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The Media

Congress Creates Copyright Cops 533

Posted by Zonk from the story-you-are-about-to-see-is-a-fib-but-its-short dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Not satisfied with pitiful potential penalties of $150,000 for infringing upon a $0.99 song, Congress is proposing new copyright cops in the "'PRO IP' Act of 2007, specifically the creation of the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). They also feel that the authorities need the authority to seize any computers used for infringement and to send copyright cops abroad to help other countries enforce US laws. MPAA boss Dan Glickman praised the bill saying that, 'films left costs foreign and domestic distributors, retailers and others $18 billion a year,' though Ars points out that it allegedly costs the studios only $6 billion."
Google

Google Maps GPS Simulator 205

Posted by samzenpus from the google-where-you-are dept.
garbletext writes "A new version of Google Maps introduced this week includes a beta feature dubbed My Location that was designed to simulate the GPS experience on mobile phones and handheld devices that do not include GPS hardware, like Apple's iPhone. Essentially, the My Location feature takes information broadcast from mobile towers near non-GPS equipped mobile phones to approximate the device's current location on the map down to about 10 city blocks. "It's not GPS, but it comes pretty close (approximately 1000m close, on average)," the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant explained on its website. "We're still in beta, but we're excited to launch this feature and are constantly working to improve our coverage and accuracy." The My Location feature is currently available for most web-enabled mobile phones, including Java, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia/Symbian devices."
Debian

Ubuntu Dev Summit Lays Out Plans For Hardy Heron 261

Posted by Zonk from the hee-such-humorous-names dept.
Opurt writes "On the first day of the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Boston this week, a roundtable session focused on the vision for the upcoming Hardy Heron Ubuntu release. Unlike Gutsy Gibbon, which brought a handful of experimental features along with some new functionality, the focus with Heron will be on robustness as it will be supported on the desktop for 3 years. 'The Compiz window manager, which adds sophisticated visual effects to the Ubuntu user interface, will be a big target for usability improvements. Keyboard bindings and session management were noted as two areas where Compiz still needs some work.' PolicyKit and Tracker will also be significantly tweaked, while Heron is also likely to see a complete visual refresh."
Toys

Geek and Gadgets Set Cross-US Speed Record 805

Posted by kdawson from the breaker-breaker-need-a-bear-check dept.
Brikus writes "And you thought your car had gadgets. In this story from Wired magazine, we hear about Alex Roy and his quest to break the record time for a cross-USA road trip. One of the biggest roadblocks to breaking the record: highway patrol officers, about 31,000 along the way. So Roy decked out his E39 BMW M5 with a thermal camera, radar/laser detectors, GPS devices, police scanners, and other high-tech gadgets and toys."

Rob Malda Answers Your Questions 221

Posted by Roblimo from the pants-are-still-optional-but-not-for-you dept.
Last week hundreds of you posted questions for Slashdot's CmdrTaco, AKA Rob Malda. Today we present his answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions. CT: You can continue to sign up for 10 year anniversary parties but we're already working on shipping shirts so you won't be able to get a care package... but you can still try to run for the big grand prize by just taking videos of pictures or just doing something cool at your parties to prove that we should have been there.
The Almighty Buck

Will the Pope Declare Google Evil? 622

Posted by kdawson from the and-all-you-others-too dept.
theodp writes "In the next few days, Pope Benedict XVI plans to issue his second encyclical, in which he is expected to denounce the use of tax havens as socially unjust and immoral in that they cheat the greater well-being of society. He is also expected to argue that the globalized economic world needs to be regulated. Prime technology companies playing the offshore 'profit laundering' game include Dell, Google, Microsoft, and Sun, who set up subsidiaries in Ireland, where the corporate tax rate is a low 12.5% and no taxes are charged on royalties (e.g. from patents)."
Censorship

FCC to Develop 'Super V Chip' To Screen All Content 408

Posted by Zonk from the any-chance-we-could-stop-thinking-about-the-children-now dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Senate Commerce Committee has stepped in and approved a legislation asking the Federal Communications Commission to 'oversee the development of a super V-chip that could screen content on everything from cell phones to the Internet.' Since the content viewed by children is no longer restricted to TV or radio Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., the sponsor of the Child Safe Viewing Act, feels that the new law is necessary. 'The bill requires the FCC to review, within one year of enactment, technology that can help parents manage the vast volume of video and other content on television or the Internet. Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, TV makers are required to embed the V-chip within televisions to allow parents to block content according to a rating system.'"
Businesses

