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Handhelds

Submission + - No Bars For iPhone Brits

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The newest iPhone users, who bought the Apple phones when they went on sale in England on Nov. 9, are reporting persistent signal-strength problems on O2, the UK's only iPhone service provider. InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe says there's a debate as to whether O2 or the iPhone is at fault; it appears to be the handset, which is unusual since U.S. users haven't reported similar problems. Some 02 customers report that getting a replacement phone fixes things; others have had to do a software restore back to version 1.1.2 of the iPhone software.
Security

Submission + - SPAM: French gov't plans to disconnect content pirates

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: The French government has a plan for cutting music and film piracy on the Internet: cut off the pirates' Internet access.The penalty is part of a range of measures to deal with the unauthorized copying of music and video online proposed by the French Ministry of Culture including watermarking content, tracking surfers' activities, and creating a registry of those accused by copyright holders of piracy."We can't accept for much longer that artists be deprived of the fruits of their work," one government official said.
Link to Original Source
Announcements

Submission + - CS Games: rank your coding skills

Submitted by
LinuxRulz
LinuxRulz writes: "For those of you who are still at university, rejoice, for the 2008 edition Computer Science games website is now open for registrations. For those who haven't heard of the event, the CS Games are a North American inter-university computer science related competition with challenges in debugging, ai development, scripting, team programming, algorithms and more. Last year's event attracted more than 300 participants from 30 universities. If you want to value your knowledge and make your university stand out, this is your chance!"
Patents

Submission + - Broadcom Seeks New Injunction Against Qualcomm (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "Chip maker Broadcom said Friday it will try to stop rival Qualcomm from making, using, selling or developing cellular chips based on contested patents. It's the latest legal cannonball hurled by Broadcom in its wide-ranging court battle with industry Goliath Qualcomm over the rights to technology for cell phones. The move comes two days after Broadcom chose to accept a reduced damage award of $19.6 million rather than retry its case against Qualcomm in a California federal court. U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna initially indicated he would award Broadcom $39.3 million in damages, double what a jury awarded in May. The panel found that Qualcomm willfully violated three of Broadcom's patents on technologies that help cell phones process video and walkie-talkie conversations and hand off calls between different networks. Selna overturned his own ruling after a federal appellate court raised the bar for proving patent infringement. That ruling came in a dispute between an individual investor and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology against Seagate Technology, the world's largest maker of hard drives. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/23/broadcom-seeks-new-injunction-against-qualcomm/ )"
Quickies

Submission + - 'Cooper pairs' can be found in insulators as well (eurekalert.org)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: In new work appearing in Science, physisicsts at Brown University show that Cooper pairs not only form in superconductors, but can also form their opposite — electrical insulators. link

"Our finding is quite counterintuitive," said James Valles, a Brown professor of physics who led the research. "Cooper pairing is not only responsible for conducting electricity with zero resistance, but it can also be responsible for blocking the flow of electricity altogether."
Space

Submission + - Arecibo Observatory's Future in Doubt

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The future is hazy for the legendary Arecibo radio observatory in Puerto Rico, a 'jewel of space instruments'. The New York Times reports that the National Science Foundation, which pays for the observatory's operation, has slashed Arecibo's annual budget from $10.5 million to $8 million, and may close it altogether in four years, imperiling its historic work, including its detection of the near-Earth asteroid KW4 eight years ago. "The planetary science community is in danger of losing one of its instrumental crown jewels," Donald K. Yeomans, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Staples to offer data recovery service?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Staples on Tuesday said it has signed an agreement with Seagate Recovery, a company owned by disc-drive maker Seagate Technology, to provide disaster-recovery services through Staples' in-store EasyTech department. It will let customers whose files are locked in a broken electronic device the chance to recover their data. Under the deal, Staples customers can seek data recovery from any type of digital media, from a notebook or a desktop to portable media player. Staples will offer through Seagate a free evaluation to determine the cost of recovery. Once approved by the customer, the recovered data will be returned on a USB hard drive under a two-year limited warranty. If no data is recovered, then the customer isn't charged.
Security

Submission + - dealing with online merchants who don't use SSL?

Submitted by Unprotected Coward
Unprotected Coward writes: I was just about to make an online purchase for a hardware product when I discovered the vendor (a self-titled "leading" seller for the US university market) does not even use SSL to encrypt the credit card form data (yes, I checked the HTML source, the form POST is to a non https URL). I am angry and frustrated that in 2007 this still happens with big stores (and I don't even want to imagine what application-level vulnerabilities they may have).

