Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Android

Submission + - X Windows now available for Android (wordpress.com)

Submitted by mkwan
mkwan writes: The open-source X Server for Android has hit beta and is now available for download through the Android Market. On Australian networks at least, smartphones are assigned publicly-accessible IP addresses, so it should be possible to display many Linux applications on an Android smartphone simply by setting the DISPLAY environment variable to the phone's IP address followed by :0
Hardware

Submission + - Kinect grocery cart follows shoppers around the store

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: When Chaotic Moon Labs debuted the Kinect-powered Board of Awesomeness — and its mind-reading offspring, the Board of Imagination — that was apparently just a preview of a more practical product the company had in the works. Grocery store chain, Whole Foods, recently gave a demonstration of Chaotic Moon's latest device, which uses the same technology in a self-propelled shopping cart. The "Smarter Cart," as it's been named, can detect what items are placed in it, match those to a shopping list, and even follow shoppers around the store on its own.

Comment Typical "Hype"! (Score 1) 118

by mix77 (#38146562) Attached to: South Africa Passes Secrecy Bill, Makes Whistleblowing a Dangerous Act
There is nothing new her folks. In the country that I leave in, every so often, the media "breaks" a story and runs with it while it can still inflate their distribution, ratings, etc numbers. This story, like some many other stories before it, will disappear into this air!

Getting back on the topic. I did a quick Google search (viewed first page results only) on the "Secrecy Bill" and "Information Bill". To absolutely no surprise, all the media houses that published the story had no link to the actual bill. And, all the stories were just someone view point and did not actually make reference to any section of the bill. Now, if you inform me about that a bill that is good or bad, I expect to see references to the bill while you argue your point.

I don't know about media in other countries, but, where I live, "hype" is the order of the day! For those would like to read the bill, here is the link : http://www.google.co.za/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=information+bill&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CEAQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.info.gov.za%2Fview%2FDownloadFileAction%3Fid%3D118894&ei=KcHMTqqkBMmW8QO_sd35Dw&usg=AFQjCNGn2FalPrO3u_N5pB5yIvXEykWJ8Q&sig2=abHVGv4w5tM8NqMkOmrT7Q

Disclaimer: the above link may not be the latest version of the bill, as I did not go beyond the first page of the search.
Science

Submission + - Student finds universe's missing mass (cosmosmagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A 22-year-old Australian university student has solved a problem which has puzzled astrophysicists for decades, discovering part of the so-called "missing mass" of the universe during her summer break.
Android

Submission + - PayPal Sues Google Over Wallet Trade Secrets (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by jhernik
jhernik writes: Google executives are being sued by PayPal for using trade secrets to build the new Google Wallet service

PayPal, eBay’s payment service, has sued Google over its new Google Wallet service, accusing the search engine of poaching trade secrets for use in its mobile payment service.

The suit, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court just hours after Google unveiled its Wallet payments sheme, alleges that two key executives who created the near-field communication (NFC) service used company secrets about mobile payments to fashion its own service.

Unveiled at a press event in New York, Google Wallet lets consumers pay for products by tapping their Android-based smartphones against a special sale terminal.

Submission + - NYSE sends C&D letter to news organization (talkingpointsmemo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apparently, the NYSE has registered a trademark for the actual trading floor. They claim that no longer can one use a photograph of the trading floor without permission.
Microsoft

Submission + - Steve Ballmer's head on the block? (reuters.com)

Submitted by mix77
mix77 writes: Influential hedge fund manager David Einhorn has called for Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to step down, saying the world's largest software company's long-time leader is stuck in the past.

Comment Caution: Employers too stingy to train employees (Score 2) 609

by mix77 (#35335754) Attached to: IT Graduates Not "Well-Trained, Ready-To-Go"
This article should be read with some caution: SAP, Oracle and SharePoint all require vocational training as these are vendor products! To be a "Database Administrator" also is requires vendor specific product training. An Oracle DBA does not automatically become a DBA for all other database servers. At least 4 of the to 10 positions require vocational training which Universities/Colleges cannot be expected to provide training for : they don't provide flavour of the month product training. This article simply points out that companies are too stingy to pay for their employees to get training! Someone else must do it for them.
Businesses

Leaked Letter — BSA Pressures Europe To Kill Open Standards 156

Posted by Soulskill from the open-and-shut-investigation dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Business Software Alliance is trying to kill open standards. Free Software Foundation Europe has gotten hold of a letter in which the BSA tries to bully the European Commission into removing the last traces of support for open standards from its IT recommendations to the public sector. FSFE published the BSA's letter (PDF), and picked apart its arguments one by one."
Graphics

Adobe Releases New 64-Bit Flash Plugin For Linux 240

Posted by samzenpus from the flash-in-the-pan dept.
TheDarkener writes "Adobe seems to have made an about face regarding their support for native 64-bit Linux support for Flash today, and released a new preview Flash plugin named 'Square.' This includes a native 64-bit version for Linux, which I have verified works on my Debian Lenny LTSP server by simply copying libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins — with sound (which I was never able to figure out with running the 32-bit version with nspluginwrapper and pulseaudio)."
Ubuntu

Canonical Begins Tracking Ubuntu Installations 548

Posted by Soulskill from the following-bitprints-and-scrapes-on-the-router dept.
suraj.sun passes along this excerpt from Phoronix: "Just uploaded to the Ubuntu Lucid repository for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (and we imagine it will appear shortly in Maverick too for Ubuntu 10.10) is a new package called canonical-census, which marks its initial release. Curious about what this package provides, we did some digging and found it's for tracking Ubuntu installations by sending an 'I am alive' ping to Canonical on a daily basis. When the canonical-census package is installed, the program is to be added to the daily Cron jobs to be executed so that each day it will report to Canonical over HTTP the number of times this system previously sent to Canonical (this counter is stored locally and with it running on a daily basis it's thereby indicating how many days the Ubuntu installation has been active), the Ubuntu distributor channel, the product name as acquired by the system's DMI information, and which Ubuntu release is being used. That's all that canonical-census does, at least for now. Previously there haven't been such Ubuntu tracking measures attempted by Canonical."

Slashdot Top Deals

The world is coming to an end. Please log off.

Close