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Apple

Submission + - Apple files motion to intervene in Lodsys suits (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple filed a motion today to intervene in the Lodsys suit. To update, last week Lodsys fulfilled its promise to sue developers by filing suit against seven developers in East Texas. Lodsys however did not name Apple in the suit. Apple wants to be included so that it can take on Lodsys directly.
Power

Submission + - First solar power plant that works at night (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by surveyork
surveyork writes: The world's first commercial Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant that generates power at night has recently been commissioned.

"The Gemasolar Power Plant near Seville in southern Spain consists of an incredible 2,650 panels spread across 185 hectares of rural land.

The mirrors — known as heliostats — focus 95 per cent of the sun's radiation onto a giant receiver at the centre of the plant.

Heat of up to 900C is used to warm molten salt tanks, which create steam to power the £260million station's turbines.

But, unlike all other solar power stations, the heat stored in these tanks can be released for up to 15 hours overnight, or during periods without sunlight."

Company website: http://www.torresolenergy.com/TORRESOL/gemasolar-plant/en

Promo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN-8DMZLpyI

Submission + - China does it again (hpcwire.com)

Submitted by gupg
gupg writes: When China built the fastest supercomputer based on NVIDIA GPUs last year, a lot naysayers said this was just a stunt machine. Well, guess what — here comes the science! They are working on better material for solar panels and they ran the world's fastest simulation ever! NVIDIA (whose GPUs accelerate these applications as a co-processor) blogged on this a while ago, where they talk about how the US really needs to up its investment in high performance computing.
Censorship

Submission + - Key court case tests right to record the police wi (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Key court case tests right to record the police with a cell phone:

If you pull out your cell phone to make a video of police officers arresting a suspect, are you "secretly recording" them? "No" seems like the obvious answer, but that's precisely the claim that three police officers made to justify their arrest of a Boston man. In arguments before the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Wednesday, the city also denied the man's claim that his First or Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. The case will be an important test of whether the Constitution protects individuals' right to record the police while they are on duty.

Many states have "one-party notification" wiretapping laws that allow any party to a conversation to secretly record it. But under the strict "two-party notification" laws in Massachusetts, it's a crime to "secretly record" audio communications unless "all parties to such communication" have given their consent. The police arrested Glik for breaking this law. For good measure, they also charged Glik—who did no more than stand a few feet away with his cell phone—with "aiding the escape of a prisoner" and "disturbing the peace."

Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/if-you-pull-out-your.ars
Science

Submission + - Research: Tobacco Co.s Add Weight Loss Drugs (oxfordjournals.org)

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: According to this article from the European Journal of Public Health, the tobacco companies have been implicated in adding a number of drugs to tobacco products to enhance their weigh reducing properties. Discovery News did a good job of explaining the neurological process for appetite suppression, which involves activating pro-opiomelanocortin cells in the hypothalamus.
Privacy

Submission + - School District Hit With New Mac Spying Lawsuit (computerworld.com) 2

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "A former student at a suburban Philadelphia high school has sued his school district for allegedly spying on him and his family using a school-issued Mac laptop, according to court documents. The Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa. was first sued in February 2010 by another student using similar charges. That case, dubbed 'Spygate' in some reports, was settled last October when Lower Merion agreed to pay Blake Robbins $175,000 and cover $425,000 in court costs. On Monday, Joshua Levin, a 2009 graduate of Herriton High, charged the district with violating his civil rights and privacy by remotely activating the notebook's built-in camera to take photographs and screenshots. On Wednesday, Lower Merion spokesman Doug Young called Levin's lawsuit 'solely motivated by monetary interests and a complete waste of the taxpayer's dollars.' Levin begged to differ. According to his lawsuit, Lower Merion used his laptop to take more than 8,000 photographs and screenshots between September 2008 and March 2009. A district report uncovered more than 30,000 photographs and 27,000 screenshots taken. Last June, lawyers made photos and screenshots available for viewing by the 76 affected students. 'Plaintiff opted to view the recovered images, and was shocked, humiliated and severely emotionally distressed at what he saw,' Levin's lawsuit stated."
Security

Submission + - Court:Passwords+Secret Questions=Secure Banking (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A closely-watched court battle over how far commercial banks need to go to protect their customers from cyber theft is nearing an end. Experts said the decision recommended by a magistrate last week — if adopted by a U.S. district court in Maine — will make it more difficult for other victim businesses to challenge the effectiveness of security measures employed by their banks. This case would be the first to add legal precedent to banking industry guidelines about what constitutes "reasonable" security. The tentative decision is that a series of passwords + some device fingerprinting is enough to meet the definition of "something you know" + "something you have". The case has generated enormous discussion over whether the industry's "recommended" practices are anywhere near relevant to today's attacks, in which crooks usually have complete control over the victim's PC
Google