Besides writing them, should I call Visa or Mastercard? I thought it was mandatory for online merchants to use SSL and other basic security measures. Is it all hopeless?
Google

Google Crowdsources Map Editing 149

Posted by kdawson from the don't-do-your-home-address-first dept.
An anonymous reader notes that Google now makes it possible to edit the map location designated by (almost) any address. Registered Google users in the US, Australia, and New Zealand can move incorrect markers for their homes or businesses to the correct locations. Access to some listings is restricted — hospitals, government buildings, and businesses whose listings have been claimed through Google's Local Business Center. In addition, moving a place marker more than 200 yards (or 200 meters) from its original location requires a moderator's approval before the change shows up on the map. Once a marker has been moved, a "Show Original" link will direct users to the original location.
Intel

Submission + - Intel CTO: Computing's future in multicore machine (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by JohnnyUtah
JohnnyUtah writes: For much of his 34 years at Intel, Justin R. Rattner has been a pioneer in parallel and distributed processing. His early ideas didn't catch on in the market, but the time has come for them now, he recently told Computerworld's Gary Anthes. Rattner answered questions on a wide range of issues, some of which included: Are we at the end of the line for microprocessor clock speeds? We'll see modest growth, 5% to 10% per generation. Power issues are so severe that there won't be any radical jumps. If you get a 2% improvement in clock speed but at a 5% increase in power consumption, that's not a favorable trade-off. I keep reassuring Bill Gates that there is no magic transistor that is suddenly going to solve his problem, despite his strong desire for such a development. So the only way to keep Moore's Law going is to add more computing cores to a microprocessor chip? The only way forward in terms of performance — but we also think in terms of power — is to go to multicores. Multicores put us back on the historical trajectory of Moore's Law. We can directly apply the increase in transistors to core count — if you are willing to suspend disbelief for a moment that you can actually get all those cores working together. How many cores might we see on a chip in five years? We have been talking about terascale for the past couple of years, and we are demonstrating an 80-core [processor chip]. Our [future] product is Larrabee. It's not 80 cores; we can do things like that in research because we don't care how much it costs. Our hope is that that will stimulate software developers to bring terascale applications to market. We are talking about early production [of Larrabee] in 2009. b>What's the future of spintronics, in which information is based on the spin of an electron rather than on its charge? Charge-based electronics is going to run out of steam. The memory guys have already hit that point, basically. They can't make those memory cells any smaller. So researchers are looking at quantum effects like spin, and some early results aren't bad. Spin has some nice things about it, both in terms of performance and power. Could we have working computers based on spin in 10 years? Yes, but I wouldn't be more aggressive than that. We'd want to make the transition seamlessly. We wouldn't want to say, "OK, there will be no new microprocessors for five years while we figure out spintronics."
Google

Submission + - Google SA plans big broadband drive (mybroadband.co.za)

Submitted by
slash-sa
slash-sa writes: "Google South Africa, set to officially launch in February 2008, says it will go on a big broadband drive next year. Speaking at the recent Get to know Google event in Bryanston Stafford Masie, Country Manager for Google South Africa, said that he will engage with all role-players, including Government, to emphasize the importance of broadband to grow the economy."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Penny Arcade launches Print-on-Demand Comics (penny-arcade.com)

Submitted by Irreducibly
Irreducibly writes: Not to be outdone by Marvel's recent announcement, Gabe over at Penny Arcade recently announced that they've made virtually every Penny Arcade comic ever published available for purchase. Marvel "rents access" to its archives but like so many old media plays, it just begs for fans to pirate images and circulate them for free. PA makes their archives free and just relies on the true fans and Comic Book guys to send them money for what they want. Time to start building my Itchy and, er, Twisp and Catsby collection!
Programming

Submission + - Gaining Non-Trivial Programming Experience

Submitted by AvailableName
AvailableName writes: I have been working as an IT Manager for a small non-IT company for the past 3 years. This is my first job since graduating from college with a Computer Programmer/Analyst diploma. My role does contain some development (C#, PowerBuilder 10.5, MS SQL 2000 programming), but the projects are, what I would consider, trivial. My other responsibilities include every other facet of IT (from printers all the way to budgeting). I find my job increasingly unfulfilling. I am uninterested and feel unqualified for some of my responsibilities. What I am interested in is software development and computer science in general. However, when I look at job postings for developers, I notice requirements often include experience with tools for testing, building and collaboration. My question is: How do I go from all the trivial software I have created (either at work or through working through textbooks) to gaining experience in creating non-trivial software with sophisticated tools?
Music

Submission + - Last.Fm goes legal

Submitted by
tryfan
tryfan writes: "Seems that CBS's buyout of Last.Fm has resulted in someting rather spectacular: yesterday a deal was announced that will make the Sony BMG's music catalogue legally available to Last.Fm listeners:

"Last.fm strikes Sony music deal
Last.fm connects users who share the same music tastes
Fans of the Foo fighters, Kings of Leon or Natasha Bedingfield will soon be able to listen to their music through the social music site Last.fm. The service, bought in May for $280m (£140m) by CBS Corporation, has signed a deal with the Sony BMG record label. The partnership will give the web 2.0 service's 20 million users access to the entire Sony catalogue of music.""

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