kkleiner writes with an update on the boycott of Elsevier started in January. From the article: "Academic research is behind bars and an online boycott by 8,209 researchers (and counting) is seeking to set it free, well, more free than it has been. The boycott targets Elsevier, the publisher of popular journals like Cell and The Lancet, for its aggressive business practices, but opposition was electrified by Elsevier's backing of a Congressional bill titled the Research Works Act (RWA). Though lesser known than the other high-profile, privacy-related bills SOPA and PIPA, the act was slated to reverse the Open Access Policy enacted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 that granted the public free access to any article derived from NIH-funded research."
ichard writes "In a couple of months I'm going to start working from home full-time. I've been thinking about the obvious things like workspace ergonomics, but I'm sure there are more subtle considerations involved in a zero-minute commute. What are other Slashdot readers' experiences and recommendations for working from home? How do you stay focused and motivated? "
xwwt writes "Wil Wheaton is working with Felicia Day on a new show called Tabletop, which will air on the YouTube Channel Geek and Sundry. The show will be about board games and gaming in general. This is how he describes it: 'My ulterior motive with Tabletop is to show by example how much fun it is to play boardgames. I want to show that Gamers aren't all a bunch of weirdoes who can't make eye contact when they talk to you, and that getting together for a game night is just as social and awesome as getting together to watch Sportsball, or to play poker, or for a LAN party, or whatever non-gamers do with their friends. I want to inspire people to try hobby games, and I want to remove the stigma associated with gaming and gamers.' The first show airs April 2nd."
benrothke writes "The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), now in its 16th edition, is the de facto style guide for American writers. It deals with aspects of editorial practice, grammar, usage, document preparation and more. It's just one of many style guides for writers. The Microsoft Manual of Style, just released in its 4th edition, attempts to do for the technical writers what the CMS has done for journalists and other writers." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.
An anonymous reader writes "More than 400 years after Galileo's discovery of Io, the innermost of Jupiter's largest moons, a team of scientists led by Arizona State University has produced the first complete global geologic map of the Jovian satellite. The map, published by the U. S. Geological Survey (PDF), depicts the characteristics and relative ages of some of the most geologically unique and active volcanoes and lava flows ever documented in the Solar System."
eldavojohn writes "Apparently the Samsung and Apple patent hoedown has received some uninvited guests that wish to troll with the big trolls — all over a built-in button for an emoticon. According to Varia Holdings (don't bother googling, you won't find anyone trying to license their patents to you) 'by asserting [its European] emoticon patent against Apple, Samsung has recognized the value of the type of invention embodied in [Varia's] '731 Patent.' And, thusly, Varia feels this provides grounds to sue Samsung and RIM. Techdirt provides commentary on the obviousness of said patent while raking the USPTO examiner over the coals (although, curiously, gives Samsung a free pass)."
snydeq writes "A hard-to-detect piece of malware that doesn't create any files on the affected systems was dropped onto the computers of visitors to popular news sites in Russia in a drive-by download attack, according to Kaspersky Lab. 'What's interesting about this particular attack is the type of malware that was installed in cases of successful exploitation: one that only lives in the computer's memory. ... It's ideal to stop the infection in its early stages, because once this type of "fileless" malware gets loaded into memory and attaches itself to a trusted process, it's much harder to detect by antivirus programs.'"
MojoKid writes "At last count, Activision Blizzard pegged the number of World of Warcraft subscribers at 10.2 million. It takes a massive amount of gear to host all the different game worlds, or realms, as they're referred to. Each realm is hosted on its own server, and in late 2011, Activision Blizzard began auctioning off retired server blades from the days of yore to benefit the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. They sold around 2,000 retired Hewlett-Packard p-Class server blades on eBay and donated 100 percent of the proceeds (minus auction expenses) to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which seeks to advance the treatment and prevention of catastrophic diseases in children. This article has a look at one of those retired server blades."
