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Displays

Submission + - HDCP prevents PC from playing 1080p on TV

Submitted by
motherball
motherball writes: "Will hardware manufacturers and the movie industry stop at nothing to fight the consumer? An article in EDN mentions that newer TVs deliberately do not include the common HDMI connector but instead have the HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content-protection) connector which is intended to make it impossible to hook up your PC to your TV and render 1080p! Who stands to gain from this? Doesn't the consumer (I hate that word) have any rights?"
Security

Submission + - Cybercrime on the rise in Japan

Submitted by
dido
dido writes: "The Mainichi Daily News reports that the incidence of cybercrime in Japan has increased 40% in 2006 from the previous year, including incidences of online fraud, phishing, and Internet-assisted child prostitution. From the article: 'Police departments across the country cracked down on a record 4425 cybercrimes in 2006. A total of 1597 cases involved online fraud, accounting for 36.1% of the total and was up 13.4% from the previous year. In 703 cases, the suspects illegally accessed websites using other people's ID and passwords, up a hefty 153.8 percent from 2005.'"
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Apple: the best and worst

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: silicon.com is running a two-part column on the 10 best and 10 worst things about Cupertino — and it would seem Steve Jobs' latest magic trick is the ability to create products that are simultaneously Mitchell and Webb... Take the iPod — it's apparently blessed with "usability and simplicity". Yet has also "long been dogged by accusations of dodgy battery life, defective mechanics, easily scratched or cracked screens and a general lack of longevity"... Or the iPhone — a flagrant example of 'style over substance', says writer Seb Janacek, before really sticking the boot in: "A clutch of mobile devices have been offering the same services for the last year or so at a fraction of the price. And it doesn't arrive for another six months or so. And when it does there will be just one operator to choose from. The latest example of Steve Jobs snake oil?"... But wait! "The gloriously sexy iPhone was worth the wait"... gushes the same author... "Apple spent two and a half years developing a device that makes the usual phone functions, MP3 playing and internet browsing work as a whole"... Confused? It seems Steve Jobs is not the only one guilty of a 'reality distortion field'...
Google

Google Apps Premier Edition Launches 261

Posted by kdawson from the en-garde-Office dept.
prostoalex writes "Google Apps is adding a premium offering: a custom 10-GB Gmail box, Google Calendar, GTalk instant messenger, Writely, Google Pages, Google Custom home page iGoogle and Google SpreadSheets for $50 a year per employee. The NYTimes provides some details on competitive pricing: 'By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange,... in addition to the costs of in-house management, customer support and hardware, according to the market research firm Gartner.' Boston.com quotes an analyst for Nucleus Research on Google's ease-of-use: '"What we see in the Google Apps is a real focus on making them easy to use and intuitive," she said. "And that's something that Microsoft has been unable to do in all of its years with Office."' But the same analyst is bearish on Google Apps' shortcomings relative to the mature Microsoft desktop products: 'Right now Google's going to give companies a better ability to negotiate with Microsoft.'"
Music

Submission + - Puretracks music store drops DRM

Submitted by
khendron
khendron writes: "The Canadian online music store Puretracks (a store I have generally avoided because of their Microsoft specific solutions) has announced that it will immediately start selling part of its catalog as DRM-free mp3 files. The site's unprotected catalog, which includes artists such as The Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, will initially feature only 50,000 of its 1.3 million tracks, but will grow weekly.

More also from the Globe and Mail. If this endeavour is successful, maybe we will see the larger music labels jumping on board."
Communications

Submission + - AT&T's Fiber "Cuts" Off Central Illino

Submitted by mozzwald
mozzwald writes: Virtually all phone services (cellular and land-line) were disrupted Tuesday in Central Illinois because of a cut fiber line near Joliet Illinois. "Officials also said a separate piece of equipment that serves as backup near Decatur also went down, causing disruption to 309, 815, and 217 area codes." This caused major problems for businesses that use credit and debit card machines. It even caused sporadic problems with 911 services.
Science

Colossal Squid Landed Intact In Antarctica 85

Posted by kdawson from the bigger-than-giant dept.
zakkie writes "New Zealand fisherman have caught a massive 450-kg colossal squid in Antarctic waters. This is by far the biggest yet found, measuring over 10 meters in length and weighing 450 kg. It has been taken back to New Zealand for study." The NZ government's announcement page features a downloadable backgrounder on the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) and a 1.1-MB popup portrait of the animal in the fishing boat's hold.
Security

Submission + - Email Security (gmail, yahoo etc...)

