Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "On Thursday we discussed news that Google pressured Acer and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba to cancel the launch of a phone running the Aliyun OS. Google has now addressed the issue, speaking out on the importance of compatibility for Android devices. Andy Rubin, who runs Android development at Google, said Aliyun was a non-compatible version of Android, which weakens the ecosystem. He pointed out that the Open Handset Alliance provides all the tools necessary to make it compatible. An Alibaba exec fired back, saying, 'Aliyun OS is not part of the Android ecosystem so of course Aliyun OS is not and does not have to be compatible with Android. It is ironic that a company that talks freely about openness is espousing a closed ecosystem.'"

mdsolar writes "Reuters reports that the Japanese government said it 'intends to stop using nuclear power by the 2030s, marking a major shift from policy goals set before last year's Fukushima disaster that sought to increase the share of atomic energy to more than half of electricity supply. Japan joins countries such as Germany and Switzerland in turning away from nuclear power ... Japan was the third-biggest user of atomic energy before the disaster. In abandoning atomic power, Japan aims to triple the share of renewable power to 30 percent of its energy mix, but will remain a top importer of oil, coal and gas for the foreseeable future. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's unpopular government, which could face an election this year, had faced intense lobbying from industries to maintain atomic energy and also concerns from its major ally, the United States, which supplied it with nuclear technology in the 1950s.' Meanwhile, the U.S. nuclear renaissance appears to be unraveling."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit has upheld the initial jury verdict in the case against Jammie Thomas, Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset. This case was the first jury trial for a file-sharing suit brought by the major record labels, and focused on copyright infringement for 24 songs. The Court of Appeals has ruled that the award of $220,000, or $9250 per song, was not an unconstitutional violation of Due Process. The Court, in its 18-page decision (PDF), declined to reach the 'making available' issue, for procedural reasons."

theodp writes "In what may surprise Khan Academy backers Google and Bill Gates, educators from the Los Altos School District where KA was initially piloted and implemented have responded to some recent KA critiques with a blog entry which notes, 'Teachers in our district have determined that the greatest value of the Khan Academy lies, not in the videos, but in the exercise modules and data generated as students work practice problems.' Not too surprisingly, when it comes to revolutionizing student learning, teachers are bullish on teachers. 'Key to this revolution are the Los Altos teachers,' the educators conclude. 'Teachers in our district are highly valued for their pedagogical perspective, content knowledge, experience, and creative abilities. When district administrators put tools in the hands of teachers and give them room to work, amazing things happen for students. Tools will come and go, but it's the teachers who create meaningful learning experiences that challenge students to grow.'"

Orome1 writes "Joanna Rutkowska, CEO of Invisible Things Lab, today released version 1.0 of Qubes, a stable and reasonably secure desktop OS. It is the most secure option among the existing desktop operating systems — even more secure than Apple's iOS, which puts each application into its own sandbox and does not count on the user to make security decisions. Qubes will offer users the option of using disposable virtual machines for executing tasks they believe could harm their computer. These VMs will be lightweight, easily and extremely speedily created and booted, and would be just as easy to discard." First covered back in 2010. See some screenshots of the X11 part in action (and they say displaying clients from multiple "hosts" isn't useful...)

Orome1 writes "Joanna Rutkowska, CEO of Invisible Things Lab, today released version 1.0 of Qubes, a stable and reasonably secure desktop OS. It is the most secure option among the existing desktop operating systems — even more secure than Apple's iOS, which puts each application into its own sandbox and does not count on the user to make security decisions. Qubes will offer users the option of using disposable virtual machines for executing tasks they believe could harm their computer. These VMs will be lightweight, easily and extremely speedily created and booted, and would be just as easy to discard." First covered back in 2010. See some screenshots of the X11 part in action (and they say displaying clients from multiple "hosts" isn't useful...)

theodp writes "Drawn by amenities and talent, the WSJ reports that tech firms are saying goodbye to office parks and opting for cities. Pinterest, Zynga, Yelp, Square, Twitter, and Salesforce.com are some of the more notable tech companies who are taking up residence in San Francisco. New York City's Silicon Alley is now home to more than 500 new start-up companies like Kickstarter and Tumblr, not to mention the gigantic Google satellite in the old Port Authority Building. London, Seattle, and even downtown Las Vegas are also seeing infusions of techies. So, why are tech companies eschewing Silicon Valley and going all Fool for the City? 'Silicon Valley proper is soul-crushing suburban sprawl,' Paul Graham presciently explained in 2006. 'It has fabulous weather, which makes it significantly better than the soul-crushing sprawl of most other American cities. But a competitor that managed to avoid sprawl would have real leverage.'"

retroworks writes "Rebecca J. Rosen interviews experts in this edition of The Atlantic, to ask about the ethics and wisdom of using cloning, backbreeding, or genome editing. Over 90% of species ever to exist on earth are no more. The article ponders the moral and environmental challenges of humans reintroducing species which humans made extinct."

