is OS/2 Coming Back? 432

Posted by CmdrTaco from the high-school-flashback dept.
mstansberry writes "Is IBM considering relaunching OS/2? One source close to IBM says Big Blue plans to repurpose OS/2 services atop a Linux core. IT managers ask, why now?" Hey, back in simpler times OS/2 was super badass. Both of the guys who ran it were hard core.

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