Link Collection

Nice summary of the huge impact SpaceX's success had on the space program for the U.S.:
http://pjmedia.com/blog/what-does-the-success-of-the-dragon-mean/?singlepage=true


Mars One plans to have the first human settlement on Mars by April 2023. They will first send 4 astronauts to live on Mars (it takes 7 months to get there), then send new teams every 2 years until they have over 20 people living on Mars by 2033:
http://mars-one.com/mission/mission-and-vision


Experts note that Flame represents a new level of sophistication in government-sponsored cyberattacks, where Flame circumvented anti-virus programs and remained undetected between 2 and 5 years. One expert points out that Flame hid itself and used multiple exploit combinations (some that may not have been discovered yet) and another expert said that Flame makes signature-based malware detection software obsolete:
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20120601-experts-flame-represents-a-new-level-of-statesponsored-cyber-attacks


That $1 bil that Oracle wanted from Google over Java is *not* going to happen...the jury threw up the patents last week and the copyright claims were thrown out by the judge today. The judge dismissed Oracle's claims that the APIs for Java that Google used were copyrightable...that is good, since having a language's APIs copyrightable would have changed things with the software industry:
http://www.androidcentral.com/another-huge-win-google-judge-throws-out-copyright-claims-oracle


The iPhone is entering the prepaid market, with Cricket provider Leap Wireless committing $900 mil over 3 years to sell the iPhone. Leap will sell the iPhone 4S for $499.99 for the 16 GB model and the iPhone 4 for $399.99 for the 8 GB model. Leap will allow iPhone users to use the $55 all-in-one plan:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/leap-commits-900m-over-three-years-apple-iphone/2012-06-01


The Tourism branch for British Columbia built a 14-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide bike-and-kayak-dispensing machine in San Francisco to promote tourism in their region of Canada:
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/giant-vending-machine-dispenses-bikes-and-kayaks-tourism-british-columbia-140865

Researchers have been able to use electrical and chemical stimulation to enable paralyzed (due to spinal-cord injuries) rats to learn to voluntarily control their hind limbs via a rehabilitative device that stimulates their lower spine, leading to the creation of new neuronal connections between the movement-directing motor cortex of the brain and the lower spine. They also showed this could work with human patients, with a paralyzed man being able to stand on his own for a few minutes and even take repeated steps on a treadmill. Clinical trials could begin soon with a system built for humans:
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/40482/


A Spanish construction firm is the latest European company to sell their assets to Chinese buyers, as debt problems force European companies to turn to China for cash:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/05/china-buys-spanish-assets-in-brazil.html


Fewer veterinary students are pursuing Ph.D. training to prepare for academic careers, key jobs in the public sector, and some industry positions, which has resulted in a limited supply of vets to fill jobs overseeing and enforcing food safety and animal health standards, and other important positions relating to wildlife, ecosystems, disease control, etc.:
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20120531-veterinary-profession-trends-shortchange-biosecurity-food-security-public-health


ASUS already has a very popular and well-reviewed Android tablet line that integrates well with their docking station, but they are now releasing teaser videos for their next Transformer tablet that they will unveil next week...that apparently may dual-boot to run Windows 8 and Android!
http://androidandme.com/2012/05/tablets-2/asus-computex-teasers-hint-at-dual-booting-transformer/


Nebraska couple have worn matching outfits every day for the last 35 years!  They have 146 custom-made matching outfits that they have been rotating over the past 35 years:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/nebraska-couple-wears-matching-outfits-every-day-35-184802408.html

Scientists and amateur astronomers are gearing up to observe the rare occurrence of Venus crossing the face of the Sun on June 5-6, with live reporting from the Arctic island of Spitsbergen allowing for the transit to be viewed under the "midnight Sun". The next transit will not be until 2117, so don't miss this one if you want to see it!
http://www.asdnews.com/news-42951/Get_ready_for_the_transit_of_Venus!.htm


AT&T's Chairman has had public disagreements with the FCC Chairman (a Democrat) over spectrum policies and the killing of AT&T's $39 bil acquisition of T-Mobile...and shortly after he lost $2.1 mil in bonus pay when the Democrats killed his deal to buy T-Mobile, he made his largest campaign donation in more than 2 decades to the Republicans:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-29/at-and-t-chief-fills-gop-accounts-after-democrats-hit-his


Facebook had their IPO at $38/share, rose to $45 right after its IPO when people tried to get in on the rush...and is now down to around $28, When you consider that times are coming up when Facebook employees can cash in on their stock options, it will be hard for Facebook stock to rise. Facebook's billionaire CEO/Founder is getting bad press on his honeymoon because it turns out he left NO tip at several restaurants:
http://www.telecomtv.com/comspace_newsDetail.aspx?n=48780&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10

