Slashdot Mirror

judgecorp writes "How many cells does it take to cover a city? In London's case, it will take 70,000 cells by 2015 for the next-generation LTE network needed for 4G mobile broadband, according to a calculation from PicoChip. A shame that's too late for 2012, when Mayor Boris Johnson warns that mobile data demands during the Olympics may overload the current 3G network"

judgecorp writes "The patent dispute between Samsung and Apple has finally boiled down to clear understandable terms. Samsung says Apple has not been paying it royalties for use of patented 3G technology. Apple says Samsung smuggled that technology into the 3G standards, disclosing its IP demands later. The Dutch court will rule on 14 October." The issue at hand now seems to be whether Apple already has a license to the patents under the 3G "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" requirements for patented technology used in the standard. If Samsung really believes Apple needs a separate license, when can we expect them to sue everyone else?

zacharye writes "According to JP Morgan analysts Mark Moskowitz and Gokul Hariharan, Apple lowered fourth-quarter iPad orders 25%, the first time there has been a production decrease. This decrease has led some to speculate that the move is more than a response to lower demand, or a wish to operate with reduced inventory. Some insiders see this as a move in production from China to Brazil."

First time accepted submitter BigSlowTarget writes "Are we simply subject to whatever a software provider demands of us in their clickthrough TOS agreement or are they real contracts where we can counteroffer our preferred terms and expect a refund if they are rejected? One blogger has come up with an applet to change TOS agreements and automatically submit the changes for approval (or rejection). Even he is not sure of the legal standing for the offer, but with these contracts so common they have been featured on South Park the issue certainly could be coming to the courts soon."

First time accepted submitter Pete McCann writes "Given the recent spate of domain seizures by the U.S. government, it seems that registrations in any U.S.-hosted registry (like the gTLDs .com, .net, and .org) aren't stable places to put content that the U.S. government might find objectionable. I am wondering, are there any ccTLD registries out there that have an open registration policy and are willing to stand up to censorship demands from the USG? There is this list of ccTLDs with open registration policies, and the current MAFIAAFIRE redirection list looks very Tuvalu-heavy. Where would you register a site for maximum resistance to confiscation?"

chicksdaddy writes "Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said on Tuesday that her office would be inquiring into long-standing complaints about fraudulent purchases that leverage Apple's popular online music store. Coakley was herself a victim of identity theft in recent months, telling the audience that her stolen credit card information was used to make fraudulent iTunes purchases. When asked (by a Threatpost reporter) about whether such fraud constitutes a reportable event under the Bay State's strict data breach notification law, 201 CMR 17, Coakley said that her office would be looking into that question and demanding answers from Cupertino, which has steadfastly refused to respond to media requests regarding user reports about fraudulent iTunes purchases, and which has not reported the breaches to Massachusetts regulators."

msmoriarty writes "NASA has decided to develop methods for using lasers and/or microwave energy to 'provide external power on demand for aerospace vehicles' as part of its 'Game-Changing' technology development program. According to the announcement, 'The project will attempt to develop a low-cost, modular power beaming capability and explore multiple technologies to function as receiving elements of the beamed power. This combination of technologies could be applied to space propulsion, performance and endurance of unpiloted aerial vehicles or ground-to-ground power beaming applications. Development of such capabilities fulfills NASA's strategic goal of developing high payoff technology and enabling missions otherwise unachievable with today's technology."

GovTechGuy writes "Social Intelligence Corp's online employment screening service, which preserves users' social media profiles and other data for use by potential employers, infringes on consumers' privacy and could be a violation of the law according to Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Al Franken (D-MN). The Senators wrote to Social Intelligence Corp on Monday demanding answers to a host of questions about the service and how it collects data."

PolygamousRanchKid writes with this quote from an article in the Economist: "The directors of Yahoo! were 'so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country' that they fired Carol Bartz as chief executive 'to show that they're not the doofuses that they are.' That was Ms Bartz's typically blunt verdict, offered to Fortune after she was dismissed with a phone call by the internet firm's chairman, Roy Bostock, on September 6th. She would say that. Yet Ms Bartz's criticisms of the board have been sympathetically received. Firing a chief executive by phone smacks of hasty, panicky decision-making. And Yahoo!'s board already had a poor reputation, having turned down an offer from Microsoft that valued the firm at several times what it is worth today. It is not just Yahoo!'s board that is feeling the heat. The directors of HP, another stumbling Silicon Valley giant, have been accused of serial ineptitude spanning the appointment and dismissal of Carly Fiorina as chief executive, the firing of her successor, Mark Hurd, and the selection of his replacement, Léo Apotheker. ... There is growing demand for boards to undergo a formal evaluation process, to assess both the performance of each individual board member and how they work together as a group. The European Union is considering new regulations that would require an independent evaluation of the board every three years."

