Yvanovich.com Family Portal

An anonymous reader writes "A legal paper (PDF), commissioned by Google and written by Eugene Volokh and Donald Falk, makes the case that search results should be protected under the First Amendment, thereby making regulation of search results illegal. The authors say a search engine 'uses sophisticated computerized algorithms, but those algorithms themselves inherently incorporate the search engine company engineers' judgments about what material users are likely to find responsive to these queries.' Cory Doctorow's reaction: 'I think that the editorial right to exercise judgment is much more widely understood than the sacred infallibility of robotic sorting. I certainly support it more. But I wonder if Google appreciates that it will now have to confront people who are angry about their search rankings by saying, "I'm sorry, we just don't like you very much" instead of "I'm sorry, our equations put you where you belong." And oy, the libel headaches they're going to face.'"

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Phrogman writes "The Conservative government of Steven Harper in Canada has proposed a new bill that would impose a jail term of 10 years for anyone wearing a mask while 'participating in a riot or unlawful assembly.' The conservative backbencher who proposed the bill makes it clear that he intended it to allow police to arrest anyone wearing a mask 'before protests spiral out of control.' Since this is the same government that arrested hundreds of protesters during the G8/G20 summit using a law that didn't actually exist, it raises the question as to how they will define 'unlawful.' The 10-year penalty is more than double the penalty awarded to a person who murdered someone in a fit of 'road-rage' recently."

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New submitter IdleThoughts writes "Sometimes it takes a long time to spark a revolution. Long the ugly duckling of programming languages, iOS' Objective-C passed C# in the 'TIOBE Programming Community Index this month and seems on a trajectory to overtake C++ in the next few. It was invented in the early 1980s by Brad Cox and Tom Love, with the idea of creating 'Software Integrated Circuits' and heavily influenced by Smalltalk — yet another legacy from Xerox PARC, along with desktop GUIs, ethernet and laser printers. It was adopted early on by Steve Jobs' NeXTStep, the grand-daddy of all that is now OS X. It had to wait, however, for the mobile device revolution to have its day, being ideally suited to the limited resources on portable devices. It's still being actively developed by Apple and others, sporting the new automatic reference counting and static analysis in the Clang compiler. It turns out it has supported dynamic patching of code in applications all along. What more surprises does this venerable language have up its sleeve?"

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Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that as Nevada licenses Google to test its prototype driver-less car on public roads, futurists are postulating what a world of driver-less would cars look like. First, accidents would go down. 'Your automated car isn't sitting around getting distracted, making a phone call, looking at something it shouldn't be looking at or simply not keeping track of things,' says Danny Sullivan. Google's car adheres strictly to the speed limit and follows the rules of the road. 'It doesn't speed, it doesn't cut you off, it doesn't tailgate,' says Tom Jacobs, a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles. Driver-less cars would mean a more productive commute. 'If you truly trust the intelligence of the vehicle, then you get in the vehicle and you do our work while you're traveling,' says engineer Lynne Irwin. They would mean fewer traffic jams. 'Congestion would be something you could tell your grandchildren about, once upon a time.' Driver-less cars could extend car ownership to some groups of people previously unable to own a car, including elderly drivers who feel uncomfortable getting behind the wheel at night, whose eyesight has weakened or whose reaction time has slowed." Another reader points out an article suggesting autonomous cars could eventually spell the end of auto insurance.

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sl4shd0rk writes "Apparently the USPS is enacting a ban on the international shipment of all devices containing Lithium Ion batteries. The ban is expected to lift in January of 2013. It seems like this would drive more business away from the already floundering USPS financial situation. The article focuses on the shipment of items out of the U.S., but doesn't mention whether the same ban will apply to purchasing these items on eBay from overseas sources."

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An anonymous reader writes with news that the European Space Agency has lost contact with its Envisat environmental satellite mere weeks after celebrating a full decade in orbit. Engineers have spent the last month trying to re-establish contact, and will continue to do so for another two months. "With ten sophisticated sensors, Envisat has observed and monitored Earth’s land, atmosphere, oceans and ice caps during its ten-year lifetime, delivering over a thousand terabytes of data. An estimated 2500 scientific publications so far have been based on this information, furthering our knowledge of the planet." The ESA was hoping Envisat would stay operational for another two years, until Sentinel satellites from the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security initiative became operational.

