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Censorship

Aussie Internet Censorship Minister Censors Self 158

Posted by timothy from the see-also-recursion dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the minister attempting to ram the great firewall of Oz down everyone's throat, has been removing all traces of the unpopular legislation from his main website with a JavaScript filter. From the article: 'It was revealed today a script within the minister's homepage deliberately removes references to internet filtering from the list. In the function that creates the list, or "tag cloud," there is a condition that if the words "ISP filtering" appear they should be skipped and not displayed.' Bear in mind, this is the same minister that tried to get the ISP of tech forum Whirlpool to pull the site after users there posted a response email from the ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority)."
Mozilla

Is Mozilla Ubiquity Dead? 148

Posted by timothy from the no-man-it's-everywhere dept.
darthcamaro writes "Remember Mozilla Ubiquity? It was an effort to bring natural language commands to the Firefox browser. Now after almost two years of development and a half million downloads, the project is no longer being actively developed. Project founder Aza Raskin is now working on other projects, including Mozilla Jetpack, so Ubiquity is on the back burner. '"There is huge demand for being able to connect the Web with language — to not have to move from one site to another to complete your daily tasks," Raskin said. "And there is huge demand for anyone to be able to write small snippets of code that lets them command the Web the way they want. Ubiquity gave everyday developers a voice with how the browser and the Web works."'"
Businesses

Submission + - The Sad History and (maybe) Bright Future of TiVo (gadgetopolis.com) 2

Submitted by gjt
gjt writes: For the couch potato geek, one name typically comes to mind: TiVo — the company that invented the DVR, and with it, timeshifting. TiVo's been around for more than 10 years now. And TiVo fans (like myself) tend to love TiVO. Yet, despite being loved and around longer than the Apple iPod, it comes no where close to the iPod/iPhone's success. Apple sells more iPod and iPhone products in a single quarter than TiVo has sole in the entire lifetime of the company. At it's peak, TiVo had only 4.4 million active users — that was over three years ago. Now TiVo only has about 2.7 million active users. So I wanted to find out why TiVo hasn't been more successful. What are the issues that prevent them from being more popular — especially with a seeming lack of competition on store shelves? So I did some research and posted my finding about TiVo's past, present, and future up on my blog.

The key takeaways seem to show that TiVo is a victim of cable industry collusion, loopholes in FCC regulations, and, of course, plenty of their own mistakes.

Submission + - Is Mozilla Ubiquity Dead? (linuxplanet.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Remember Mozilla Ubiquity? It was an effort to bring natural language commands to the Firefox browser. Now after almost two years of development and a half million downloads, the project is no longer being actively developed. Project founder Aza Raskin is now working on other projects including Mozilla Jetpack, so Ubiquity is on the backburner.

"There is huge demand for being able to connect the Web with language — to not have to move from one site to another to complete your daily tasks," Raskin said. "And there is huge demand for anyone to be able to write small snippets of code that lets them command the Web the way they want. Ubiquity gave everyday developers a voice with how the browser and the Web works."
Censorship

Submission + - Lawmakers set sights on P2P programs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Lawmakers are considering a bill that would prohibit peer-to-peer file sharing programs from being installed onto computers without consent. The P2P Cyber Protection and Information User Act will also require software developers to inform people when their files are made available to others via peer-to-peer networks.
Authority would be given to the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the act.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Linux Fund Announces UK Business Credit Card (linuxfund.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Linux Fund has announced the first European and Business credit card that supports open source! The Linux Fund UK Business Credit Card will be available in March and is the first card to allow businesses support free and open source projects and events with every purchase. While Linux Fund has offered US and Canadian cards for a decade and is now joined by the Linux Foundation and Free Software Foundation, this card represents the first European fundraising effort of this kind.

Submission + - How safe is flying with Macgyver?

Submitted by CyberDong
CyberDong writes: A friend of mine is flying soon, and we were discussing the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority packing list. The topic of Macgyver came up, and we started trying to think of ways that carry-on articles could be combined. For example, "cheese dunked in breast milk with razors, sealed in a container until the gas builds up and explodes across the room"? Or what could you do with air-activated hand warmers, 2 batteries, and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide?

