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Government

Submission + - Obama Admin Taking Aim At Leakers (msn.com)

Submitted by krou
krou writes: As fallout from the Wikileaks "Cablegate" continues, the Obama administration is taking active steps to try prevent further leaks. A recent executive order signed by President Obama 'prescribes a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information, including information relating to defense against transnational terrorism'. In addition, a highly detailed 11-page memo (PDF) has instructed agencies to assess “any perceived vulnerabilities, weaknesses, or gaps in automated systems in the post-WikiLeaks environment", and also to implement "insider threat" programs — similar to those used in the CIA — to ferret out possible whistle-blowers. Suggestions include using psychiatrists to monitor 'relative happiness' and their 'despondence and grumpiness' in order to assess their trustworthiness. Agencies have also been asked whether they 'capture evidence of pre-employment and/or post-employment activities or participation in on-line media data mining sites like WikiLeaks or Open Leaks?' or if 'all employees required to report their contacts with the media?' FAS have described the steps as being 'paranoia, not security' and 'absurd'.
Science

Submission + - Journal Article on Precognition Sparks Outrage (nytimes.com)

Submitted by thomst
thomst writes: The New York Times has an article (cookies and free subscription required) about the protests generated by The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology's decision to accept for publication later this year an article (PDF format) on precognition (the Times erroneously calls it ESP). Complaints center around the peer reviewers, none of whom is an expert in statistical analysis.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Multitouch Mouse - stroke your mouse? (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Multitouch is great — as long as you have an input device that supports it. For the desktop machine this is something of a problem. Not many have multitouch enabled monitors and the ones that do aren't exactly natural to use in a vertical mode. Multitouch works best on mobile devices that you tend to hold horizontally. Now Microsoft thinks it has the answer in the form a new mouse — Touch Mouse, that supports gestures. This mouse has a capacitive touch sensor on its back bring new meaning to "now stroke your mouse".
Australia

Submission + - Aussie Retailers lobby for tax on online purchases (theage.com.au) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Major Australian retailers are running a print advertising campaign, to get the government to decrease the amount where the Goods and Services tax (Australian Sales tax) comes into effect for all online purchases. Currently, the tax free amount is at $1000 AUD for online purchases. The retailers, such as Target, Harvey Norman, David Jones, Myer and other retailers are lobbying through newspapers and are considering to launch a television commercial. The print adverts are claiming that if the amount remains the same, Australian jobs will be lost and the Economy will be harmed. This is facing a massive backlash from consumers, and the governments assistant treasurer said it was an action by stores to fix the issues effecting them.
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Kinect blamed for new “Red Ring of Death" fa (myce.com)

Submitted by BussyB
BussyB writes: It has been quite a long time since we’ve heard any news regarding the dreaded “Red Ring of Death” that seemed to be an Xbox 360 epidemic the first few years the console was sold. Now, however, since the launch of Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing add-on for the console, there seems to be a new wave of the telltale system failures.

Xbox 360 owners, who haven’t had any issues with their consoles until they hooked up their new Kinect, are understandably blaming the new device for their system failures.

“We plugged it in the day we got it but only played it a few times before we got the red lights. The next day when we tried it again we still had the red rings of death and haven’t been able to use it since.” Ten-year old Adam Winnifrith told BBC reporters. “It is quite a shame as we got loads of new games for the Xbox too and I never had a chance to play them.”

And the Winnifrith family isn’t the only case. Several more instances of Xbox 360 failures immediately following the connection of a Kinect are starting to show up on online gaming forums. Despite this, Microsoft is claiming that there is no connection between the Kinect and the sudden console failures.“There is no correlation between the three flashing red lights error and Kinect. Any new instances of the three flashing red lights error are merely coincidental,” A Microsoft representative told the BBC.

Submission + - Toshiba demos glasses-free 3D (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat
arcticstoat writes: Whether you think 3D is a cynical fad to gouge cinema audiences out of extra cash, or a genuine step forward, the largest drawback of the technology remains its dependence on dorky looking bulky glasses. Out at CES in Las Vegas, though, Toshiba has raised a few eyebrows by demonstrating its glasses-free 3D technology. The demo panels are sized at 56in and 65in, with both boasting 4,096 x 2,160 pixel resolutions. Rather than previous attempts to make glasses-free 3D TV, which have used methods such as ridged panels, Toshiba claims its technology offers wide viewing angles, and doesn't even require a 'sweet spot' in which you have to sit. When pushed on how the technology precisely worked, Toshiba described it as a sheet across the display, which pitch-shifts certain frames to create the 3D effects, with the help of an on-board software algorithm named CEVO.
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - PSPgo hacked, can now play UMD games (gamepron.com)

Submitted by dotarray
dotarray writes: While it might not be the portable PlayStation-related story we’d been hoping for today, Sony‘s handheld has still made it into the headlines.
One of the main complaints people had about the PSPgo was the lack of a UMD drive. It seems gamers didn’t like being forced to download all of their games, and the inability to play titles they already had languishing in their collections.
But now, that may have changed – as long as you’re okay with downloading some files, making copies of your game and doing a little bit of software hacking.

