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Communications

Test Selling "Last Mile" Fiber to Homeowners Under Way in Canada 196

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the more-individual-control-the-better dept.
Ars Technica is covering an interesting pilot program taking place in Ottawa, CA. 400 homes are being outfitted with fiber optic cables; however, the "last mile" of fiber is going to be sold outright to the homeowners rather than providing internet at a monthly fee. "In the future, it could become commonplace for homes to come with 'tails.' These customer-owned, fiber-optic connections would link them to a network peering point. Without the expense of rolling out last mile infrastructure to every home, many more ISPs could afford to serve a given neighborhood by running wiring to the peering point, leading to more competition and lower prices. Perhaps best of all, the growth of customer-owned fiber could make debates over 'open access' and network neutrality moot, as robust telecom competition should prevent the worst of the monopolistic behavior exhibited by telco and cable incumbents."
Communications

FCC, FAA Still Don't Want Cell Phones on Planes 300

Posted by Zonk from the probably-a-terrorist-plot dept.
mattnyc99 writes "Last month we learned that the UK has approved in-flight mobile, effective immediately. Popular Mechanics has a follow-up on why the phones-on-planes ban is here to stay in the United States. Statements from the FCC and FAA confirm that any chance to overturn it remains dead on arrival — even though new "pico-cell" networks cut down interference with phones on the ground. American Airlines is looking like it will have onboard Wi-Fi within the next couple months, just the same. PM does note, however, that if the European mobile rollout is a success, US carriers might just have to give into demand."
Google

Google Buys a Piece of a Cable To Japan 78

Posted by kdawson from the got-fiber dept.
Googling Yourself writes "Google announced that they will be part of a six-company consortium that will build a high-bandwidth sub-sea fiber optic cable linking the US and Japan. The new cable system, named Unity, is expected initially to increase Trans-Pacific lit cable capacity by about 20 percent, with the potential to add up to 7.68 Terabits per second of bandwidth across the Pacific. The name Unity was chosen to signify a new type of consortium, born out of potentially competing systems, to emerge as a system within a system, offering ownership and management of individual fiber pairs. Rumors that Google would join the consortium had originally surfaced in September last year but the company had declined to confirm or deny the news."
Government

Best Super Tuesday Candidate for Technology? 549

Posted by CmdrTaco from the something-to-talk-about dept.
Petey_Alchemist writes "With Super Tuesday coming up and the political field somewhat winnowed down, the process of picking the nominees for the next American President is well underway. At the same time, the Internet is bustling through a period of legal questions like Copyright infringement, net neutrality, wireless spectrum, content filtering, broadband deployment. All of these are just a few of the host of issues that the next President will be pressured to weigh in on during his or her tenure. Who do you think would be the best (or worst) candidate on Internet issues?"
IT

Engineers Have a Terrorist Mindset? 837

Posted by Zonk from the only-the-ones-who-drink dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Do engineers have a way of looking at the world not all that different from terrorists? According to an article in the EE Times, they do. The story cites 'Engineers of Jihad,' a paper (pdf download) by two Oxford University sociologists, who found that graduates in science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements. The paper also found that engineers are 'over-represented' among graduates who gravitate to violent groups. Authors Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog chalk this all up to what they call the 'engineering mindset,' which they define as 'a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions.' Is this just pop psychology masquerading as science?"
The Military

World's Most Powerful Rail Gun Delivered to US Navy 615

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the wanting-what-you-can't-have dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The world's most powerful functional rail gun capable of accelerating projectiles up to Mach 8 has been delivered to the Navy. The new rail gun is a 32-megajoule Electro-Magnetic Laboratory Rail Gun. The Navy eventually hopes to have 64-megajoule ship mounted rail guns. 'The lab version doesn't look particularly menacing -- more like a long, belt-fed airport screening device than like a futuristic cannon -- but the system will fire rounds at up to Mach 8, drawing on tremendous amounts of electricity to generate the current for each test shot. That, of course, is the problem with rail guns: Like lasers, they're out of step with modern-day generators and capacitors. Eight and 9-megajoule rail guns have been fired before, but providing 3 million amps of power per shot has been a limitation.'"
Communications

