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Submission + - Carrier IQ claims are FUD (galexander.org) 2

Submitted by galexand
galexand writes: I'm tired of hearing about Carrier IQ as if it invented the capability for telcos, device manufacturers, and Google to snoop on your activity. In fact, Carrier IQ is probably the most innocent piece of software on your phone, and the truly dangerous software you wouldn't have any other way. So I wrote an article about it. This FUD about Carrier IQ is simply not factually accurate!
Privacy

Submission + - US congressman asks for FTC Carrier IQ investigati (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "US Congressman Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has sent a letter to the FTC asking it to investigate Carrier IQ. "I have serious concerns about the Carrier IQ software and whether it is secretly collecting users' personal information, such as the content of text messages," he said in a statement. Consumer Watchdog has called for a US government investigation of Carrier IQ, the maker of tracking software for mobile phones, and its users."

Submission + - Grassley Stands by Threat to Hold Up FCC Nominees (foxnews.com)

Submitted by
K7DAN
K7DAN writes: "Sen. Charles Grassley is standing by his threat to place a hold on two nominees to the Federal Communications Commission over concerns about a controversial new wireless network the agency has allowed to move forward.
The Iowa Republican this week accused the FCC of refusing to comply with his requests for information on its discussions with Virginia company LightSquared regarding its next-generation national wireless network.
Some fear the network would hinder the effectiveness of high-precision GPS systems — used by the military, farmers and others. Grassley also raised questions about the involvement of Harbinger, the hedge fund behind the project and founded by Democratic donor Philip Falcone.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/03/grassley-stands-by-threat-to-hold-up-fcc-nominees-over-wireless-network/?test=latestnews#ixzz1fbUYpuJi"

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Google Tests Ice Cream Sandwich Update on Employees - PC Magazine (google.com)

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SlashGear
Google Tests Ice Cream Sandwich Update on Employees
PC Magazine
Ready for a little Ice Cream Sandwich – that's Android 4.0 – for your smartphone? Keep waiting, although you can now complement your patience with a little bit of hope. New reports from company employees indicate that Google has started ...
Google tests Android update on employees' Nexus SCNET
Google Said to be Testing Android 4.O on Samsung Nexus SPCWorld (blog)
Galaxy Nexus volume update: Are you fixed?SlashGear
Android Police-InformationWeek-msnbc.com
all 134 news articles

Cellphones

Submission + - Hedy Lamarr: Inventor of Cellphones, Wi-Fi and GPS

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Hedy Lamarr, a siren of the silver screen and legend of Hollywood's Golden Age, had a penchant for invention and in 1942, came to be co-holder of a patent on spread spectrum radio, a technology that underlies mobile and cordless telephones, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. "Here was someone of intellect in Hollywood who didn't like to go to parties," says Richard Rhodes author of "Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World". "[Hedy] didn't drink and she didn't like loud parties and drunken parties — and she had to find some way to spend her time. It was her hobby." Lamarr had an inventor's corner set up in the drawing room of her Hollywood home complete with a drafting table and tools, and in the course of her life tinkered with a range of inventions including a fluorescent dog collar, a skin-tautening technique, modifications to the Concorde airliner and a bouillon-like cube that would create a carbonated beverage when mixed with water. But Lamarr's most important invention was a torpedo guidance system (PDF) for the U.S. Navy she co-developed with composer George Antheil that used a method of coordinated switching (or "hopping") between radio frequencies to prevent communications from being detected and jammed, a technology that underlies today's mobile communications. “Any girl can be glamorous,” Lamarr was famous for saying. “All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” But it’s not every girl who can be glamorous, stand still, and take the future in a new direction."
China

Submission + - China Telecom Pledged to Stop Monopolistic Practic (xinhuanet.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Within a few weeks after the anti-monopoly probe initiated by the National Development and Reform Commission, China's two telecommunications giants, China Telecom and China Unicom, announced Friday they will substantially raise their broadband speeds while further lowering broadband costs by 35% over the next five years. They also acknowledge the existence of monopolistic practices in reply to this investigation which is the first of its kind against major Chinese state-owned enterprises. Being state-owned companies, their profits are supposedly belonging to the nation, but they also become the "golden rice bowls" for their management, employees, and their supervising departments and officials. Luckily, inter-department politics can bring in some level of check and balance in a strange way.
Education

