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Wii

Submission + - Seniors love the Wii

Submitted by textureglitch
textureglitch writes: Nintendo's mission to expand the $30 billion global video game market far beyond the children and young males who make up its core consumers is well under way. The Wii's focus on intuitive gameplay rather than high-powered graphics has made it outsell the more expensive Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 so far, and now CNN reports that retirees love the Wii.

"I played tennis, if you can call it that, as a high school student. I had such fun doing it," Ebert swung the Wiimote just like a tennis racquet and said playing the game reminded her of the feeling she had all those years ago.

Flora Dierbach, 72, chairs the entertainment committee of Erickson Retirement Communities in Chicago and helped arrange a Wii bowling tournament.

"It's a very social thing and it's good exercise ... and you don't have to throw a 16-pound bowling ball to get results."
Privacy

Submission + - Thumbprint required to buy a car in Southern CA

Submitted by
saccade.com
saccade.com writes: "Here's an insidious use of biometrics: A southern California car dealership actually refuses to sell you a car unless you submit your thumbprint. From the posting:

The dealership claimed that the fingerprinting was for my protection. To make sure I'm really who I say I am, and haven't just stolen someone's social security number.

But I don't get it. How does that work? No one's checking to make sure the fingerprint I leave matches the one on file with the DMV. There's no forensics expert on staff. And I don't have data on this but I feel pretty certain that any car thief worth his salt probably already has more than one set of prints on file.
...
Dollar Rent-A-Car tried fingerprinting their customers for a while. They gave up after realizing that it had no effect on fraud or theft. Simply, treating your customers like felons is bad for business.
"
Caldera

Submission + - IBM Asks Court to Declare Linux Non-Infringing

Submitted by
A Cyclic Graph
A Cyclic Graph writes: "We finally have a redacted version of IBM's Reply Memorandum in Support of Summary Judgment on Counterclaim 10 in SCO v. IBM. In short, IBM is asking the Court to declare that Linux doesn't infringe upon any of SCO's purported intellectual property. This document is the last word on that matter until the Court either declares there to be no doubt that Linux is free of infringement, or decides that that issue has to be decided by the jury. In their brief, IBM points out that SCO puts forth a convoluted set of non-answers referencing each other to disguise it's inability to answer IBM. Their set of cross-references is so complex that Groklaw readers graphed the claims to make what little sense of them they could."
Space

Submission + - Spacecraft may surf on magnetic fields

Submitted by
Matthew Sparkes
Matthew Sparkes writes: "NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts have proposed spacecraft that surf the magnetic fields of Earth and other planets, taking previously unfeasible routes around the solar system. The electrically charged craft would not need rockets or propellant of any kind. A cylindrical mesh of fibres would be attached to the spacecraft. To charge itself up, the stocking could be coated with a radioisotope such as polonium-210, the isotope used to poison former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko."
Software

Submission + - Microsoft's Plot to Kill QuickTime

Submitted by Mail.app
Mail.app writes: Following the 1997 agreement between Apple and Microsoft, there was a surface appearance that the two companies were now working as partners instead of rivals. "In many ways, this was actually true," says Daniel Eran Dilger, who then launches into a history of rivalry between Apple and Microsoft, citing testimony from the Microsoft monopoly trial to paint a secret story of desperation and intrigue between the largest installed base of media software, and Apple's aging, third place QuickTime. Why did Microsoft Plot to Kill QuickTime?
Digital

Submission + - Hollywood's Secret Plan to Lock Down European TV

Submitted by monkey_dongle
monkey_dongle writes: From EFF's "Deep Links" section:

Hollywood's desire to force DRM on TV fans doesn't stop at the US border — an international consortium of television and technology companies is devising draconian anti-consumer restrictions for the next generation of TVs in Europe and beyond, at the behest of American entertainment giants.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005157.php

http://www.eff.org/IP/DVB/dvb_briefing_paper.php

http://www.eff.org/IP/DVB/dvb_paper_032007.pdf
Television

Submission + - Analog TV is out Digital is in

Submitted by db32
db32 writes: At sfgate we have the story of the cutoff date for those rabbit ear antennas we all grew up with. Now while the story of analog vs digital TV has been beaten to death, and what it means for our future viewing I think there is something worse here. "The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) said it is setting aside $990 million to pay for the boxes. Each home can request up to two $40 coupons for a digital-to-analog converter box, which consumer electronics makers such as RCA and LG plan to produce." Beyond my disdain for most TV to begin with, I am blown away that with all of our current problems from the at home social issues of homelessness and crime, and our foreign policy and war fighting efforts that our government is seriously going to spend this much money on upgrading peoples TVs. So at $80 per household the government could buy most people a year long subscription to their local newspaper instead, but instead we get TV upgrades. Is this what our society has finally come to?
Television

Submission + - MythTV vs. TiVo Round 2: The Debate Continues

Submitted by
Egadfly
Egadfly writes: " Open source MythTV or highly commercial TiVo’s new Series 3 – which product wins at what?

