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Cellphones

In the UK, T-Mobile and Orange To Merge 74

Posted by kdawson from the what-is-this-competition-of-which-you-speak dept.
EthanV2 sends in BBC coverage of the merger plans of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK. "T-Mobile and Orange plan to merge their UK businesses, creating a mobile phone giant with 28.4 million customers. If completed, a deal between Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile and Orange owner France Telecom would see a firm with sales of €9.4 B (£7.0 B, $13.4 B). It would be the UK's largest provider, overtaking Telefonica's O2, with about 37% of the mobile market. ... However, it is likely that competition authorities in the UK and EU will probe the deal."
Classic Games (Games)

A Look Back At Star Raiders 104

Posted by Soulskill from the xwing-fans-take-note dept.
blacklily8 writes "Gamasutra has just published our history of Doug Neubauer's Star Raiders, a 1979 game for the Atari 8-bit that offered 'high-speed first-person perspective through a fully navigable 3D-like environment in just 8K of RAM (memory) and 8K of ROM (storage).' Designed by the creator of the Atari's POKEY chip, Star Raiders was a hit on its home platform but now seems to have fallen into obscurity: 'Star Raiders is a shining example of what happens when a developer is told that something can't be done, does it anyway, and then is promptly forgotten for having done it.' In addition to describing the game itself, the article focuses on its impact on later games such as Wing Commander, X-Wing, and Elite."
Data Storage

Why Anonymized Data Isn't 280

Posted by kdawson from the can't-keep-good-PII-down dept.
Ars has a review of recent research, and a summary of the history, in the field of reidentification — identifying people from anonymized data. Paul Ohm's recent paper is an elaboration of what Ohm terms a central reality of data collection: "Data can either be useful or perfectly anonymous but never both." "...in 2000, [researcher Latanya Sweeney] showed that 87 percent of all Americans could be uniquely identified using only three bits of information: ZIP code, birthdate, and sex. ... For almost every person on earth, there is at least one fact about them stored in a computer database that an adversary could use to blackmail, discriminate against, harass, or steal the identity of him or her. I mean more than mere embarrassment or inconvenience; I mean legally cognizable harm. ... Reidentification science disrupts the privacy policy landscape by undermining the faith that we have placed in anonymization."
Image

The Magicians Screenshot-sm 122

Posted by samzenpus from the potter-by-any-other-name dept.
stoolpigeon writes "The popularity of web site Will It Blend? is indicative of how people enjoy mashing things together. Of course this kind of sharing and combining has been going on in the arts for quite some time. The new Lev Grossman novel, The Magicians asks 'will it blend?' of two rather popular fantasy series, J.K. Rowling's world of Harry Potter and the tales of Narnia from C.S. Lewis. Grossman's thoughts on both are tossed on top and then the author begins to play a symphony across the full range of buttons from stir to liquefy. What comes out is not children's fantasy but at times a rather bitter mix." Keep reading for the rest of JR's review.
Cellphones

Apple Pulls C64 Emulator From the App Store 580

Posted by kdawson from the brief-shining-moment dept.
Rob Hearn sends in a piece up at PocketGamer.co.uk on why Apple suddenly pulled Manomio's C64 emulator soon after finally approving it. (El Reg has coverage too.) "It was a glorious few moments for retro gamers when Manomio's C64 emulator was finally approved by Apple and released to the eager, nostalgic iPhone public. Then, calamity! It was gone again. Apparently some wily users figured out how to access the Commodore 64 BASIC system that was originally packaged with the emulator — something that Apple wasn't too happy with, given the nature of the interpreter's code. By setting the keyboard to 'always on,' launching a game and restarting BASIC, players got into the 'empty shell' of their C64 emulator."
Encryption