An anonymous reader writes "Here's an interesting article on the Google security blog about the dangers faced by modern web applications when hosting any user supplied data. The surprising conclusion is that it's apparently almost impossible to host images or text files safely unless you use a completely separate domain. Is it really that bad? "

After watching this video, a lot of you are going to wish you were Dave Carter, who works at the University of Michigan's Computer and Video Game Archive. He deals with video games, from the oldest hand-helds and consoles to the newest Xbox and PC games and controllers. A lot of his time is no doubt spent fixing things that break, finding obscure games, being generally helpful, and making sure nobody breaks the games, consoles, computers, controllers, and even board games and memorabilia in the collection. But still, this has got to be the ultimate job for a game junkie. And it looks like a great place to visit, because this museum is part of a library, and just as a library encourages you to pick up books and read them, this is a place where you can actually play the games, not just stare at a ColecoVision console in a display case. You can play in a cubicle or, for games that take some space, there are a couple of big gaming rooms with soft-looking sofas and big flat-screen TVs, where you can jump up and down like crazy while you're doing Guitar Hero or using a Wii or Kinect. And if you can't make it to Ann Arbor, MI, there's an informative blog that's all about video games past and present that's must reading for almost any serious gamer.

retroworks writes "The BBC reports on a paper published in the U.S.'s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing a correlation between persistent, regular cannabis use and risk of lower IQ. The study finds the risk particularly correlates use of cannabis by teenagers who use the drug "four times a week year after year." The more people smoked, the greater the loss in IQ. Reviewers of the study at King's College Institute of Psychiatry states that the data and methodology are exceptional, but she also cautions that there may be another explanation, such as depression, which could lower IQ while stimulating marijuana use. The study does not mention or rule out 'nocebo' effects, i.e. just feeling stupid for spending your teens hanging out with potheads."

mdsolar writes "Arctic sea ice has hit a record low extent for the period of satellite observation. Further, this record has been set in August when the minimum annual sea ice extent (and the prior record) has always come in September. Further still, the ice is still retreating as rapidly as it was in June and July when normally the decrease of sea ice extent slows in August. It is thus possible the the final minimum sea ice extend for 2012 will be seen in October rather than September as has always occurred in the past. More than one monitoring effort agree on the existence of a new record."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY v Tenenbaum, the new District Judge assigned to the case has disagreed with the previous judge, and instead of reducing the $22,500 per file award to $2250 per file, has instead upheld the jury's verdict. The jury initially found defendant Joel Tenenbaum to have 'willfully' infringed the RIAA copyrights by downloading 30 mp3 files which would normally retail for 99 cents each, and awarded the plaintiff record companies $675,000 in 'statutory damages.' Tenenbaum moved to set the verdict aside on both common law remittitur grounds and constitutional due process grounds. Judge Gertner — the District Judge at the time — felt that remittitur would be a futility, and on constitutional grounds reduced the verdict to $2250 per file. The RIAA appealed. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals remanded on the ground that Judge Gertner ought to have decided the question on remittitur grounds and reached the constitutional question prematurely. By the time the case arrived back in District Court, Judge Gertner had retired, and a new judge — Judge Rya Zobel — had been assigned. Judge Zobel denied the remittitur motion. And then Judge Zobel denied the constitutional motion, leaving the larger verdict in place. I think it is reasonable to expect Tenenbaum to appeal this time around."

An anonymous reader writes "In the tech industry, as the economy continues its downturn, IT folks in my circles who were either laid off or let go are turning to contract work to pay their bills. Layoffs and a decline in tech jobs has affected older IT workers the most. Many of us find it more lucrative and enjoyable in the long run and leave the world of cubicles forever. However, there is much to be said for working for a large company or corporation, and health insurance is one of the benefits we value most. But what happens to those who find themselves in this position at mid-career or later in life? Hopefully they have accumulated enough savings or have enough money in an HSA to survive a major medical emergency. Unfortunately, many do not and some find themselves in dire straits with their lives depending on others for help. I have been working IT contracts mostly now for the past 11 years and I've done very well. I belong to a group insurance plan and the coverage is decent, but as I get older, premiums and copays go up and coverage goes down. If you work contracts exclusively, what do you think is the best plan for insurance? Any preferences?"

lpress writes "The Tour de France and the Olympics were live streamed on the Web. The BBC streamed 2,500 hours of live coverage of the Olympics and NBC streamed the entire Tour de France and 302 events from all 32 Olympic sports. I watched both events as a fan and as an observer of the online content and the network performance. I blogged detailed descriptions of my experience and summarized it in 12 observations and recommendations. The summary concludes with predictions about the way live events will be covered in the future — coverage of these events was an early step in a major shakeup of the way live events are produced, distributed and viewed."

lpress writes "The Tour de France and the Olympics were live streamed on the Web. The BBC streamed 2,500 hours of live coverage of the Olympics and NBC streamed the entire Tour de France and 302 events from all 32 Olympic sports. I watched both events as a fan and as an observer of the online content and the network performance. I blogged detailed descriptions of my experience and summarized it in 12 observations and recommendations. The summary concludes with predictions about the way live events will be covered in the future — coverage of these events was an early step in a major shakeup of the way live events are produced, distributed and viewed."

