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Censorship

James Powderly of Graffiti Research Labs Detained In China 337

Posted by timothy from the many-eyes-might-help dept.
An anonymous reader writes "News from Free Tibet 2008 that internationally known artist, technologist and co-founder of the Graffiti Research Lab, James Powderly, was detained in Beijing early on August 19th while preparing to debut a new work and technology of protest, the L.A.S.E.R. Stencil. According to a Twitter message received yesterday by Students for a Free Tibet at approximately 5 pm Beijing Standard Time, Powderly had been detained by Chinese authorities at 3 am. His current whereabouts remain unknown. Powderly was the inventor of throwies." (Powderly's detention was also mentioned at Make Magazine's blog.)

Comment Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD (Score 1) 254

by pridkett (#24622083) Attached to: MythTV Allows Multiple Front-Ends On Wide Range of Platforms

cable company is REQUIRED by fcc to give customers cable boxes with firewire out.

myth tv can control almost all firewire boxes just fine.

While it is currently true that the FCC has regulations regarding the availability of firewire controllable cable boxes, the regulations do NOT state that the encryption level must be changed. I used a cable box with firewire for two years in MythTV setup. The only channel I received over firewire that was not available via unencrypted QAM was Universal HD, and I'm pretty sure that was a mistake. All the other channels that were encrypted over QAM were still encrypted on firewire.

The only alternative that you have right now is the Hauppauge HD-PVR, which captures analog component and transcodes it to H.264. Of course, this device isn't fully supported yet. It's an exciting future, but not quite there.

Even at the point that where the HD-PVR becomes fully functional, you'll still need to drive it with a cable box.

There is also question about how long the firewire "standard" will remain. At the recent FCC hearing on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, Intel made it very clear that they were pushing for IP based technologies and thought that the firewire standard had failed.
Censorship

Photographers Face Ejection Over Lenses 743

Posted by kdawson from the control-freaks-dining-out dept.
destinyland writes "Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk was ejected from a San Francisco art museum because the security guard apparently thought his expensive camera could be used to spy on female employees. Another photographer notes that 'many people consider a professional-looking camera a threat,' and the state of California has even passed a law against telephoto lenses being used to intrude on celebrities' private lives. Hawk is routinely confronting security guards who argue that photographing their buildings represents a 'security threat.' Ironically, four weeks ago while attending Microsoft's Pro Photo Summit, he was told he couldn't even photograph the lobby of a Hyatt Hotel."
Bug

Hotmail Full Version Incompatible With Firefox 3 258

Posted by kdawson from the smells-like-a-varmint dept.
An anonymous reader notes that Hotmail's full version doesn't work with Firefox 3. Users get the following message when they try to log in: You are temporarily on the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail due to an error encountered during login. Before trying again, please clear your cache and cookies. (Clearing cache and cookies doesn't fix it.) At least 8 other bug reports have been duped to this one. The fault apparently lies with the Hotmail site, not Mozilla — maintainer Dave Garrett assigned the bug to Tech Evangelism, explaining: "I'll... move this over to TE, as my guess is this [is] the site's fault (just bad user agent sniffing?)."
Sony

Sony Thinks Blu-ray Will Sell Like DVDs by Year End 434

Posted by Zonk from the ambitious-planning dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Sony CEO Ryoji Chubachi knows something we don't. At a press conference, he announced Sony's plan to increase Blu-ray market share to 50% of all movie discs by the end of the year. 'DVD and BD currently account for about 80% and 20%, respectively, of global demand for movie discs, Chubachi indicated. The new BD devices to be offered by Sony include models integrating an HD LCD TV with BD recording functionality, Chubachi pointed out. Sony has relied mainly on the PlayStation 3 (PS3) to promote BD, and sales of the game console will increase along with the offering by top Hollywood studios of new BD movies, Chubachi noted. However, Sony will extend its BD promotion from the current focus on the PS3 and BD players/recorders to IT devices, Chubachi pointed out.'"
GNU is Not Unix

Bruce Perens Aims For OSI Executive 161

Posted by kdawson from the board-games dept.
mutube writes "Open Source advocate Bruce Perens began petitioning for support in election to the OSI Executive Board. Because it's a self-electing board, demonstrable community support is needed to attain a seat. Perens is standing on a platform of reducing over-representation of vendors in OSI leadership in favor of developers. In his petition notice, Perens suggests that recent Open Source involvement by Microsoft could lead to their being offered a place on the board. With his background fighting SCO and the Novell-Microsoft patent agreements, Perens would be a good counter-balance."
Security

Fifth Cable Cut To Middle East 676

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-wait-a-minute dept.
You may have noticed a number of stories recently about undersea cables getting cut around the world. Apparently the total is now up to 5, but the scariest part of this is that Iran is now offline. You can also read Schneier's comments on this coincidence. Update: 02/06 17:42 GMT by Z : As a commenter notes, though the country of Iran is obviously experiencing some networking difficulties, it is not offline.
Media