Cell Phone Sommeliers on the Way? 159

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the aged-vintages-not-quite-so-popular-for-some-reason dept.
Japan is reportedly toying with the idea of educating and licensing "sommeliers" to help potential buyers wade through the vast sea of options available for a new cellphone purchase. "Japan's communication ministry is looking to the private sector to manage the potential nightmare exam and certification process, with children's online safety highlighted as an important part of the plan. Mobile sommelier sounds like a pretty sweet title, we can totally feel how an HTC TyTN II might be paired with an earthy unlimited plan followed by the soft nutty finish of a 200-minute a month daytime calling package."
Robotics

Submission + - Robots Roaches Lead Real Thing, Robot Chicken Next

Submitted by DrLudicrous
DrLudicrous writes: European researchers have constructed robots in order to study the swarming phenomena of cockroaches, as reported in Science. The robots were only vaguely cockroach in form, but were doused with roach sex hormones to fool the real cockroaches to accept them. They found that by programming the robots to act in decidedly uncockroach-like ways, the real cockroaches would mimic their behaviors a sizable percentage of the time. The NYTimes has a short synopsis here, that is viewable by people without access to Science articles. It mentions that a future experiment could involve constructing a "Robotic Chicken". I wonder what Seth Green would think about that?

Feed Science Daily: Seawater Intrusion Is The First Cause Of Contamination Of Coastal Aquifers (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
About 60 percent of coastal aquifers are contaminated by seawater intrusion, a generalised phenomenon in 20 percent of cases. Experts have found viable solutions implying not so much investment, but rather an "intelligent" management of water resources. Scientists from France, Italy, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Spain, Switzerland and Tunisia have taken part in an international project to address sustainable water management in Mediterranean coastal aquifers.
Security

Intern Loses 800,000 Social Security Numbers 492

Posted by Zonk from the bad-day-bad-day dept.
destinyland writes "A 22-year-old intern said today he's the 'scapegoat' for the loss of over 800,000 social security numbers - or roughly 7.3% of the people in the entire state of Ohio. From the article: 'The extent of my instructions on what to do after I removed the tapes from the tape drive and took the tapes out of the building was, bring these back tomorrow.' Three months into his $10.50-an-hour internship, he left the tapes in his car overnight — unencrypted — and they were stolen. Interestingly, the intern reports to a $125-an-hour consultant — and was advised not to tell the police that sensitive information had been stolen, which initially resulted in his becoming the prime suspect for the theft. Ohio's Inspector General faults the lack of data encryption — and too many layers of consultants. But their investigation (pdf) revealed that Ohio's Office of Management and Budget had been using the exact same procedure for over eight years."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - The Life of a Chinese Gold Farmer

Submitted by DrLudicrous
DrLudicrous writes: The NYTimes (reg. required) is running an article about Chinese gold farmers. It is an interesting look at the economics and day-to-day reality of people who "play" MMO games for a living. Check it out here.

Molecules Spontaneously Form Honycomb 106

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-a-push-in-the-right-direction dept.
Science Daily is reporting that University of California Researchers have discovered a new process in which molecules assemble into complex patterns without any outside guidance. From the article: "Spreading anthraquinone, a common and inexpensive chemical, on to a flat copper surface, Greg Pawin, a chemistry graduate student working in the laboratory of Ludwig Bartels, associate professor of chemistry, observed the spontaneous formation of a two-dimensional honeycomb network comprised of anthraquinone molecules."

Cable Industry Needs to Spend Heavily on Upgrades 126

Posted by Zonk from the think-of-the-children dept.
BlueCup writes "A report from the cable industry's research arm suggests that Cable-television operators require another round of multibillion-dollar network upgrades to keep up with rivals in the fast-growing high-speed Internet hookup business. The conclusions underscore the challenges posed by the rapid growth of broadband video from YouTube and Google, and the looming threat of a planned $20 billion rollout of high-capacity fiber lines by U.S. phone giant Verizon Communications Inc."

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