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Submission + - 'Profane' Content On 700Mhz Band?

Submitted by
janitorj
janitorj writes: "As I was reading the manual for my new cellular phone (yes I RTFM), I came across an FCC warning that reads "No person shall utter any obscene, indecent or profane language by means of radio communication." This just means I cannot legally curse during my phone calls, but then I started thinking about all the talk about the high stakes FCC auction for the 700Mhz band. If, as the hype suggests, a large broadband network is created on these frequencies, what will become of internet censorship? The FCC will potentially have jurisdiction over any data sent over its frequencies, so does that mean if this wireless network is created, there will be no more profanity allowed on the internet?"
Networking

Submission + - Inter-Bank ATM transactions becomes cheaper (banknetindia.com)

Submitted by
techbhai
techbhai writes: "Switching (routing) fee for the transactions through National Financial Switch has been waived in India. This opens up an opportunity for banks in India to reduce costs by routing inter-bank ATM transactions through NFS. This waiver should promote use of ATM as shared infrastructure of all banks benefiting all customers. Full story at- http://www.banknetindia.com/banking/71213.htm"
Books

Submission + - Group hopes to rename street after Douglas Adams.

Submitted by
interstellar_donkey
interstellar_donkey writes: "After the recent brouhaha over the renaming of 4th Ave after César Chávez, a Portland group is pushing to rename a local street after the late writer Douglas Adams. The street? Why, 42nd Ave, of course. According to their website, the renaming will reflect Portlanders' commitment to the arts, respect for the environment, desire to provide technological access to all, their passion to further education to all people, and most importantly remind Portlanders DON'T PANIC. This appears to be a serious movement, with preliminary paperwork already in the works."
Robotics

Submission + - Microcontroller for the hobbyist? 5

Submitted by
TomTheGeek
TomTheGeek writes: "I'm a programmer that's done some assembly language before and would like to start programming microcontrollers. I've heard about the BASIC Stamps from Parallax, the PIC series from Microchip, the MAKE Controller Kit, and the AVR series from Atmel but they seem to be focused on a development board that is too expensive to dedicate to a single project. Having an expensive development board is fine but I want the microcontroller to be cheap (<$10) enough that I don't have to disassemble my previous project in order to start a new one. I'll be doing the programming in Ubuntu so compatible development tools and drivers are required."
Censorship

Submission + - creationists violate copyright (blogspot.com)

Submitted by The_Rook
The_Rook writes: the discovery institute copied Harvard University's BioVisions video, "The Inner Life of the Cell", stripped out Harvard's copyright notice, credits, and narration, and inserted their own creationist friendly narration and renamed the video "The Cell as an automated city". pretty insidious, as suggesting that a cell is like a city is to suggest that it was designed rather than evolved. it should also be of interest because the discovery institute, really more of a lawyer mill than a scientific institution, engaged in a particularly egregious example of copyright infringement.
Programming

Submission + - What every programmer should know about memory (lwn.net)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "LWN.NET has just finished publishing an excellent series about memory, by Ulrich Drepper:"What every programmer should know about memory". Wonder the difference between PC100 and PC1600? Challeges of NUMA systems, access optimizations for L1 and L2 caches? Want to write code which performs well in several memory contexts? Then this series is probably what you should read first. There is also a PDF version available from Ulrich's home page. While at it, why not do a combo grabbing a copy of Goldberg's classical paper "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating Point Arithmetic"?."
Software

Submission + - New Trend in OSS: Small Teams Develop Better Apps (madpenguin.org)

Submitted by
OSS
OSS writes: "MadPenguin.org has a new article up that discusses the latest trend in open source software. The author notes that a lot of OSS developers are keeping their teams small to personally benefit themselves and release better releases in a timely manner to benefit the community. He further writes, "More and more, it seems like open source projects are doing more with less. Even to the tune of more frequent release dates and a solid release each time. Is this a good thing? Should this become the new model for the future of budding, young open source projects? I suppose a lot of this has to do with goals and the future plans of each specific project."
Portables

Submission + - Looking for good DIY laptop resources

Submitted by foeclan
foeclan writes: After frequent and nightmarish experiences with Alienware's tech support, I've decided that no support is better than bad support. To that end, I'm interested in building my own laptop. I do this with desktop systems all the time, but laptop components are tougher to track down. What resources are out there for building your own laptop from parts?
Programming

Submission + - Intel updates compilers for multicore CPUs (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Threaded
Threaded writes: With multicore CPUs becoming the norm, Intel has announced major updates to its C++ and Fortran tools. The new compilers are Intel's first that are capable of doing thread-level optimization and auto-vectorization simultaneiously in a single pass. 'On the data parallelism side, the Intel C++ Compiler and Fortran Professional Editions both sport improved auto-vectorization features that can target Intel's new SSE4 extensions. For thread-level parallelism, the compilers support the use of Intel's Thread Building Blocks for automatic thread-level optimization that takes place simultaneously with auto-vectorization... Intel is encouraging the widespread use of its Intel Threading Tools as an interface to its multicore processors. As the company raises the core count with each generation of new products, it will get harder and harder for programmers to manage the complexity associated with all of that available parallelism. So the Thread Building Blocks are Intel's attempt to insert a stable layer of abstraction between the programmer and the processor so that code scales less painfully with the number of cores.'
Censorship

Submission + - Overzealous lawyers and DMCA notices on YouTube

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ThoughtFix of TabletBlog.com got smacked with a DMCA notice from YouTube this morning stating that Nokia Corporation claimed copyright to his Nokia N800 Dissection video. He composed the video himself — it just showed off a Nokia product. It does not show any proprietary IP that any competitor can't get simply by grabbing an N800 off the shelves. Even the photos of the dissection are still up.

Imagine the slippery slope here. If they can take down videos because their product appears in the content, every clothing manufacturer will be totally rich by suing people for royalties for wearing their designs. Every musical instrument maker will be amazingly wealthy for suing bands for videos of performances with their gear.
Patents

Submission + - Final Draft of GPL3 Grants Novell a Free Pass

Submitted by
Kadin2048
Kadin2048 writes: "According to an article at Ars, posted yesterday, the proposed final draft of the GPL3 will contain an exemption for Novell's pact with Microsoft. The "Novell clause" would allow Novell to continue using GPL3 code, by exempting 'selective-license' agreements entered into before March 28, 2007. Eben Moglen, Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center, justified the change, saying "[the license] can do more to protect the community by allowing Novell to use software under GPL version 3 than by forbidding it to do so." The apparent crux of the FSF's position is that by allowing Novell to distribute GPL3 software, the patent agreements between Microsoft and Novell and their direct customers (those who bought 'vouchers'), would percolate down to all Linux users. However, this tactic could backfire, since "the [GPL3 downstream patent-conveyance] provision is only applicable when a patent is licensed to some parties. The actual text of the agreement between Microsoft and Novell — which was largely disclosed in Novell's recent SEC filing — reveals that the patent aspect of the deal consists exclusively of a covenant not to sue and does not actually involve any patent licensing at all." So it would seem that the FSF is gambling: giving Novell/Microsoft to distribute GPL3 software with the special exemption, and hoping that they can use this to their advantage later."

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