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bonch writes "22 percent of California eighth-graders passed a national science test, ranking California among the worst in the U.S. according to the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The test measures knowledge in Earth and space sciences, biology, and basic physics. The states that fared worse than California were Mississippi, Alabama, and a tie between the District of Columbia and Hawaii. 'Nationally, 31 percent of eighth-graders who were tested scored proficient or advanced. Both the national and state scores improved slightly over scores from two years ago, the last time the test was administered.'"

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Zothecula writes "SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace have joined forces in an attempt to woo international customers looking to enjoy some extended periods of microgravity. The joint marketing effort will push trips to orbiting Bigelow habitats on SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft using the Falcon launch vehicle. 'Bigelow's BA 330 space module would be designed to provide 330 cubic meters of usable volume, which is about the size of a two-bedroom apartment. The BA 330 could accommodate up to six astronauts, depending on how cozy they plan to get. Two or more BA 330 modules could be connected together in orbit for lease by national space agencies, companies or universities, according to Bigelow Aerospace.'"

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An anonymous reader writes "Willow Garage has announced the launch of the Open Source Robotics Foundation. 'It's always been the intention of Willow Garage to create an independent body that can take our initial work in open source robotics and see it grow beyond the confines of a single organization,' said CEO Steve Cousins."

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circletimessquare writes "Everyone in the modern world has thrown away at least one thing that was perfectly good except for an easily fixed defect, because it's just easier to buy a new one. In the Netherlands, in the name of social cohesion, and with government and private foundation grants, there is a trend called the Repair Cafe (Dutch). People bring in broken items: a skirt with a hole in it, an iron that no longer steams, and they fix each other's stuff and meet their neighbors. Now that's an idea worth keeping."

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Alt-kun writes "This past week has seen a couple of interesting articles about Research In Motion's strategic plans for BlackBerry 10. The Globe and Mail thinks that by pushing HTML5 for app development, they want to make mobile applications platform-neutral, which would let them sell devices purely on the strength of the hardware and OS, rather than on the ecosystem. And the Guelph Mercury notes that they also plan to push BB10 as the basis for a whole range of mobile and embedded devices, not just phones and tablets. One example shown off at the recent developer conference was a Porsche with a BlackBerry entertainment system."

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ananyo writes "Evidence is mounting that research is riddled with positive bias. Left unchecked, the problem could erode public trust, argues Dan Sarewitz, a science policy expert, in a comment piece in Nature. The piece cites a number of findings, including a 2005 paper by John Ioannidis that was one of the first to bring the problem to light ('Why Most Published Research Findings Are False'). More recently, researchers at Amgen were able to confirm the results of only six of 53 'landmark studies' in preclinical cancer research (interesting comments on publishing methodology). While the problem has been most evident in biomedical research, Sarewitz argues that systematic error is now prevalent in 'any field that seeks to predict the behavior of complex systems — economics, ecology, environmental science, epidemiology and so on.' 'Nothing will corrode public trust more than a creeping awareness that scientists are unable to live up to the standards that they have set for themselves,' he adds. Do Slashdot readers perceive positive bias to be a problem? And if so, what practical steps can be taken to put things right?"

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TheGift73 writes in with this link about IE 9 coming to an Xbox 360 near you. "Microsoft is currently testing a modified version of Internet Explorer 9 on its Xbox 360 console, according to our sources. The Xbox 360 currently includes Bing voice search, but it's limited to media results. Microsoft's new Internet Explorer browser for Xbox will expand on this functionality to open up a full browser for the console. We are told that the browser will let Xbox users surf all parts of the web straight from their living rooms."

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CowboyRobot writes "Growing up, many of our teachers used gamification techniques such as a gold star sticker on a test (essentially a badge) or a public display of which students had completed a set of readings (leaderboard). These were intended to motivate students to strive to do better. Now, these techniques are increasingly common in the workplace where the parallel with computer games is more intentional. A report by Gartner predicts that 'by 2015, 50% of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes.' One example would be assigning badges for submitting work on time, another would be having a leaderboard in an office to show who completed a training module first. The idea of using game mechanics in work or study environments is not new, but its ubiquity is. Educators can discuss how effective gamification is in classrooms, but how useful is it as a motivator in the workplace?"

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First time accepted submitter BigVig209 writes "Univ. of MN is cataloging open-access textbooks and enticing faculty to review the texts by offering $500 per review. From the article: 'The project is meant to address two faculty critiques of open-source texts: they are hard to locate and they are of indeterminate quality. By building up a peer-reviewed collection of textbooks, available to instructors anywhere, Minnesota officials hope to provide some of the same quality control that historically has come from publishers of traditional textbooks.'"

