A collection of stories tagged 'texting' from Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/ Copyright 2006 RoomforMilk.com. RoomforMilk is not affiliated with Slashdot.org. Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:28:13 EST The Federal Communications Commission adopted a Second Report and Order that establishes rules to allow new, sophisticated wireless devices to operate in broadcast television spectrum on a secondary basis at locations where that spectrum is open. It's the first time we have access to clear specifications for these devices, dubbed TVBDs — 'TV band devices' by the FCC. The published guidelines allow manufactures to create protocols and build compatible devices, which could be available in 18 Months, according to Larry Page. The full PDF text of this Second R&O is published on the FCC site."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26265 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/jQzRrcQu0-U/article.pl Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:05:23 EST The Federal Communications Commission adopted a Second Report and Order that establishes rules to allow new, sophisticated wireless devices to operate in broadcast television spectrum on a secondary basis at locations where that spectrum is open. It's the first time we have access to clear specifications for these devices, dubbed TVBDs — 'TV band devices' by the FCC. The published guidelines allow manufactures to create protocols and build compatible devices, which could be available in 18 Months, according to Larry Page. The full PDF text of this Second R&O is published on the FCC site."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26259 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/jQzRrcQu0-U/article.pl Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:05:06 EST Just how many books a year would you need to read before the cost of Amazon's Kindle is justified? The answer is not so cut-and-dried. If you're a college student and all of your texts were available on Kindle (possible but unlikely), you could recover the cost of the reader in a semester and a half. For consumers to break even with Kindle's cost in that time, they would have to be in the habit of buying and reading four new hardback books per month — if the convenience factor wasn't part of the equation. At two books per month, breakeven would be in three years." Here is the spreadsheet if you want to play with the numbers.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26201 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/jrTZvMwwx0k/article.pl Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:05:03 EST We all know that Google purges known 'attack sites' — sites that deliver viruses, spyware, or other malware to visitors — from its index of searchable sites, but that doesn't stop the text ad giant from happily selling ads linking to those sites. One wouldn't think it would be any more difficult to cross-reference the list of purged sites with the list of advertisers than it was for the main search index, would it?" To be fair, the article says that Google shut down the ad when notified of it; and no other examples of linked malware are offered. Was this a one-time oversight?Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26158 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/nxoYPXBRVV8/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:05:03 EST After recently sleeping through a page for work, I decided to change my paging device from my BlackBerry (which is quiet and has a pathetic vibrate mode) to an actual pager. After looking at the websites of Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, I'm left scratching my head and wondering where all the pagers went. I can't find them or any mention of them. Pagers of yore offered some great features that reflected the serious nature of being paged. They were loud. They had good vibrate modes. They continued to alert after a page until you acknowledged them. I didn't have to differentiate between a text from a friend and a page from work. Now that pagers seem to have become passé, what are other people doing to fill this niche? Are some phones better pagers than others? Are there still paging service providers out there?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26092 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/v8Yv6anfQiM/article.pl Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:05:01 EST Someone more nostalgic than I am, and with a lot of time on their hands, had created a scripting language based on Commodore BASIC for Mac OS X. They recently finished a version that works on Windows and Linux. You can pass the text of a BASIC program as a parameter to the program. I found it odd that it took 1.8 MB of source code to compile to an interpreter that used to fit in 8K of ROM space. If this ever becomes popular, perhaps we'll see Obfuscated CBM BASIC contests." In a simliar vein, in the comments someone points out what is essentially an open source AmigaOS Classic.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25967 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/96u-Tq_2yNo/article.pl Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:05:01 EST While James Gleick, Lawrence Lessig, and other pundits have reacted positively to this week's proposed settlement of the publishing industry's lawsuit against Google over the Google Book Search project, a deeper study of the agreement turns up some worrisome provisions that could make online access to books much more costly and difficult than it needs to be. Harvard University's libraries, for example, declined to endorse the settlement over concerns that it provides no mechanism for keeping the cost of access to books reasonable. And while the parties to the settlement have made much of the clause providing public libraries with free full-text access to Google's database of over 7 million out-of-print books, Xconomy has a post pointing out that this access is restricted to exactly one Google terminal per library. So, you can read books for free — as long as you're the first person to get to your public library's computer room in the morning."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25898 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/g5bho-O4J9w/article.pl Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:05:02 EDT Iddo Genuth writes to tell us that Samsung and Unidym have shown the world's first carbon nanotube-based color e-paper. Interestingly, the new film is electrically conductive while remaining almost completely translucent and only 50 nanometers thick. "The company also mentions that the EPD [electrphoretic displays] has important advantages over conventional flat panel displays. EPDs have very low power consumption and bright light readability, which means that even under bright lights or sunlight, the user would be able to view the display clearly. Furthermore, since the device uses the thin CNT films, applications can include e-paper and displays with thin, flexible substrates. Power consumption is lowered due to the EPD's ability to reflect light and therefore able to preserve text or images on the display without frequently refreshing."