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Communications

When Telemarketers Harass Telecoms Companies 234

Posted by timothy from the listen-through-the-glitches dept.
farnz writes "Andrews & Arnold, a small telecoms company in the UK, have recently been hit with an outbreak of illegal junk calls. Unlike larger firms, they've come up with an innovative response — assign 4 million numbers to play recordings to the telemarketers, put them on the UK's Do-Not-Call list and see what happens. Thus far, the record is over 3 minutes before a telemarketer works out what's going on." The sound quality (and the satisfying humor) of the recording gets better as it goes on.
Movies

Why I Steal Movies (Even Ones I'm In) 753

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-not-me-him dept.
Jamie found a link saying "Like a billion other people, I download things illegally. I'm also an actor, writer, and director whose income depends on revenue from DVDs, movies, and books.This leads to many conflicts in my head, in my heart, and in bars."
Space

Jupiter Is Missing a Belt 187

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what-holds-up-its-pants dept.
mbone writes "Jupiter just went through Superior Conjunction (i.e., went behind the Sun as seen from the Earth), so it has been out of view for a while. Now that it has returned, it is different — the South Equatorial Belt (SEB) is missing. The SEB has about 10 times the surface area of the Earth, so this is not a small change. Here are a series of photos of Jupiter's new look. The Great Red Spot typically inhabits the southern border of the SEB, but it doesn't seem to be affected by the change. It's a pity that this happened at Superior Conjunction, and that there is no satellite in Jupiter orbit, so details of the change are largely missing. The SEB has previously gone missing in 1973 and 1990. Since no one really knows what makes the Jovian belts, no one knows why they disappear either. If the belts are really just material from deeper layers coming to the surface, it is possible that the convection has stopped for some reason, or that high-altitude clouds have covered it over."
Image

Visually Demonstrating Chrome's Rendering Speed 140

Posted by kdawson from the want-to-see-it-again dept.
eldavojohn writes "Recent betas of Google's Chrome browser are getting seriously fast. Couple that with better hardware, on average, and it's getting down to speeds that are difficult to demonstrate in a way users can appreciate. Which is why Google felt that some Rube Goldberg-ish demonstrations with slo-mo are in order. Gone are the days of boring millisecond response time metrics."
Transportation

Japan To Standardize Electric Vehicle Chargers 240

Posted by kdawson from the twist-of-lemon-please dept.
JoshuaInNippon writes "Four major Japanese car manufacturers and one power company (Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, and Tokyo Electric) have teamed up with over 150 business and government entities in Japan to form a group to promote standardization in electric vehicle chargers and charging stations. The group hopes to leverage current Japanese electric vehicle technology and spread standardization throughout the country, as well as aim towards worldwide acceptance of their standardized charger model. In a very Japanese manner, the group has decided to call themselves 'CHAdeMO,' a play on the English words 'charge' and 'move,' as well as a Japanese pun that encourages tea-drinking while waiting the 15+ minutes it will take to charge one's vehicle battery."
Botnet

Waledac Botnet Now Completely Offline, Experts Say 91

Posted by kdawson from the it's-dead-jim dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "After Microsoft's actions to take down the Waledac botnet last month, there was some question about whether the operation was much more than a grab for headlines that would have little effect on actual spam levels or malware infections. But more than three weeks after the takedown, researchers say that Waledac has essentially ceased communications and its spam operations have dropped to near zero. One researcher said that Waledac now seems to be abandoned. 'It looks crippled, if not dead,' said Jose Nazario, a senior security researcher at Arbor Networks."
Censorship

North Korea's Own OS, Red Star 316

Posted by timothy from the linux-is-sometimes-for-communists dept.
klaasb writes "North Korea's self-developed computer operating system, named 'Red Star,' was brought to light for the first time by a Russian satellite broadcaster yesterday. North Korea's top IT experts began developing the Red Star in 2006, but its composition and operation mechanisms were unknown until the internet version of the Russia Today TV program featured the system, citing the blog of a Russian student who goes to the Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang."
Cellphones

Multiplayer Mobile AR Gaming With No Dedicated Server 14

Posted by Soulskill from the pocket-server dept.
MIT's Technology Review discusses a new augmented-reality game for Android phones called Photoshoot, which allows multiplayer without the need for an additional server. Quoting: "Multiplayer games on mobile devices like phones usually require remote servers for communication between devices and game hosting, says Roelof Kemp, a computer scientist at Vrije Universiteit, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, who codeveloped the game. But the game allows phones to communicate without the cost and added complexity of maintaining this additional infrastructure, he says. 'We hope it's going to open the door for new and interesting distributed computing applications,' says Kemp. The game uses a computing middleware system, called Ibis, originally developed for high-performance, distributed computing tasks, such as image processing or astrophysics research, but which Kemp and colleagues have adapted to run on Android phones. 'It allows each phone to run a lightweight communication server,' says Kemp. The devices can communicate directly with the game, which is hosted on both handsets, using a 3G connection or Wi-Fi."
Space

