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AMD

Submission + - Lenovo to use AMD chips in low-end ThinkPads (networkworld.com) 1

netbuzz writes: Lenovo is looking beyond long-term partner Intel and beginning to offer budget ThinkPad laptops — starting at under $500 — based on AMD processors, the company announced today. Lenovo's commitment to AMD chips comes only a few weeks after the FTC filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel, accusing the chip maker of illegally using its dominant market position to stifle competition and limit consumer choice.

Submission + - Honesty box: the way to stop the inkjet rot (pcpro.co.uk)

Barence writes: A company in Britain has found a novel solution to the increasingly problem of home inkjet printers being consigned to landfill. The firm has said that any member of staff can print personal documents on their pool of big refurbished printers, with “honesty boxes” left by the printers for them to drop some change into: a much better “green” approach, than investing in a personal printer with a short life-cycle. Could this work?
Security

Submission + - Security in the Ether

theodp writes: Technology Review's David Talbot says IT's next grand challenge will be to secure the cloud — and prove we can trust it. 'The focus of IT innovation has shifted from hardware to software applications,' says Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson. 'Many of these applications are going on at a blistering pace, and cloud computing is going to be a great facilitative technology for a lot of these people.' But there's one little catch. 'None of this can happen unless cloud services are kept secure,' notes Talbot. 'And they are not.' Fully ensuring the security of cloud computing, says Talbot, will inevitably fall to emerging encryption technologies.

Submission + - TSA: Keep Your Hands Where We Can See Them (yahoo.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: Courtesy of Yahoo News: Some airlines were telling passengers on Saturday that new government security regulations prohibit them from leaving their seats beginning an hour before landing The regulations are a response to a suspected terrorism incident on Christmas Day. Air Canada said in a statement that new rules imposed by the Transportation Security Administration limit on-board activities by passengers and crew in U.S. airspace...Flight attendants on some domestic flights are informing passengers of similar rules. Passengers on a flight from New York to Tampa Saturday morning were also told they must remain in their seats and couldn't have items in their laps, including laptops and pillows.

I seriously thought this was an Onion article at first.

Comment Re:I love transparency! (Score 2, Insightful) 187

But while you are listening to them rant about saving the children from paedophile-terrorist-aliens the nice men in white coats can circle around behind them and catch them more easily!

More seriously though: they should be listened to because then you can point out the flaws in their position. I have spoken to a number of "[c]ensorship advocates" who simply didn't understand the implications and were more than happy to change their position when spoken to reasonably. Of course some will be beyond reason or be pushing some other agenda, but not all are beyond hope and if you refuse to engage them, isolate them and let them only hear the extreme perspective you lose any chance to convert them... In a democratic system this is a losing strategy as you need to convince/convert the majority to your view.

Submission + - Chasing babes not so good for the species (cosmosmagazine.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: Aggressively courting the most attractive females could be bad for the species as a whole, according to a new study on sexual selection in fruit flies.
Privacy

Submission + - Facebook Masks Worse Privacy With New Interface 1

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook launched new privacy settings this week. Cosmetically, this means that the settings are explained more clearly and are marginally easier to manage. Unfortunately, some of the most significant changes actually make preserving privacy harder for its users: profile elements that could previously be restricted to "Only Friends" are now designated as irrevocably publicly available: "Publicly available information includes your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, and Pages" (http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=927). Where you could previously preserve the privacy of this information and remain publicly searchable only by name, Facebook now forces you to either give up this information (including your current city!) to anyone with a Facebook account, or to restrict your search visibility — which of course limits the usefulness of the site far beyond how not publicly sharing your profile picture would. That Facebook made this change while simultaneously rolling out major changes to the privacy settings interface seems disingenuous.

Submission + - Peer-to-Patent Pilot Project Launches in Australia (iptoday.com)

panikhide writes: Intellectual Property Today reports that Peer-to-Patent is being trialled in Australia. Peer-to-Patent Australia is based on the successful Peer-to-Patent project conducted by New York Law School, and is the result of the collaborative efforts between the Law School and the Queensland University of Technology. From June 2007 to June 2009, the Law School conducted the successful Peer-to-Patent pilot, in cooperation with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and opened the patent examination process for the first time to a network of scientific and technical experts.

"I am delighted to witness the launch of Peer-to-Patent Australia," Mark Webbink, Executive Director of New York Law School’s Center for Patent Innovations, said. "We have enjoyed working with Queensland University of Technology in extending the reach of Peer-to-Patent and look forward to a successful pilot."

Professor Brian Fitzgerald, from QUT's Faculty of Law, said the project's aim is to assist patent examiners by identifying prior art they might not otherwise have discovered or had access to. He invites appropriately qualified people to get involved as peer reviewers.

"The success of the project requires the participation of appropriately qualified people from industry, government, academia, and the broader community, many of whom will be exposed to new technologies on a daily basis," Professor Fitzgerald said.

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