Submission + - Google Redirects Traffic to Avoid Kazakh Demands (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "Google has rejected attempts by the Kazakh government "to create borders on the web" and has refused a demand to house servers in the country after an official decree that all Internet domains ending with the domain suffix for Kazakhstan ,".kz", be domestically based. Bill Coughran, Google senior vice president said in his blog that from now on, Google will redirect users that visit google.kz to google.com in Kazakh:" We find ourselves in a difficult situation: creating borders on the web raises important questions for us not only about network efficiency but also about user privacy and free expression. If we were to operate google.kz only via servers located inside Kazakhstan, we would be helping to create a fractured Internet." Mr. Coughran said that unfortunately, it would mean that Kazakh users would have a poorer experience as results would no longer be customized for the former Soviet republic."
Oracle

Submission + - Oracle releases RHEL 6.1 clone (channelregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
Julie188
Julie188 writes: "From the "that didn't take long" category, Oracle has already released a clone of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 6.1, despite Red Hat's efforts to stop the cloning of its flagship distro. Oracle's "unbreakable Linux" is not CentOS, which is still back at the RHEL 5.6 level. In the Oracle Linux 6.1 release notes, Oracle notes that it tweaked 61 packages from Red Hat's code. Of course some of those tweaks were to remove a few Red Hat-specific items and logos."

Comment Re:I almost feel sorry for Sony (Score 1) 353

by lrobert98 (#36361314) Attached to: Daily Sony Hacking Occurs On Schedule
I tried watching that presentation live online. After a few minutes of "Loading..." every few seconds I gave up. People trying to watch via Playstation Home were reporting that they were not even able to log in because the system was so overloaded. Sony doesn't really need any help from outside groups to screw things up. They're quite capable on their own.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Asus to ship Ubuntu 10.10 on three Eee PC netbooks (extremetech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Asus has announced that three Eee PCs will ship with Ubuntu Linux. Three 2011 models — the 1001PXD, 1011PX, and 1015PX — are immediately available, though no retailers seem to stock them yet.

The Product Manager for Asus had this to say about the new netbooks: "There are a number of factors that make Ubuntu an attractive proposition for ASUS and its customers. Ubuntu continues to set the standard for slick design, ease of use and security, it is the world's third most popular operating system, and [it] has the most number of users in Linux. We [Canonical] were looking at publicly available data on the operating systems accessing Wikipedia last week and found the web site serves more pages to Ubuntu PCs than to the Ipads — there are a lot of users out there."

It might not be the same as Asus launching three flagship netbooks all running Ubuntu instead of Windows, but it's definitely a start. Asus says there are more Ubuntu netbooks to come later this year, too — and hopefully they'll run Ubuntu 11.04...
Government

Submission + - Is identity theft overwhelming the IRS? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The number of tax-related identity theft incidents is exploding and nowhere is that more obvious than at the Internal Revenue Service which as seen reports rice from 51,702 in 2008 to 248,357 in 2010.While it has programs in place to fight the identity theft issue, it is also hamstrung in many other areas, according to a report out this week from the Government Accountability Office. For example, the GAO says the IRS's ability to address identity theft issues is constrained by among othre things, privacy laws that limit IRS' ability to share identity theft information with other agencies."
Hardware

Submission + - Unacceptable packaging. (wdc.com)

Submitted by RockDoctor
RockDoctor writes: I'm fully aware that this is hardly news, but while preparing a device for shipping for warranty repair, I glanced through the WD "Rogues Gallery" of improperly-packaged items that had been returned for repair/ replacement.

Some are people being shoddy on the packing front (e.g. wrapping bare hard drives in newspaper in lieu of anti-static bags), but others are such pathetic attempts at fraud (Items captioned "Real WD label on non-WD drive", "Counterfeit label, Photocopy of real WD label ") and obviously (non-warranty) damaged goods (Items captioned "Dented", "Missing Screws ") that you have to wonder what hope the people who sent them in had of getting them repaired/ replaced.

"Connector, Bent Pins = Acceptable defect" is a worthwhile picture to attend to. Or it was in the days of IDE cables (does modern SCSI use the same connectors? Possibly.)

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