Space Photos Taken From Shed Stun Astronomers 149

Posted by timothy from the love-the-gold-mylar dept.
krou writes "Amateur astronomer Peter Shah has stunned astronomers around the world with amazing photos of the universe taken from his garden shed. Shah spent £20,000 on the equipment, hooking up a telescope in his shed to his home computer, and the results are being compared to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 'Most men like to putter about in their garden shed,' said Shah, 'but mine is a bit more high tech than most. I have fitted it with a sliding roof so I can sit in comfort and look at the heavens. I have a very modest set up, but it just goes to show that a window to the universe is there for all of us – even with the smallest budgets. I had to be patient and take the images over a period of several months because the skies in Britain are often clouded over and you need clear conditions.' His images include the Monkey's head nebula, M33 Pinwheel Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and the Flaming Star Nebula, and are being put together for a book."
Music

Facebook Campaign Decides UK Christmas Music Charts 362

Posted by kdawson from the rage-against-the-commercialization dept.
uglyduckling writes "A grassroots Facebook campaign has pushed the 1990s Rage Against the Machine song 'Killing in the Name Of' to the top of the British music charts for Christmas. The campaign was planned to prevent the X-Factor winner from charting Christmas number one, as has been the case for the past four years. It was supposedly a kick against the commercialism of Christmas and commercial dominance in the music scene, although Rage and the X-Factor winner Joe McElderry were actually signed to the same label. Despite this minor detail, it's interesting to note that this is the first song to reach the number one spot through downloads alone in the UK, and is a testament to the organizational power of social networking sites like Facebook. The Facebook group also asked for donations to charity, and has raised £70,000 for the homeless charity Shelter."
Windows

Submission + - So Much For XP Loyalty: Windows 7 Share's Big Grab (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Microsoft's Windows ran to stay in place last month as Window 7's market share gains made up for the largest-ever declines in Windows XP and Vista, data released today by Web metrics firm Net Applications showed. By Net Applications' numbers, Windows 7's gains were primarily at the expense of Windows XP. For each copy of Vista replaced by Windows 7 during November, more than six copies of XP were swapped for the new OS. Meanwhile, Apple's Mac OS X lost share during November ... betcha Ballmer is having an extra giddy time with that news too. Hold on, however, Steve. Linux came up a winner last month, returning to the 1% share mark for the first time since July. Linux's all-time high in Net Applications' rankings was May 2009, when it nearly reached 1.2%.
Google

Submission + - Is Google abandoning Gears? (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: When Google announced its Gears technology for giving Web services offline capabilities in early 2007, it looked like it could have a huge impact in speeding the transition from traditional software to the cloud. But Gears never got an outpouring of support from Web-service companies--even Google's own support in its own products has been scattered and incomplete. Now the company seems to be saying that developers who like the Gears concept should focus their attention on HTML5, which will bring Gears-like features--eventually. Is the Gears dream over?
The Internet

Submission + - Disney Accuses 5th Grader of Hacking Game (brianguy.com)

Submitted by brianguy
brianguy writes: Disney Online has falsely accused an 11 year old fifth grader of hacking Pirates of the Caribbean Online. His account remains banned after his dad pointed out to Disney its error. The dad is asking for an apology from Disney but is so far only receiving canned replies.

Submission + - Newspaper crowdsources Tony Blair investigation (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by projector
projector writes: The Guardian are crowd sourcing an investigation into former Prime Minister Tony Blair's finances. "Since Tony Blair stepped down, he has received millions of pounds from an unusual mixture of income streams. His financial affairs have been described as 'Byzantine' and 'opaque'. Can you shed any light on them?" Documents detailing Blair's companies are being made available, readers are asked to send their remarks and observations to the newspaper.
Graphics

Building 3D Models On the Fly With a Webcam 93

Posted by kdawson from the do-you-see-what-i-see dept.
blee37 writes "Here is an excellent video demonstration of a new program developed by Qi Pan, a graduate student, and other researchers at the University of Cambridge. The 'ProFORMA' software constructs a 3D model of an object in real time from (commodity) webcam video. The user can watch the program deduce more pieces of the 3D model as the object is moved and rotated. The resulting graphics are of high quality."

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