Submission + - Raspberry Pi or Programming - What shall we teach (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Programming is a skill for which demand currently outstrips supply by a huge margin. Is the solution to go back to the sort of hardware that inspired the self-taught programmers of the 80s?
The well known and much talked about Raspberry Pi is a small ARM/GNU Linx box for $25 and it is supposed to bring programming back to the masses.
First let me say that I think that Raspberry Pi is wonderful and I want one, as I'm sure you do, but it isn't going to bring programming back to the masses.
If you read any review of this wonder you will find that all that is talked about is the hardware. Somewhere towards the end you might see a reference to what software it might run, but never more than a short paragraph.
The point is that we don't really need more hardware to get kids interested in computers — we need the right software. Raspberry Pi is yummy but it isn't essential.
You can see classrooms full of computers in most schools. Homes have multiple machines. Portables, laptops and tablets they are all over the place and if you take into account the population of mobile phones then you can see that lack of hardware isn't really the problem. What ever it is, be it Scratch, Alice, Kodu or something really new, it is unlikely to be hardware like Raspberry Pi — desirable though it is.
The Military

Submission + - German City Evacuated for WWII Bomb Removal 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "In the largest bomb-related evacuation in Germany's post-war history, life has come to a standstill in the German city of Koblenz, where 45,000 people — nearly half of the citys population — have been evacuated after the discovery of three bombs that were dropped by American and British warplanes in the last years of World War II. "Its the largest German evacuation since the end of the war," says fire brigade spokesman Ronald Eppelsheim. The largest of the explosives is a 1.8-ton British air bomb that has the potential to destroy the citys center but the focus of attention isn't on the largest bomb — it's on the much smaller, 125-kilogram American high-explosive bomb. "This one has been transformed on impact of the earth. We might have some serious problems deactivating the detonator," says bomb-disposal squad member Jurgen Wagner. The deactivation of bombs is a common practice in Germany. Last year, a bomb exploded in the German town Gottingen — killing three members of a bomb-disposal squad."

Submission + - Superluminal Neutrinos? yes and no 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Question shout-out to my fellow Physicists out there. If you aren't familiar with the Scharnhorst effect, you may want to Google it first. In essence, the idea is that photons travelling through empty space interact with the virtual particles that arise from vacuum fluctuations. They occasionally are absorbed and then readmitted. Scharnhorst speculated that light travelling between two plates placed close enough that they experience the Casmir effect would encounter fewer virtual particles and thus wouldn't slow down as much. Effectively, the speed of light we normally measure is really the vacuum dampened speed. Now here comes the question: Would Neutrinos who interact substantially less with physical matter also be relatively immune to virtual particles? I would think yes. If this is so then the recent Neutrino superluminal results aren't really a problem. It's really just a measurement of the un-dampened speed of light.-Peter B.
NASA

Submission + - Lightning-made Waves in Earth's Atmosphere Leak In (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
TheNextCorner
TheNextCorner writes: "At any given moment about 2,000 thunderstorms roll over Earth, producing some 50 flashes of lightning every second. Each lightning burst creates electromagnetic waves that begin to circle around Earth captured between Earth's surface and a boundary about 60 miles up. Some of the waves – if they have just the right wavelength – combine, increasing in strength, to create a repeating atmospheric heartbeat known as Schumann resonance....

NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite has detected Schumann resonance from space. This comes as a surprise, since current models of Schumann resonance predict these waves should be caged at lower altitude, between the ground and a layer of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere."
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook Settles FTC Charges Over Privacy (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: According to the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The proposed settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining consumers' express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established.

The proposed settlement bars Facebook from making further deceptive privacy claims, requires that the company get consumers' approval before it changes the way it shares their data, and requires that it obtain periodic assessments of its privacy practices by independent, third-party auditors for the next 20 years.
Science

Submission + - DNA Barcoding Technology is Advancing (fellowgeek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This week, more than 450 researchers and industry experts are set to meet at Australia’s University of Adelaide, for the fourth International Barcode of Life Conference. They will celebrate the innovations in DNA barcoding, and discuss some of the applications for the new technology.

DNA barcoding basically means identifying a species of animal, based on a sample of their DNA. A short genetic marker can be compared to the ever-growing Barcode of Life Database – a guide to more than 16,700 species – to identify a species within a few hours...
PHP

Submission + - Linux: 25 PHP Security Best Practices For Sys Admi (cyberciti.biz)

Submitted by
TheNextCorner
TheNextCorner writes: "PHP is an open-source server-side scripting language and it is a widely used. The Apache web server provides access to files and content via the HTTP OR HTTPS protocol. A misconfigured server-side scripting language can create all sorts of problems. So, PHP should be used with caution. Here are twenty-five php security best practices for sysadmins for configuring PHP securely."
AMD

Submission + - AMD retreating from competing with Intel (mercurynews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AMD spokesman Mike Silverman:

We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore.

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