DRM Take II — Digital Personal Property 356

Posted by timothy from the shhh-you're-disturbing-my-metaphors dept.
Diabolus Advocatus writes "Ars Technica has an article on a new form of DRM being considered by the IEEE. It's called Digital Personal Property and although it removes some of the drawbacks of conventional DRM it introduces new drawbacks of its own. From the article: 'Digital personal property (DPP) is an attempt to make consumers treat digital media like physical objects. For instance, you might loan your car to a friend, a family member, or a neighbor. You might do so on many different occasions and for different lengths of time. But you are unlikely to leave the car out front of your house with the keys in it and a sign on it saying, "Take me!" If you did, you might never see the vehicle again. It's that ability to lose control over property that is central to the DPP system. DPP files are encrypted. They can be freely copied and distributed to anyone, but here's the trick: anyone who can view your content can also "steal" it irrevocably. The simple addition of a way to lose content instantly leads consumers to set up a "circle of trust" that can be as wide as they like but will not extend to total strangers on the Internet.'"
Image

SA's Largest Telecomms Provider vs. a Pigeon Screenshot-sm 149

Posted by samzenpus from the may-the-best-bird-win dept.
dagwud writes "Just a few days after this Slashdot article, South Africa's largest telecoms provider, Telkom (which has been taking flak for years for its shoddy and overpriced service), is being pitted against a homing pigeon to see which can deliver 4GB of call centre data logs quickest over a distance of around 80km (50 miles). According to the official website, the race is set to take place September 10."
Input Devices

Bootstrapping a New Technology? 360

Posted by kdawson from the research-in-motion dept.
djk1024 writes "I've just filed for a patent on a new approach to motion capture that is simple, cheap, easy, accurate, and portable. It's RF-based, accurate to 1 mm, and simple enough that a sophisticated hobbyist could build one in a couple weekends from plans and standard electronics. So now what? I quit my job and have been working on this full-time for the past couple of years; now I'm out of money so can't continue development on my own. I'm also not an electrical or RF guy so I can't carry out my own independent development on the electronics. I'm quite frustrated at this point. I've been in the software development field for over 30 years and have gone through a large number of startups, but always just as the head techie, and always as part of a team. This doing it alone sucks. I would love some advice on how best to go forward."
Censorship

Church of Scientology Proposes Net Censorship In Australia 464

Posted by timothy from the all-they-want-is-a-little-sanity dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Submitted by the Australian branch of Scientology to the local Human Rights Commission is a proposal to eliminate anonymity on the net and the removal of critical websites (MS Word document). The submission is listed as #1931 at this page at the Australian Human Rights Commission." (Read on below for some of the details of what the Scientologists propose.)
Media

iPod Fee Proposed For Canada 414

Posted by timothy from the when-organized-interests-meet-diffuse-ones dept.
innocent_white_lamb writes "The Canadian Private Copying Collective is pushing for the implementation of an iPod fee in Canada to compensate them for 'losses' when people copy music to their digital music players. They have collected a fee from every CDR sold in Canada since 1997 and now want to extend that to digital music players. From the article: 'Some have argued that once they buy a CD they shouldn't have to pay again and again to listen to those songs — which they already purchased — on a personal compilation CD or on their MP3 player. But for people like Milman and Basskin, it's about recognizing the value of those works. "There has to be some sort of way to compensate the artist for the hours and the sweat and the blood and the tears and the extreme, extreme expense that goes into making music," Milman said.'"
Privacy

Samsung System Tailors Ads To Its Audience 172

Posted by timothy from the you'd-like-a-philip-k-dick-book dept.
angry tapir writes "Samsung has developed an outdoor digital advertising system that tailors ads based on its audience. There are three main components of the system: an LCD display panel, a dual lens camera and a processing computer, which runs the company's proprietary facial recognition software. If the technology identifies several female members in a group, then it can target advertisements at them, for example. Even if the group is mixed, the technology can identify whether onlookers are children or adults. If they're adults then maybe a wine ad could run whereas an advertisement for toys might play for kids."
Portables (Apple)

Thieves Clear Out NJ Apple Store In 31 Seconds 459

Posted by timothy from the you're-soooo-specific dept.
theodp writes "An amazing surveillance tape of a burglary in progress at a New Jersey Apple Store shows five perps in masks smashing the plate-glass doors at 2:05 a.m., signaling to the security guard that they had a gun, and clearing off the display tables with the efficiency of a Indy 500 pit crew. The take: 23 MacBook Pros, 14 iPhones and 9 iPod touches in 31 seconds flat. Estimated value, based on average selling price: $46,345. No word yet on whether Microsoft's Laptop Hunters have alibis."

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