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Intel

Submission + - First "Nehalem" Processors Called "Cor (intel.com)

Submitted by chise1
chise1 writes: In a press release today, Intel named the first products in its next-generation PC chips (codenamed "Nehalem") "Core i7." From the release:

"Intel Corporation announced today that desktop processors based on the company's upcoming new microarchitecture (codenamed "Nehalem") will be formally branded "Intel® Core(TM) processor." The first products in this new family of processors, including an "Extreme Edition" version, will carry an "i7" identifier and will be formally branded as "Intel® Core(TM) i7 processor." This is the first of several new identifiers to come as different products launch over the next year."
The Internet

Submission + - Georgia blanked out on Google Maps

Submitted by dabert
dabert writes: Georgia and other strategic countries along the strategic Baku-Ceyhan Caspian Sea oil pipeline are blank on Google maps, completely devoid of even major cities or roads: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=turkey&ie=UTF8&ll=41.787697,44.25293&spn=6.257764,14.282227&z=7 Has this been the case for some time or did the U.S. and/or Georgia make the request at the outset of (or in preparation for) recent hostilities? Is Google taking sides?
The Military

Scientists Closer To Invisibility Cloak 308

Posted by timothy from the excellent-for-parties dept.
Aviran was one of many readers to submit news of a just-announced development in the ongoing quest to develop a working invisibility cloak, writing: "Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible. Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects" Reader bensafrickingenius adds a link to coverage at the Times Online, and notes that "the world's two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week." Tjeerd adds a link to a Reuters' story carried by Scientific American.
Power

Submission + - Material Improves Ionic Conductivity in Fuel Cells (spacemart.com)

Submitted by
DougF
DougF writes: "Researchers in Spain have devised a new material with a huge increase in ionic conductivity. Theoretically, it could mean fuel cells that operate at near room temperature, solving a huge problem with waste heat in current fuel cells. Oak Ridge National Laboratory studied the material with their 300 kilovolt Z-contrast scanning transmission electron microscope. The super-lattice's larger vacant spaces allow ions to move much more quickly than they can through current materials."
Security

Submission + - Hackers Booted From Black Hat For Hacking (star-telegram.com)

Submitted by strelitsa
strelitsa writes: Its AP, so you'll just have to get over the nonstandard use of the term "hacker".

With thousands of hackers milling around the Black Hat convention here, and widespread snooping on the public Wi-Fi network, one place was supposed to be off limits: the press room.

But in a case of reporters spying on other reporters, three journalists working for the French publication Global Security Magazine were booted Thursday from the hackers' conference after they were allegedly caught hacking into the private computer network set up for the media.
Security

Submission + - Vista memory protections rendered useless (techtarget.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Two security researchers have developed a new technique that essentially bypasses all of the memory protection safeguards in the Windows Vista operating system, an advance that many in the security community say will have far-reaching implications not only for Microsoft, but also on how the entire technology industry thinks about attacks. In a presentation at the Black Hat briefings, Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc. will discuss the new methods they've found to get around Vista protections such as Address Space Layout Randomization(ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and others by using Java, ActiveX controls and .NET objects to load arbitrary content into Web browsers.
Quickies

Submission + - Sexual Harassment Essential for Human Race (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Telegraph.co.uk: A Russian advertising executive who sued her boss for sexual harassment lost her case after a judge ruled that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race.

"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.
Security

Submission + - DOJ: Card Thefts Aided by 'Well Designed' Software (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "Following a bust in May that was related to yesterday's charging of 11 people in one of the largest and most organized credit card theft operations ever, the feds asked the CERT Coordinating Center to give an opinion of the software it found. CERT told the U.S. investigators that the "core sniffer program" used for wardriving — driving around in a car with a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop computer seeking access — is "efficient, well designed and uses some algorithms and data structures that reflect college-level knowledge of computer programming skills. ...""
Handhelds

Submission + - Did iPhone Hackers Go Too Far? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Tom Yager draws attention to the unfortunate side effect of Apple's crackdown on iPhone unlocking with firmware update 2.0.1 — the possible end of open source iPhone development. 'Apple has quietly allowed open source iPhone development since the original iPhone was introduced,' Yager writes. 'Up until a couple of days ago, it was possible to develop software for iPhone 2.0 devices ... without the encumbrances of Apple's onerous developer contracts and code-signing requirements,' thanks in large part to Cydia, an App Store equivalent for open source developers and those interested in sampling their wares. But that look-the-other-way strategy on Apple's part changed once Pwnagetool enabled nonsavvy users to carrier-unlock first-gen iPhones running 2.0 firmware. 'Apple's 2.0.1 firmware update accomplishes what hackers had claimed Apple couldn't do: It relocks an iPhone to AT&T,' Yager writes. And by breaking unlocking, the firmware update also breaks iPhone open source development. 'My iPod Touch, which never made any trouble for AT&T or Apple, and never cost any App Store vendor a dime in lost sales, won't run Unix apps any more.'"
Government

