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Robotics

Submission + - ExoSkeleton Storm Trooper

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From Endgadget comes a review and video clip: "Have you been waiting for a legion of half-man, half-machine storm troopers to descend upon your city and blaze a round of hellfire in all general directions? If you said yes, that's kind of weird. At any rate, you can consider yourself one step closer to cyborg annihilation thanks to a company called Sarcos and its semi-scary exoskeleton — which will make any regular old soldier into a Terminator-like killing machine (as far as we can tell). Sure, they demo the unit lifting heavy equipment and reducing fatigue of the user, but we know what this thing is really for — and it doesn't involve food drops.
Space

Submission + - EU agrees to publicly fund Galileo satellite proje (itwire.com)

Submitted by
WirePosted
WirePosted writes: "The Galileo positioning system, which is a European Union project, that, when completed, will be a global navigational satellite system and, thus, a competitor of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS). It will be funded with public funds after private investors refused to further fund the project."
Patents

Submission + - Portable Nuclear Reactor to Power Homes (sfreporter.com) 1

Submitted by
Xight
Xight writes: "Santa Fe Reporter article about a portable nuclear reactor is the size of a hot tub, but is big enough to power 25,000 homes claims the company Hyperion Power Generation. Thing is they don't want to call it a reactor, but a really big battery since it is self-contained with no moving parts. If all goes according to plan, Hyperion could have a factory in New Mexico by late 2012, and begin producing 4,000 of these reactors."
Privacy

Submission + - Open-Source p2p Developer takes on Mark Cuban (deluge-torrent.org)

Submitted by
markybob
markybob writes: "The lead developer of Deluge Torrent, a GPL, cross-platform BitTorrent client, has personally taken on billionaire Mark Cuban. Cuban, who clained that all p2p users are freeloaders and rob him of his internet speed, has yet to comment. If this ends up going to court, it could very seriously be a deciding factor in America when it comes to p2p and the internet as a whole."
The Military

Submission + - British Nukes Protected with Bicycle Locks

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Until 1998 British nuclear weapons were armed by inserting a bicycle lock key into the arming switch and turning it 90 degrees, the BBC reported last week. There was no code required or dual key system to prevent a rogue individual from arming the Bomb. The British military resisted proposals to fit bombs with Permissive Action Links — or PALs — which would prevent them being armed unless the right code was sent. PALs were introduced in the 1960s in America to prevent a mad General or pilot launching a nuclear war off their own bat — the Dr Strangelove scenario. The correct code had to be transmitted by the US Chiefs of Staff and dialed into the Bomb before it could be armed otherwise it would not detonate. Papers at Britian's National Archive show that as early as 1966 an attempt was made to impose PAL security on British nuclear weapons. The Royal Navy argued that officers of the Royal Navy as the Senior Service could be trusted: "It would be invidious to suggest... that Senior Service officers may, in difficult circumstances, act in defiance of their clear orders". Learn how to arm a WE 177 nuclear bomb (video)."
Businesses

Journal SPAM: ForTwo Subcompact Coming to the USA 4

Journal by stoolpigeon
SmartUSA plans to start selling the Smart ForTwo here in the U.S. in January. This nifty looking little car is 3 feet shorter than a Mini Cooper and gets 40 mpg. Apparently already already over 30,000 people have put up a $99 refundable deposit on one.
Communications

Submission + - Skype caught out over video enhancement 'hack' (zdnet.co.uk)

Submitted by
superglaze
superglaze writes: "When Skype signed a deal with Logitech to enable "high quality" video calls, what it didn't make clear is that an option already existed within Skype to manually boost video quality. But Skype removed the feature, possibly to protect its new partnership. Guess what? The users of that feature cried foul, and now Skype has been forced to do a U-turn, reintroducing the option to manually increase resolution. Surely a victory for the consumer, albeit of a free product. I wonder how this will affect Skype's ongoing problem with being profitable."
Security