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25810 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/uQcI6alAfq0/article.pl Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:05:01 EDT Russian regulators will not let Google buy a local online advertising company, halting a $140 million deal agreed to in July. Google had planned to acquire Zao Begun, which has a search and contextual video and text advertising business. Begun is owned by Rambler Media, a Russian company that own various Web sites and runs a search engine. Google said it is reviewing the decision of Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) and hasn't decided how to react. Slashdot has previously covered some of the issues surrounding Google's muscle in the advertising market."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25789 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/KUTmPNARB8c/article.pl Mon, 27 Oct 2008 01:05:01 EDT You can find six new online sources of info about hot topics in modern physics at the 'What We Research' outreach page of Perimeter Institute. The info includes text, graphics and online presentations dealing with Cosmology, Superstring Theory, Quantum Gravity, Quantum Foundations, Quantum Information and Particle Physics. The resource section at the bottom of each page recommends a wealth of interesting online lectures by some famous scientists. PI is an independent, nonprofit scientific research and outreach organization."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25779 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/DzO0uYkwGTg/article.pl Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:05:04 EDT A simple analysis of the most updated version (a Git checkout) of the Linux kernel reveals that the number of lines of all its source code surpasses 10 million lines of code, but attention: this number includes blank lines, comments and text files. With a deeper analysis thanks to SLOCCount tool, you can get the real number of pure code lines: 6.399.191, with 96,4% of them developed in C, and 3,3% using assembler. The number grows clearly with each new version of the kernel, that seems to be launched each 90 days aproximately."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25707 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/XmbnsQgJvuM/article.pl Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:05:02 EDT Several years ago I wrote a book called The Not So Short Introduction to Getting Into Medical School (PDF) and released it online under a Creative Commons license. I have been asked several times to publish the text so that I can make money off of it. The book has become quite famous among pre-med students and is now available from the Princeton Review as a free CD that is given to pre-medical interest groups. My question to the Slashdot community involves claiming this work as volunteering for tax purposes. Have any of you had any success with releasing free software and then writing off your time when April 15 rolls around?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25623 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/a_3He8WdOhU/article.pl Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:05:02 EDT In the southeastern US, fisherman have an unusual way to collect earthworms for bait. The practice is called worm grunting, fiddling, snoring, or charming. It involves pounding a wooden stake into the ground and rubbing the top of the stake with a long piece of steel to produce a grunting sound that causes earthworms to come to the surface where they can be easily collected for bait. A study published today in the open access journal PLoS ONE shows that the technique works because the worm grunters are unknowingly imitating the sounds created by burrowing moles. Full text of the paper is available at PLoS ONE."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25536 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/0pag4jRklKo/article.pl Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:05:01 EDT Canadian company Aegis Mobility has developed software that detects if a cell phone is moving at 'car' speeds. If so, the software, DriveAssistT, will alert the cellular network, telling it to hold calls and text messages until the drive is over. Calls are not blocked entirely; callers will be notified that the person appears to be driving, but they can still leave an emergency voice mail, which will be sent through immediately."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25534 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/pA-ifj0IiM0/article.pl Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:05:01 EDT It appears that Verizon is going to start double-dipping by charging both consumers AND content providers for SMS text messages. Verizon has informed content partners that it will levy a $.03 charge for messages sent to customers, effective November 1. From RCRWireless: 'Countless companies could be affected by the new fee, from players in the booming SMS-search space (4INFO, Google Inc. and ChaCha) to media companies (CNN, ESPN and local outlets) to mobile-couponing startups (Cellfire) to banks and other institutions that use mobile as an extension of customer services.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25433 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/m2EsxQ7LwLs/article.pl Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:05:18 EDT It appears that Verizon is going to start double-dipping by charging both consumers AND content providers for SMS text messages. Verizon has informed content partners that it will levy a $.03 charge for messages sent to customers, effective November 1. From RCRWireless: 'Countless companies could be affected by the new fee, from players in the booming SMS-search space (4INFO, Google Inc. and ChaCha) to media companies (CNN, ESPN and local outlets) to mobile-couponing startups (Cellfire) to banks and other institutions that use mobile as an extension of customer services.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25415 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/m2EsxQ7LwLs/article.pl Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:05:09 EDT There's been a lot of talk about recovering blurred or pixelated text, but here's an actual implementation using nothing but Photoshop and a little JavaScript. Includes a Hollywood-esque video showing the uncovered letters slowly appearing."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25374 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/TKOPG7FHN_4/article.pl Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:05:01 EDT We seldom think about how our mobile phones actually work, but in this TidBITS article, Rich Mogull pulls back the covers and peels away the jargon to explain why text messages work when voice calls are dropped, why your battery lasts longer in some places than in others, why you're not allowed to use phones on airplanes, why you can be notified of a voicemail message when your phone never rang, and more."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25351 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NXCzUjQ1lcM/article.pl Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:05:08 EDT We seldom think about how our mobile phones actually work, but in this TidBITS article, Rich Mogull pulls back the covers and peels away the jargon to explain why text messages work when voice calls are dropped, why your battery lasts longer in some places than in others, why you're not allowed to use phones on airplanes, why you can be notified of a voicemail message when your phone never rang, and more."