Let's pretend for a moment that your name is Google. You want to have lots of developers working with your stuff. So you hold a Google Input|Output 2012 event. You have Sergey Brin showing off Google Glass, but most of your show consists of talks with titles like Integrate Web Intents into Your Web Application Today and What's New in Android?... which is all great fun, but also a tad boring. Luckily, somebody at Google piped up and said, "I know! We need Android-controlled fighting robots!" And they contacted the Stupid Fun Club, and Lo! There were Android-controlled robots fighting on the show floor, and all was right with the world.
TroysBucket writes "One developer who is trying to fund his development work via donations has taken on an 'Everyone gets the source code, donations get you binaries' business model, where he provides installers and binaries directly only to donating users. Quoting: 'A very central goal of everything I am doing, right now, is to show a concrete [and highly documented] way that other developers can fund their own FOSS work. With that in mind One major mistake I made, right off the bat, was that I provided very little direct benefit to people who donate (no “perks”).' Has anyone seen this work well before with other projects?"
wiredmikey writes "It's refreshing to see a security report from a security vendor that isn't all doom-and-gloom and loaded with FUD. Web Application Security firm WhiteHat Security released a report this week (PDF) showing that the number of major vulnerabilities has fallen dramatically. Based on the raw data gathered from scans of over 7,000 sites, there were only 79 substantial vulnerabilities discovered on average in 2011. To compare, there were 230 vulnerabilities on average discovered in 2010, 480 in 2009, 795 in 2008, and 1,111 in 2007. As for the types of flaws discovered, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) remained the number one problem, followed by Information Leakage, Content Spoofing, Insufficient Authorization, and Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) flaws. SQL Injection, an oft-mentioned attack vector online – was eighth on the top ten."
redletterdave writes "Apple will begin transitioning the leadership role within its hardware engineering department, now that Bob Mansfield, who led the engineering of many of Apple's most successful products since 2005, has decided to retire. Apple was quick to name Dan Riccio — currently the VP of hardware engineering for the iPad — as Mansfield's successor, mentioning that Riccio will learn the new role over several months. During that time, the hardware engineering team will continue to report to Mansfield."
1sockchuck writes "An Amazon Web Services data center in northern Virginia lost power Friday night during an electrical storm, causing downtime for numerous customers — including Netflix, which uses an architecture designed to route around problems at a single availability zone. The same data center suffered a power outage two weeks ago and had connectivity problems earlier on Friday."
shinjikun34 writes "I am currently stationed on a U.S. Navy ship deployed in a country with restrictive internet policies. We are currently in the process of setting up an entertainment internet connection for the crew to use in their downtime. I suggested (and was thereby tasked with finding) a VPN service that would support 100 to 500 devices, have an end point inside the continental United States, be reasonably priced, and secure/trustworthy. Something that is safe to use for banking and other financial affairs. Ideally, it would be fast enough to support several VoIP calls (Skype, Google Voice, etc) along side online gaming, with possible movie/music streaming. It will need an end point in the U.S. to allow for use of Google Books, Netflix, Hulu, and other services that restrict access based on region. I, in all honesty, have no idea where to begin searching, and I ask the good folks of Slashdot to aid me in my quest. One of the main requirements I was given is that the company has to be trustworthy. And it has to be a company — computer in someone's closet hosting a VPN isn't acceptable to the Navy. What services would Slashdot recommend? (I understand that our connection without a VN probably won't be able to handle the described load, but I would prefer a VN service that offers capacity above our need. That way when T/S'ing the connection, the VPN can be at least partially ruled out.)"
CWmike writes "Microsoft will support full upgrades to Windows 8 only from the three-year old Windows 7, according to a report Thursday by ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley. Citing unnamed sources, Foley said that Microsoft has informed select partners of the upgrade paths to Windows 8. While Microsoft may be revealing upgrade paths to some partners, it has been much more reticent to keep customers informed than three years ago when it rolled out Windows 7. Among the details the company has not disclosed are the on-sale date and the pricing of the two retail editions. By this time in 2009, Microsoft had revealed both: On June 2 that year, it pegged a launch date for Windows 7, and by June 25 had not only posted prices for the operating system but had also kicked off a pre-sale that discounted upgrades by as much as 58%. The increased secrecy from the company was demonstrated best last week, when it unveiled its first-ever tablet, the Surface, but left many questions unanswered, including the price, sales date, and even the hardware's battery life."
theodp writes "'Perhaps nothing will have as large an impact on advanced analytics in the coming year as the ongoing explosion of new and powerful data sources,' writes Bill Franks in Taming The Big Data Tidal Wave. And one of the hottest new sources of Big Data, reports the WSJ's Alexandra Alter in Your E-Book Is Reading You, is the estimated 40 million e-readers and 65 million tablets in use in the U.S. that are ripe for the picking by data scientists working for Amazon, Apple, Google, and Barnes & Noble. Some privacy watchdogs argue that e-book users should be protected from having their digital reading habits recorded. 'There's a societal ideal that what you read is nobody else's business,' says the EFF's Cindy Cohn."
Dr. Eggman writes "If you don't recall, then Broadband/DSL Reports is here to remind us that ISPs around the U.S. will begin adhering to the RIAA/MPAA-fueled 'Six Strikes' agreement on July 1st. Or is it July 12th? Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Cablevision are all counted among the participants. They will each introduce 'mitigation measures' against suspected pirates, including: throttling down connection speeds and suspending Web access."
mikejuk writes about a neat use of machine learning. From the article: "Using reinforcement learning to make a computer paint like an oriental Sumi-e artist isn't just a matter of shouting 'well done' — and yet, when you look at the results, that's what you want to do. ... Three researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have attempted to teach a computer how to do it [paint] using standard reinforcement learning. When the program used the brush to create a smooth stroke, it was rewarded. After it had learned to use the brush, it was set to rendering some photos and the results look very good."
