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EU

EU Calls for Unified Approach to Allocating "White Space" Spectrum 25

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the illuminati-mind-control-plot dept.
judgecorp writes "The European Union has proposed that operators should share their spectrum, to make better use of it. The European authorities want to go beyond the 'white space' re-use of geographic gaps in spectrum, acknowledging that intelligent radio systems can now avoid interference. The EU wants operators to allow other players onto their licensed spectrum with short range equipment, in exchange for help building wireless infrastructure and creating more mobile data capacity"
Security

Iran and North Korea Team Up To Fight State-Sponsored Malware 191

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the supervillian-crossover dept.
An anonymous reader writes, quoting the article: "At the start of this month, news broke that Iran and North Korea have strengthened their ties, specifically by signing a number of cooperation agreements on science and technology. The two states signed the pact on Saturday, declaring that it represented a united front against Western powers. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, told Kim Yong Nam, North Korea's ceremonial head of state, the two countries have common enemies and aligned goals. On Monday, security firm F-Secure weighed in on the discussion. The company believes Iran and North Korea may be interested in collaborating against government-sponsored malware attacks such as Duqu, Flame, and Stuxnet."
Google

Google Pulls Access To Unsupported But Popular Weather API 168

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the we-did-it-because-we-love-you dept.
New submitter drsmack1 writes with news of some bummed out programmers losing access to an undocumented Google API. From the article: "The curious popularity of the Google Weather API appears to be coming to a close. The search giant never officially supported the feature, but developers have used the unofficial feed available from the iGoogle homepage. With iGoogle now set for deprecation in November, developers are reporting that the once simple weather API is no longer returning data." Seems like the sort of thing you could replace with a tiny bit of XSLT.
Sci-Fi

Hugo Awards Live Stream Cut By Copyright Enforcement Bot 393

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the not-as-much-fun-as-bender dept.
New submitter Penmanpro writes news of the Hugo Awards stream being unintentionally cut off by some AI gone awry: "Quotes from the linked article 'UStream's incorrectly programmed copyright enforcement squad had destroyed our only access.' 'Just as Neil Gaiman was giving an acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, "The Doctor's Wife." Where Gaiman's face had been were the words, "Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement."'"
Virtualization

Xen-Based Secure OS Qubes Hits 1.0 175

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the subhurds-for-the-masses dept.
Orome1 writes "Joanna Rutkowska, CEO of Invisible Things Lab, today released version 1.0 of Qubes, a stable and reasonably secure desktop OS. It is the most secure option among the existing desktop operating systems — even more secure than Apple's iOS, which puts each application into its own sandbox and does not count on the user to make security decisions. Qubes will offer users the option of using disposable virtual machines for executing tasks they believe could harm their computer. These VMs will be lightweight, easily and extremely speedily created and booted, and would be just as easy to discard." First covered back in 2010. See some screenshots of the X11 part in action (and they say displaying clients from multiple "hosts" isn't useful...)
Education

Do We Need a Longer School Year? 729

Posted by samzenpus from the school's-out-for-the-summer dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Jennifer Davis writes that while summer holds a special place in our hearts: lazy afternoons, camping at the lake, warm evenings gazing at the moon, languid summers can be educationally detrimental, with most youth losing about two months of grade-level equivalency in math computational skills over the summer and students from low-income families falling even further behind. A consensus is building that the traditional nine-month school year might be a relic of the 20th century that has no place in an increasingly competitive global work force and an analysis of charter schools in New York reveals that students are most likely to outperform peers if they attend schools that are open at least 10 days more than the conventional year. What of the idea that summer should be a time of respite from the stresses of school? There are two wrong notions wrapped up in this perspective. The first is that somehow summer is automatically a magical time for children but as one fifth-grader, happy to be back at school in August, declared, 'Sometimes summer is really boring. We just sit there and watch TV.' The second mis-perception is that school is automatically bereft of the excitement and joy of learning. On the contrary, as the National Center on Time and Learning describes in its studies of schools that operate with significantly more time, educators use the longer days and years to enhance the content and methods of the classroom. 'We should expect our schools to furnish today's students with the education they will need to excel in our global society,' says Davis. 'But we must also be willing to provide schools the tools they need to ensure this outcome, including the flexibility to turn the lazy days of summer into the season of learning.'"
Games

Fans Bring Back Half Life Game Series: Black Mesa Mod Launches 9/14 133

Posted by samzenpus from the back-by-popular-demand dept.
MojoKid writes "In a little less than two weeks, Half Life fans will have an opportunity to relive Valve's original 1998 title Half Life, albeit reborn and modified using the company's Source engine. The ambitious third-party project is called Black Mesa (previously known as Black Mesa: Source) and it's been in development for eight years. Black Mesa will deliver Half Life as you've never seen it before. It will have all new graphics, maps, a new soundtrack, updated voice acting, support for multi-core processors, hardware accelerated facial animation, and other goodies."
Books