Submission + - Windows coming to ARM

Submitted by quo_vadis
quo_vadis writes: At CES today, Microsoft announced full blown windows coming to ARM. This is a very Apple like move for Microsoft, but without the whole "oh we had this running for 5 years before releasing it". Sounds like we are in for driver incompatibilities a million times worse than the Vista transition. Even worse, given that Windows biggest selling point is legacy application compatibility, requiring all third party applications to be recompiled negates the advantages of a legacy compatible version of windows. Finally, the lack of a strong infrastructure for supporting the transition (universal binaries, system library management) point to the transition being a painful one.

Submission + - Android Makes Gains In OS Share, Passing Microsoft (crn.com)

Submitted by cgriffin21
cgriffin21 writes: Another week, another big step forward for Google Android: The red-hot mobile OS is taking U.S. smartphone market share from both BlackBerry maker Research In Motion and iPhone behemoth Apple, according to a new report from market researcher comScore. Android, which now lays claim to 17 percent of the mobile OS market share in the U.S., has also passed Microsoft in share for the first time.

Comment straight out of europe & practicaly mandatory (Score 0) 421

by dyshexic (#33484860) Attached to: Ideas For a Great Control Room?
electrically height adjustable desks allowing a range of positions from sitting to standing. Worth every penny in my opinion and will save you massively in productivity gains. Also training people in how to sit for their backs not for how they are used to. we should move around much more than we do. In combination with good ergonomic chairs and height adjustable monitors you can produce exceptionally effective environments.
Iphone

Submission + - How to make your iPhone 4 to look like a Leica M8 (trippletech.com)

Submitted by hasanabbas1987
hasanabbas1987 writes: A MacRumors user printed out that picture of a Leica M8 and placed it inside a Griffin Reveal Case to create his mock Leicaphone. He cut out holes for the camera and LED and blacked out some white spots to make the picture an exact fit for the iPhone 4. If you want to get started on your own, he recommends you print out the picture of the M8 to 2.282 x 4.528 at 600 dpi.

Submission + - Preserving memories 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: My wife is dying of metastatic (stage 4) cancer. Statistically she has between one and two years left. I have pre-teen daughters. I'm looking for innovative ideas on how to preserve memories of their mother and my wife so that years down the road we don't forget the things we all tend to forget about a person as time passes. I have copious photos and am taking as much HD video as I can without being a jerk, so images and sounds are taken care of (and backed up securely). I'm keeping a private blog of simple daily events that help me remember the things in between the hospitalizations and treatments. In this digital age what other avenues are there for preserving memories? Non digital suggestions would be welcome too. Thanks.
Crime

Submission + - Online 'Sextortion' of Teens on the Rise (nytimes.com)

Submitted by pickens
pickens writes: The NY Times reports that federal prosecutors and child safety advocates are seeing an upswing cases of online sexual extortion where teens who text nude cell phone photos of themselves or show off their bodies on the Internet are being contacted by pornographers who threaten to expose their behavior to friends and family unless they pose for more explicit porn, creating a vicious cycle of exploitation. A nude photo sent to a boyfriend's cell phone can easily be circulated through cell phone contacts and wind up on websites that post sexting photos and teens are more vulnerable to blackmail because they're easy to intimidate and embarrassed to seek help. And the extortionists are often willing to make good on their threats, says Steve DeBrota, an assistant U.S. attorney in Indianapolis who has been involved in sextortion investigations. "You are blackmailable,'' says Parry Aftab, an attorney and online child safety advocate," ... and you will do anything to keep those pictures from getting out.''
Firefox

Submission + - How Much Faster Is Konqueror With WebKit? (digitizor.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We always knew that WebKit is going to make Konqueror fast; but how much faster? Today we test that by putting Konqueror with KHTML through the SunSpider JavaScript Test and the then do the same with WebKit. To get an idea of how fast they are compared to other browsers, we also decided to put Firefox 4.0 Beta 2 through the tests.

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