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?"
The company's new Nexus Q is "Designed and Manufactured in the USA" according to the inscription on the device.
Is that hottie really just a bottie? Here are six ways to tell the difference between real and fake accounts and spot a Twitter bot.
A low cost PC would better meet the needs of education, says the software leader and philanthropist.
Google's latest venture into social networking has been around for a year now, and it hasn't taken over the world but it does encompass all things Google.
Need a bit of help coming to grips with the hardware element of your robotics endeavor? Let this Kickstarter project help you!
After Apple wins another injunction banning the sale of a Samsung product, will Galaxy S III be Apple's next target?
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating Google's Motorola Mobility unit to determine whether it is stifling innovation in the mobile market by...
In this iOS game, you're in charge of a tiny airline with big dreams.
Industry stakeholders, rights groups, and Internet marketers will discuss privacy issues involving consumer data on mobile devices.
It's getting decent reviews from users, although a big complaint is the browser now available for iPhone and iPad is slower than Apple's Safari.
It is so fully and beautifully integrated into Apple's Mail app at so many levels that you'll forget where Mail ends and MailTags begins.
Severe storms wiping out power to 2 million people in the eastern US cause an outage of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud in northern Virginia.
Some users of new Wi-Fi routers from Cisco's Linksys division complained this week that the company automatically updated the routers' firmware and pushed them...
When NewsGator Technologies decided to play in the nascent enterprise social collaboration market a few years ago with a product that worked only with...
A California court has granted Apple an injunction against Samsung over sales of its Galaxy Nexus smartphones in the U.S.
Google is readying a new set of Analytics usage reports designed specifically for mobile applications.
Jelly Bean? Most Android devices are still running Gingerbread! Android fragmentation reaches new levels.
Currently at No. 14 on DistroWatch's page-hit popularity rankings, Sabayon Linux recently got a major upgrade.
Playing Diablo III seriously basically means you have to learn to play smart, play economically, and play the auction house. Here's why that’s okay.
No business today that depends on online customers and processes to keep the lights on can afford an application meltdown.
Hewlett-Packard's first Windows 8 tablet will be a business-oriented slate running an x86 CPU, not a consumer product running Microsoft's upcoming Windows RT operating system, the company has announced.
Long regarded as "just" technology providers, IT organizations now are routinely called on to leverage infrastructure advances and virtualization in order to drive efficiencies, improve performance and transform business functions throughout the enterprise.
Researchers at Rice University have developed a lithium-ion battery that can be painted on virtually any surface.
I'd love to see RIM survive, and for BlackBerry to remain as one of the major mobile platforms, but it seems increasingly less likely with each passing quarter.
Apple is running servers from IBM and Oracle with flavors of the Unix operating system at its Malden, North Carolina, data center.
Researchers at Rice University in Houston have developed a prototype spray-on battery that could allow engineers to rethink the way portable electronics are...
Tech stocks are ending the first half of the year on an upbeat note with news that enterprise spending on software lately has been relatively strong.
Google's Nexus 7 tablet will be available online and from brick-and-mortar retailers.
Checkmate! Make your game of chess more interesting with a few Nixie tubes and some clever circuitry.
A U.S. judge may hold an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the U.S. Department of Justice acted improperly in blocking Megaupload customers' access to...
The European Union is lacking a well-developed cyberinsurance market that could push companies to better protect their information systems and data, the European...
The app store model popularized by Apple is gaining further adoption in the world of ERP (enterprise-resource-planning) software, with new stores announced this...
Negotiations on the E.U.'s future unitary patent system were concluded on Friday by a decision on where the central division of the European Unified Patent Court...
Google at its I/O conference is emphasizing its growing number of music, movies, and TV shows available for Android tablets and smartphones.
The New Tab feature exposes a user's travel to secure websites, but it draws the material from a source long present in the browser.
Google is readying a new set of Analytics usage reports designed specifically for mobile applications, the company plans to announce at its I/O developer...
Initial approval doesn't preclude a wish list: Its tight integration with Google Play can't match Amazon's content selection and price for the competing Kindle Fire.
Unlike many iOS fax apps, this one can pull documents from your Dropbox, Google Docs, and iDisk accounts. Even better, it lets you fax photographed documents on the fly.
One security analyst suggests choosing a BlackBerry for work and an Android device for personal use.
Chrome for iOS has some nifty new tools for syncing across devices, but delivers slower-than-Safari speeds.
Glasses reportedly will ship to consumers about a year after the prototype Explorer Edition makes its way to developers.
To achieve higher download and upload speeds, vendors and operators are planning to use a number of different technologies over the coming years in both HSPA and...
A delay in the release of BlackBerry 10 gives the competitors of the beleaguered RIM plenty of time to lure away jittery customers.
This week’s roundup has everything the internet loves including felines, the undead and free games.
No certified implementations of Adobe Systems' Flash Player will ship for Android 4.1, and on August 15 the player will no longer be available for download from Google Play.
The Digital Archery contest, devised by ICANN to determine which gTLD applications would be handled first, was canceled on Thursday.
WikiLeaks Julian Assange said Thursday night it is very unlikely he will obey a summons from British police to leave Ecuador's embassy on Friday and surrender...
Former T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm has joined Vodafone Group as the chief executive of a new division covering northern and central Europe.
The Apple executive in charge of hardware engineering for the iPhone, iPad and other Apple products is retiring from the company, Apple said Thursday.
Reports of the demise of Google+ have been widely exaggerated, Vic Gundotra seemed to suggest on Thursday morning at Google I/O when he said that the social...