What can more chemically talented Slashdotters find in the list that we should fear?
Data Storage

Submission + - 'Limited Edition' SSD has fastest storage speed (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: The idea of having a "Limited Edition" solid state drive might seem counter intuitive but regardless of the naming, the new OCZ Vertex LE is based on the new Sandforce SSD controller that promises significant increases in performance, along with improved ability to detect and correct errors in the data stored in flash. While the initial Sandforce drive was called the "Vertex 2 Pro" and included a super-capacitor for data integrity the Vertex LE drops that feature to improve cost efficiency. In PC Perspective's performance tests the drive was able to best the Intel X25-M line in file creation and copying duties, had minimal fragmentation or slow down effects and was very competitive in IOs per second as well. It seems that current SSD manufacturers are all targeting Intel and the new Sandforce controller is likely the first to be up to the challenge.
Power

Submission + - An Updated Look at Lithium Production (theoildrum.com)

Submitted by Gooseygoose
Gooseygoose writes: Just over a year ago, and spurred by an article in Time, I wrote a post on the possible global supply of lithium, which is used in renewable batteries, and a major choice for use in the batteries of electric vehicles, such as the Chevy Volt. Since the story has acquired more recent interest this week, and with new information, it is worth re-visiting the topic.

I began the original post by noting that our first introduction to these batteries was in our role as an Explosives Lab when we found out — in a series of experiments a long time ago — that they can blow up if handled wrongly. And it turns out that such a risk is still around, though not that common.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6228
Google

Google Gets US Approval To Buy and Sell Energy 218

Posted by timothy from the smartest-guys-in-the-room dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday granted Google the authority to buy and sell energy on a wholesale basis. Google applied for the authorization last December through a wholly owned subsidiary called Google Energy. 'We made this filing so we can have more flexibility in procuring power for Google's own operations, including our data centers,' Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said via e-mail. But the authorization also raises the prospect that Google may start to buy and sell energy as a business." Reader angry_tapir supplies a link to the approval document itself (PDF).
Displays

Submission + - The End of Sony's OLED TV's May Not Be the End (gadgetopolis.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In it's marketing of the first commercially available OLED television, Sony just screwed up. Present cost aside, OLED is better than both LCD and plasma technology in pretty much any technical measure. OLED could (and should) still be the technology of the future. But what could Sony have done differently to avoid the seemingly gray skies over OLED technology today? This story explains the missed opportunities that Sony ignored (for some mysterious reason). With only a tiny 11" screen, it was stupid to target the TV market with a $2,000 price tag! Now if they had gone after the high end laptop display market, the folks that drop $5K on VooDoo and AlienWare laptops might have been a successful market to hit.
Sony

Submission + - How Sony Could Still Make OLED a Success (gadgetopolis.com)

Submitted by robertgiam
robertgiam writes: With the news of Sony pulling the plug on sales of their super-thin OLED screens (in Japan, at least) I, like many, gadget geeks spent some time sulking and mourning the loss of a great technology. Of course, it wasn't a complete surprise. I went to CES this year and noticed that OLED became a back seat technology to 3D and "apps". But then I started thinking about the history of display technology (mostly the long 20+ year journey of LCD screens) and realized that it's not over for OLED. In fact, with OLED screens on some smaller devices (like the Nexus One smart phone), it may just be the beginning — an opportunity to reset and follow the success path of LCD technology. So I did some poking around and wrote about it. It's the business blunder that should never have happened. And like the correction in Sony's PS3 sales with the new PS3 Slim, it too can be fixed.

Feed Engadget: Watch Nexus One get built, then beaten mercilessly (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed
This might be the best entry yet in Google's Nexus One video series. Today's double feature is marked by the testing and manufacturing of the device, and while the all-white facilities and assembly lines can be interesting in their own right, we love nothing more than seeing just how Google and HTC stress test its labor of love. Watch it dropped, slammed, bent, poked, and detonated -- okay, maybe not detonated, and we unfortunately don't get to see any phones crack, but it's still good fun. The big game's not on yet, so give yourself a few minutes and hit up the two short videos after the break.

Continue reading Watch Nexus One get built, then beaten mercilessly

Watch Nexus One get built, then beaten mercilessly originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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