NBC's Zucker Hints At Return to iTunes 68

Posted by Zonk from the yay-we-can-all-just-get-along dept.
Bad corporate blood led to the collapse of the NBC/Apple business relationship in the fall of last year. Now, via the Engadget news feed, comes word that things may be thawing out between the two. A for-pay article in the Financial Times had words from NBC Universal's COE Jeff Zucker, saying: "'We've said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple.' He then unexpectedly adds, 'We're great fans of Steve Jobs.' No telling what has caused the turnabout. Perhaps the writers strike gave both parties time to reflect on their mounting lost revenue." The site also notes that NBC signed a deal as part of the recent movie rental announcement, possibly contributing to the thaw. They link to a BusinessWeek article pointing out positive statements from Jobs reciprocating these 'feelings'.
Networking

FireWire Spec to Boost Data Speeds to 3.2 Gbps 223

Posted by Zonk from the lots-of-mp3s-really-fast dept.
Stony Stevenson writes "A new set of data transfer specs may reach new Firewire speed records. The new transfer version is called S3200 and builds on the earlier specification approved by the IEEE.' The technology will be able to use existing FireWire 800 cables and connectors while delivering a major boost in performance. The new spec also will let users interconnect various home-networking appliances via coax cable, linking HDTVs with set-top boxes, TVs, and computers in various rooms around a home or office. The new release enables the transmission of FireWire data over distances of more than 100 meters. Home entertainment centers are likely to be an early application.'"
Transportation

UPS Using Software To Eliminate Left Turns 511

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-can't-get-there-from-here dept.
cybermage writes "The NY Times has a story about UPS using software to dramatically reduce the number of left turns their drivers take. With a fleet of vehicles their size, the time and money saved by pre-planning routes that try to eliminate left turns means big savings." Some CS major probably figured this out instead of traveling salesman.

Greenpeace Admits Targeting Apple Grabs Headlines 394

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the green-but-not-so-much-for-peace dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo published this morning allegations by the bromine industry claiming that Greenpeace's report on the iPhone was inaccurate and alarmist. They got an official rebuttal to the bromine industry by Greenpeace, but the most interesting part is their acknowledgment that their targeting of Apple, even while they have similar reports on every manufacturer, is a deliberate attempt to grab headlines. While it's logical and not surprising, I find it quite shocking to see them be so cavalier, and even hypocritical, about it."
Announcements

Submission + - Ohio Linuxfest 2007 Schedule Announced (ohiolinux.org)

Submitted by
Damin
Damin writes: "The conference schedule for the Ohio Linuxfest 2007 (Saturday, September 29th, Columbus Ohio) has been posted and it contains a suprisingly diverse mix of topics. In it's Fifth year, the conference has been growing steadily and remains free to the public. The list of speakes is quite impressive; Max Spevack, leader of the Fedora Project, kicks off the conference with a presentation on "How Red Hat Continues Learning to Stop Worrying and Love the Community" and Bradley Kuhn former Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation will close out the conference with an evening keynote. Always worth seeing, Jon 'maddog' Hall of Linux International will be on hand as well as Warren Woodford, the founder of MEPIS. Ubuntu, Debian, OpenOffice.Org, Zenoss, PostgreSQL will all be represented.

In addition to the regular fare, there are a few really interesting presentations such as "FOSS and How Developers Pay the Bills", "Are Developers Responsible for Ensuring Users Can Use Their Programs" and this one on using Open Source tools to manage baseball stastistics. Google is apparently planning one hell of an after party. It is hard to argue with the value provided for the cost($0) of this conference. While free and open to anyone, registration is required, and with over 2,000 people expected this year things should be quite hopping!"
The Internet

Are In-Depth Articles Better Than Blog Postings? 157

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the think-before-you-speak dept.
athloi writes to tell us usability expert Jakob Nielsen is stressing the importance of well-thought-out articles as opposed to off-the-cuff blog postings. "Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's comments. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant."
Robotics

Robotic Ecologies 80

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the rise-of-the-machines dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "The University of Virginia (UVA) School of Architecture has started a new program about 'robotic ecologies' which wants to answer the question: Will robots take over architecture? As said the program leader, 'This research is not just about architectural machines that move. It is about groups of architectural machines that move with intelligence.' Apparently, buildings tracking our movements and adapting their shape or texture according human presence are not far fetched. Maybe one day, we'll talk to our homes and they'll answer."
Microsoft

Submission + - Bill Gates: Microsoft will support OpenID

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In his RSA conference keynote today, Bill Gates announced the Microsoft will support the decentralized OpenID digital identity protocol, in addition to WS-* and CardSpace. From its roots in LID, the first major deployment in LiveJournal, and now with support from Techorati, Magnolia, Symantec, a suspected mass-deployment by AOL, and a number of startups, using URLs as digital identities seems to be an unstoppable idea.

Key points of Bill Gates on OpenID are transcribed here, video of the full speech is here.

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