2012年3月30日星期五

Blink if you're human: Samsung boosts Android Face Unlock security - SlashGear

Samsung has tweaked Android 4.0′s Face Unlock system to boost it’s security credentials, addressing criticisms that the facial-recognition system can be fooled by a photograph. In a custom version of Ice Cream Sandwich for the Galaxy S among other devices, Samsung added blink-recognition to Face Unlock the company?has revealed.

One of the more attention-catching features of Android 4.0, Face Unlock learns the user’s face and only subsequently unlocks the device if it recognizes them with the front-facing camera.?However, Google quickly admitted that the lock-screen alternative was more gimmick than true biometric security, conceding that it could be fooled with a snapshot of the registered user.

Samsung’s modified system, however, adds in the requirement that the user must blink while they’re being observed by Face Unlock, thus going some way to prove that they are a real person rather than a still photograph.

The security is still unlikely to be foolproof, though it does make it a little less straightforward to trick into unlocking. Our own experience with Ice Cream Sandwich suggested that the system was both entertaining and frustrating in equal measure, having trouble with changed haircuts, sunglasses and different expressions.


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A Google Nexus tablet? Bad news for Android partners - CNET

A Google Nexus tablet? Bad news for Android partners | Mobile - CNET News CNET News @import "http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/Ads/common/css/SponsoredTextLink/sponsoredTextLink.live.css"; ie8 fix # {font-size:93.5%;position:absolute;top:1px;right:330px;text-shadow:0 0 1px #000,0 0 2px #000,0 0 3px #000,0 0 4px #000,0 0 5px #000;} Ad: Manage Packages With UPS My Choice Home Reviews Cell Phones Camcorders Digital Cameras Laptops TVs Car Tech Forums Appliances Cell Phone Accessories Components Desktops E-book Readers Games and Gear GPS Hard Drives & Storage Headphones Home Audio Home Video Internet Access Monitors MP3 Players Networking and Wi-Fi Peripherals Printers Software Tablets Web Hosting You are here: News Latest News Mobile Startups Cutting Edge Media Security Business Tech Health Tech Crave Apple Microsoft Politics & Law Gaming & Culture Blogs Video Photos RSS Download Windows Software Mac Software Mobile Apps Web Apps The Download Blog CNET TV Products Tech Shows How To Most Popular New Releases How To Computers Home Theater Smartphones Tablets Web Marketplace Today's Deals Exclusive Deals Coupon Codes Marketplace Blog Log In | Join Log In Join CNET Sign in with My profile Log out
CNET News Mobile A Google Nexus tablet? Bad news for Android partners You may think it's difficult to operate in the tablet business now. But just you wait until Google itself gets into the game.

Roger Cheng by Roger Cheng March 29, 2012 4:58 AM PDT Follow @RogerWCheng Samsung Galaxy NoteTablets, even tweener ones like the Galaxy Note, could face pressure if Google gets into the business itself.

(Credit:Sarah Tew/CNET)

The worst thing Google could do to its buddingAndroidtablet business is get into it.

But that appears to be what the Internet search titan is up to. The latest report from Digitimes has Google partnering with Asus to create a low-cost tablet to compete with Amazon's Kindle Fire.

If Google wanted to assuage its Android partners that it isn't interested in competing against them, the company is going about it completely wrong. Android tablets haven't exactly been blockbusters like Apple's iPad, but device makers have begun to make some slight progress in the area. Google getting into the business with its own so-called Nexus tablet may spark some interest in the area, but it'll come at the cost of sales to its Android partners.

Related storiesThree-deal Thursday: $139 Kindle Fire and more!CNET review: Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7CNET review: Amazon Kindle FireKindle Fire updated with sharing, book extrasBest Android tablets with 4G

Sure, Google can get away with the occasional Nexus smartphone, which carries the best and latest from Android. But the smartphone market is fairly mature, with more and more consumers adopting them everyday. There's certainly a big enough market to support a product from Google.

But the Android tablet is still in its infancy, and Google would be rocking the boat in a big way if it launched its own tablet.

