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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 12:05 AM EDT |
Members of QPAC [Queen’s Printer Association of Canada] from across
Canada were in town for their annual conference. Last Saturday, QPAC co-hosted a
hackathon using legislative data with the Open Data Society of BC, a community group
of developers passionate about open data. The developers presented the
applications they created at the hackathon to the QPAC conference attendees
Tuesday.
Their work was proof that when given the opportunity, developers
can create easy-to-use applications that provide citizens improved access to
legislation.
Loren Mullane, DataBC Team[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: macrorodent on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 01:14 AM EDT |
Guess who is being interviewed here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428680.200-the-man-w
ho-gave-linux-to-the-world.html
Not much new for those already familiar
with Linux and open Source, but a good intro to other folks.
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Authored by: eamacnaghten on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 04:11 AM EDT |
An interesting article. Not so much new content, but it is
on the BBC web
site which is main stream.
Linus
Torvalds: Linux
succeeded thanks to selfishness and
trust
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 08:27 AM EDT |
RAS [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 08:54 AM EDT |
Continuing a long string of similar cases,
the Supreme Court
will review a New York federal court
decision that decided, in short, that the
first-sale
doctrine does not apply to any copyrighted product
manufactured
abroad. That case concerns textbooks.
John Wiley & Sons, a textbook
publisher, sells expensive
versions of the textbooks here and less expensive
versions
abroad. Supap Kirtsaeng, a foreign graduate student at
University of
Southern California, decided to help pay for
his schooling by having relatives
buy him copies of the
foreign versions abroad, send them to him, whereupon he'd
sell those books on eBay to willing students. He'd make
money, the students
would save money, but Wiley might have
fewer sales of its pricey American
versions. The case is
styled Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons.
Both
the District and Second Circuit courts held that any
product manufactured
abroad is not subject to the first-sale
doctrine.
The Atlantic
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 10:45 AM EDT |
When the nothing-to-hide argument is unpacked, and its underlying
assumptions examined and challenged, we can see how it shifts the debate to its
terms, then draws power from its unfair advantage.
The nothing-to-hide
argument speaks to some problems but not to others. It represents a singular and
narrow way of conceiving of privacy, and it wins by excluding consideration of
the other problems often raised with government security measures. When engaged
directly, the nothing-to-hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to
focus on its narrow understanding of privacy.
But when confronted with the
plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use
beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing-to-hide argument, in the end,
has nothing to say.
Daniel
J. Solove, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Daniel J. Solove is a
professor of law at George Washington University. This essay is an excerpt from
his new book, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security,
published this month by Yale University Press. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 10:56 AM EDT |
He shares the honour with Dr Shinya Yamanaka, a stem cell
scientist.
Technology Academy Finland said Mr Torvalds's achievements had
"had a great impact on shared software development, networking and the openness
of the web".
It is the first time the bi-annual award has been split. Each
man receives 600,000 euros ($752,000; £483,000).
BBC[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 11:39 AM EDT |
The researchers chose a light-emitting diode with a small band gap,
and applied such small voltages that it acted like a normal resistor. With each
halving of the voltage, they reduced the electrical power by a factor of 4, even
though the number of electrons, and thus the light power emitted, dropped by
only a factor of 2. Decreasing the input power to 30 picowatts, the team
detected nearly 70 picowatts of emitted light. The extra energy comes from
lattice vibrations, so the device should be cooled slightly, as occurs in
thermoelectric coolers.
hipstomp, Core77[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Gringo_ on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 12:57 PM EDT |
Article
The
device uses proprietary screws (which
mean that you'll need a special
screwdriver just to open the
bottom cover), the RAM is soldered to the logic
board, and
there is no traditional hard-drive enclosure, just an array
of
proprietary flash storage.
What's more, the battery is glued — rather
than screwed —
into the case, and the display assembly is completely
fused.
As a software developer, computers are the tools of
my
trade. With a former background in electronics, I take great
pride in
fixing or upgrading my own computers. I would hate
a MacBook Pro. I would feel
locked out of my own computer.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 02:44 PM EDT |
"Examining body AQA has teamed with Microsoft to create a new computer science
GCSE to address demands from the IT industry to develop more candidates with the
necessary IT skills .. We are working with Microsoft to provide support and
continuing professional development for teachers," link
"To enhance student learning with industry required
skills and certification the course content for AQAs GCSE in Computer Science is
aligned with the new MTA certifications .. MTA is a new entry-level credential
from Microsoft .. students can choose from a variety of Microsoft courses
including gaming, mobile app, software development, networking and web
development" link[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 02:45 PM EDT |
"How open is Android in reality? The system now runs on more than
300 million smartphones and tablets, made by all sorts of companies. It
primarily targets the ARM platform, according to Christopher Neugebauer, a young
Tasmanian developer, who presented a talk on Android to the island's LUG a
couple of months ago.
Android has a Linux kernel at its core. "There's
the kernel itself which talks to your hardware; there's a C library (in the case
of Android, it's called 'Bionic' (most Linux distros use Glibc, from the GNU
Project) which provides a useful interface to the kernel; and then there's the
user space. The difference is that the userspace is an entirely custom one
developed by the Android project, so it doesn't, for example, include X11 for
drawing GUIs, but instead it uses its own custom layer," he says.
The
Linux kernel, of course, is released under the GNU General Public Licence which
says that any changes made to the code have to be released whenever the changed
version is distributed. But when it comes to the other elements of Android,
things do become a little murkier."
