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Submission + - US Military Using $600K 'Drone Buggies' To Patrol Camps In Africa (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. military is using an unmanned robotic vehicle to patrol around its camps in the Horn of Africa. The remote controlled vehicle is the result of a 30-year plan after military chiefs approved the concept of a robotic security system in 1985. Now the Mobile Detection Assessment and Response System, known as MDARS, are carrying out patrols in the east African country of Djibouti, under the control of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. The area is known as home to a number of hostile militant groups including the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab. An operator sits in a remote location away from the vehicle watching the terrain via a camera link which is fixed to the chassis. U.S. military software engineer Joshua Kordanai said in a video presentation that the vehicle drives itself, freeing the remote operator to monitor video. "The vehicle has an intruder detection payload, consisting of radar, a night vision camera, a PTZ [pan-tilt-zoom] camera and two-way audio, so the system will be able to detect motion," he added. One report prices the cost of an earlier version of the military 'drone buggy' at $600,000 each.

Submission + - Intel Kills a Top-of-the-Line Processor (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: In June of this year, Intel announced a processor branded as Broadwell-C. Now, the company has confirmed that the part was cancelled but would not give an official reason. Why did Intel kill the Broadwell-C? ITworld's Andy Patrizio speculates that it's a 'combination of increased cost, lower yield and potential product cannibalization' — cannibalization of the company's newly-launched Skylake processor, which the Broadwell-C outperformed.

Submission + - Steam OS will be available for download on December 13 (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Valve Software, the makers of Halflife and Left4Dead, have announced that Steam OS will be available for public download on December 13. That’s the day when the company will start shipping the Steam Machines and Steam Controllers to the 300 selected beta participants. The company said, "SteamOS will be made available when the prototype hardware ships. It will be downloadable by individual users and commercial OEMs. (But unless you’re an intrepid Linux hacker already, we’re going to recommend that you wait until later in 2014 to try it out.) We’ll post info soon about that. Oh, and stay tuned for the in-home streaming beta to begin soon, too!"
Google

Google Loses Street View Suit, Forced To Pay $1 225

Posted by timothy from the token-victory dept.
Translation Error writes "Two and a half years ago, the Borings sued Google for invading their privacy by driving onto their private driveway and taking pictures of their house to display on Google Street View. Now, the case has finally come to a close with the judge ruling in favor of the Borings and awarding them the princely sum of $1. While the judge found the Borings to be in the right, she awarded them only nominal damages, as the fact that they had already made images of their home available on a real estate site and didn't bother to seal the lawsuit to minimize publicity indicated the Borings neither valued their privacy nor had it been affected in any great way by Google's actions."
Media (Apple)

Why Won't Apple Sell Your iTunes LPs? 306

Posted by timothy from the can-anyone-think-of-a-reason? dept.
jfruhlinger writes "Over the weekend there's been a bit of controversy over the fact that Apple has effectively shut indie artists out of the iTunes LP market by charging $10,000 in design fees. But the real question is why Apple is in charge of designing the new iTunes LP at all, since the format is based on open Web design technologies. There's at least one iTunes LP already available outside the iTunes store. Why won't Apple sell it?"
Censorship

Bill Would Declare Your Blog a Weapon 780

Posted by kdawson from the can't-say-that-it's-too-severe dept.
Mike writes "Law prof Eugene Volokh blogs about a US House of Representatives bill proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez and 14 others that could make it a federal felony to use your blog, social media like MySpace and Facebook, or any other Web media 'to cause substantial emotional distress through "severe, repeated, and hostile" speech.' Rep. Sanchez and colleagues want to make it easier to prosecute any objectionable speech through a breathtakingly broad bill that would criminalize a wide range of speech protected by the First Amendment. The bill is called The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, and if passed into law (and if it survives constitutional challenge) it looks almost certain to be misused."
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun Enters the Commodity Silicon Business (sun.com)

Submitted by Samrobb
Samrobb writes: According to Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, Sun has decided to release its UltraSPARC T2 processor under the GPL. According to Schwartz, "We're announcing the fastest microprocessor we've ever shipped this week — delivering 89.6 Ghz of parallel computing power on a single chip — running standard Java applications and open source OS's. Simultaneously, we've said we're entering the commodity marketplace, and opening the chip up to our competition... To add fuel to the fire, the blueprints for our UltraSPARC T2... the core design files and test suites, will be available to the open source community, via its most popular license: the GPL."
Linux Business