Google is already walking a tightrope with its partners over its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. While the acquisition is largely meant to shore up Google's patent position to better defend Google itself and its partners from legal attacks, it also means the Android maker will eventually compete directly against its partners with a handset unit of its own.

Google isn't going so far yet with the tablet, instead purportedly partnering with Asus. To better compete with the Kindle Fire, the only other real success in the tablet business, Google would price the device at $199, according to Digitimes.

That'll add a lot of pressure to its partners to get the price of their products down while maintaining some level of quality. While the Kindle Fire is relatively inexpensive, it also uses lower-end parts. Amazon can afford to keep the price low because the device is designed to spur sales of the company's products and services.

Other Android partners aren't so fortunate. Products like Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Note and Galaxy Tab lines are priced much higher, while Motorola's Xyboard line also feature premium prices.

If a Nexus tablet becomes the standard at $199, what hope do the other vendors have in selling competing products at twice that price?

Of course, another low-cost tablet may be good for consumers. A high-profile Nexus tablet may drive prices down for everyone, and bring more badly needed attention to the Android side of the tablet playing field.

But that will hurt the ability of many vendors to continue making tablets at a profit, dimming the longer-term picture for tablets. For the sake of its partners, Google should stay out of the game.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, in pictures (photos) 1-2 of 6Scroll LeftScroll Right

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Unearthed fossil foot could belong to new human ancestor, scientists say - Fox News

Published March 29, 2012

NewsCore

Burtele partial foot 2.jpg

The fourth metatarsal of the Burtele partial foot right after discovery in Stephanie Melillo's hand.Yohannes Haile-Selassie / The Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Burtele partial foot 3.jpg

A laboratory photo shows the Burtele partial foot (BRT-VP-2/73) in its anatomically articulated form after cleaning and preparation.Yohannes Haile-Selassie / The Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Burtele partial foot.jpg

The first element of the Burtele partial foot, fourth metatarsal, as it was found on the ground in the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region of Ethiopia.Yohannes Haile-Selassie / The Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Burtele partial foot 4.jpg

Lead author Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, in the field investigating a fossil fragment.Yohannes Haile-Selassie / The Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Burtele partial foot 10.jpg

The Burtele partial foot embedded in an outline of a gorilla foot.Yohannes Haile-Selassie / The Cleveland Museum of Natural History

CLEVELAND – ?Ancient foot bones discovered in Ethiopia point to the existence of a previously-unknown human ancestor whose feet were specially adapted to tree climbing.

U.S. and Ethiopian scientists said that a 3.4 million-year-old partial foot found in Burtele, in the remote Afar region of Ethiopia, belonged to a prehuman who coexisted with the famous "Lucy" species, Australopithecus afarensis.

Scientists have long argued that there was only one prehuman species between three and four million years ago, but the fossilized foot bones provide the first indisputable evidence that at least two prehuman species with different modes of movement lived at the same time in East Africa.

The discovery, detailed Thursday in the journal Nature, suggests that while the newly-discovered species could walk upright like members of the "Lucy" species, its opposable big toe meant it was more adept at climbing and swinging from trees.

Researchers hope the fossils will provide scientists with a clearer picture of how primitive feet evolved and humans became separated from apes.

Coauthor Dr. Bruce Latimer of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland said, "It is now clear that the adaptation to terrestrial bipedality was not a single, isolated event."

He added, "Rather, one group [Lucy's species] totally relinquished the arboreal habitat and became functionally-committed, long-distance ground walkers -- while another group, represented by the Burtele foot, maintained a climbing foot and stayed, at least part of the time, in the trees. It is now apparent which group succeeded."

The new Burtele species cannot be named until a skull and teeth are found, the scientists said.


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2012年3月29日星期四

Weather Runs Hot and Cold, So Scientists Look to the Ice - New York Times

As a surreal heat wave was peaking across much of the nation last week, pools and beaches drew crowds, some farmers planted their crops six weeks early, and trees burst into bloom. “The trees said: ‘Aha! Let’s get going!’?” said Peter Purinton, a maple syrup producer in Vermont. “?‘Spring is here!’?”

