Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Cellphones

Nokia N9: the World's Most Underrated Smartphone? 176

Posted by timothy from the single-minded dept.
jrepin writes "Eighteen months ago, Nokia announced a smartphone unlike any other it has produced before. It was a proper smartphone, one that looked miles away from previous Nokia phones: it was sleek, modern and simple at the same time. The hardware was pretty modern, too; no underpowered processors with severely limited RAM issues to be seen here. And, it runs on an operating system that Nokia had announced dead months before the phone's announcement. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Nokia N9."

Comment Re:Japanese phones (Score 1) 371

I can tell you that there is a world of difference between production lines for Nokia and LG/Samsung. Nokia is much more worker-friendly overall, from R&D to manufacturing.
However, Nokia does use components produced by others (Chinese and Korean companies among them) that don't necessarily follow the same procedures. Nonetheless, Nokia tries to influence work environment on these, both from people and ecological points of view (to varying degrees of success, of course).

Full disclosure: I do work on projects for Nokia, so take my view with whatever amount of salt you fell appropriate.
Privacy

The Crypto Project Revives Cypherpunk Ethic 77

Posted by Soulskill from the blast-from-the-past dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "When a small group of activists announced the debut of The Crypto Project earlier this year, for many, ahem, mature, security and privacy advocates it brought to mind memories of the original cypherpunk movement that began in the 1990s and that group's seminal efforts to encourage the use of strong cryptography and anonymity online, as well as its successes and failures. The two groups are not allied by anything other than ideology, but The Crypto Project's leaders are aiming to follow in the footsteps of the cypherpunks, build on their accomplishments and make security and privacy tools freely available to the masses. The group is working on a number of projects right now, including setting up an anonymous remailer, putting up a Convergence notary and setting up a Tahoe-LAFS grid. Threatpost has an interview with Sir Valiance, one of the leaders of the project, who talks about the need for better privacy and anonymity online and why the cypherpunks are still important today."
Cellphones

SignalGuru Helps Drivers Avoid Red Lights 436

Posted by timothy from the green-is-so-much-more-beautiful dept.
cylonlover writes "Researchers at MIT and Princeton have now devised a system, dubbed SignalGuru (PDF), that gathers visual data from the cameras of a network of dashboard-mounted smartphones and tells drivers the optimal speed to drive at to avoid waiting at the next set of lights." In their testing, the system saved drivers about 20 percent in fuel.
Science

Why There's No Nobel Prize In Computing 229

Posted by CmdrTaco from the they-hate-us dept.
alphadogg writes "When Nobel Prizes are dished out each fall, the most accomplished professionals in computing, telecom and IT have usually been left out in the cold. That's because there is no Nobel Prize for these fields, and it's unlikely there will be one any time soon. According to the Nobel Foundation: 'The Nobel Prizes, as designated in the Will of Alfred Nobel, are in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. Only once has a prize been added — a Memorial Prize — The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, donated by Sweden's central bank to celebrate its tercentenary in 1968. The Nobel Foundation's Board of Directors later decided to keep the original five prizes intact and not to permit new additions.' So, if IBM, Google, Apple or some other deep-pocketed tech company wanted to make a big donation along the lines of what Sweden's central bank did in 1968, maybe it could sway the Nobel Foundation to add a prize. But it most likely wouldn't be officially called a Nobel Prize."
Businesses

Supreme Court: AT&T Can Force Arbitration 415

Posted by timothy from the anywhere-it-wants-to dept.
suraj.sun writes with this unhappy news, as reported by Ars Technica: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that AT&T — and indeed, any company — could block class-action suits arising from disputes with customers and instead force those customers into binding arbitration. The ruling reverses previous lower-court decisions that classified stipulations in AT&T's service contract which barred class arbitration as 'unconscionable.' ... In cases where an unfair practice affects large numbers of customers, AT&T or other companies could quietly settle a few individual claims instead of being faced with larger class-action settlements which might include punitive awards designed to discourage future bad practices."

Comment Never going to happen (Score 1) 385

by Tellarin (#35672296) Attached to: Wikipedia Wants More Contributions From Academics

Egos and charlatans aside, real academics with actual know-how/expertise on given areas are simply not going to use Wikipedia.

Not for any reason except that much of what they'd write would be reverted by some random i-know-more-than-you joe, or some of the entrenched biased "editors".

I love the Wikipedia idea and I still like the site a lot as a whole, but I no longer contribute much mainly because of this. Especially on the non-English wikis.
Image

German Kindergartens Ordered To Pay Copyright For Songs 291

Posted by samzenpus from the easy-as-taking-music-from-a-baby dept.
BBird writes "Deutsche Welle reports: 'Up until this year, preschools could teach and produce any kind of song they wanted. But now they have to pay for a license if they want children to sing certain songs. A tightening of copyright rules means kindergartens now have to pay fees to Germany's music licensing agency, GEMA, to use songs that they reproduce and perform. The organization has begun notifying creches and other daycare facilities that if they reproduce music to be sung or performed, they must pay for a license.'"
Earth

Geocentrists Convene To Discuss How Galileo Was Wrong 1027

Posted by timothy from the when-did-britain-pull-ahead dept.
rollcall writes "'Galileo Was Wrong' is an inaugural conference to discuss the 'detailed and comprehensive treatment of the scientific evidence supporting Geocentrism, the academic belief that the Earth is immobile in the center of the universe.' The geocentrists argue that 'Scientific evidence available to us within the last 100 years that was not available during Galileo's confrontation shows that the [Catholic] Church's position on the immobility of the Earth is not only scientifically supportable, but it is the most stable model of the universe and the one which best answers all the evidence we see in the cosmos.' I, like many of you, am scratching my head wondering how people still think this way. Unfortunately, there is still a significant minority of Western people who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe: 18% of Americans, 16% of Germans, and 19% of Britons." I hope there is live blogging from the conference.

Slashdot Top Deals

"No, no, I don't mind being called the smartest man in the world. I just wish it wasn't this one." -- Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, WATCHMEN

Close