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Thread: Cutting Edge Technology in the news

  1. #11
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    Kindle Fire seems like a great deal for $199.00, but what happens when the kids spend $$$$ because one click purchase doesn't have a password feature? Let's hope the promised software update fixes all the little bugs.

    Amazon plots Kindle Fire update: Aims to weather first flapBy Larry Dignan | December 12, 2011, 2:48am PST

    Summary: Although volume control gets the press, the biggest issue for Amazon is fixing the one-click buying without a password. That’s a parental nightmare.

    Amazon is learning life in the tablet market is a bit different than e-readers. The critics, who are talking about volume control, user interface and one-click shopping, are starting to pile up. The open question here is whether Amazon is facing a crisis or just a hiccup.

    Much of the latest consternation around the Kindle Fire is summed up by a New York Times story. The most disgruntled are sending the Fire back. No external volume control is a hassle; privacy concerns abound and a sometimes clunky UI are the biggest beefs. User interface expert Jakob Nielsen has panned the Fire. Amazon said it will update the software in less than two weeks

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    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
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  2. #12
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    52Million users tracked? Seems illegal d/L become more popular ever day.
    When WILL the industry stop with the legal manuvering and come up with a system that works for everyone?

    Website knows what you've illegally downloaded

    It could be trouble for those who steal copyrighted music and movies
    By Matt Liebowitz

    A new website that keeps track of everything you download from file-sharing sites could spell trouble for the scores of people who steal copyrighted music and movies.

    The site, Youhavedownloaded.com, does exactly what its name implies: It keeps a huge database of millions of media files that have been downloaded to tens of millions of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from file-sharing websites and services such as BitTorrent. When you visit the site, it automatically scans your IP address and reveals what, if any, files you've downloaded.

    To date, Youhavedownloaded has a database of more 52,286,000 users and 110,800 torrents made up of 1,918,000 individual files. A glance at the homepage shows a small sample of what people have downloaded, including the film "Spy Kids 4," the AMC show "The Walking Dead" and season four of FX's "Sons of Anarchy."

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    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
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  3. #13
    "They're gonna find out who's naughty and nice"

  4. #14
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    The number of available programs in the Android app store has long trailed Apple.
    Maybe this new tool can help fix that by giving aspiring Android programmers a leg up.



    Google offering new tools for aspiring Android developers
    by Scott Webster

    Google has long offeredAndroid developers a number of resources for creating quality applications and games.

    Indeed, whether it's the oft-updated platform version chart or a member of the team dropping by the developer blog to share some code or best practices, there's plenty of official information available.

    If that wasn't enough, today brings another valuable set of tools for new and seasoned Android developers with a beta program called Android Training. Presented in a wiki-like format, this collection of classes is designed to help developers create compelling apps.


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  5. #15
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    I always thought hands free was a good thing. Not any worse than eating or changing out a CD.
    Are those things NEXT on the NTSB ban list?

    NTSB recommends full ban on use of cell phones while driving

    By Mike M. Ahlers, CNN

    A federal safety board called Tuesday for a nationwide ban on the use of cell phones and text messaging devices while driving.

    The recommendation is the most far-reaching yet by the National Transportation Safety Board, which in the past 10 years has increasingly sought to limit the use of portable electronic devices -- recommending bans for novice drivers, school bus drivers and commercial truckers. Tuesday's recommendation, if adopted by states, would outlaw non-emergency phone calls and texting by operators of every vehicle on the road.

    It would apply to hands-free as well as hand-held devices, but devices installed in the vehicle by the manufacturer would be allowed, the NTSB said.

    The recommendation would not affect passengers' rights to use such devices.

    Study: Distracted drivers in denial

    NTSB members say the action is necessary to combat a growing threat posed by distracted drivers. While distracted driving has been a problem "since the Model T,"

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    Last edited by calikid; 12-18-2011 at 07:20 AM. Reason: add comment
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
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  6. #16
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    The Microsoft vs Novell lawsuit.
    When Novell purchased WordPerfect, Microsoft did everything in it's power (Underhanded/Illegal?) to stop the competition with MS Word.



    Mistrial declared in Microsoft-Novell suit, over hung jury
    by Jay Greene

    Novell filed the case in 2004, alleging that Microsoft, while developing Windows 95, promised to support Novell's WordPerfect and Quattro Pro products, but held back key technical information required to make them compatible with Windows 95. Novell sought more than $1 billion in damages as a result of Microsoft's alleged anticompetitive behavior.

    Microsoft's Bill Gates
    The jury trial, which lasted two months, saw Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates travel to the Salt Lake City ourtroom to testify. According to an Associated Press article, jurors told the judge presiding over the trial that they were "hopelessly deadlocked" after deliberating for three days.


    SOME OF THE ALLEDGED WRONG DOINGS:
    - Microsoft signed licensing deals with hardware and computer makers, forbidding them from selling WordPerfect or from bundling WordPerfect with any computers they sold. (This claim was upheld during the DOJ antitrust case against Microsoft.)