An anonymous reader writes "Hugo Campos got an implanted cardiac defibrillator shortly after collapsing on a BART train platform. He wants access to the data wirelessly collected by the computer implanted in his body, but the manufacturer says No. It seems weird that a patient can't get access to data about his own heart. Hugo and several medical device engineers are responding to live Q/A on Sunday night on such topics via ACM MedCOMM webcast at ACM SIGCOMM."

An anonymous reader sends word of a change Google will be making to its search algorithms. Beginning next week, the company will penalize the search rankings of websites who are the target of many copyright infringement notices from rightsholders. Quoting The Verge: "Google says the move is designed to 'help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily' — meaning that it's trying to direct people who search for movies, TV shows, and music to sites like Hulu and Spotify, not torrent sites or data lockers like the infamous MegaUpload. It's a clear concession to the movie and music industries, who have long complained that Google facilitates piracy — and Google needs to curry favor with media companies as it tries to build an ecosystem around Google Play. Google says it feels confident making the change because because its existing copyright infringement reporting system generates a massive amount of data about which sites are most frequently reported — the company received and processed over 4.3 million URL removal requests in the past 30 days alone, more than all of 2009 combined. Importantly, Google says the search tweaks will not remove sites from search results entirely, just rank them lower in listings."

An anonymous reader writes "Technology Review profiles Petr Mitrichev, who has since 2005 dominated the world of competitive programming, a little known sport where competitors furiously code for five hours in pursuit of glory and cash prizes worth tens of thousands of dollars. Mitrichev now works for Google, and competes only for leisure, but is still ranked number one. Many large tech companies, such as Facebook and Google, now sponsor and pay close attention to competitive coding contests, seeing them as a place to recruit new talent."

mdsolar writes with a tidbit from the New York Times on global warming: "The percentage of the earth's land surface covered by extreme heat in the summer has soared in recent decades, from less than 1 percent in the years before 1980 to as much as 13 percent in recent years, according to a new scientific paper. The change is so drastic, the paper says, that scientists can claim with near certainty that events like the Texas heat wave last year, the Russian heat wave of 2010 and the European heat wave of 2003 would not have happened without the planetary warming caused by the human release of greenhouse gases. Those claims, which go beyond the established scientific consensus about the role of climate change in causing weather extremes, were advanced by James E. Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, and two co-authors in a scientific paper published online on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 'The main thing is just to look at the statistics and see that the change is too large to be natural,' Dr. Hansen said in an interview."

itwbennett writes "Assuming that Microsoft doesn't choose to implement Secure Boot in the ways that the Linux Foundation says would work with Linux, there 'will be no easy way to run Linux on Windows 8 PCs,' writes Steven Vaughan-Nichols. Instead, we're faced with three different, highly imperfect approaches: Approach #1: Create UEFI Secure Boot keys for your particular distribution, like Canonical is doing with Ubuntu. Approach #2: work with Microsoft's key signing service to create a Windows 8 system compatible UEFI secure boot key, like Red Hat is doing with Fedora." itwbennet finishes with: "Approach #3: Use open hardware with open source software, an approach favored by ZaReason CEO Cathy Malmrose." When you can't even use a GPLv3 licensed bootloader to boot your system, you might have a problem. Why is everyone so quick to accept the corpse of TCPA in new clothes?

Bill Dimm writes "Craigslist now demands an exclusive license to the content you post there. How many people are aware that they are agreeing not to post their job ads, rentals, items for sale, etc. anywhere else when they post to Craigslist?" It's not going out on much a limb to suspect this is to strengthen Craigslist's position against those extension sites they love so much.

retroworks writes "J.D. Tuccille of the conservative think tank Reason Foundation discusses last week's news about the first working 3D-printed gun. According to the original article, the partly plastic '.22-caliber pistol, formed from a 3D-printed AR-15 (M16) lower receiver, and a normal, commercial upper' fired 200 rounds without any sign of wear and tear. Tuccille takes the discovery in the direction of politically topical gun control. '...the development makes it clear that a wide range of bans, restrictions and prohibitions are becoming increasingly unenforcable.' But in my mind, this example of additive-manufacturing technology raises even more questions about patent law enforcement. Will 3D printing be to the Anti-gray-market-alliance what online porn became to neighborhood blue laws?"

hypnosec writes "Apple announced during WWDC 2012 that it is going to ditch Google maps and bring out its own under iOS 6. So, Google started working and in fact raced ahead of Apple in providing 3D maps for iOS. Through a blog post, Google announced that it has now made 3D imagery available on its Google Earth for iOS app. Users of iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or new iPad, while using Google Earth for iOS app, will feel that they are virtually flying over cities.The feature, as of now, works only for 12 regions. Cities for which the 3D imagery is provided are from US with an expectation of a city in Rome. The U.S. cities include: Boulder, Colo., Boston, Charlotte, N.C., Lawrence, Kan., Long Beach, Calif., Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., San Diego, Santa Cruz, Calif., Tampa, Fla., Tucson, Ariz., and San Francisco, plus its East Bay and Peninsula neighbors, notes the blog post."