How different are the two system’s available remote control devices and their graphic interfaces when it comes to ease of use? Which product should you choose if your HD signal comes OTA or if you plan to use CableCARDs? And what software features (present and future) can you expect with each product? Will loopholes in FCC regulations and cable company encryption ultimately squeeze out MythTV and other open source players?"
The Internet

Submission + - Reduce global warming - buy some CO2

Submitted by
Not That Anonymous Coward
Not That Anonymous Coward writes: "If you buy the right to use a certain amount of CO2 — and you don't use that right — you contribute to reduce the global warming. It's a simple idea — but it might save the world. Today, most scientists argue that global warming is caused by human emission of greenhouse gases like CO2 — therefore a reduction of the emission is urgent. Go buy yourself some CO2: CO2Quota.org"
Power

Submission + - Reducing Peak Electricity Load and Keeping Cool

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The Atlantic Monthly has an article on a Chinese company which sells non-electric air conditioners: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200703/fallows -zhang (subscriber only). Considering the recent D grade given to the U.S. energy infrastructure in 2005 by the American Society of Civil Engineers: http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=25 , are their products, among others, viable for lowering peak electrical use during summers worldwide?
Security

Submission + - Nanoparticles reveal fingerprints

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "According to 'Chemical Science,' Israeli researchers have found new ways to use nanotechnology to reveal hidden fingerprints. They've used gold nanoparticles suspended in a stable solution of petrol ether. The nanoparticles 'stick to the fingerprint residues through hydrophobic interactions.' This new method produces high quality prints in just three minutes. Other experts in forensic science confirmed the results, but it's still unknown when — or if — law-enforcement forces will use this technology. Read more for additional references and a picture showing how well this new method works by comparison to current ones."
Software

Submission + - FSF aims for partnership with hardware vendors

Submitted by
johnsu01
johnsu01 writes: "The Free Software Foundation has published a paper called, "The road to hardware free from restrictions". In the paper, they outline five major areas where hardware manufacturers can take action to create a mutually benificial relationship with the free software community: supporting free software drivers, ending the "Microsoft Tax" on new hardware, removing proprietary BIOS locks, supporting a free BIOS, and rejecting DRM. Their release puts the paper in context with Greg Kroah-Hartman's kernel driver announcement and Dell's recent request for customer feedback about improving their hardware."
Encryption

Submission + - Secure private key storage for UNIX?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft Windows, from 2000 forwards (except ME) offers secure certificate and private storage at the OS level in what is called a protected store. Offline, its encrypted by a combination of the user's password and a session key stored on the filesystem. When the OS is running, the private keys stored are available to the logged in user, optionally encrypted with another password. The keys are stored in protected memory, so no applications can access them without going through the Microsoft CAPI calls. This code also is FIPS 140-1 level 1 (the best one can get for software cryptography modules) compliant.

This functionality (especially certified FIPS 140-1 or FIPS 140-2) would be nice to see in UNIX variants. MacOS's keychain functionality is similar, but stores at the application level, and is not FIPS compliant. An implementation of the protected store functionality will allow applications like Firefox, Thunderbird and gpg to have one common place to obtain private keys and certificates rather than maintaining their own individual keystores. An additional application for this would be the ability to use hardware PKCS #11 tokens.

I am wondering why this functionality does not exist at the OS level in most OSes except Windows. A number of applications on many platforms have this functionality, but its at the app level, with their own keystores, and not a standard at the OS level.
Wine

Submission + - WoW on Linux

Submitted by Kaptain_Krovac
Kaptain_Krovac writes: If I'm posting in the wrong section, I'm sorry. I need to ask /.ers a PC spec question, I have an older PC at home that I'm contemplating turning into an Ubuntu box, and I am wondering if the machine will run WoW well as it is, or if I will need to upgrade the grphx card. I'd like any/all of the WoW Linux ppl to speak up on this, as I WILL make this machine a Ubuntu box no matter what. I'm just hoping I can get a lil gaming on it also. CPU : Athlon 2000+ RAM : 1 GB HDD : 80 GB 3D : Earlier GeForce series, IIRC 4600Ti, it's been a while that I looked at it But it is a 64 MB vid card that can handle DX 8, and I'm pretty sure DX9 also, but I would be scrapping that for OGL goodness. I'm just being a cheap bastard, as money's tight, and don't want to build a brand new PC, I run WoW on a newer laptop now, that has a newer ATI vid card, but I still get only around 10-15 FPS in game, I'm hoping to improve that, and am open to suggestions. Thanks all

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