Robotic jellyfish are being developed by researchers to put life-like autonomous robot jellyfish in waters around the world. The jellyfish could patrol the oceans, clean oil spills, and monitor the environment--and a small robotic jellyfish is already operational at Virginia Tech:
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2012/05/Manufacturing-Robotic-Jellyfish-Could-Patrol-Oceans-Clean-Oil-Spills-And-Detect-Pollutants/


A "spy virus" called Flame, thought to be the biggest, longest-running and most complicated ever constructed has actively spread throughout the Middle East for up to 5 years. Experts say that since the virus just spies instead of steals, it could only come from a well-funded government espionage program. One hint to the motives behind the virus is that it has been very active in Iran:
http://www.telecomtv.com/comspace_newsDetail.aspx?n=48777&id=24918e49-f85e-4515-a3ae-5f0b6506f9f5


Mexican drug cartels often make a lot of money from extortion of private citizens and businesses, where the people or businesses have to pay them or risk attack. Several arson attacks over the weekend against a Mexican snack chip subsidiary might be the first time that a Mexican cartel has targeted a multinational corporation. Effectively, the Knights Templar cartel (they use a logo of muscle-bound medieval knights) has declared war on Pepsi and Cheetos:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/cartels-cheetos/


Google filed for an interesting patent that allows the Google Glasses to know what you are looking at and then provide neat little nuggets of information about what you're seeing. The glasses could also see the page you are reading and look for information deeper in the website that you haven't even looked at yet, bringing up the most useful bits of information and showing it to you:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/29/google-patents-view-augmentation-method-and-glasses/


Facebook hopes to release a smartphone by 2013 and has hired a number of software and hardware engineers from Apple. Their Buffy team (named after the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show) has increased significantly in size and they are moving forward with their plans:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/rumor-mill-facebook-goes-back-work-smartphone/2012-05-29


RIM's smartphone/tablet woes have had severe consequences: they currently have 16,500 employees and reportedly plan to get down to 10,000 people by early next year:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/report-rim-may-lay-2000-employees-amid-restructuring/2012-05-29


50+ year-old Colorado man went to the hospital for a kidney stone and found out that the test results found that he was actually a woman! The nurse told him that she found traits of both genders so he is intersex, meaning that he has both male genetalia and internal female sex organs. More than 1,500 children a year are born intersex, where they can have the male organ and testes but also have ovaries:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/05/25/man-admitted-to-hospital-for-kidney-stone-discovers-hes-a-woman/

NYU researchers identified a single gene that simultaneously controls inflammation, accelerated aging and cancer!  They called this an unexpected finding because it is uncommon for a gene to have 2 different, significant functions and tying together aging, inflammation and cancer development is a big find. Researchers have known for decades and inflammation, accelerated aging and cancer were somehow intertwined, but nobody figured out the connection between them until now:
http://communications.med.nyu.edu/media-relations/news/key-gene-found-responsible-chronic-inflammation-accelerated-aging-and-cancer


When an iPhone user asks Siri something, that information is sent to a server farm in North Carolina and saved--IBM blocked Siri on employees' iOS devices because Apple stores potentially sensitive voice-inputted data. In addition to the voice-input data, Apple also sends the user's name, nicknames, the names, nicknames, and relationships to you of your address book contacts, the songs you have in your iTunes account, and the location of the iOS Device if Location Services is turned on:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/data-security/should-you-care-siri-taking-notes-194136


Google hired several key members of HP's Enyo team, key members for the webOS platform. The designer of the original webOS platform is now in charge of design for Android at Google, and one of the people joining Google was the lead of the Enyo team:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/google-poaches-talent-webos-enyo-team/2012-05-25


Interesting tweet: "So #Google gets #Palm for around zero billion. #wellplayed"
https://twitter.com/#!/gartenberg


The FCC voted unanimously to allow LTE to be used in the 800 MHz band, enabling Sprint to use its Nextel iDen spectrum for LTE. The previous rules had restricted 800 MHz to 2G services, with the restrictions dating back to before Sprint merged with Nextel in 2005:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/fcc-approves-use-lte-800-mhz-band-opening-door-sprint/2012-05-25


Political polls have been reporting that landline voters prefer Romney over Obama, but voters with only cell phones prefer Obama by quite a big margin over Romney:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/polls-cell-phone-users-prefer-obama-landline-users-153934903.html

The FCC approved rules that will enable medical body-area networks to operate on 2.36 GHz to 2.4 GHz to support the transmission of health-monitoring from patients using body-worn sensors. A study recently showed that 48% of monitored hospital patients survived cardiac arrests, but just 6% survive without monitoring. The 40 MHz used for medical monitoring has traditionally been used by commercial test pilots--the medical monitoring will be used in hospitals, clinics, doctors offices and patients' homes, far away from where commercial test pilots operate:
http://urgentcomm.com/mobile_data/news/fcc-body-monitoring-spectrum-20120524/?NL=UC-03&Issue=UC-03_20120524_UC-03_69