An anonymous reader writes "The Contiki project just released version 2.6 of its open source operating system for the Internet of Things, used to track city sound pollution, control street lights, read power meters, monitor radiation, among other things. The technology behind it? A really tiny IPv6 stack that fits in a few kilobytes of memory, allowing everything, everywhere to have an IPv6 address."

Several readers sent word that Google has announced its intention to start fighting drug cartels and other 'illicit networks.' According to a post on the official blog, the company thinks modern technology plays a key role in helping to 'expose and dismantle global criminal networks, which depend on secrecy and discretion in order to function.' They're holding a summit in Los Angeles this week, which aims to 'bring together a full-range of stakeholders, from survivors of organ trafficking, sex trafficking and forced labor to government officials, dozens of engineers, tech leaders and product managers from Google and beyond. Through the summit, which lasts until Wednesday, we hope to discover ways that technology can be used to expose and disrupt these networks as a whole—and to put some of these ideas into practice.'

RockoW writes "Steve Mann, a long-time researcher of computer vision systems, (i.e. Augmented reality, Digital Eyeglass) had an incident at a McDonald's in Paris, France. He was assaulted by three men during his visit to get food with his family. They had a problem with his digital eye glasses and tried to take them off his head. 'The eyeglass is permanently attached and does not come off my skull without special tools.' The men also tore up Mann's documentation and a letter from his doctor explaining the device's use. Fortunately, the rough treatment of the device caused it to keep recent images in its memory, instead of quickly overwriting them, so Dr. Mann has pictures of the men who assaulted him."

Alex Rivest has created one of the most visually riveting videos we've seen. Alex says, "In looking at the pictures taken from the International Space Station of the earth at night, I find my attention drawn to that thin line separating earth from space: Our atmosphere." He also says, "A good photograph is one that sparks a question." Since this video runs at 30 (really 29.97) frames per second, and it's about 290 seconds long, that's close to 8700 questions. Luckily, Alex has written a blog post that answers most of them. This doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy his work for its sheer beauty. Or that you shouldn't wish Alex well in his attempt to get into NASA's 2013 Astronaut Candidate Class. A fine art photographer who also has a PhD in Neuroscience from MIT... what better qualifications could there possibly be for astronauthood?

Hugh Pickens writes "According to Alan D. Mutter, after a 50% drop in newspaper advertising since 2005, the old ways of running a newspaper can no longer succeed, so most publishers are faced with choosing the best possible strategy going-forward for their mature but declining businesses: farm it, feed it, or milk it. Warren Buffett is farming it, and recently bucked the widespread pessimism about the future of newspapers by buying 63 titles from Media General. He is concentrating on small and medium papers in defensible markets, while steering clear of metro markets, where costs are high and competition is fierce. 'I do not have any secret sauce,' says Buffett. 'There are still 1,400 daily papers in the United States. The nice thing about it is that somebody can think about the best answer and we can copy him. Two or three years from now, you'll see a much better-defined pattern of operations online and in print by papers.' Advance Publications is milking it by cutting staff and reducing print publication to three days a week at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, thus making the Crescent City the largest American metropolis to be deprived of a daily dose of wood fiber in its news diet. Once dismantled, the local reporting infrastructure in communities like New Orleans will almost certainly never be rebuilt. 'By cutting staff to a bare minimum and printing only on the days it is profitable to do so, publishers can milk considerable sums from their franchises until the day these once-indomitable cash cows go dry.' Rupert Murdoch is feeding it as he spins his newspapers out of News Corp. and into a separate company empowered to innovate the traditional publishing businesses into the future. In various interviews after announcing the planned spinoff, Murdoch promised to launch the new company with no debt and ample cash to aggressively pursue digital publishing opportunities across a variety of platforms. 'If the spinoff materializes in anywhere near the way Murdoch is spinning it, however, it could turn out to be a model for iterating the way forward for newspapers.'"

retroworks writes "The New York Times has an interesting article about efforts by the Food and Drug Administration to locate a source of 'leaks' within the agency. The search became a slippery slope involving trojans, keyloggers, screenshot captures, and an investigation that eventually became an allegory for management overkill. The article describes how the investigation of one employee expanded to five, and how the investigation of five led to other staff (including the interception of correspondence to President Obama). The Agency struggled with the gray area between protecting trade secrets of drug companies (which had applied for FDA approval) and censoring researchers with legitimate questions about the Agency's approval process."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has upheld sanctions awarded by a District Court against one of the lawyers bringing copyright infringement cases against individuals for BitTorrent movie downloads, in Mick Haig Productions v. Does 1-670. The Court's opinion (PDF) described the lawyer's 'strategy' as 'suing anonymous internet users for allegedly downloading pornography illegally using the powers of the court to find their identity, then shaming or intimidating them into settling for thousands of dollars — a tactic that he has employed all across the state and that has been replicated by others across the country.'"

