xeniar - Slashdot User

Submission + - Rare operating Apple 1 rakes in $374,500 at Sotheby's auction (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Friday June 15, 2012 @12:34PM

coondoggie writes: "It's not one of a kind but pretty darn close. Sotheby's this week auctioned off a rare working Apple 1 computer for $374,500 to an unnamed bidder. The price was more than double the expected price listed on the Sotheby's web site.
The Sotheby's notes about the Apple 1 say it is one of six thought to be operational boxes and one of about 50 known to exist."

Submission + - Quantum Dots Are Behind New Displays (ieee.org)

Submitted by ArmageddonLord on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:50AM

ArmageddonLord writes: "Liquid crystal displays dominate today’s big, bright world of color TVs. But they’re inefficient and don’t produce the vibrant, richly hued images of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens, which are expensive to make in large sizes. Now, a handful of start-up companies aim to improve the LCD by adding quantum dots, the light-emitting semiconductor nanocrystals that shine pure colors when excited by electric current or light. When integrated into the back of LCD panels, the quantum dots promise to cut power consumption in half while generating 50 percent more colors. Quantum-dot developer Nanosys says an LCD film it developed with 3M is now being tested, and a 17-inch notebook incorporating the technology should be on shelves by year’s end." --IEEE Spectrum

Submission + - Wearable Device Generates Electricity From Walking Knee Movements (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:08AM

Zothecula writes: If you’ve ever worn a knee brace, then you may have noticed what a large change in angle your knee goes through with every step you take, and how quickly it does so. A team of scientists from the U.K.’s Cranfield University, University of Liverpool and University of Salford certainly noticed, and decided that all that movement should be put to use. The result is a wearable piezoelectric device that converts knee movement into electricity, which could in turn be used to power gadgets such as heart rate monitors, pedometers and accelerometers.

Submission + - Monsanto may have to repay 10 years of GM soya royalties in Brazil (nature.com)

Submitted by scibri on Friday June 15, 2012 @09:41AM

scibri writes: Biotech giant Monsanto is one step closer to losing billions of dollars in revenues from its genetically-modified Roundup Ready soya beans, after the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled the company must repay royalties collected over the past decade.

Since GM crops were legalized in 2005, Monsanto has charged Brazilian farmers royalties of 2% on their sales of Roundup Ready soya beans. The company also tests Brazilian soya beans that are sold as non-GM — if they turn out to be Roundup Ready, the company charges the farmers 3%. Farmers challenged this as an an unjust tax on their business.

In April a regional court ruled against Monsanto, though that ruling has been put on hold pending an appeal. The Supreme Court, meanwhile has said that whatever the final ruling is, it will apply throughout the whole country.

Comment Nectar = build server not billing (Score 1) 1

by xeniar on Tuesday August 02, 2011 @03:00PM (#36963208) Attached to: WANdisco Opens uberApps Store for Enterprise IT

There is a typo in the article that changes the sense of the whole thing... it's build server not billing. Nectar and Jenkins share the same code base, but Nectar has a distinct release cycle. All major bug fixes from opensource Jenkins are backported to Nectar during the support period. With Nectar, entreprises can BUILD it's software factory with a strong, stable and supported continuous integration server.

Submission + - How do you keep up with science developments?

Submitted by malraid on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @09:44PM

malraid writes: As a nerd who used to love science back in high school (specially physics), I now find myself completely disconnected from any and all scientific developments and news. How do you try to stay up to date with scientific developments? Science journals? Whatever makes it into Slashdot's front page? Books? Magazines? I'm looking for something engaging and informative, for not something that will require me to go and get a PhD just to be able to comprehend.

Submission + - KDE software compilation 4.7.0 released (kde.org)

Submitted by

jrepin

on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @06:48PM

jrepin writes: "KDE 4.7 releases provide many new features and improved stability and performance. Lots of visual polishing took place with an update to the Oxygen icons, and improved consistency between panel items such as clock and notification areas. The window manager KWin brings a new shadow system and can now run on OpenGL ES supporting hardware, making it better suited for mobile devices. Network management widget is much improved. Navigating through applications and recent files is easier with the addition of breadcrumbs to the Kickoff application launcher. Kontact groupware solution rejoins the rest of the KDE software, with increased stability, better connection to new services and sharing of communication information between more applications. Dolphin file manager has a cleaner default appearance. The menu bar is hidden, but easy to reach and restore. The file searching interface has been improved. Marble the virtual globe now has voice navigation support and a map creation wizard. Gwenview image viewer now offers the ability to compare two or more pictures side by side. Digikam photo management app brings face detection and recognition."