Nobody knows better than Award-winning wildlife photographer Terje Helleso how hard it can be to get that perfect shot in an out-of-the-way location. That's why he used stock photos. The 47-year-old photographer passed off hundreds of stock photos as his own over the course of several years. From the article: "On Wednesday, a deeply regretful Helleso spoke to local radio. He gave economic problems as a reason, but mostly it was about his own unreasonably high demands on himself to be successful, he said. 'I was under pressure, mostly from myself, and I gave in to temptation. Looking back, I’m surprised that I got away with it for so long, and that I managed to keep up appearances to my wife and everyone else,' he said."

First time accepted submitter serviscope_minor writes "A friend of mine has recently started a research group. As usual with these things, she is on a shoestring budget and has computational demands. The computational task is very parallel (but implementing it on GPUs is an open research problem and not the topic of research), and very CPU bound. Can slashdotters advise on a practical way of getting really high bang for buck? The budget is about £4000 (excluding VAT/sales tax), though it is likely that the system will be expanded later. The computers will probably end up running a boring Linux distro and Sun GridEngine to manage batch processing (with home directories shared over NFS)."

Orome1 writes "Cybercriminals know how to evade current operating systems-based security, demanding a new paradigm – security beyond the operating system. On that note, McAfee demonstrated the workings of its new McAfee DeepSAFE technology at the Intel Developer Forum on Tuesday. Co-developed with Intel, it allows McAfee to develop hardware-assisted security products to take advantage of a 'deeper' security footprint. It sits beyond the operating system and close to the silicon, and by operating beyond the OS, it provides a direct view of system memory and processor activity."

itwbennett writes "Speaking at the launch of his Japan Renewable Energy Foundation, Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of Softbank, outlined a plan to rebuild Japan's energy infrastructure. Son said the country could shift to renewable energy sources for 60 percent of its electricity requirements over the next two decades. He called for a 2 trillion yen (US$26 billion) 'super grid' across the country, and underwater off the coast, that would zip electricity around cheaply and efficiently to meet demand."

With his first posted submission, SpaceCracker writes "According to this Bloomberg article, hardware giants like HP and Dell are losing out to Intel and others who've adapted more quickly to the trend of shifting from traditional, off-the-shelf servers to custom-tailored machines. 'Buyers say custom servers provide a cheaper, more efficient way of meeting the boom in demand for personal data shared via the Web. A lot of that demand can be met by less expensive machines shorn of the components, upgrades and backup services that server makers traditionally offer to large corporations.'"

First time accepted submitter ni5dotcom writes "Amazon is soon going to launch an e-book rental service soon for US customers, according to The Wall Street Journal. Publishers, however, have shown mixed reaction to this decision so far. From the article: 'Amazon is believed to have offered book publishers a large fee for joining the service. However, the negotiations are said to still be in their early stages. The Seattle-based technology company, which is expected to imminently launch a tablet device to rival Apple’s iPad, has also said that the digital ebook library would feature older titles and be accessible to those who pay for $79 a year for Amazon Prime, the service which allows people unlimited two-day shipping and films and TV shows on demand.'"

We hear all the time that household energy consumption is rising, both in the U.S. and around the world. That's been true in the big picture for several decades at least, but reader captainkoloth, with his first accepted submission, points to an Associated Press article with some encouraging news on this front: the rate of growth in U.S. household energy use, and household energy use itself, is expected to decline slightly over the next 10 years. Take it for what you will, but that conclusion is drawn by the Electric Power Research Institute, "a nonprofit group funded by the utility industry."

A few days ago, the Opposable Thumbs blog ran a piece titled, "In gaming, everything is amazing, but no one is happy." The thrust of the article is that discussion about modern games focuses almost entirely on flaws, which are often blown out of proportion. "Every game is too short, although we never finish the games we play. Every game is too expensive, although we demand ever-increasing levels of interaction, graphical fidelity, and length. The same people who claim every game was 80 hours and a masterpiece 10 years ago are 10 years away from saying that today was the golden time, once they have the distance needed to scrub the bad games from memory." Today, gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun offers counterpoint, saying that video games need active criticism for the industry to improve. "Everything is amazing, and sometimes people are happy. That’s how it will always be. And we should probably make the most of it, and then strive to make it better."

An anonymous reader writes "TSA employee Theldala Magee has filed a lawsuit against a blogger demanding $500k in damages for alleging a particularly invasive search involving multiple incursions of a finger into the passenger's vagina. The passenger, who likened the feeling to being raped, is being sued for defamation for supposedly sullying the otherwise good name of a checkpoint smurf."

judgecorp writes "The .uk registrar, Nominet, has proposed rules that would give the police powers to demand Internet domains be shut down without a court order, in certain circumstances. The powers were requested by the Serious and Organized Crime Agency and have aroused concern that legitimate sites might be closed on suspicion of wrongdoing. Nominet's suggested implementation is online for public consultation."

hypnosec writes "Celebrities have moved swiftly to block their names from the .xxx domain, which is meant for websites that offer pornographic content. Thousands of celebrities have contacted ICM Registry to put their names on the permanently reserved list so that no one will be able to start offering porn under their name. The domain registration company, ICM Registry, failed to give out the list of domain names it had blocked nor it is willing to tell how long the list is. On a lighter note, OsamaBinLaden.xxx has been also blocked and we assume the Al Qaeda would have demanded to reserve the domain."