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Comment Re:"Competitive Research" (Score 1) 380

by ribond (#35116564) Attached to: Google's Search Copying Accusation Called 'Silly'

every visit to /. I find myself arguing with the angry internet hivemind. Here I'm responding to an anonymous coward, but still feel the need to point out that the comments here have flow into fantasy.

Go read Danny Sullivans' articles - he details how the results are different, bing is not copying google and how google uses their toolbar in similiar ways. This is a tempest in a teakettle. Find something real to fight.

Hugs, Anonymous cowards - I just want to love you with the data.

Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 1) 380

by ribond (#35116536) Attached to: Google's Search Copying Accusation Called 'Silly'

Did y'all read these articles? Danny Sullivan went back over this exhaustively.

The "underhanded" things Google accused Bing of doing to get clickstream data? Google does the same things, with the same disclosure.
The "cheating" around click results? Complete BS.

Charges of "industrial espionage" based on public data? Gibberish. read the articles, then argue with me.
Google

Security Expert Warns of Android Browser Flaw 98

Posted by Soulskill from the memory-leak-leading-to-robot-revolt dept.
justice4all writes "Google is working on a fix to a zero-day flaw discovered by British security expert Thomas Cannon that could lead to user data on a mobile phone or tablet device being exposed to attack. Cannon informed Google before posting information about the flaw on his blog. 'While doing an application security assessment one evening I found a general vulnerability in Android which allows a malicious website to get the contents of any file stored on the SD card,' Cannon wrote. 'It would also be possible to retrieve a limited range of other data and files stored on the phone using this vulnerability.'" Sophos's Chester Wisniewski adds commentary on how this situation is one of the downsides to Android's increasing fragmentation in the mobile marketplace.
Earth

BP Ignored Safety Modeling Software To Save Time 203

Posted by Soulskill from the show-of-hands-who-is-surprised dept.
DMandPenfold writes "BP ignored the advice of safety modeling software in an attempt to save time before the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to a presentation slide (PDF) prepared by US investigators. The slide in question briefly appeared on the Oil Spill Commission's website in error, but was quickly retracted. Advanced cement modeling software, provided by BP's cement contractor Halliburton, had highlighted serious stability concerns with the well."
XBox (Games)

Xbox Live Enforcement — No Swastika Logo 473

Posted by Soulskill from the pursuing-the-rare-double-godwin dept.
itwbennett writes "It's one of those questions that really should never come up, but as blogger Peter Smith points out, Stephen Toulouse, the head of Xbox Live enforcement, is used to fielding all sorts of strange questions. Recently, one of those questions was apparently 'Can I use a Swastika as my logo in Call of Duty: Black Ops?' When Toulouse responded with the obvious answer ('No, of course you can't, we'll ban you.') he was met with some pushback by people he refers to as 'contrarians' and 'internet pundits' who decided to educate him on the long and storied history of the swastika as a symbol of good fortune and how just because the Nazis used it, it doesn't make the symbol itself a bad thing. Toulouse covers the topic on his blog in a post titled Context and it's an interesting read if for no other reason than to get a peek inside the day-to-day issues the Xbox Live Enforcement team deals with."
Input Devices

Robot Swarm Control On Microsoft's Surface 106

Posted by timothy from the moving-things-about dept.
zerOnIne writes "Dr. Mark Micire of UMass Lowell has built an intriguing new user interface on the Microsoft Surface, a multitouch-capable table computer. The interface is being used to control swarms of robots for disaster response, search, and rescue. One of the most interesting things about it is the intuitive tabletop joystick widget. Using a very fast hand-detection-and-identification algorithm, they can paint a touch joystick (dubbed the DREAM controller) directly underneath the hand. This joystick conforms to the size of the user's hand and tracks with hand movements, making sure that the control is always directly under the hand where the user expects it, even without haptic feedback. I've had a chance to go hands-on with this system, and I think it's truly remarkable."
Image

How To Index and Search a Video By Emotion 76

Posted by timothy from the black-beauty-special dept.
robotsrule writes "Here's a a demonstration video of EmoRate, a software program that uses the Emotiv 14-electrode EEG headset to record your emotions via your facial expressions. In the video you'll see EmoRate record my emotions while I watch a YouTube video, then index that video by emotion, and then navigate that video by simply by remembering a feeling. The web page for EmoRate explains how I used Emotiv's SDK to build the software program, and how I trained the system by watching emotionally evocative videos on YouTube while wearing the headset."
Image

