Slashdot News

Slashdot

• Finding Lost Recording From the 1880s - An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times recently ran a story on the discovery of a cache of wax cylinder records, recorded in Europe in the 1880s, of Otto von Bismarck, Helmuth von Moltke, and various musicians.
• India Turns Down American Fighter Jets, Buys From France - An anonymous reader writes "While America had offered the F-16, F-18 and now the stealth F-35 fighter, India picked for its new multi-role attack jet a low cost, older French plane.
• New Hampshire Passes 'Open Source Bill' - Plugh writes "In a victory for transparency and openness in government, and saving tax dollars, New Hampshire has passed HB418.
• Text Message Brands Quebec Man a Terror Suspect - An anonymous reader writes "Saad Allami likely never expected that a simple text message of encouragement would have turned his life upside down.
• Apple Overturns Motorola's German iPad and iPhone Sales Bans - SpuriousLogic sends this excerpt from a BBC article detailing the suspension of a sales ban on certain Apple products in Germany: "Motorola Mobility had forced Apple to remove several iPad and iPhone models from its online store [yesterday] after enforcing a patent infringement court ruling delivered in December.
• LibreOffice Developer Community Increasingly Robust - New submitter someWebGeek writes "LibreOffice, the community-driven fork of OpenOffice, appears to have a very healthy and growing group of code contributors.
• Canada's Massive Public Traffic Surveillance System - New submitter cqwww writes "A small magazine in Victoria, BC just uncovered a massive public traffic surveillance system deployed in Canada.
• German Government Endorses Chrome As Most Secure Browser - New submitter beta2 writes "Several articles are noting that the German IT security agency BSI is endorsing Google Chrome browser: 'BSI ticked off Chrome's anti-exploit sandbox technology, which isolates the browser from the operating system and the rest of the computer; its silent update mechanism and Chrome's habit of bundling Adobe Flash, as its reasons for the recommendation.
• Milky Way Magnetic Fields Charted - eldavojohn writes "Using radio telescope data, scientists from around the world have plotted the Milky Way Galaxy's magnetic field in the form of Faraday Depth.
• New Book Helps You Start Contributing To Open Source - jrepin writes "This new book Open Advice is the answer to: 'What would you have liked to know when you started contributing?' 42 prominent free and open source software contributors give insights into the many different talents it takes to make a successful software project; coding, of course, but also design, translation, marketing and other skills.
• $100,000 Prize: Prove Quantum Computers Impossible - mikejuk writes "Quantum computing is currently a major area of research — but is this all a waste of effort? Now Scott Aaronson, a well-known MIT computer scientist, has offered a prize of $100,000 for any proof that quantum computers are impossible: 'I'm now offering a US$100,000 award for a demonstration, convincing to me, that scalable quantum computing is impossible in the physical world.
• President By Day, High-Tech Headhunter By Night - theodp writes "The White House is following up on an offer made by President Barack Obama this week to help find a job for an unemployed semiconductor engineer in Texas.
• You Will Never Kill Piracy - scottbomb writes "This is perhaps the best op-ed I've read about the whole SOPA/PIPA controversy.
• New Mobile Plan Pools Data On Unlimited Devices - Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that Ting, a new reseller of Sprint's voice, 3G and WiMax services, has a new approach to mobile pricing that lets customers buy minutes, messages, and data separately, and allows households to pool them to an unlimited number of phones and data devices on one account.
• The Destruction of Iraq's Once-Great Universities - Harperdog writes "Hugh Gusterson has written a devastating article about what has happened to Iraq's once great university system, and puts most of the blame for its total collapse on the U.