Submitted by utefan001
utefan001 writes: Many of us have email accounts that contain some level of sensitive data. A simple security measure that gmail could provide (but doesn't) is a log file of the date and time of the previous successful logins. Why doesn't any of the big online email providers have something like this? Some type of two-factor login would be good, but RSA type solutions still can fail using man in the middle attacks.
http://scmagazine.com/us/news/article/629853/messa gelabs-phishing-emails-outnumber-virus-trojan-emai l-attacks
The Internet

Submission + - Shock therpay used to cure internet addiction

Submitted by andy1307
andy1307 writes: According to this article in the Washington Post, Chinese teenagers deemed addicted to the internet are being treated in military run installation. Led by Tao Ran, a military researcher who built his career by treating heroin addicts, the clinic uses a tough-love approach that includes counseling, military discipline, drugs, hypnosis and mild electric shocks. The state run media blames internet addiction for for a murder over virtual property earned in an online game, for a string of suicides and for the failure of youths in their studies. Located on an army training base, the Internet-addiction clinic is distinct from the other buildings on campus because of the metal grates and padlocks on every door and the bars on every window.From the article "On the first level are 10 locked treatment rooms geared toward treating teen patients suffering from disturbed sleep, lack of motivation, aggression, depression and other problems. Unlike the rest of the building, which is painted in blues and grays and kept cold to keep the teens alert, these rooms are sunny and warm."
Security

Submission + - NY Times Trashes Open Source

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/business/smallbu siness/20hack.html?pagewanted=2&ref=smallbusiness
In a NY Times article about small businesses and network security : "Many use open-source software, which is free on the Internet...Some of that software, because it is written by relatively unskilled programmers, has a poor security record." It goes on to discuss the 'threat' of PHP and Ajax.
Announcements

Fran Allen Wins Turing Award 79

Posted by kdawson from the one-small-step-for-a-woman dept.
shoemortgage writes "The Association for Computing Machinery has named Frances E. Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. Allen,74, is the first woman to receive the Turing Award in the 41 years of its history. She retired from IBM in 2002."
Software

Submission + - Turing award announced

Submitted by wannabgeek
wannabgeek writes: Turing award for the year 2006 is awarded to Frances Allen, an IBM Fellow Emeritus, for her work in compiler optimizers. From this article: she also "worked on writing intelligence analysis software for the National Security Agency. More recently she helped design software for IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer." It is the first time a woman won this honour. She was also the first woman to become IBM Fellow in 1989.
United States

Submission + - Are we stuck with CYA homeland security?

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "Security expert Bruce Schneier suggests this morning that "there might not be a solution" to our post-9/11 penchant for making domestic anti-terrorism decisions based on the basic human desire to cover one's backside. He might be right. But shouldn't we at least try to figure out a better way? For example, wouldn't "Commonsense Homeland Security" be a winning political banner, not a risky one? Aren't we sick and tired of taking our shoes off at the airport?

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1174 6"
Space

Submission + - the largest non-commercial rocket launch in Europe

Submitted by jaweekes
jaweekes writes: The TV program "Top Gear" recently launched the "largest non-commercial rocket launch in European history" in the form of a rocket-propelled Reliant Robin. From the article http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/show/production_notes /shuttle.shtml "What could possibly be so difficult about building a space shuttle? Quite a lot, as it turns out. This was easily Top Gear's most ambitious film and, while everything didn't go quite according to plan, we're still very proud of the results. Here are just a few of the things that happened when we tried to put an ageing three-wheeler into space."

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