Zothecula writes "A throwback to early 20th century aviation may hold the key to eliminating the sonic boom — at least according to researchers at MIT and Stanford University. Strongly reminiscent of biplanes still in use today, the researcher's concept supersonic aircraft introduces a second wing which, it is claimed, cancels the shockwaves generated by objects near or beyond the sound barrier."
judgecorp writes "Here's a reason to pay for smartphone apps: the free versions can spend three times as much energy finding and serving ads as they do serving their actual purpose. Research from a Purdue University scientist found that as much as 75 percent of the energy used by free apps (PDF) goes on accessing location services, finding suitable advertisements and displaying them."
cylonlover writes "Because everyone's immune system is different, it's impossible to predict with absolute certainty how any given person will react to a specific medication. In the not-too-distant future, however, at-risk patients may get their own custom-altered mouse, with an immune system that's a copy of their own. Medications could be tried out on the mouse first, and if they are shown to have no adverse effects, the person could take the medication with a higher degree of confidence. If the person has an autoimmune disease, the mouse could also provide valuable insight into its treatment. A team led by Columbia University Medical Center's Dr. Megan Sykes has recently developed a method of creating just such a 'personalized immune mouse.'"
1sockchuck writes "The Pirate Bay says it plans to deploy servers on airborne drones several kilometers above international waters. The site said it was experimenting with servers using Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized Linux computer. April Fools come early? Torrent Freak says the plan is real. It's apparently a literal approach to cloud computing."
wiredmikey writes "Earlier this month, researchers from Kaspersky Lab reached out to the security and programming community in an effort to help solve a mystery related to 'Duqu,' the Trojan often referred to as 'Son of Stuxnet,' which surfaced in October 2010. The mystery rested in a section of code written an unknown programming language and used in the Duqu Framework, a portion of the Payload DLL used by the Trojan to interact with Command & Control (C&C) servers after the malware infected system. Less than two weeks later, Kaspersky Lab experts now say with a high degree of certainty that the Duqu framework was written using a custom object-oriented extension to C, generally called 'OO C' and compiled with Microsoft Visual Studio Compiler 2008 (MSVC 2008) with special options for optimizing code size and inline expansion."
floydman writes "Apple has said it will use its cash to start paying a dividend to shareholders and to buy back some of its shares. The technology giant said it would pay a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share from July. It will buy back up to $10bn of its own shares starting in the company's next financial year, which begins on 30 September 2012. Apple CEO Tim Cook said, 'We have used some of our cash to make great investments in our business through increased research and development, acquisitions, new retail store openings, strategic prepayments and capital expenditures in our supply chain, and building out our infrastructure. You'll see more of all of these in the future. Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business. So we are going to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program.'"
Apple announced Monday that it sold three million new iPads over the weekend.
Recent changes in back-end software may work to provide users more personalized apps, study says.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is rethinking its policy on digital devices.
The good news for enterprises: Mobile devices are packed with power. A new iPhone is 100 times lighter, 100 times faster, and 10 times less expensive than the luggable notebooks of the early 1980s.
"Privacy-by-design" is the guiding principle for tech pros.
The development of online privacy protections is at a critical moment as policy makers in both the U.S. and European Union push for changes to their privacy...
As businesses align their strategies with online routes to market, major firms companies continue to suffer losses due to cybercrime.
Windows 8 tablets have a lot of potential, but without strong support from Dell and HP Microsoft will struggle to compete against the Apple iPad juggernaut.
After years of being chased on land, The Pirate Bay is looking to take to the air with small airborne drones.
The Corpra's Qbo robot gets a 3D motion-sensing camera that lets it map out its surroundings and go on exploring by itself.
The transition from print to digital media has tremendous benefits for Earth and society as a whole, but the downsides could be devastating.
A free set of 3D printable models makes 10 different construction toys work together for better building.
Microsoft is offering users a choice between Metro and the traditional Windows desktop on ARM tablets, but that may be more puzzling than flexible.
Leave Google and restore your privacy in seven days (or at least get a start on the process) -- One man's tale of escape.