Submission + - Australian court rules eBay auctions as binding

Submitted by
Ellis D. Tripp
Ellis D. Tripp writes: "An Australian court has ruled that an eBay seller cannot back out of an auction sale once it is successfully completed. The court has ordered a seller to hand over a vintage airplane to an eBayer who bid just over the reserve price of $128,000, despite a subsequent non-eBay offer of over $200,000. More details here:

http://www.comcast.net/news/technology/index.jsp?c at=TECHNOLOGY&fn=/2007/08/03/730424.html"
HP

Submission + - First Personal Computer Ad from 1962

Submitted by
Gary
Gary writes: "The Hewlett Packard 9100A was built with magnetic core memory, printed circuit board ROM, a CRT display and provided industrial strength calculating in a machine that weighed 40 pounds and cost $4900."
Handhelds

Submission + - Translation technology for wartime... (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: [fix the "scoop" if you would, please — thanks] I don't know if the Topic's correct, but I think it's a short article that's interesting from several points of view. from the article: -=-=- The voice recognition-based technology would aid troops and civilians in high-risk situations. It translates phrases such as "don't shoot", "stay back" and "help will be here soon". The technology is the idea of Derby-based Amin Ismail, an Iraqi-born former student who fled to the UK. -=-=-
Linux Business

Submission + - Open Source and the "Xen" of Xen (interopnews.com)

Submitted by
AlexGr
AlexGr writes: "Recently Slashdot linked to an article by Jeff Gould titled "Desperately Seeking Xen" (http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/28 /1341205). It looks like this led to XenSource desperately seeking Jeff Gould! According to Jeff: "After my post two weeks ago about Xen, I got a call from the XenSource people. I had a long chat with their CTO Simon Crosby, who had some very interesting things to say. He confirmed that Xen is being pulled into enterprise and production environments sooner than they expected. Crosby also shed some light on the changes in XenSource's go-to-market strategy.""
Google

Submission + - Photos: Inside Google UK

Submitted by Meatball Jones
Meatball Jones writes: CNET has a story that features pictures from inside Google UK's offices. It seems that Google is taking the environment seriously and advising employees to ride to work, and providing recycling bins. "There were signs up asking employees to ride to work because it's more environmentally friendly, Google-themed recycling bins dotted around the place and breakout areas were employees sat and chatted in a very relaxed manner." Is this representative of most multinational IT companies?

Feed Kohler, Polk team up on SoundTile in-shower speakers (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Household, Portable Audio

It appears that the art of singing in the shower is full comeback mode, as not only do you have the option of picking up a speaker-infused shower or bathtub, but now you can retrofit your current one with SoundTiles. Co-developed by Kohler and Polk Audio, these music makers are designed to "perfectly match the shape, profile and finish of the WaterTile bodysprays and showerheads," but we don't see any reason why a slimmed down, waterproof speaker won't work just fine in your current arrangement. The device sports a "marine certified" coaxial speaker in a four- x four- inch escutcheon, a stainless steel front grill, and can be controlled by Kohler's DTV II or wired into any vanilla sound system. The SoundTiles will only be sold in pairs, but should be offered in a variety of finishes for $295 when they land in May.

[Via ElectronicHouse]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Graphics

Submission + - ATI committed to fixing its problems with OSS

Submitted by
Sits
Sits writes: "While talking about the Red Hat summit Chris Blizzard mentions how an ATI marketing spokesman was on stage. The spokesman said ATI knows it has a problem with open source and is committed to fixing it. Does this mean ATI will finally resolve alleged agpgart misappropriation, fast track the release of open source 2D drivers on its latest cards while releasing specifications for its mid-range cards or is ATI only concerned with fixes to its binary driver to maintain feature parity with competitors?"
PlayStation (Games)

God of War 3 and God of War PSP Official 39

Posted by Zonk from the hard-not-to-like-a-bald-killa dept.
GOWfreak writes "Oh his blog covering the God of War 2 launch event at the PlayStation store in San Francisco, 1UP editor Matt Leone revealed a whole ton of stuff on the future of the God of War series. The biggest news is that God of War 3 is coming to PS3 and it will have rumble (first confirmation of rumble coming back to PS3!) and 1080p resolution. There's even talk of it having co-op play. Director Cory Barlog also spoke about the God of War PSP game. 'It is epic. It is big. There are hooks in the PSP story that I actually wrote from one of my first stories for God of War 2.'"

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