Evil Al writes "From the ubiquitous Verifone card terminals to the fancy Apple Store terminals, point-of-sale devices are everywhere. But does anyone know of an open terminal (with printer + Wi-Fi), preferably running Linux, that we can use to run a custom application for retail, made by a reputable manufacturer?"

ClimateHacker writes "The struggle for freedom is still ongoing in Egypt and one of the many challenges that face the demonstrators in Tahrir Square is the sweltering heat. Skies are mostly clear and temperatures can reach up to 44 degrees Celsius (111 F) with hardly any shade. The risk of life-threatening heat stroke is quite real. I ask clever Slashdotters out there for novel DIY passive and active ambient cooling techniques. Perhaps some ideas could be a model for saving energy on cooling elsewhere."

Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that the licensing company overseeing the HDMI specification has confirmed that existing Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters which are designed by several cable makers and sold by several PC OEMs, are apparently illegal and could be recalled. According to Charlene Wan, director of marketing for HDMI LLC, any cable that does not include HDMI connectors on both ends violates the specification. 'The HDMI specification defines an HDMI cable as having ONLY HDMI connectors on the ends,' says Wan. 'Anything else is not a licensed use of the specification and therefore, not allowed.' That apparently includes Apple's mini-DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters, which are sold by Belkin on Apple's Web site. However a representative for Belkin denies that the cable it sells on Apple's Web site is illegal. 'Essentially, the product you mention in your post is not out of compliance because it is just an adaptor and not a cable,' the representative wrote in an email. 'We do not sell a cable with a male Mini-DP and male HDMI port, which is what falls out of compliance with the spec. HDMI does recognize a product that has a Mini-DP connector and HDMI receptacle with an internal active circuitry as it falls into the definition of a source device.' There may also be a glimmer of hope, in that HDMI Org understands that there is a need for this type of cable: 'We do recognise that there may be a market need for a cable solution rather than a dongle solution. However, at this time, there is no way to produce these cable products in a licensed manner.'"

i4u writes "LG announced today that the German VDE, one of the largest technical and scientific associations in Europe, has certified the LG Cinema 3D TVs to be full HD in 3D-mode. LG's Film Patterned Retarder (FPR) technology, used on the CINEMA 3D TVs, creates the perception of 3D depth by delivering two 540 line images, one for each eye, that are then combined via the glasses to create a unified 1080p image. The ruling from the VDE lets LG carry the full HD badge. There is no explanation one how the VDE arrives at this ruling. My personal experience shows a rather big resolution difference between FPR and shutter glass based 3D TVs."

Narmacil writes "U.S. Team RoMeLa has swept Robocup 2011, winning first place in both the kid size and teen size divisions. (Video) CHARLI, America's first full size autonomous humanoid, managed to also make the high score record for the teen size division. DARWIN, the kid-sized robot, beat the Darmstadt Dribblers, the previous world champs, and continued on to the finals to win out." There must be joy in Blacksburg today.

dkd903 writes "Yesterday, many users of Google+ noticed Google spamming their inbox with multiple email notifications in very quick succession. Earlier today, Vic Gundotra, Head of Social at Google, explained what was causing it – Google ran out of disk space on the server that keeps track of notifications."

oxide7 writes "A nuclear reactor in Japan was forced to shut down due to infiltration of enormous swarms of jellyfish near the power plant. A similar incident was also reported recently in Israel, when millions of jellyfish clogged the sea-water cooling system of a power plant."

morgan_greywolf writes with this snippet from Wired:"You're never too young (or too old) to start learning the joys of electronics. You don't need to know how to solder, or even how to plug circuit components into a breadboard. As long as you're past the 'I'm going to stick this up my nose' phase, this homemade playdough circuit project is a great way to introduce kiddos and adults alike to basic circuits and electricity."

Beloved of concert tapers for their small size, shock resistance, and long battery life, MiniDisc recorders never much caught on with the general public. I remember playing with one in the early '90s — before high-quality solid state stereo recorders were affordable — and looking forward to the day that I would have one of my own. Playback-only decks were available, but understandably (in retrospect) never became big sellers; when MiniDisc was introduced, CDs were still a recent comer, and 8-track was fresh in the mind. Music fans were probably tired of replacing their vinyl and cassettes with the Next Big Thing. Still, with its cheap media and decent portable recorders, MiniDisc struck a chord for some uses, and stuck around better than the Digital Compact Cassette. Now, 19 years after the introduction of the MiniDisc format, Sony has announced that it will stop shipping its MiniDisc Walkman products in September, though it will continue to produce blank media.

wasimkadak writes with this excerpt from GigaOM: "According to database pioneer Michael Stonebraker, Facebook is operating a huge, complex MySQL implementation equivalent to 'a fate worse than death,' and the only way out is 'bite the bullet and rewrite everything.' Not that it's necessarily Facebook's fault, though. Stonebraker says the social network's predicament is all too common among web startups that start small and grow to epic proportions."

