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Google

Submission + - AIM is now available via GMail/GoogleTalk

Submitted by
cmeans
cmeans writes: "Ever since myjabber.org started redirecting to google.com (early November), I wondered if this was a hint that Google was finally going to start supporting other transports via it's Jabber / XMPP based IM service. AIM is now an option under GMail's Settings/Chat. I've not yet been able to log into my AIM account, but this is at least a start. Hopefully, MSN and Yahoo! transports won't be far behind."
NASA

New NASA System to Keep Lightning Off The Launchpad 31

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the shockingly-good-ideas dept.
coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA is building a new system to protect people and equipment on the shuttle launchpad from lightning strikes. "The new structure called a catenary wire system, will be the largest on the space compound and will feature large cables strung between three 594-foot-tall steel and fiberglass towers. Each tower is topped with a fiberglass mast and a series of catenary wires and down conductors designed to divert lightning away from the rocket and service structure. This configuration helps keep the vehicle isolated from dangerous lightning currents, NASA said."
Microsoft

Journal Journal: Ballmer foils bank robbery.

Journal by ozmanjusri
A bank robbery in Salt Lake City was foiled Friday when an unidentified man, believed to be Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, threw a chair from a second-story balcony, striking the would-be bandit.

The unidentified person grabbed a chair and hurled it off the balcony, striking the suspect in the back and knocking him to the ground, while yelling "I'll f****g kill bank robbers. I've done it before and I'll do it again!".
Social Networks

Submission + - Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
privatemusings
privatemusings writes: "'Wikipedians' are up in arms at the revelations that respected administrators have been discussing blocking and banning editors on a secret mailing list. The tensions have spilled over all over the 'encyclopedia anyone can edit' and news agencies are sniffing. The Register have this fantastic write up — read it here first."
Announcements

Submission + - Wikipedia to be licensed under Creative Commons

Submitted by sla291
sla291 writes: Jimmy Wales made a very exciting announcement (video & transcript) yesterday night at a Wikipedia party in San Francisco : Creative Commons, Wikimedia and the FSF just agreed to make the current Wikipedia license (the GFDL) compatible with Creative Commons (CC BY-SA). As Jimbo puts it, "This is the party to celebrate the liberation of Wikipedia".
User Journal

Journal Journal: Native Win32 on OSX? 3

Journal by ozmanjusri
Coders working on Wine for Mac have found that the Mac loader has gained its own undocumented ability to load and understand Windows Portable Executable (PE) files
Perl

Submission + - BBC creates 'Perl on Rails' 2

Submitted by Bogtha
Bogtha writes: Long-time users of Perl for their public websites, and having successfully used Ruby on Rails for internal websites, the BBC have fused the two by creating a 'Perl on Rails' that has the advantages of rapid development that Rails brings, while performing well enough to be used for the Beeb's high-traffic public websites. This is already powering one of their websites, and is set to be used in the controversial iPlayer project as well.
Robotics

Submission + - Grasping at straws, with a robotic hand (wired.com)

Submitted by jcasman
jcasman writes: Wired's got a piece on building a better robotic hand at Standford. The current robot is called "Stair 1.0." If you reach and grab at something, you need to understand if you've succeeded. If not, try again. If still unsuccessful, trying a new approach. "The trick is to build robots that act more like children than machines." Wonder how you build in "giving up"?
Privacy

Submission + - Facebook Revamps New Advertising System - Beacon - (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "Seeking to keep the peace in its popular online hangout, Facebook has overhauled a new advertising system that sparked privacy complaints by turning its users into marketing tools for other companies. Under the changes outlined late Thursday, Facebook's 55 million users will be given greater control over whether they want to participate in a three-week-old program that circulates potentially sensitive information about their online purchases and other activities. Facebook provided two different opportunities to block the details from being shared, but many users said they never saw the "opt-out" notices before they disappeared from the screen. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/29/facebook-revamps-new-advertising-system-beacon/ )"
Cellphones