Submission + - Climate unit releases virtually all remaining data (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

mutube

on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @05:03PM

mutube writes: "The BBC is reporting that the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, target of "ClimateGate", has released nearly all its remaining data on temperature measurements following a freedom of information bid.

Most temperature data was already available, but critics of climate science want everything public. Following the latest release, raw data from virtually all of the world's 5,000-plus weather stations is freely available.

Release of this dataset required The Met Office to secure approval from more than 1,500 weather stations around the world. The article notes that while Trinidad and Tobago refused permission but the Information Commissioner ruled that public interest in disclosure outweighed those considerations."

Submission + - Russia Wants to Dump Space Station in Ocean

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @04:41PM

An anonymous reader writes: Once the International Space Station has finished its celestial journey, it will head to a new great unexplored region: the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

A similar fate awaited Mir, the predecessor space station to the current one, which was committed to its watery grave in 2001 after spending 15 years in space. Essentially, Russia and its partners are trying to avoid littering. Space waste is becoming an increasingly visible problem, with a stray piece of debris narrowly missing the space station last month.

Submission + - Transparent lithium-ion battery (sciencedebate.com)

Submitted by Med-trump on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @02:20PM

Med-trump writes: Stanford researchers say they have developed a transparent battery. Trasparent futuristic gadgets have been a topic of science fiction and dream of engineers. The paper "Transparent lithium-ion batteries" was published in the July 25 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They used a grid-structured electrode, which is fabricated by a microfluidics-assisted method, such that the feature dimension in the electrode is below the resolution limit of human eyes, and, thus, the electrode appears transparent.

Submission + - Sniffer Hijacks SSL Traffic From Unpatched iPhones (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

CWmike

on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @02:15PM

CWmike writes: "Almost anyone can snoop the secure data traffic of unpatched iPhones and iPads using a recently-revised nine-year-old tool, a researcher said as he urged owners to apply Apple's latest iOS fix. If iOS devices aren't patched, attackers can easily intercept and decrypt secure traffic — the kind guarded by SSL, which is used by banks, e-tailers and other sites — at a public Wi-Fi hotspot, said Chet Wisniewski, a security researcher with Sophos. 'This is a nine-year-old bug that Moxie Marlinspike disclosed in 2002,' Wisniewski told Computerworld on Wednesday. On Monday, Marlinspike released an easier-to-use revision of his long-available 'sslsniff' traffic sniffing tool. 'My mother could actually use this,' he said."

Submission + - War texting lets hackers unlock car doors via SMS (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @02:11PM

alphadogg writes: Software that lets drivers unlock car doors and even start their vehicles using a mobile phone could let car thieves do the very same things, according to computer security researchers at iSec Partners. Don Bailey and fellow iSec researcher Mathew Solnik say they've figured out the protocols that some of these software makers use to remote control the cars, and they've produced a video showing how they can unlock a car and turn the engine on via a laptop. According to Bailey, it took them about two hours to figure out how to intercept wireless messages between the car and the network and then recreate them from his laptop. Bailey will discuss the research at next week's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, but he isn't going to name the products they've hacked — they've looked at two so far — or provide full technical details of their work until the software makers can patch them.

Submission + - First Earth Trojan asteroid discovered (discovermagazine.com) 1

Submitted by

The Bad Astronomer

on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @01:25PM

The Bad Astronomer writes: "Astronomers have found the very first Earth Trojan asteroid, a rock that more-or-less shares Earth's orbit around the Sun. Seen in data by NASA's WISE mission, 2010 TK7 is about 300 meters across and leads the Earth by 60 degrees around the Sun. Trojans have been seen for Jupiter, Neptune, and Mars, but this is the first for our planet."

Submission + - Dark winters "led to bigger human brains" (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

Brad1138

on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @12:51PM

Brad1138 writes: "Humans living at high latitude have bigger eyes and bigger brains to cope with poor light during long winters and cloudy days, UK scientists have said. I wonder if Brett came from the Himalayas?"

Submission + - Most enterprises plan to be on IPv6 by 2013 (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

Julie188

on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @12:18PM

Julie188 writes: "More than 70% of IT departments plan to upgrade their websites to support IPv6 within the next 24 months, according to a recent survey of more than 200 IT professionals conducted by Network World. Plus, 65% say they will have IPv6 running on their internal networks by then, too. One survey respondent, John Mann, a network architect at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said his organization has been making steady IPv6 progress since 2008. "Mostly IPv6 has just worked," he said. "The biggest problem is maintaining forward progress with IPv6 while it is still possible to take the easy option and fall back to IPv4.""

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