Stirling Newberry writes "This image shows 'P5,' the placeholder name for a fifth natural moon of Pluto, a tiny sliver that orbits ~29,000 miles from its primary in a circular orbit. Other than Charon, Hubble has been the means by which astronomers have found all of the known moons of Pluto. 'The new detection will help scientists navigate NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft through the Pluto system in 2015, when it makes an historic and long-awaited high-speed flyby of the distant world. The team is using Hubble’s powerful vision to scour the Pluto system to uncover potential hazards to the New Horizons spacecraft. Moving past the dwarf planet at a speed of 30,000 miles per hour, New Horizons could be destroyed in a collision with even a BB-shot-size piece of orbital debris.'"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In one of the myriad BitTorrent downloading cases against individuals, one plaintiff's law firm thought they'd be clever and insert a 'negligence' claim, saying that the defendant was negligent in failing to supervise his roommate's use of his WiFi access. Defendant moved to dismiss the negligence claim on the ground that it was preempted by the Copyright Act, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus curiae brief (PDF) agreeing with him. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan agreed, and dismissed the complaint, holding that the 'negligence' claim was preempted by the Copyright Act."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In one of the myriad BitTorrent downloading cases against individuals, one plaintiff's law firm thought they'd be clever and insert a 'negligence' claim, saying that the defendant was negligent in failing to supervise his roommate's use of his WiFi access. Defendant moved to dismiss the negligence claim on the ground that it was preempted by the Copyright Act, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus curiae brief (PDF) agreeing with him. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan agreed, and dismissed the complaint, holding that the 'negligence' claim was preempted by the Copyright Act."

Stirling Newberry writes "The New York Times reports: 'In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a daunting 1.3 million demands for subscriber data last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.' One stinging statistic: AT&T responds to an average of 700 requests per day, and turns down only 18 per week. Sprint gets 500,000 requests per year. While many requests are backed by court orders, most are not. Some include 'dumps' of tower data, which captures everyone near by at a certain time."

Snirt writes "A group of ex-Nokia staff and MeeGo enthusiasts has formed Jolla (Finnish for 'dinghy'), a mobile startup with the aim of bringing new MeeGo devices to the market. According to its LinkedIn page, Jolla consists of directors and core professionals from Nokia's MeeGo N9 organization, together with some of the best minds working on MeeGo in the communities."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In one of the many BitTorrent download cases brought by pornographic film makers, the plaintiff — faced with a motion to quash brought by a "John Doe" defendant — has filed its opposition papers. Interestingly, these included a declaration by its 'forensic investigator' (PDF), employed by a German company, IPP, Limited, in which he makes claims about what his technology detects, and about how BitTorrent works, and attaches, as an exhibit, a 'functional description' of his IPTracker software (PDF)."

Stirling Newberry writes "Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir details more of the evidence for what she calls a 'judicial vendetta' against WikiLeaks and its volunteers, including attempts to gain access to her Twitter account. Her efforts to block the National Defense Authorization Act were discussed here previously. The story was taken up last year by Glenn Greenwald and Wired. As a result, the International Parliamentarian Union adopted a resolution on her case. What's new? She asserts that there is a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and related organizations, and is calling on Sweden to provide assurances that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange not be re-extradited to the U.S. She says, 'There is no doubt that the U.S. wants to get even with WikiLeaks.'"

New submitter Trashcan Romeo writes "Three years ago, it accounted for 20% of all visits to Google's home page. Two years ago, Lifehacker readers voted it the best start-page service. Today it was announced that iGoogle will be retired — or in the company's parlance, 'spring cleaned' — on November 1, 2013." Google Video is also getting the axe this summer. It hasn't accepted new videos since 2009, and all of the old ones will be migrated to YouTube. The company is also getting rid of Google Mini, Talk Chatback, and their Symbian search app.

New submitter Trashcan Romeo writes "Three years ago, it accounted for 20% of all visits to Google's home page. Two years ago, Lifehacker readers voted it the best start-page service. Today it was announced that iGoogle will be retired — or in the company's parlance, 'spring cleaned' — on November 1, 2013." Google Video is also getting the axe this summer. It hasn't accepted new videos since 2009, and all of the old ones will be migrated to YouTube. The company is also getting rid of Google Mini, Talk Chatback, and their Symbian search app.

An anonymous reader writes "Cheap handheld terahertz scanners that do the same thing as those big bulky full-body scanners at the airport could be in your doctor's and dentist's office soon. The Semiconductor Research Corp. has successfully sponsored chip maker Texas Instruments in making cheap CMOS chips that do the same thing as those refrigerator sized full-body scanners at the airport. The resulting handheld versions can be tuned to look inside your teeth in the dentist chair and under you skin at the doctor's office. The best part is that terahertz rays are completely safe, unlike the X-rays used today by dentists and doctors which can cause cancer. Count me in!"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In the new wave of bittorrent downloading cases, the plaintiffs' lawyers like to lump a number of 'John Does' together in the same case in order to avoid filing fees ($350 a pop). Their excuse for 'joinder' is the allegation that the defendants 'interacted' with each other by reason of the fact that their torrents may have emanated from the same 'swarm.' In Malibu Media v. Does 1-5, when John Doe #4 indicated his intention to move for severance, the Court asked the lawyers to address the 'swarm' issue in their papers. So when John Doe #4 filed his or her motion to quash, sever, and dismiss, he filed a detailed memorandum of law (PDF) analyzing the 'swarm' theory in detail. What do you think?"