Submission + - More Malicious TOR Nodes (f-secure.com)

Submitted by
You Read Browser Certificate Warnings... Right?
You Read Browser Certificate Warnings... Right? writes: "Apparently the TOR exit node that recently sniffed embassy passwords wasn't the only bad node. F-Secure tested some 400 TOR nodes and found that at least one German node was performing man-in-the-middle attacks against SSL. While that node is now offline thanks to the German authorities, it does raise the question of how you know whether any given node is trustworthy. They note that there are still other "suspicious" nodes out there, like the one that only forwards for people logging into Google and MySpace."
Intel

Submission + - Intel Answers Phenom with Unsupported CPU (pcper.com)

Submitted by
Vigile
Vigile writes: "Sure the AMD Phenom is getting a lot of attention today but Intel wasn't going to let AMD's parade run without raining on it. In a response that seems more than a little strange, Intel brought in the release of performance data on the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor which runs at 3.20 GHz on a 1600 MHz front-side bus. What makes this release odd is that AMD's parts don't even come close to competing with the existing Intel high-end CPUs and that there is no chipset from Intel or elsewhere that actually supports a 1600 MHz FSB! Using current motherboards that were overclocked to run the QX9770, the performance of the new processor is simply the fastest desktop processor we have seen."
Microsoft

Submission + - Is it Time to Start Ignoring Microsoft? (earthweb.com) 3

Submitted by
jammag
jammag writes: "It's time for GNU/Linux advocates to quit casting Microsoft as the Great Satan, opines Bruce Byfield, a leading GNU/Linux pundit. "Things were different ten years ago...Back then, the community was fragile," he writes. But now, FOSS thrives in data centers everywhere. However, "over the years, we've developed a culture of hate, where bashing Microsoft proves our membership in the club. We've come to count on this opposition as a central part of our identity." Give it up, Byfield writes: "If you value FOSS, there are aspects you should be promoting — not the taunts more suitable to a high school locker room.""
The Courts

Submission + - FBI Doesn't Tell Courts About Bogus Evidence

Submitted by dprovine
dprovine writes: According to a joint investigation by series of articles in The Washington Post and 60 Minutes, a forensic test used by the FBI for decades is known to be invalid. The National Academy of Science issued a report in 2004 that FBI investigators had given "problematic" testimony to juries. The FBI later stopped using "bullet lead analysis", but sent a letter to law enforcement officials saying that they still fully supported the science behind it. Hundreds of criminal defendants — some already convicted in part on the testimony of FBI experts — were not informed about the problems with the evidence used against them in court. Does anyone at the Justice Department even care about what effect this will have on how the public in general (and juries in particular) regards the trustworthiness of FBI testimony?
Music

Submission + - NAB Asks FCC to Stop the Clock on XM-Sirius Merger (broadcastingcable.com)

Submitted by
cyberworm
cyberworm writes: "The National Association of Broadcasters asked the Federal Communications Commission to pull the plug on its 180-day shot clock for considering the XM Satellite Radio-Sirius Satellite Radio merger to give the NAB time to go through documents it said it is getting through a Freedom of Information Request filed in March....
Specifically, the NAB asked the commission to "formally toll its 180-day 'time clock' until the NAB has a reasonable opportunity to review and supplement the record."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft loses anti-Trust EU case (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by CPUsInHotPlaces
CPUsInHotPlaces writes: The BBC is reporting that the European Union's "Court of First Instance" has ruled against Microsoft in the ongoing anti-trust case. As a result of this ruling, they must pay abide by the original ruling from 2004 (including a 497m euro fine), and also pay 80% of the EU commission's legal costs.

The only section of the original ruling that was not upheld was the comission's attempt to impose an independent monitoring trustee
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft loses anti-trust appeal

Submitted by
Kugrian
Kugrian writes: "Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (£343m; $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute. The European Court of First Instance upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position."

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