Fat Fingered Sumo Wrestlers Given iPads 69

Posted by samzenpus from the 100-finger-slap dept.
The Japan Sumo Association is handing out about 60 iPads to training stables to help the wrestlers communicate because their fingers are too fat to use a regular mobile phone. From the article: "The iPad was chosen because the sumo association believed the device was big enough to cater to wrestler's fat fingers, unlike the smaller keys on mobile phones, according to reports."
Microsoft

Submission + - MS pulls Windows 7 tool after GPL violation claims 1

Submitted by Sam
Sam writes: Ars Technica reports: Microsoft has pulled the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool from the Microsoft Store website after a report indicating that the tool incorporated open-source code in a way that violated the GNU's General Public License (GPL). Whether the software giant is actually violating the GPL, a widely used (including by the Linux kernel) free software license, is not confirmed. "We are currently taking down the Windows USB/DVD Tool (WUDT) from the Microsoft Store site until our review of the tool is complete," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. "We apologize to our customers for any inconvenience." The fact the company pulled the tool doesn't bode well, so we'll have to watch closely to see what the company puts back on its servers.

Submission + - The Economics of Federal Cloud Computing Analyzed (ulitzer.com)

Submitted by jg21
jg21 writes: With $20BN about to be spent by the Federal Government on IT infrastructure investments, this highly analytical article by two Booz Allen Hamilton associates makes it clear that Cloud computing has now received full executive backing and offers clear opportunities for agencies to significantly reduce their growing data center and IT hardware expenditures. President Obama's America is going distinctly cloudy! [From the article: "A few agencies are already moving quickly to explore cloud computing solutions and are even redirecting existing funds to begin implementations ... Agencies should identify the aspects of their current IT workload that can be transitioned to the cloud in the near term to yield "early wins" to help build momentum and support for the migration to cloud computing."]
Censorship

Submission + - EFF forces DMCA abuser to apologize

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "The EFF just announced victory over a serial abuser of DMCA copyright notices. To set an example, their settlement required Michael Crook to record a video apology to the entire internet for interfering with free speech. He's also required to withdraw every bogus DMCA notice, and refrain from future bogus notices, never contest the original image again, and take a remedial class on copyright law. He'd attempted to use flaws in the DMCA to censor an embarrassing picture of himself that he just didn't want appearing online — but instead the whole thing backfired."
The Courts

H-P's Dunn Enters No Plea, Charges Dismissed 156

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the buying-your-way-out-of-trouble dept.
GogglesPisano writes "CNN earlier reported that former HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn would plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent wire communications stemming from her involvement in last year's corporate eavesdropping scandal. The story was later amended after charges again st Dunn were dropped. The original charges, four felony counts, were reduced to misdemeanors in exchange for a plea bargain. Her three co-defendants are expected to receive 96 hours of community service; in Dunn's case this sentence is likely to be waived due to illness." Update: 03/15 02:21 GMT by KD : The prosecutor in the case issued a correction to the eariler pronouncement that Dunn would plead guilty to a misdemeanor. "At court today, Patricia Dunn did not enter any plea in response to the misdemeanor count, and the court exercised its discretion by dismissing the case against her," the revised statement said.
Censorship

Submission + - Copyright law used to shut down anti-coal site

Submitted by driptray
driptray writes: The Sydney Morning Herald reports that an Australian mining industry group has used copyright laws to close a website that parodied a coal industry ad campaign. A group known as Rising Tide created the website using the slogan "Rising sea levels: brought to you by mining" in response to the mining industry's slogan of "Life: brought to you by mining". The mining industry claimed that the "content and layout" of the parody site infringed copyright, but when Rising Tide removed the copyrighted photos and changed the layout, the mining industry still lodged a complaint. Is this a misuse of copyright law in order to stifle dissent?
Privacy

The Pentagon Wants a 'TiVo' to Watch You 256

Posted by Zonk from the i-think-the-shulmans-are-particularly-funny-this-week dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Danger Room, a Wired blog, today cites a study of future electronic snooping technologies from Reuters, written by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board. More than anything, it seems these outside advisers want a surveillance system that would put Big Brother to shame, and they're looking at the commercial sector to provide it. 'The ability to record terabyte and larger databases will provide an omnipresent knowledge of the present and the past that can be used to rewind battle space observations in TiVo-like fashion and to run recorded time backwards to help identify and locate even low-level enemy forces. For example, after a car bomb detonates, one would have the ability to play high-resolution data backward in time to follows the vehicle back to the source, and then use that knowledge to focus collection and gain additional information by organizing and searching through archived data.'"
Patents

MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain 331

Posted by kdawson from the chicken-or-the-ogg dept.
nadamsieee refers us to a piece up at Wired on the fallout from Microsoft's recent courtroom loss to Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patents. From the article: "Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format... Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win."

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