Stirling Newberry writes "Luciano Iess and team have hypothesized that Titan joins Earth, Europa, and Ganymede as ocean worlds. They measured the size of the tidal bulges and found that the moon is likely not solid (abstract). Team member Jonathan Lunine points out that Titan's methane atmosphere is not stable, so it needs some source, perhaps from outgassing. On Earth, water means life, and in the future, ice covered ocean worlds are targets for human colonization. As the late Arthur C. Clarke observed, water is the most precious substance in the universe to humans."

Through some stroke of fortune, your friendly editor Timothy Lord is at Google I/O watching the keynote. We'll be updating the story live (below the fold) with his updates as they stream in. Starting things off, he reported a few features of Android Jelly Bean. First, graphics will be triple-buffered for extra smoothness; the graphics demo was reportedly impressive enough that the audience swooned. Text input has been improved with new dictionaries and a predictive keyboard that will learn better over time. Additionally, voice typing will now work offline. English will be initially supported, with Farsi, Thai, and Hindi support to follow. Hit the link below to see further updates, including details on the Nexus 7 tablet and the Nexus Q streaming device.

Update: 06/27 17:16 GMT by S : Camera: Toss photos by just flicking them away — actually, you can now do this with apps on the home screen, too. Pinch for a quick sideshow view; it's much faster than one by one, and makes a quick strip-view to slide back and forth. Undo for photo delete -- nice.

Google Beam: More than a million NFC-enabled devices are out now: In Jellybean, send someone a photo or contact info by tapping phones. Works with big files, too.

Notifications: You can expand and collapse them, they are actionable, and you can get a lot more info directly from notifications than in previous versions. Rather than opening an app from notifications (as from a missed call), you can call right from the notification itself. Similarly, you can read mail (that is, Gmail) right from the notification list. Canned responses to messages are also available directly from notifications. You can see full photos, Foursquare check-ins, etc. Notifications expand as they bubble to the top of the list, but you can also make them expand with a two-finger drag gesture.

Google search: Using Knowledge Graph. The graph allows new "card" answers to Google searches — a bit like "I'm feeling lucky," but with more multimedia right there. Search for 'What movies was Angelina Jolie in,' and you get back a headshot and a filmography.

Voice Search: Quick spoken answers to spoken questions. The demo question was: "Show me pictures of pygmy marmosets." Yep, there are the pictures.

"Google now" (lower case n): "Gets you just the right info at just the right time." It uses things like search, location, and calendar history to figure out what info you might need and when. If you looked for a flight, and it's updated, Google will alert you and show you the new one. It keeps track of your favorite sports teams. (The guy next to me says, "that's scary cool.. and kind of creepy.") Call up public transportation or an upcoming flight and you get details like how long each trip will be and where to transfer. I'm surprised it doesn't tell you which side of the street is shadier to walk on. Google knows now when you're traveling, and tells you, among other things, what time it is back home.

Note for developers: Jelly Bean will start to release to open source in mid-July. Devs can grab the Preview SDK from developer.android.com right now.

Android Engineering director Chis Yerga says Google Play is now up to 600,000 apps and 20 billion downloads Thousands of books and movies, as well as millions of songs. You can store 20,000 tracks for free in your music library. Yerga introduced movie sales, not just rentals. They're also adding TV: buy episodes, or whole seasons — 'perfect for when you're on the bus.' To start, their partners include Disney, NBC, Sony Pics, Paramount, and small ones like Magnolia. There will also be magazines: premium ones (Esquire, Wired) and lots of the pedestrian ones, too.

Brief, but important new features: App encryption (big applause from audience), and smart App updates — only the parts of the APK that update need to be transferred.

What everyone was waiting for: Asus-built Nexus 7, brandished from the stage. It's super thin, light and portable, and has a 1280x800 display. Inside: Tegra 3. Quad-core CPU, 12-core GPU. "That's basically 16 cores, which makes everything, including games, incredibly smooth.' It has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, a gyro, an accelerometer, and up to 9 hours of video playback. It weighs 340 grams — like a paperback book. Fits nicely in one hand.

Mag reader gets you form-factor optimized version of magazines, with various swipe-activated interactive features. There were chuckles from audience on showing the cover of 'Shape' magazine. A bikini picture as a demo of interactive "Premium reading experience" on Google play, available for certain magazines. I'm surprised that was the choice. It seems like the kind of thing women developers might not appreciate, or at least that I'd anticipate would have been nixed based on that presumption.

Google has also added a "what's this song" widget, which leads you to (of course) the store, where you can buy the identified song.

Apps on N7 + Jellybean: The Nexus 7 is the first device that ships with Chrome as a standard browser! YouTube app provides high-def video optimized for the N7. Google Maps: you've got the usual features (public transit, etc.), but also, "learn about a place before you get there." It has pannable 3D images inside places (where they have the footage, of course: it's not complete magic). They demonstrated panning inside a bar. BUG: "Make available offline" in a tappable menu means you don't need a data connection. Google Currents, news reader, etc., now has Google Translate built right in, transparently: choose a new language and see your news in Arabic, say, or any supported language, just like that. Games: They showed an amazing game demo (Horn) with lens flare, environment effects, and individually rendered leaves. Another game has zombies and lots and lots of blood (Dead Trigger). Not for kids, but great graphics.