Read the entire 3 page article
here - itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/55247-android-not-so-o
pen-open-source.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 05:34 PM EDT |
The Web giants provide users no notification that their information is being
used for political targeting.
Click here [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 05:36 PM EDT |
Lawmakers Weigh in on Microsoft v.
Motorola Fight at
ITC
If those lawmakers would have done a better job reforming the
patent
system, they would not have to lose time with letters.
And, by the way,
if the ITC is involved, you are talking about
import, whatever the music that
sounds. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 06:07 PM EDT |
"Earlier this year, I wrote a story about Maya, a four-year-old girl who used an
app called Speak for Yourself to help her communicate with the outside world.
Maya’s mother, Dana Nieder, preferred the app over more established augmentative
and alternative communication (AAC) devices because it worked on an iPad, which
was easier for Maya to handle, and it was cheaper — $299 plus the cost of an
iPad, as opposed to bulkier devices that can cost up to
$8,000".
"The app is being threatened by a joint lawsuit from
Prentke Romich Company (PRC) and Semantic Compaction Systems, which claim that
Heidi LoStracco and Renee Collender — the two speech pathologists behind Speak
for Yourself — infringed on over 100 of their software patents. LoStracco and
Collender fought back, claiming in court that the lawsuit is baseless". link[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: MadTom1999 on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 02:39 AM EDT |
Does anyone know about this speech app for the iPad?
linky
If this app is really as simple as it seems anyone want to spend a few minutes
making an open source android one? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 02:50 AM EDT |
Court Denies Petition To Question Zuckerberg and Banks About Alleged
Facebook IPO Fraud
Today a Texas court dismissed a petition asking for “oral
depositions and requests for documents” from Facebook to determine if it
defrauded investors in its IPO last month.
The judge ruled that the
plaintiffs needed to already have grounds for a complaint against Facebook, and
could not use a petition for discovery in order to figure out the basis for a
lawsuit
Josh Constine, TechCrunch[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 03:44 AM EDT |
If the sky goes dark today (or tomorrow for that matter), remember those
immortal words written in large friendly letters, referred to far and wide
across the galaxy: DON'T PANIC![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: say_what on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 08:27 AM EDT |
Clicky
The company also warned that increased competition
in the smartphone sector would hit its financial results in the second and third
quarters, causing its operating loss margin to be bigger than previously
forecast.
--- A cheap solution that doesn't work is
neither,
Say What? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 12:18 PM EDT |
The Danish daily 'Politiken' (The Policy) has a small item on Nokia's fall from
grace
(Story from Danish news agency Ritzau (in Danish) here:
http://politiken.dk/tjek/digitalt/forbrugerelektronik/ECE1656369/nokia-er-roeget
-fra-top-til-bund-paa-kun-fire-aar/)
I've provided a homespun translation below
*******************************************
NOKIA HAS GONE FROM TOP TO BOTTOM IN ONLY FOUR YEARS
Once it was a Nokia the smart, the hip, and the fast whipped out when the phone
rang.
Those days are long gone. American Apple with iPhone and Korean Samsung with
Android has long ago left Nokia and their smartphone (the) Lumina in the dust.
"What happened to Nokia, to put it in simple terms, was that a man in a
turleneck and round glasses came down from the mountain with the holy
phone", says Nikolaj Sonne, gadget expert and host on the Danish
Broadcasting (DR) program So ein ding.
It is Apple, iPhone and Steve Jobs the TV host refers to. And history has shown
that Nokias bosses read the situation the wrong way.
"Because they said at Nokia -'No, that there wonn't matter' and they were
simply asleep at the wheel", thinks Nikolaj Sonne.
Nokia has made a lot of good phones:
"They wow'ed the whole world with the N95, which had camera, GPS, music
player - it could do everything. The problem was that they kept adding
functionality to their phones without looking at the user interface. They got
too hard to use", opinions Nikolaj Sonne.
And the numbers says it all. Samsung sold 90 million mobile phones in Q1 2012,
of which 44 million were so-called smart phones. Nokia sold 83 million mobile
phones of which 12 million were smart phones.
Samsung's sales of smart phones gives it a marketshare of around 31 percent.
Apple sold 35 million smart phones, adding up to a marketshare of 24 percent.
Nokia, which Thursday announced they will lay off 10.000 people globally, are
trying to once more become the preferred choice for customers - but without any
luck:
"In February thay presented a phone with a fantastic camera but with an OS
that was essentially dead. And nobody wants to buy a phone for which there are
no (downloadable) apps", Nikolaj Sonne points out.
******************************************
Notice how any mentioning of Microsoft is deftly avoided.
A few day back, another story bemoaned the lack of market share for former
market leader Nokia - also without any reference to Microsoft.
If I was into conspiracy theories, I might see a pattern in this and think
disinformation campaign...
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 14 2012 @ 07:01 PM EDT |
In most papers we at Ars cover, we'll be pleasantly surprised to
find a single clever turn of phrase that has survived multiple rounds of editing
and peer review.
So it was an unexpected surprise to come across a paper
where the authors, all professors of economics, have spent the entire text with
tongues so firmly planted in their cheeks that they threatened to burst out,
alien-style. It surprised me even more to find it in a journal that is
produced on behalf of the Royal Statistical Society and American Statistical
Association. Credit to the statisticians, though, for the journal's clever name:
Significance.
What topic allowed the economists to cut loose?
Bank robberies—or more specifically, the finances thereof.
John Timmer, ars technica[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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