An anonymous reader noted that Computerworld is running a story on the 20 must have Firefox extensions. Several of my favorites are in there so I'm looking forward to playing with the ones I haven't heard of.

miller60 writes "The race by Microsoft and Google to build next-generation data centers is intensifying. On Thursday Microsoft announced a $550 million San Antonio project, only to have Google confirm plans for a $600 million site in North Carolina. It appears Google may just be getting started, as it is apparently planning two more enormous data centers in South Carolina, which may cost another $950 million. These 'Death Star' data centers are emerging as a key assets in the competitive struggle between Microsoft and Google, which have both scaled up their spending (as previously discussed on Slashdot). Some pundits, like PBS' Robert X. Cringley, say the scope and cost of these projects reflect the immense scale of Google's ambitions."

Marlow the Irelander writes "The BBC is reporting that in response to a YouTube video of a schoolboy breaking his teacher's window (yes, this is a video), NASUWT, one of the teaching unions in the UK, is calling for legislation to control the internet. Could Britain, rather than the US, be the main front of the battle against censorship in 2007?" From the article: "Unfortunately, any yob or vandal can now have their 15 minutes of fame, aided and abetted by readily accessible technology and irresponsible internet sites which enable such behaviour to be glorified. [The general secretary of the union] said the union supported a zero tolerance approach in schools to pupils who used technology to abuse and undermine teachers, and called for more rigorous legislative control of internet sites which gave them license."

theodp writes "Is there such a thing as a BusinessWeek Cover Jinx? Amazon was bitten by the success of its 1,000 Xboxes for $100 promotion, which brought the entire site to its knees for about 15 minutes on Thanksgiving Day. Singing the too-much-traffic blues on Black Friday were Wal-Mart and Disney."

jcatcw writes "Computerworld's Rob Mitchell tells Diebold President and CEO Thomas Swidarski how to regain Diebold's reputation instead of throwing in the e-voting towel. He recommends full disclosure of all existing problems, a process for disclosure of future problems, hiring of some real professionals as CTO and as an advisory group, and public testing. 'Surely if Diebold can make a secure ATM there is no reason why it cannot make secure and reliable e-voting apparatus in which the public has confidence.'"

scottv67 writes "Dell today gave freelance programmer and sysadmin Dave Mitchell, of Sheffield, UK, a refund of 47 pounds ($89) for the unused copy of Microsoft Windows XP Home SP2 bundled with his new Dell Inspiron 640m laptop, Mitchell says. Dell also refunded the tax, for a total of £55.23 ($105)."

turgid writes, "The Hindustan Times reports that the Indian Space Research Organization plans to land an Indian on the Moon by 2020. First, experiments will be conducted to launch, orbit, and recover a capsule. Plans are to launch an Indian into space in 2014. Manned orbital missions will be launched, initially for a day, but eventually lasting a week or more. Expeditions to the Moon are expected to last 15 days to a month." The article doesn't estimate the cost of such a program. The US Apollo program cost about $135 billion (in 2006 dollars), according to Wikipedia.

ras_b asks: "I don't pay attention to politics at all, and so I will not be voting in today's elections. My family has been telling me that this is a mistake and I should vote anyway, partly because I have slightly conservative views which agrees with their political outlook. My reasoning is that since I am totally uninformed, I shouldn't vote. I don't want to vote Republican or Democrat, only to find out later I totally disagree with something a candidate stands for. So, here's my dilemma and my question: Is an uninformed vote better than no vote?" This issue is touched upon in a posting by Ezra Klein, of the The American Prospect, who disagrees, arguing against a similar assertion by Greg Mankiw, from a suppressed Fortune article. Greg says: "Sometimes...the most responsible thing a person can do on election day is stay at home ... If you really don't know enough to cast an intelligent vote, you should be eager to let your more informed neighbors make the decision." What do you think?

dptalia writes "Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have announced that they have engineered a strain of the AIDS virus that fights AIDS. This strain of AIDS works like a vaccine and improved the immune system of the test subjects. After three years on this new therapy, no side effects have been observed."

ectotherm writes "Japanese scientists have captured a dolphin with vestigial legs. Evidence, it would seem, of a land-dwelling past and observable evolution." From the article: "Fishermen captured the four-finned dolphin alive off the coast of Wakayama prefecture (state) in western Japan on Oct. 28, and alerted the nearby Taiji Whaling Museum, according to museum director Katsuki Hayashi. Fossil remains show dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestor as hippos and deer. Scientists believe they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and their hind limbs disappeared. Whale and dolphin fetuses also show signs of hind protrusions but these generally disappear before birth."

PreacherTom writes "The party line for the music industry has been clear: discourage music downloads at all cost. However, singer Peter Gabriel is taking things in a different direction. In order to promote his own label, he is actually encouraging people to not only download his music, but also adapt it into something more modern. In doing so, he actually posted a sample pack of Shock the Monkey consisting of vocals and other pieces of the original multitrack recording. Some in the music business would call this the commercial equivalent of hiring kidnappers to babysit. In actuality, Gabriel is pleased with the results."

toomanyairmiles writes, "It seems that Wolfgang Priklopil, the communications technician who kidnapped Austrian pre-teen Natascha Kampusch, relied on a Commodore 64 as his primary machine. Interestingly this is presenting some problems to the Austrian computer forensics people. Major General Gerhard Lang of the Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau told reporters it would 'complicate investigators' efforts' and would be difficult to transfer the files to modern computers 'without loss.' Could this be the latest in the criminal world's security strategy? Can we expect to see Spectrums, Archimedes, and Atari STs turning up in police investigations soon?"

ludwigvan968 writes "The University of Texas New Media Initiative in association with Google's Summer of Code program have been working on a project to make sharing files over the internet easier than ever before. Summer of Code intern Evan Wilson just released Project Snakebite, the first fully automatic BitTorrent server. Just as with a normal webserver, you drop files in a folder to share them. Snakebite takes care of generating torrent files and running a tracker and a seeder for each file. Additionally, it builds a user-customizable link page with all of your files. It will even register your Snakebite server with an easy to remember URL for people that can't remember their IP. Snakebite is free and open software and is currently released for Debian. It's fully portable to both Windows and OS X and the developers just need some help packaging it."

tobiasly writes "TechNewsWorld reports that three and a half years after SCO saw its stock price increase tenfold to US$20.50 following the filing of its lawsuit against IBM, it closed Tuesday at US$2.28 per share, or two cents less than where it was before the lawsuit. This follows a sustained slide fed by poor earnings results and courthouse reversals which, according to OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen, shows that 'Linux and open source software are bigger than any one company. Linux has won in the courts and is winning in the marketplace.'"

segphault writes "Ars Technica reports on a paper (PDF) about ambient audio analysis authored by Google researchers. The system described in the paper can effectively determine what television show a user is watching just by capturing a short audio clip. The paper explains how a regular computer microphone can be used to record an audio clip that is then converted into a statistical data summary and transmitted to a remote server which matches the clip against archived data in order to ascertain which TV show it is associated with. Apparently, the system is fully viable, and other kinds of ambient noise don't negatively impact its accuracy. The paper also describes how web services can provide contextually relevant information based on a consumer's television viewing activities."