Submission + - Open-source E-voting Goes for Whirl at LinuxWorld (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "After Florida in 2000, Alan Dechert decided that there had to be a better way to safely and accurately cast ballots. More than seven years later, Dechert is at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, publicly displaying the open-source e-voting system he helped develop. "I watched the 2000 election, and I was stunned that we didn't know how to count ballots," Dechert said. That December, Dechert co-founded the Open Voting Consortium to develop an electronic voting system that allows voters to make their candidate selections on a screen, then print their ballots and have them scanned and tallied by reliable machines. The system runs on PCs loaded with Ubuntu Linux and the free, open source e-voting application created by the consortium. More than 300 people tried out the system at LinuxWorld yesterday. Dick Turnquist, an IT manager at the Association of California Water Agencies in Sacramento, test-voted on the proposed system and said he liked what he experienced. "It certainly was easy enough to use. I probably would prefer it" to existing e-voting systems."
Books

Submission + - Restrictive Software Licensing now for Hardware

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: We recently purchased a Kindle and I am impressed with the technology if not the licensing. It seems like it has real potential in the library environment. Unfortunately, two attempts to discuss this with Amazon have resulted in email telling us that "usage of the Kindle in a situation where it is loaned or checked out to many users would be against the Kindle Terms of Use." Now, I understand licensing agreements for software (though I don't often agree with them) but I didn't know they could do this with hardware. Don't we have the final say so on what we do with our physical property? I understand not being able to copy the media from one Kindle to the next but not being able to hand a kindle to someone else. Isn't that going beyond extreme? Can they do that? This Kindle in ours, isn't it?
Privacy

Submission + - SPAM: DVRs legal, appeals court rules

Submitted by
Naturalist
Naturalist writes: "A federal appeals court on Monday lifted an injunction against Cablevision Systems that blocked it from offering a recording service that stored programming on the cable company's own servers instead of on an viewers' in-house recording devices.

Hollywood and television programmers alleged Cablevisions plan would directly infringe their exclusive rights to both reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works.

A lower court last year agreed, and blocked the service, ruling a distribution license first was required by Cablevision.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, ruled no license was reqiured. Cablevision was not doing any of the copying, the court ruled. Instead, the appellate court ruled any copying would be done by individual customers who have that right."
Link to Original Source
Transportation

Submission + - Electronic Progress to Lower Your Car Insurance

Submitted by
head_dunce
head_dunce writes: "Progressive Insurance has come out with a new gizmo that plugs into your car and wirelessly reports back to them about your driving habits. The idea is to adjust your auto insurance rates based on how, when, and where you drive your car. The impact on the rate could be anywhere from a 60 percent discount to a 9 percent surcharge. — I can't wait to lower my rates by plugging this thing into a 12V supply at my desk."
Linux Business

Source Claims 240K Kindles Sold 176

Posted by kdawson from the drm-and-all dept.
Naturalist writes "Exact data on (the Linux-powered) Kindle sales figures have been hard to come by. Amazon is notoriously tight-lipped about it, and although CEO Jeff Bezos did give some Kindle-related information back in July, the company has yet to break out how many readers it has sold to date. Now TechCrunch claims to have spoken to a source close to Amazon with direct knowledge of the company's sales figures. According to this unnamed source, Amazon has sold 240,000 Kindles to date, for an estimated hardware revenue between $86 million and $96 million; media sales would push the total above $100M." We've been following the Kindle since its launch nine months ago.
Social Networks

Submission + - Microsoft study disproves Kevin Bacon theory (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Bridger
Bridger writes: An analysis of Microsoft's instant messaging system has concluded that there aren't six degrees of separation between everyone, the number is 6.6. A team of researchers analysed 30bn messages sent on the company's instant messenger client to see if the theory that everyone can be linked to everyone else by six degrees of separation was accurate. The six degrees of separation argument, popularised by American psychologist Stanley Milgram, posits that everyone is one degree removed from people they know, two degrees from people their friends know and no more than six degrees away from everyone on the planet.

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