    - Microsoft punished resellers who sold WordPerfect, or other products that competed with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office, by revoking their licenses, increasing their OEM costs, or refusing to sell them copies of Windows.

    - Microsoft integrated code into Windows 95 specifically to prevent earlier versions of WordPerfect from running, or to create deliberate incompatibilities with earlier versions of WordPerfect. (This is consistent with Microsoft's strategies against other competing products, the most famous being DR-DOS.)

    - Microsoft refused to reveal parts of the Windows 95 API that they *did* reveal to other developers, which put Novell at a competitive disadvantage.
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    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
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  7. #17
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    Not so merry Christmas for Verizon customers....

    Verizon users across nation report data outage
    By Rosa Golijan

    Uh oh! It seems that it's not a good day to be a Verizon Wireless user. Based on an overwhelming number of reports in support forums, the cellular provider's customers are experiencing 3G and 4G data outages across the U.S. right now.

    We've reached out to Verizon for more information about the issue and will update this story once we hear back, but in the meantime we're checking on the complaints in Verizon's own support forums.

    Users are reporting trouble maintaining a steady data connection as well as misleading connectivity statuses (some devices are displaying icons which suggest connectivity, but no actual connection occurs). According to the folks at The Verge — who have been keeping track of the origins of the posts — the reports are coming in from "pretty much everywhere" including California, Rhode Island, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Jersey, and New York.

    Are you a Verizon customer and experiencing issues with your data connection? Please let us know in the comments below.

    Update: Verizon Wireless responded to us with a brief note stating that things should be getting back to normal:

    Verizon Wireless 4G LTE service is returning to normal this morning after company engineers worked to resolve an issue with the 4G network during the early morning hours today. Throughout this time, 4G LTE customers were able to make voice calls and send and receive text messages. The 3G data network operated normally.

    Story Continues
    Last edited by calikid; 12-21-2011 at 10:02 PM. Reason: format issue
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
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  8. #18
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    "Unauthorized Access to my HP Laser Printer"?
    Yikes!, that doesn't sound good.
    So now hackers are going after my printer to what, print reams of paper?
    Or maybe something more sinister, like access my local area network?


    HP firmware to 'mitigate' LaserJet vulnerability

    Hewlett-Packard said today that it has taken steps to prevent "a certain type of unauthorized access" to LaserJet printers.

    The company didn't describe its new firmware as a fix for the potential printer problem. Rather, it rather delicately used the word "mitigate," the dictionary definition of which is "to make less severe or painful." Here's HP's full statement on the matter:

    HP has built a firmware update to mitigate this issue and is communicating this proactively to customers and partners. No customer has reported unauthorized access to HP. HP reiterates its recommendation to follow best practices for securing devices by placing printers behind a firewall and, where possible, disabling remote firmware upload on exposed printers.

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    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
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  9. #19
    Junior Member ka-lemtah's Avatar
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    LANL Scientists model brain structure to help computers recognize objects

    FYI,

    cheers,

    ka-lemtah

    From: http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/do...hat_i_see.html

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    Do you see what I see?
    Scientists model brain structure to help computers recognize objects

    By Garrett Kenyon

    LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, December 20, 2011—An essential question confronting neuroscientists and computer vision researchers alike is how objects can be identified by simply "looking" at an image. Introspectively, we know that the human brain solves this problem very well. We only have to look at something to know what it is.

    But teaching a computer to "know" what it’s looking at is far harder. In research published this fall in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Computational Biology journal, a team from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chatham University, and Emory University first measured human performance on a visual task - identifying a certain kind of shape when an image is flashed in front of a viewer for a very short amount of time (20-200 milliseconds). Human performance gets worse, as expected, when the image is shown for shorter time periods. Also as expected, humans do worse when the shapes are more complicated.

    But could a computer be taught to recognize shapes as well, and then do it faster than humans? The team tried developing a computer model based on human neural structure and function, to do what we do, and possibly do it better.

    Their paper, "Model Cortical Association Fields Account for the Time Course and Dependence on Target Complexity of Human Contour Perception," describes how, after measuring human performance, they created a computer model to also attempt to pick out the shapes.

    "This model is biologically inspired and relies on leveraging lateral connections between neurons in the same layer of a model of the human visual system," said Vadas Gintautas of Chatham University in Pittsburgh and formerly a researcher at Los Alamos.

    <snip>

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    Last edited by calikid; 12-26-2011 at 04:03 PM. Reason: for Fair Use.
    Cameras are ubiquitus, but they are not instruments.

  10. #20
    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    Robin Hood or just plain criminal activity? You decide.

    Anonymous claims hack on security think tank
    by Natalie Weinstein

    Anonymous is claiming to have stolen 200GB worth of data, including e-mails and clients' credit card information, from a U.S.-based security think tank, the Associated Press reported today.

    The hacking group also used Twitter to post a link to a list of clients apparently belonging to think tank Stratfor Global Intelligence.

    "Not so private and secret anymore?" read one of numerous tweets from AnonymousIRC, a Twitter account linked to Anonymous.

    This morning Stratfor's site was down. A notice reads: "Site is currently undergoing maintenance."

    Story Continues
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
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