The Nexus 7 price: They will launch "starting at" $199, including a $25 credit in the Google Play store, and several things as teases, including a Transformers movie and the Bourne Dominion book. It will be available in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the UK to start, with more countries coming.

Mysterious: Project Tungsten. It involves Android and Google Play — the first consumer product Google has ever built from ground up: The "Nexus Q." Q is a small (tiny!) Android computer, which "connects to all the media you have stored in the cloud." It's designed to plug into the best speakers and TV in your home, and always be connected to the cloud. It pulls content directly from Google Play, and is controlled by (but not streaming through) your phone / tablet as a remote. It's a small black orb; looks like a little Death Star. It'll use an NFC connection to your phone: "This is how you get your software," he said, as the phone leaned against it for a moment.

It runs on the same chip as the Galaxy Nexus. And 25-watt amp built right in (!?). It has optical digital audio and micro HDMI outs, too. Dual-band Wi-fi, ethernet, NFC, BT, and a port to encourage 'general hackability' (which got big applause). It's an odd-looking little thing — you won't be stacking anything on top of it. OK, I am drooling: there's a multi-colored LED-lit line around the equator (imagine Luke diving in with his tiny X-wing) which lights in patterns based on music.

It's a 'social connected device': multiple people controlling it from their own tablets in the same space results in their songs from different devices getting spread. Anyone can move songs around the queue, or control the listening experience. "Pretty cool, my friends can now play their music in my living room." Neat tech, but not the very newest possibility in the world. Slightly more cumbersome possibility it replaces: carrying one's whole movie library around. Basically, you can take over the TV connected to the Nexus Q, in order to stream stuff. It will cost $299. They're taking pre-orders now, and the device will start shipping in mid-July.

Google+: Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of G+. They played a cute video of hangouts, showing live video streaming to group. There's a vibrant community of astronomers, knitters, musicians, etc. 250 million G+ users now, with 50pct daily logins. Users tend to spend more than 12 minutes a day in the stream, up from 9 a few months ago (is that an impressive number?) Google+ is now accessed more from mobile than from desktop. They keep getting the same request from users: "Native tablet version?" That's the big G+ announcement today: native G+ for tablets. Photos, text, video, etc. are stylized slightly differently from each other for easy scanning. Hangout experience is an emphasis, too. Swipe to accept and invite, just like a phone call. Automatic video switching to whoever's talking. Looks slick and sweet. Everything is launching on the iPad, too, "very soon." All the new features also now immediately available for phones. Final note: they're introducing a sort of organization around events. "The substance of a real world event is [now] lost online" -- invites are brittle. Announcement: Google Plus Events, for stuff before, during, after. It includes deep integration with Google Calendar.

Before: Invitation, scheduling, organization. You can choose ready-made, cinematic themes. Eh, that looks sort of weak, but then, people sure bought a lot of trapper keepers in the '80s, and Hallmark is a successful business. During: Streaming, involvement, etc. "Everyone's photos get lost," with typical current mix of devices, systems, etc. But you can enable "party mode," which shares all the photos people are taking, if they've turned it on. Also, a current-photos slideshow. This is also controlled from Notifications — a green icon shows if one has turned on Party mode. OK, this is pretty neat — it beats my long-time idea that weddings should all have stations for dumping pictures from SD cards. After: put all those photos in chronological order: all the pics from all the guests who had party mode on, in one stream. Also, analyze photos, for most engagement or plus-ones, and ones in which you're tagged; can also sort by photographer.

Now Sergey is up on stage for a Google Glass demo...

Sergey is talking with his friend JT — they're live-streaming from about a mile ahead and thousands of feet up. They're in a blimp. They're communicating through a Hangout using Google Glass. He's about to jump with the glasses on . He's wearing a wing suit and has a GoPro camera. They're looking right at Moscone Center. And there they go! They're flying through the air, broadcasting the view live. They're aiming for the Moscone. Since I'm inside a big building, this could all be special effects, and I wouldn't know. And now they've landed on the room. Audience applause is hurting my ears.

And they have bikers up there, to speed them along the roof, also with Glasses. The bikers zoomed along the roof, doing flips, all streamed live. They rappelled down the side of the building to get onto the appropriate floor, then biked right up to the stage. Ludicrous. "Special delivery for Sergey." Now the skydivers and other guys have all reached the stage.

More on Glass: Lots of sensors, networking, location awareness, multiple radios for data communications. The project started 2.5 years ago. They showed a photo of Thad Starner wearing a clunkier version from back then. Now it's more like one side of a pair of fat-framed sunglasses. Lead designer Isabel Olsson (Senior Industrial Designer) talks about it: the display is above the eye; designed to be close to your senses, but not block them. The latest prototype weighs less on the nose than many sunglasses. They showed a few demos: playing tennis, first person service. Jumping into a ball pit. They stressed the importance of scaleable design: put all components to one side, so there can be wide frame compatibility. It looks symmetrically (could be be reversed and put on the other side?), but the demos all seem to show it on the right side (from the user's perspective) of the head.

