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Software

Safari 4 Released, Claimed "30 Times Faster Than IE7" 465

Posted by timothy from the don-your-pith-helmet dept.
CNETNate writes "Apple has released the beta version of Safari 4 for Mac and PC, with claims that its Nitro rendering engine is '30 times faster than IE7,' and three times faster than Firefox 3. Other new features include 'Top Sites,' which shows users the most frequently visited Web pages, 'Full History Search' for searching through not only the URLs and titles of visited pages, but also the complete text within the page itself — something Opera has been doing for a while."
Announcements

Shuttleworth Announces Karmic Koala 305

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the make-the-bad-man-stop dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention that Mark Shuttleworth has announced the next release in the horribly alliterative Ubuntu family, "Karmic Koala." The new version hopes to include a newer, shinier, faster startup, better small screen support, a spruced-up desktop look (no more brown), and many minor tweaks and updates. "A newborn Koala spends about six months in the family before it heads off into the wild alone. Sounds about perfect for an Ubuntu release plan! I'm looking forward to seeing many of you in Barcelona, and before that, at a Jaunty release party. Till then, cheers."
The Courts

Will Obama's DOJ Intervene To Help RIAA? 546

Posted by kdawson from the jury-is-out dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Cloud, a Pennsylvania case in which the RIAA's statutory damages theory — seeking from 2,200 to 450,000 times the amount of actual damages — is being tested, the US Department of Justice has just filed papers indicating that it is considering intervening in the case to defend the constitutionality of such awards, and requesting an extension of time (PDF) in which to decide whether such intervention 'is appropriate.' This is an early test of whether President Obama will make good on his promises (a) not to allow industry insiders to participate in cases affecting the industry they represented (the 2nd and 3rd highest DOJ officials are RIAA lawyers) and (b) to look out for ordinary citizens rather than big corporations."
United States

Obama To Name Melissa Hathaway Cybersecurity Chief 188

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the how-do-i-get-tsar-in-my-title dept.
hargrand writes "President Obama has found the cyber tsar to head his new White House office of cybersecurity. According to US press reports this morning, an announcement expected later today will confirm Melissa Hathaway is to come in as cyber chief, after being cyber coordination executive for the director of national intelligence."
The Internet

2/3 of Americans Without Broadband Don't Want It 538

Posted by kdawson from the if-we-build-it-will-they-come dept.
Ant writes in with news that won't be welcomed by the incoming US administration as it tries to expand the availability of broadband Internet service. A recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates, as noted by Ars Technica, that two-thirds of Americans without broadband don't want it. "...when we look at the overall reasons why Americans don't have broadband, availability isn't the biggest barrier. Neither is price. Those two, combined, only account for one-third of Americans without broadband. Two-thirds simply don't want it. The bigger issue is a lack of perceived value."
Earth

Black Holes From the LHC Could Last For Minutes 672

Posted by kdawson from the becoming-greyer dept.
KentuckyFC writes "There is absolutely, positively, definitely no chance of the LHC destroying the planet (or this way either) when it eventually switches on some time later this year. And yet a few niggling doubts are persuading some scientists to run through their figures again. One potential method of destruction is that the LHC will create tiny black holes that could swallow everything in their path, including the planet. Various scientists have said this will not happen because the black holes would decay before they could do any damage. But physicists who have re-run the calculations now say that the mini black holes produced by the LHC could last for seconds, possibly minutes. Of course, the real question is whether they decay faster than they can grow. The new calculations suggest that the decay mechanism should win over and that the catastrophic growth of a black hole from the LHC 'does not seem possible' (abstract). But shouldn't we require better assurance than that?"
Software

30th Anniversary of the (No Good) Spreadsheet 407

Posted by timothy from the malignant-cells dept.
theodp writes "PC Magazine's John C. Dvorak offers his curmudgeonly take on the 30th anniversary of the spreadsheet, which Dvorak blames for elevating once lowly bean counters to the executive suite and enabling them to make some truly horrible decisions. But even if you believe that VisiCalc was the root-of-all-evil, as Dvorak claims, your geek side still has to admire it for the programming tour-de-force that it was, implemented in 32KB memory using the look-Ma-no-multiply-or-divide instruction set of the 1MHz 8-bit 6502 processor that powered the Apple II." On the brighter side, one of my favorite things about Visicalc is the widely repeated story that it was snuck into businesses on Apple machines bought under the guise of word processors, but covertly used for accounting instead.

Comment Re:Tough shit. (Score 5, Insightful) 273

by penginkun (#25895539) Attached to: At Atlantic Records, Digital Sales Surpass CDs

How many CD's did you buy in the late 90's that was complete crap besides the one song they played on the radio 3-times an hour?

So there were NO good acts or albums from the late 90s? Seriously? None?

I'm SO sick of this argument. The late 90s were a bonanza of awesome music. If you were wasting your time with top 40 pap that's your problem, and not really the fault of the record companies. The same is true today: there is an unending stream of incredible music being released by talented musicians and if you can't find it you've got nobody to blame but the person you see in the mirror every morning.
Robotics

Ethical Killing Machines 785

Posted by kdawson from the i-for-one-welcome dept.
ubermiester writes "The New York Times reports on research to develop autonomous battlefield robots that would 'behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans.' The researchers claim that these real-life terminators 'can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a result, no tendency to lash out in fear. They can be built without anger or recklessness ... and they can be made invulnerable to ... "scenario fulfillment," which causes people to absorb new information more easily if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas.' Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea."

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"I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." - Corporal Hicks, in "Aliens"

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