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Picked and ate our first heirloom tomato. I wasn’t sure it was red enough. Mark remembers from last year they were ripe enough when they are still pink. It was the best veggie bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich I’ve have had all year. One tomato made two sandwiches. The yellow tomatoes are so sweet. They taste like candy. Not good for anything but snacking. I was sure hoping I would be able to have a BLT on Katie’s birthday. I wasn’t disappointed.

Sue called yesterday to asked what day was her birthday. We all guessed wrong and it’s today. I feel bad I didn’t get her card and present to her before they left. I didn’t even know their address to give to Sue. I could have sent it too, like Sue. She is a good Aunt. Katie and Anthony are out of town. They went to Los Angeles to see the premiere of Wall-E and then they were driving to Tahoe.

We went and saw Wall-E this afternoon. Mark couldn’t decide if he was working from home or going to take the day off. He ended up working.

We bought tickets at Costco last night. They turn out to be a dollar off the matinee prices. We wished we would have picked up a few more. We still haven’t seen The Incredible Hulk and Indiana Jones. We went home and Mark back to working.

The smoke in the air is thick. Can barely see the close mountains and hills. Didn’t even get a pretty sunset out of it. The Sun was blazing red the closer it got to the horizon.

Blue won’t eat any dry dog food except for Kibble ‘n Bits. You would have thought we would have learned with our last dog. Toshiba would starve to death before she ate any other kind. Blue isn’t as bad. He eats only certain colors and kicks the rest out of the bowl. Well, maybe that is worse. The mess is unbelievable, impossible to leave until he get hungry enough to eat it.

My mom has the same problem with her dogs. She started feeding them it and that’s all they will eat now. Her husband, George, calls it Kibble and Crack because they are addicted to it.

Today when we went to buy more dog food they didn’t have any of the kind he likes. We could only find a dog food called Wholesome Medley made by Kibbles n Bits. Mark is going to chance it. Blue loves Fruits and Vegetable. He wasn’t 100 percent sure of his choice because he bought a small bag. I’ll take pictures when he doesn’t like it.

Today on Martha Steward she said she had a blog on facebook that she alternates writing on with her myspace account. I was wondering how that works? Do you have to be her friend on Facebook? I couldn’t find it. I checked her website and sure enough it was there. That makes total sense that if you are a famous person your blog would be on your web site. She has a list of blogs she likes. I checked a few out.

On one blog it said it is legal for women to walk the streets of New York without their tops, Just last week I was saying to Mark the next legal right we will see is that woman can go topless in public and they will be as common of a site as men without their tops.

As a kid I never wore a top. My parents took pictures of me. When I was a teenager they loved to embarrass me with them every time we watched home movies and slides. I have to agree with the blogger, if men can go topless then women should be able too but wish everyone had to wear their shirts in public. Some over weight men look ridiculous.

No excitement here, I’m not taking any topless pictures with my iphone. I could ask Joey to model for me. He never wears a shirt around the house on hot summer days. It drives the cousins fruits and I always have to explain it’s okay for boys not to have their tops on.

Fire works have not been legal in Santa Clara County for many years if not decades. There are some cities within driving distant that still allow them, Gilroy and Watsonville are two. This year most cities that allow them are thinking about banning them because of all the fires even though the money made goes to charities. I can’t even believe there is a choice.

The neighbors have been having a 4th of July block party for at least the last seven years. They have fireworks and not just sparklers and ground spinners but the illegal exploding and launching into the air type, bottle rockets and Roman candles. The last few years we have avoid going because we don’t agree with this practice. They aren’t even very safe when they set them off. One year the person lighting them was bare foot (and drunk). It seems like an accident waiting to happen. This year I thought they had the sense not to have the fireworks. We hadn’t heard anything so I thought there might not even be a barbeque, but a flyer showed up at the door. It seems like a different family is organizing it but they are still asking for donation for fireworks. I think we have silently protested long enough and need tell them we are against the fireworks. I’m glad we have a roof made of metal and no dried weeds and trees in the yard, unlike a lot of the neighbors.

The solar pump stopped working. I think it was just running off the battery and not charging. I got it to work but it still flashes red. It must just be running off of the solar. The goal is to have the battery light flash green but I would settle for yellow. I hope Mark can figure it out.

The fridge is leaking water and it stopped making ice. I wonder if it is fixable. I don’t want to have to buy a new one. We’ve probably had it 10 years. I miss not having ice. Joey says it’s not good for me anyway.

I have been having success with the updated version of onOne Software and Photoshop element 6. I like trying all the new frames. It does make my iphone pictures perfect.