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25333 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NXCzUjQ1lcM/article.pl Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:05:01 EDT Ian Lamont recently asked Google if they planned to extend their transcription of books and other printed media to include public records, many of which were handwritten before word processors became ubiquitous. Google wouldn't talk about any potential plans, but Lamont found out a bit more about the limits of optical code recognition in the process: "Even though some CAPTCHA schemes have been cracked in the past year, a far more difficult challenge lies in using software to recognize handwritten text. Optical code recognition has been used for years to convert printed documents into text data, but the enormous variation in handwriting styles has thwarted large-scale OCR imports of handwritten public documents and historical records. Ancestry.com took a surprising approach to digitizing and converting all publicly released US census records from 1790 to 1930: It contracted the job to Chinese firms whose staff manually transcribed the names and other information. The Chinese staff are specially trained to read the cursive and other handwriting styles from digitized paper records and microfilm. The task is ongoing with other handwritten records, at a cost of approximately $10 million per year, the company's CEO says."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25294 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/MQrYFsI9h0s/article.pl Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:05:01 EDT suraj.sun writes with news that the e-book reader market is getting more competitive. The Boy Genius Report got its hands on pictures of the Kindle 2, successor to Amazon's first e-book gadget. The new version is a bit bigger, with edges that are less awkward, and it has a revamped key layout. On the same day these pictures were found, Sony announced that a new model of its Reader would be getting a touchscreen, allowing users to "turn the page by swiping their finger across the screen" and "annotate text using a touchscreen keyboard." The advances for each gadget may help them regain market share against the iPhone, which, according to Forbes, has eclipsed both in popularity as a reading device. Hopefully the competition for sales and the work being done by the OLPC Project will help to drop prices as well.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25282 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vIUbnnuu7r8/article.pl Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:05:32 EDT suraj.sun writes with news that the e-book reader market is getting more competitive. The Boy Genius Report got its hands on pictures of the Kindle 2, successor to Amazon's first e-book gadget. The new version is a bit bigger, with edges that are less awkward, and it has a revamped key layout. On the same day these pictures were found, Sony announced that a new model of its Reader would be getting a touchscreen, allowing users to "turn the page by swiping their finger across the screen" and "annotate text using a touchscreen keyboard." The advances for each gadget may help them regain market share against the iPhone, which, according to Forbes, has eclipsed both in popularity as a reading device. Hopefully the competition for sales and the work being done by the OLPC Project will help to drop prices as well.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25265 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vIUbnnuu7r8/article.pl Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:05:01 EDT Human-rights activists have discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives Internet text conversations sent by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and eBay. Researchers say the system monitors a list of politically charged words that includes words related to the religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence, the Chinese Communist Party and also words like democracy, earthquake and milk powder. The encrypted list of words inside the Tom-Skype software blocks the transmission of these words and records personal information about the customers who send the messages. Researchers say their discovery contradicts a public statement made by Skype executives in 2006 that 'full end-to-end security is preserved and there is no compromise of people's privacy.' The Chinese government is not alone in its Internet surveillance efforts. In 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency was monitoring large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of an eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. 'This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true,' says Ronald J. Deibert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. 'It's "X-Files" without the aliens.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25218 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NA1TDFRxquE/article.pl Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:05:05 EDT Human-rights activists have discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives Internet text conversations sent by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and eBay. Researchers say the system monitors a list of politically charged words that includes words related to the religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence, the Chinese Communist Party and also words like democracy, earthquake and milk powder. The encrypted list of words inside the Tom-Skype software blocks the transmission of these words and records personal information about the customers who send the messages. Researchers say their discovery contradicts a public statement made by Skype executives in 2006 that 'full end-to-end security is preserved and there is no compromise of people's privacy.' The Chinese government is not alone in its Internet surveillance efforts. In 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency was monitoring large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of an eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. 'This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true,' says Ronald J. Deibert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. 'It's "X-Files" without the aliens.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25214 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NA1TDFRxquE/article.pl Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:05:01 EDT Yahoo!'s acquisition of open source mail client Zimbra has apparently brought some baggage to the mail team. The new Yahoo! desktop program transmits the authentication information in plain text. The flaw was discovered during a Yahoo 'hacku' Day at the University of Waterloo (the only Canadian school part of the trip). Compared to the recent news about Gmail exposing the names associated with accounts, this seems downright scary. So, if you have friends or relatives who might have installed Yahoo! desktop and value their e-mail accounts, now would be a good time to get them to change the password and switch back to the web interface."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25086 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wdPZD-SO1es/article.pl Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:05:04 EDT