Now, of course, a cold snap in Northern states has brought some of the lowest temperatures of the season, with damage to tree crops alone likely to be in the millions of dollars.

Lurching from one weather extreme to another seems to have become routine across the Northern Hemisphere. Parts of the United States may be shivering now, but Scotland is setting heat records. Across Europe, people died by the hundreds during a severe cold wave in the first half of February, but a week later revelers in Paris were strolling down the Champs-élysées in their shirt-sleeves.

Does science have a clue what is going on?

The short answer appears to be: not quite.

The longer answer is that researchers are developing theories that, should they withstand critical scrutiny, may tie at least some of the erratic weather to global warming. Specifically, suspicion is focused these days on the drastic decline of sea ice in the Arctic, which is believed to be a direct consequence of the human release of greenhouse gases.

“The question really is not whether the loss of the sea ice can be affecting the atmospheric circulation on a large scale,” said Jennifer A. Francis, a Rutgers University climate researcher. “The question is, how can it not be, and what are the mechanisms?”

Some aspects of the climate situation are clear from earlier research.

As the planet warms, many scientists say, more energy and water vapor are entering the atmosphere and driving weather systems. “The reason you have a clothes dryer that heats the air is that warm air can evaporate water more easily,” said Thomas C. Peterson, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A report released on Wednesday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that issues periodic updates on climate science, confirmed that a strong body of evidence links global warming to an increase in heat waves, a rise in episodes of heavy rainfall and other precipitation, and more frequent coastal flooding.

“A changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events,” the report found.

Some of the documented imbalances in the climate have certainly become remarkable.

United States government scientists recently reported, for instance, that February was the 324th consecutive month in which global temperatures exceeded their long-term average for a given month; the last month with below-average temperatures was February 1985. In the United States, many more record highs are being set at weather stations than record lows, a bellwether indicator of a warming climate.

So far this year, the United States has set 17 new daily highs for every new daily low, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times by Climate Central, a research group in New Jersey. Last year, despite a chilly winter, the country set nearly three new highs for every low, the analysis found.

But, while the link between heat waves and global warming may be clear, the evidence is much thinner regarding some types of weather extremes.

Scientists studying tornadoes are plagued by poor statistics that could be hiding significant trends, but so far, they are not seeing any long-term increase in the most damaging twisters. And researchers studying specific events, like the Russian heat wave of 2010, have often come to conflicting conclusions about whether to blame climate change.

Scientists who dispute the importance of global warming have long ridiculed any attempt to link greenhouse gases to weather extremes. John R. Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told Congress last year that “the weather is very dynamic, especially at local scales, so that extreme events of one type or another will occur somewhere on the planet every year.”

Yet mainstream scientists are determined to figure out which climate extremes are being influenced by human activity, and their attention is increasingly drawn to the Arctic sea ice.

Because greenhouse gases are causing the Arctic to warm more rapidly than the rest of the planet, the sea ice cap has shrunk about 40 percent since the early 1980s. That means an area of the Arctic Ocean the size of Europe has become dark, open water in the summer instead of reflective ice, absorbing extra heat and then releasing it to the atmosphere in the fall and early winter.


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Apple's Tim Cook meets with China's vice premier Li Keqiang - Washington Post

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Apple’s Tim Cook meets with China’s vice premier Li Keqiang

Bowen Liu/VIA BLOOMBERG - A handout photo shows Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., center, visiting the iPhone production line at the Foxconn Technology Group facility in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China, on Wednesday, March 28, 2012. Cook visited the iPhone production line at the newly built manufacturing facility Foxconn Zhengzhou Technology Park Wednesday

Smaller TextLarger TextText SizePrintE-mailReprints By Hayley Tsukayama, The Washington Post

Apple chief executive Tim Cook met with China’s vice premier Li Keqiang on Tuesday, solidifying ties in one of the company’s fastest-growing markets.

Cook met with Li to discuss intellectual property issues. According to the state-run news agency Xinhua, Cook and Li discussed how the Chinese government could work with multinational corporations to improve cooperation. The meeting was framed as a sign that the Chinese government is building a relationship with Apple.

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