Submission + - 3G iPhone officially in works for 2008 (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Apple Inc. will release a 3G version of the iPhone sometime next year that connects to the Internet at much faster speeds than the current model, AT&T Inc.'s CEO said yesterday, according to reports by Bloomberg.com. At a meeting of the Churchill Club in Santa Clara, Calif., on Wednesday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said, "You'll have it next year," when asked when a 3G iPhone would appear. AT&T is the exclusive mobile carrier for the iPhone in the U.S.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - New way to ID invisible intruders on wireless LANs (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Bergkamp10
Bergkamp10 writes: Australia's University of Technology in Queensland (QUT) has created a groundbreaking new system that can detect invisible intruders on wireless LANs. Wireless networks have been almost impossible to thoroughly secure as they possess no clearly defined boundaries, instead they are defined by the quality and strength of the receiving antenna. QUT Information Security Institute researcher Dr Jason Smith has invented a new system to detect eavesdropping on unencrypted networks or active hijackings of computer sessions when a legitimate user who is logged onto the network leaves the connection. Smith has created a series of monitoring techniques that when used together can detect both attackers and configuration mistakes in network devices. According to Smith, ""the strength of the signal travelling in a wireless network and the round trip time of the signal are both monitored because they will change if an intruder enters the network. Separately monitoring the signal and round trip time is unreliable, but correlating them against each other makes the system accurate," he said. Smith goes on to list further features and benefits of the new system and how threats can be responded to.
Power

Submission + - Glucose to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Developed

Submitted by tetrahedrassface
tetrahedrassface writes: Japanese researchers have made a fuel cell that uses a highly colored molecules incorporated into light-absorbing titania that appear to be able to mimic photosynthetic pathways. This photosynthetic-like electrode is coupled to a platinum electrode and immersed in glucose and enzymes. When light strikes the photosynthetic-like electrode hydrogen from the glucose is liberated and a current across the wire is generated. Currently a couple hundred millivolts are generated. Before there is wild speculation on glucose futures market please note that other materials such as starch, cellulose, sucrose, and lactose can be converted to glucose via fermentation.
Software

Submission + - DJB Releases All Source to Public Domain (google.com) 3

Submitted by
A Sage Developer
A Sage Developer writes: "During a recent conference, Sage Days 6, Dan Bernstein (who has recently come under attack for his licensing policy) was among the invited speakers. During a panel discussion on the future of open source mathematics software, Bernstein declared that all of his past and future code would be released to the public domain (video here). This includes qmail, primegen, and a number of other projects. Given the headache that incompatibility between GPLv3 and GPLv2 is causing developers, will we see more of this?"
Government

Submission + - Swiss DMCA quietly adopted (boingboing.net)

Submitted by roady
roady writes: We have seen a lot of talk about the Canadian DMCA. But few know about the Swiss version recently adopted by law makers, not even the Swiss people. The government and media have been very quiet, probably to avoid a referendum. Indeed, Switzerland is a direct democracy and if 50'000 citizens sign a referendum, the whole country will have a chance to vote against the new copyright law. In this version of the DMCA, sharing a file on P2P networks will land you one year in jail, even though the law mandates a levy on blank media. The history of the law can be read here.
The Internet

Submission + - Internet to reach capacity by 2010 story overblown (computerworld.com.au) 1

Submitted by Gustoman
Gustoman writes: The co-author of a report that received global media coverage claiming the Internet will reach capacity by 2010 says the study was blown way out of proportion. Headlines such as "Internet facing meltdown" and "Internet blackouts predicted by 2010" are way off course, said the report's co-author Johna Till Johnson, president and senior founding partner of Nermertes Research. According to her, all the study concluded is that a mismatch between demand and access capacity will be reached in three to five years that will have to be met by billions of dollars in spending by carriers. It estimates access providers will have to spend between US$42 billion and US$55 billion to close that gap, which could be 70 per cent more than they plan to invest. Otherwise, the next YouTube may be throttled because the Internet will be hard to access. Johnson goes on to explain the merits of the report, including the bandwidth consumption models used and interviews with vendors, enterprises, service providers and investment companies the research firm conducted to arrive at its findings. "We explicitly are not saying the Internet's going to break," she said.

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