Submission + - IBM saves $250 million running Linux on mainframes (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Talk about eating your own dog food. IBM today will announce it is consolidating nearly 4,000 small computer servers in six locations onto about 30 refrigerator-sized mainframes running Linux saving $250 million in the process. The 4,000 servers that IBM will replace by making this change will be recycled by IBM Global Asset Recovery Services. This change will affect IBM's data centers in Poughkeepsie, New York, Southbury, Conn., Boulder, Col, Portsmouth, UK, Osaka, Japan, and Sydney, Australia. These six data centers currently take up over 8 million square feet, or the size of nearly 140 football fields. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/17998"
Editorial

Submission + - MySpace photo sagas continue

Submitted by gwoodrow
gwoodrow writes: We've all heard the "fired because of myspace" issues, where a simple blog or picture gets someone canned. But even as it's getting worse, the targets are fighting back:

"Teacher in training Stacy Snyder was denied her education degree on the eve of graduation when Millersville University apparently found pictures on her MySpace page 'promoting underage drinking.' As a result, the 27-year-old mother of two had her teaching certificate withheld and was granted an English degree instead. In response, Snyder has filed a Federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania university asking for her education diploma and certificate along with $75,000 in damages."

The offending picture? A picture from halloween 2005 of Stacy in a pirate outfit drinking from a cup.
Debian

Journal Journal: Just to annoy ya I am going to run it in a Chroot 1

Journal by Elliot_Lin
I installed debian on my server a few days ago... that was fun. After I got through the downloading that is expected I went to install webmin... apt-get install webmin ... no... apt-get install webmin-core .... no again. So I wget the damn webmin configuration and install it. Then I restore my DNS configuration through it. But guess what? It can't use it as debian have gone out of their way to move EVERYTHING around. I mean EVERYTHING. It was impossible to sta
Security

Submission + - Virus Writers Target Google's Sponsored Links

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It looks like the bad guys are gaming Google's sponsored links to spread their junk to people who click on the ads with unpatched versions of Internet Explorer. Attackers apparently bought the rights to several high profile search terms, including searches that would return results for the Better Business Bureau, among others. The story notes this was bound to happen, given the way Google structures sponsored links: "The bad guys behind the attack appeared to capitalize on an odd feature of Google's sponsored links. Normally, when a viewer hovers over a hyperlink, the name of the site that the computer user is about to access appears in the bottom left corner of the browser window. But hovering over Google's sponsored links shows nothing in that area. That blank space potentially gives bad guys another way to hide where visitors will be taken first."
Robotics

Submission + - Hobbyist One-Ups Sandia Labs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A robotics hobbyist has created what he claims is the world's smallest autonomous robot. The robot is half the volume of the robots produced by Sandia National Labs in 2001, moves quite a bit faster, and was made using techniques and supplies accessible to anyone.
Displays

Submission + - Help requested:finding a sunlight-readable display

Submitted by
max3000
max3000 writes: "I'm currently building an embedded device that will be used outdoors. The technology is pretty much nailed down at this point, except the display. Quite honestly, I'm confused and lost in all the display technologies out there: LCD (TFT, passive/active, etc.), ChLCD, OLED, FED, AMLCD, EL, electrophoretic, ePaper like eInk, etc. (some of these may overlap.) Can you help a fellow (and confused) slashdotter? What I need is (apparently) fairly complicated: . outdoor-, sunlight-readable (i.e. "at-a-glance readable", not "squint-your-eyes readable) . diagonal size: 4"-6" . vga/svga (or a fraction, e.g. 1/8 vga or 1/4 vga) . at least 16-levels of grayscale (4-bit). More grayscale or color is even better. However, it should be a technology with a roadmap to color in 2-3 years time. . If not driveable directly from a PC, the display should come with a development kit that is. I thought it would be a joke finding a display with these characteristics but it's turning in a very long process... Thanks!"
The Courts

Submission + - Utah Bans Keyword Advertising

Submitted by
Eric Goldman
Eric Goldman writes: "Last month, Utah passed a law banning keyword advertising. Rep. Dan Eastman, the Utah legislator who sponsored the law, believes competitive keyword advertising is the equivalent of corporate identity theft, causing searchers to be (in his words) "carjacked" and "shanghaied" by advertisers. He also takes a swipe at the EFF, dismissing its critique of the law as "criticism from the fringes." I have posted a response to Rep. Eastman."

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