The third phase of Oracle's lawsuit against Google was canceled, since the damages phase wasn't needed after the jury gave a clean sweep to Google in the second phase. Instead of the original $6 bil in damages Oracle was hoping to get, Oracle can only get about $32 mil now and they *only* get that if the judge declares that APIs can be copyrighted:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/open-source-software/what-the-final-decision-oracle-v-google-really-means-194068


Verizon says that 36 potential buyers have already expressed interest in buying its 700 MHz spectrum that it will sell if it gets FCC approval to buy the cable companies' AWS spectrum:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizon-36-buyers-interested-our-700-mhz-spectrum/2012-05-24


Google has reportedly chosen Asus to make their first tablet and their supply chain vendors revealed that Google/Asus will have *600,000* tablets ready to ship next month!
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120523PD214.html


Google will reportedly unveil their Nexus tablet during Google I/O next month, priced at $199 with NVIDIA's quad-core Tegra 3 chip onboard the 7-inch tablet:
http://www.technobuffalo.com/companies/google/android/google-nexus-tablet-details-revealed-built-by-asus-nvidia-tegra-3-on-board/


IDC reports that Android went from 36% of the world's smartphone market in Q1 2011 to 59% in Q1 2012, with the iPhone going from 18% to 23%. Symbian went from 26% in 2011 to just 6.8% in 2012 and Blackberry dropped from 13% to 6%. 89.9 mil Android smartphones shipped in Q1 2012, with Samsung making 45.4% of all Android smartphone sales...and that is before the Galaxy S III is released!
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120524005389/en/Android--iOS-Powered-Smartphones-Expand-Share-Market-Quarter


Verizon announced their video portal called Viewdini, an Android powered app that lets customers with LTE smartphones and tablets to access video content from Comcast, Hulu, Netflix and mSpot:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizons-viewdini-hint-whats-come/2012-05-23


Texas-based chain Pizza Patron announced that they will give a free large pepperoni pizza to anyone who orders in Spanish on the evening of June 5:
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/chain-offers-free-pizza-if-you-order-spanish-140746


Woman's iPhone was stolen while she was on a Disney Cruise and she has discovered that a Disney employee named Nelson has her stolen phone...because her iPhone automatically posts photos to her account in the cloud. She posted a batch of those photos on her Facebook page:
http://m.npr.org/story/153317969?url=%2Fblogs%2Falltechconsidered%2F2012%2F05%2F22%2F153317969%2Fstolen-phone-beams-photos-to-owner-who-puts-them-on-facebook

Bandwidth on Navy ships is extremely limited, with sailors on non-essential computers getting below dial-up speeds. However, by the end of this year, the Navy will have 4G LTE on at least 3 of its ships...and Android smartphones owned by the sailors will actually run on the shipboard network!  The Navy is getting a ruggedized, ocean-going LTE network similar to what Verizon and AT&T have that can provide 300 Mbps of data:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/navy-wwan/


MIT study found that using stiffer pavements on the roads in the U.S. could reduce gas consumption by as much as 3%...saving 273 million barrels of crude oil per year ($15.6 bil) and reducing CO2 emissions by 46.5 mil metric tons!  The roads would also have lower maintenance costs, so governments would save money:
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2012/05/Energy-Civil-Engineers-Find-Savings-Where-The-Rubber-Meets-The-Road/


Washington State researchers developed a new technology that can triple the capacity of lithium-ion batteries--this would be a game-changer for smartphones, tablets and laptops. This technology is mature enough that it could be in market later this year:
http://news.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=31776&TypeID=1


One of the Google Maps cars was involved in a pretty bad accident...it is really smashed up!
http://www.droid-life.com/2012/05/23/google-maps-car-involved-in-accident-investigating-should-be-a-breeze/


A jury unanimously decided that Google's Android does not infringe on all 8 claims from 2 of Oracle's patents. this concluded the trial's second phase, which focused on Oracle's claims of patent infringement--and is already the longest civil trial that the judge has been a part of:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57440235-93/jury-verdict-android-doesnt-infringe-oracles-patents/

http://www.androidcentral.com/jury-finds-android-did-not-infringe-oracle-patents


Comcast is enabling its subscribers to make calls and send texts via WiFi networks, a huge threat to wireless providers and to Skype and Google Voice. Comcast subscribers can make calls using a 4G or 3G wireless data plan and won't use wireless minutes. Text messages can be sent an received to more than 40 countries. 4 family members will be given phone numbers that enables them to make calls and texts for free. Earlier this week Comcast and other cable networks (Time Warner, Cablevision, Cox, and Bright House) announced that they would allow subscribers to freely roam across their respective WiFi networks...providing huge areas of coverage around the country for the calls/texts:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/comcasts-voice-2go-wi-fi-calling-service-takes-aim-carriers-skype/2012-05-23


Microsoft launched its social networking offering (called So.cl) that is geared at competing with Google Plus, not Facebook.
http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/microsoft-vs-google-time-its-social-networking-193900?