An anonymous reader writes "A Bradley University student has built a mobile robot that uses a hemispherical omnidirectional gimbaled, or HOG, drive wheel. It consists of a black rubber hemisphere that rotates like a spinning top, with servos that can tilt it left and right and forwards and backwards. The HOG system delivers an amount of torque directly proportional to the tilt of the hemisphere, allowing the robot to move incredibly fast nearly instantaneously."

James-NSC writes "I like to do arts and crafts. I've been saving up motherboards for a while as a new medium and I started working on it last night. I wore the same gear I wear while painting – fine particulate respirator and safety goggles. I just cut some templates out of some motherboards and when I was done I used the shop-vac to clean myself & workspace up before removing my mask. Even after 5+ minutes, in a well ventilated area (not as well as it should have been apparently) my first breath was pins and needles. I'm looking into containment and exhaust solutions – ala baby's first iron lung, but seriously, am I nuts? Are these materials just too toxic to work with?"

An anonymous reader writes "Given the NFC capabilities in Nexus S, NASA researchers are about to deploy them on the International Space Station. Two Nexus S phones will be installed in robotic floating orbs called Spheres (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites). They will be performing a variety of everyday tasks like taking inventory and inspecting equipment, which will free up the human crew members for other duties. Currently the Spheres are in testing mode, as the video shows, but are expected to be up and running by the end of the year."

sfcrazy writes "CERN has launched version 1.1 of the Open Hardware License (OHL), a legal framework to facilitate knowledge exchange across the electronic design community. The alpha version was launched four months ago. In the spirit of knowledge and technology dissemination, the CERN OHL was created to govern the use, copying, modification and distribution of hardware design documentation, and the manufacture and distribution of products."

fysdt sends this quote from an AFP report: "The German parliament sealed plans Friday to phase out nuclear energy by 2022, making the country the first major industrial power to take the step in the wake of the disaster at Japan's Fukushima plant. The nuclear exit scheme cleared its final hurdle in the Bundesrat upper house, which represents the 16 regional states, after the legislation passed the Bundestag lower house with an overwhelming majority last week. Germany's seven oldest reactors were already switched off after Japan's massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, causing reactors to overheat and radiation to leak. A further reactor has been shut for years because of technical problems."

ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine is making that case that any 'maker' who builds, buys or creates electronics should learn (Mandarin) Chinese. MAKE outlines the resources for anyone wishing to learn the language of the soon-to-be largest economy and source of just about everything we buy in the USA."

angry tapir writes "The forthcoming $2.1 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope could generate more data per day than the entire internet when it comes online in 2020, according to the director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Professor Peter Quinn. SKA — which Australia with New Zealand and South Africa are competing to host, and which will help the search for Earth-like planets, alien life forms, dark matter and black holes — will be 10,000 times more powerful than any telescope currently used. Slashdot has previously discussed the proposal to use 'Skynet' — a grid-computing-based solution for processing and storage."

Hugh Pickens writes "As recently as a half-decade ago, time seemed to be running out for the wristwatch; the mechanical device was declared to be going the way of the abacus. But now the NY Times reports that the 'sundial' of the wrist is experiencing an uptick among members of the digital generation, particularly by heritage-macho types in their 20s and 30s who are drawn to the wristwatch's retro appeal, just as they have seized on straight razors, selvedge denim and vintage vinyl. 'A cool machine that is all moving parts has got to be intrinsically interesting to someone born into this generation,' says Mitch Greenblatt, an online retailer of design-forward watches who is seeing a surge in business, 'because there's just nothing like that in their life.'"

vanstinator writes "Today Dropbox has released a revised Terms of Service agreement due to the controversy caused by their recent update. This new version clarifies their position on data ownership and makes it very clear that you, and only you, have a right to your data. This is welcome news to any serious Dropbox user." On the downside, though, NorbMan writes that a company called FilesAnywhere.com is "suing Dropbox, Inc. for trademark infringement. The complaint alleges that FilesAnywhere has been using the term 'DROPBOX' since 2004 as part of its service, and that Dropbox, Inc. has also closely duplicated one of its logo designs."

felipe13 writes "We are working on a new piece of code that will be protected under a GPL license, this is fine for the code itself, but what about our 'innovations'? Are there any 'Open Patent License' models similar to the GPL or Creative Commons? We have Google patenting the highlight of search occurrences, Facebook protecting the word 'Book,' and Apple registering body movements. This is becoming ridiculous to a point. Now the patent trolls are making a killing as well. Does the open source community has a good way to protect its innovations and inventions? There are some initiatives to buy patents and release them to the public or at least place them is a protected area, but where would my very small company register a new way to include titles in a private message? Where could Drupal patent the use of 'hooks' to let developers interact with the core of the application? (If they invented this, I am not really sure.) I don't want to wake up in 10 years and discover that X huge company patented my innovation and that now I actually have to pay them for it." There's OpenPatents.org, there's the Open Source Hardware and Design Alliance, there's CERN's newly-updated Open Hardware license, and there are domain-specific patent sharing organizations like the Open Patent Alliance; what else is out there?