StillSecure brings together security experts, certified processes, and technologies to take a holistic approach to its products and services.
Already available for Android and newly released for iPhone, this free app makes call-scheduling a breeze. Too bad it's so damn buggy.
Researchers at Kaspersky tracked down a Trojan malware that was signed with a stolen digital certificate, now disabled.
Computer hackers could create malicious software that crosses the line from technology to biology, crafting viruses that could spread dangerous epidemics.
Tablet users are being let down by poor-performing websites and the companies behind those websites are potentially losing large amounts of cash as a result.
Expressing full confidence in its future, Apple on Monday said it would use its massive cash balance of $98 billion to issue dividends and repurchase shares.
Users can buy the hardware and catch the signal for free -- or sign up for a range of wireless plans starting at $10 monthly.
Apple execs announce dividend payments and a stock buyback program by the cash-rich company.
Version 3.3 of the Linux kernel, now available after a short delay, includes kernel code from Android as well as an upgrade of networking features and support...
Just 9 percent of American adults turn to Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis for news, despite the social networks' track record for breaking news events.
With options including an i7 processor and a 300GB Intel SSD, this 15.6-inch ZaReason device comes ready to go with the Linux distribution of your choice.
Microsoft is planning to roll out its first "cloud-enabled" Dynamics ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications by the end of this year, the company...
A hard-to-detect piece of malware that doesn't create files on infected systems was dropped onto the computers of visitors to popular news sites in Russia.
Patching the RDP flaws from security bulletin MS12-020 was already considered critical, but now exploit code has been discovered online and the race is on to patch before a worm is developed.
EBay subsidiary PayPal plans to enter China and India's online payment markets, marking a major push by the U.S. company in the region.
Hackers claimed to have figured out a way to bypass Apple's technical restrictions and install unauthorized applications on the company's latest iPad.
An order granted to law enforcement allowing them to seize luxury cars and other personal effects from the estate of MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom is ruled invalid.
AMOLED, IPS, PenTile, TFT…is the alphabet soup of display technologies giving you a headache? Our guide tells you what it all means.
Which classes of apps eat the most data? Which single apps in each category are the least data-efficient? We tested various popular Android apps to find out.
The Internal Revenue Service isn't doing such a great job of protecting its key financial and tax-processing systems, according to the GAO.
Internet of Things will let appliance-assisted spies snoop on anyone without ever leaving their desks.
Congress is considering a jobs-promotion bill that would also repeal consumer protections enacted after the Internet bubble burst.
Fitting into the Metro style of Windows 8 will make things easier on end users, developers say of Microsoft's message.
If you feel like Google's policy change put your privacy is at risk, here are suggestions to help you remain as anonymous as possible.
The question of whether Julian Assange can succeed in his bid is a good one, but he has the media savvy to make a go of it.
Analysis: A Minnesota middle school is being sued after it forced a sixth grader to give up her Facebook password.
Apple critic's debunked claims show that performers who tell stories are there to tell stories, but not necessarily the facts.
Apple likes to say there's an app for that, but some are better than others, so here's a must-have list.
The proof-of-concept exploit now circulating among hackers does not allow remote code execution -- necessary to compromise a system with malware -- but instead crashes a vulnerable machine.
New Zealand authorities have admitted to making a procedural mistake before seizing Kim Dotcom's possessions.
The Book of Kells inspired this year's artist -- and Google renews its invitation to students to submit their own doodles for future use.
Amazon's EC2 relies on a whopping volume of servers to manage and maintain users' storage, Accenture Research estimates.
Scientists have found ways to make use of Lego as part of their research to swap metal bone implants for more realistic ones.
UPDATE: The FCC's opposition to the planned LTE network destroys its investment and violates the public interest by eliminating a viable competitor, LightSquared claims.
AT&T expects its LTE footprint will double by year-end, hitting more than 150 million points of presence in 56 markets.
Goliath decides to pay off David and move on, so a customer wins his lawsuit against a vendor for reneging on marketing claims.