Aspirations / purposes for Glass:
- Communications, documentation: Sometimes for grand or spectacular purpose (skydivers), but also mundane moments among geo-distant friends (the weather in NY or wherever), a baby growing up, etc.
- Search result medium
- Real-time dashboard (how fast are you going on your bike?)
- Interactive communication -- you're at the market and see something odd, or want to ask your spouse about the product you're supposed to pick up.

They showed a heartwarming demo: it looks like an Apple commerical, which may or may not warm the hearts of the people who made it. Sergey talked a bit about why they're showing these particular features. A) They're excited about it, B) These are things they can show us -- there are other uses, but they're tough to demonstrate, and C) they're a small team, with only a limited ability to test them out in different contexts. Sergey also announced Google Glass Explorer Edition. It's a rough-around-the-edges version for developers. Preorders are available for US-based I/O attendees to start. Cost is $1,500, and they plan to ship it to you sometime next year.

jdray writes "My wife and I own a mid-sized restaurant with a couple of Point of Sale (POS) terminals. The software, which runs on Windows and .NET, uses SQL Server on the back end. With an upgrade to the next major release of the software imminent, I'm considering upgrading the infrastructure it runs on to better ensure uptime (we're open seven days a week). We can't afford several thousand dollars' worth of server infrastructure (two cluster nodes and some shared storage, or some such), so I thought I'd ask Slashdot for some suggestions on enabling maximum uptime. I considered a single server node running VMWare with a limp-mode failover to a VMWare instance on a desktop, but I'm not sure how to set up a monitoring infrastructure to automate that, and manual failover isn't much of an option with non-tech staff. What suggestions do you have?"

Peristaltic writes "Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are trying to determine if an unexpected mutation in a popular GM grass, Tifton 85, is responsible for the sudden deaths of a small herd of cattle in Elgin, Texas three weeks ago. The grass has been used for grazing since 1992 without incident, however after a severe drought last year in Texas, the grass started producing cyanide in sufficient quantities to kill a small herd of cattle in Elgin, Texas. Testing has found the cyanide-producing grass in nearby fields as well." Update: 06/23 22:59 GMT by T : Reader Jon Cousins writes with a correction that means the headline above is inaccurate for including "GM." Tifton 85, he writes, is "absolutely not genetically modified. It's a conventionally bred hybrid."

theodp writes "On Thursday, Google announced a product that enables a business to see where all its workers are at all times. Called Maps Coordinate, it combines a paid-for business version of Google's standard maps product with an application downloaded to a worker's smartphone, creating a real-time record of worker locations. Ironically, Google touted its worker tracking solution on the very same day that CEO Larry Page was a surprise no-show at Google's Annual Shareholder Meeting, leaving Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt to explain his absence. Schmidt explained that Page had lost his voice and, as a result, would likely also miss next week's I/O conference and possibly next month's quarterly earnings call. While a Google spokeswoman declined to comment further on Page's condition, Schmidt added that Page will continue as CEO while he recovers. So, why not reassure those worried about the situation by publicly tracking Page's location via Maps Coordinate? After all, Google's a true believer in eating its own dog food, right?"

redletterdave writes "About half of all of the languages in the world — more than 3,000 of them — are currently on the verge of extinction. Google hopes to stem the tide with its latest effort that launched Thursday, called The Endangered Languages Project. Google teamed up with the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity, a newly formed coalition of global language groups and associations, to give endangered-language speakers and their supporters a place to upload and share their research and collaborations. The site currently features posts submitted by the Endangered Languages community, including linguistic fieldwork, projects, audio interviews, and transcriptions."

retroworks writes "According to columnist Elinor Mills at CNET, efforts to track consumer browsing behavior are 'rising dramatically.' In an interview with Gordon McLeod, CEO of data mining company Krux.com, advertising targeted at browsing habits has increased fourfold since 2010. IDC, according to McLeod, projects the browser-search-term-targeted advertising industry to grow from 'zero to $5 billion in less than 5 years.' Will health insurance companies see us crawling for information on family illnesses? After reading the article, I went hunting for a download of 2008 program antiphormlite, and found nothing remaining at any download site (including CNET). Is there another 'cookie camouflage' alternative to polluting the cookie stream with false positives? Or are we left to 'do not track' pledges and trusting Tor redirectors?"

retroworks writes "Bloomberg News makes the case that when the federal government offers tuition assistance, students apply to more expensive colleges, giving the institutions an incentive to raise tuition and a disincentive to lower it. (The Wall Street Journal has a similar article, but it's paywalled.) This reminds me of the debate over President Reagan's cuts to the Pell Grant program in the 1980s. MIT's Campus Paper 'The Tech' quoted the MIT administration as saying it had 'no idea what really will occur' when Reagan's proposal to cut Pell came to Washington. So the question is, 25 years later, do we know now? Did cuts to federal tuition assistance hurt the education of the lower income students? Did increases to Pell grants create more opportunity? Or is federal money the milkshake, and students are just the straw?"