Book Review: Why Does the World Exist? 304

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
eldavojohn writes "For quite some time humans have struggled to answer the question why there is anything rather than nothing. Jim Holt's Why Does the World Exist? tackles such questions in the form of a journey. After laying a brief groundwork, Holt travels from leading prominent philosopher to curmudgeonly physicist to reserved theologian, visiting each and relaying the juiciest parts of his transcripts to the reader. In doing so, this book takes on an interesting form with a meaty dense center to each chapter (the actual dialogues) surrounded by the light and fluffy bread of Holt's expert writing about the settings, weather and food of his travels. While this consequently lacks the characteristics of a heady hard hitting original philosophical work, these sandwiches should prove quite palatable for most readers. Why Does the World Exist? criss-crosses the etymological, epistemological, theological and philosophical aspects of its title while remaining a fairly easy read." Keep reading for the rest of eldavojohn's review.
Printer

3D Printing On a Microscopic Scale 34

Posted by samzenpus from the small-details dept.
cylonlover writes "Three-dimensional printers are popping up everywhere these days. Some are small enough to fit in a briefcase and others are large enough to print houses, but scientists at the Vienna University of Technology are going for the microscopic. Earlier this year, the university built a 3D printer that uses lasers to operate on a tiny scale. Now they're refining the technique to enable precise placement of a selected molecule in a three-dimensional material. This process, called '3D-photografting,' can potentially be used to create a 'lab on a chip' or artificially grow living tissue."
Security

Knocking Infected PCs Off the Internet 206

Posted by samzenpus from the and-stay-out dept.
nk497 writes "Malware could block your access to the internet – but in some cases by those on the right side of the security fence, who are deploying tactics such as blocked ports, letters in the mail and PCs quarantined from the net to combat the most damaging threats. The DNS Changer clean up saw some PCs prevented from accessing the web. Should such tactics be used more often to prevent malware from spreading — or is that taking security a step too far?"
Education

University of Cambridge Offers Free Online Raspberry Pi Course 99

Posted by samzenpus from the learn-all-about-it dept.
Barence writes "The University of Cambridge has released a free 12-step online course on building a basic operating system for the Raspberry Pi. The course, Baking Pi — Operating Systems Development, was compiled by student Alex Chadwick during a summer interning in the school's computer lab, and has been put online to help this year's new recruits start work with the device. The university has already purchased a Raspberry Pi for every new Computer Science student starting in 2012."
Media

Bruce Willis Considering Legal Action Against Apple Over iTunes Collection 570

Posted by samzenpus from the yippie-ka-yay dept.
First time accepted submitter oobayly writes "It appears that Bruce 'Die Hard' Willis isn't too impressed that he can't include his iTunes collection in his estate when he dies. According to the article: 'Bruce Willis, the Hollywood actor, is said to be considering legal action against Apple so he can leave his iTunes music collection to his three daughters.' Such a high profile individual complaining about the ability to own your digital music can only be a good thing, right?"
Google

Google Extends Patent Search To Prior Art 81

Posted by samzenpus from the what-came-before dept.
mikejuk writes "As well as buying up patents to defend itself against the coming Apple attack on Android, Google is also readying its own technology. It has extended its Patent Search facility to include European patents and has added a Prior Art facility. The new Prior Art facility seems to be valuable both to inventors and to the legal profession. In order to be granted a patent the inventor has to establish that it is a novel idea — and in the current litigious environment companies and their lawyers might want to show that patents should not have been granted."
Mars

MIT Works On Mars Space Suit 71

Posted by samzenpus from the new-uniforms dept.
An anonymous reader writes in with a story about MIT's work on space suits to be used by Mars astronauts. "When we send the first humans to Mars we will need to get the most scientific data in the smallest amount of time while not exhausting our astronauts in the process. Dava J. Newman has been working on a 'biosuit' that's designed to do just that....Dava’s suit would be a huge leap forward in terms of construction as well. They’ve enlisted the expertise of Dainese, an Italian manufacturer of motorcycle racing 'leathers'—leather and carbon-fiber suits designed to protect racers traveling at up to 200 mph. The suit would be a degree safer than current space suits. While a puncture or scrape in a traditional space suit would cause a dramatic decrease in pressure and would be traumatic, even deadly, the 'biosuit' could be patched with a high-tech ace bandage. The wearer would wrap it around the punctured area to stop the leak almost instantly. Pressure loss would be minimal and the astronaut would be able to continue working and finish his or her task. "

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