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Privacy

Submission + - Secret GPS tracking now legal in Massachusetts

Submitted by dr. fuzz
dr. fuzz writes: The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has ruled in favor of John Law tracking you with secret GPS devices in Massachusetts provided a warrant is obtained. You've been warned. To the dissenters' credit Justice Ralph Gants is quoted with "Our constitutional analysis should focus on the privacy interest at risk from contemporaneous GPS monitoring, not simply the property interest"
Privacy

Submission + - Secret GPS tracking now legal in Massachusetts

Submitted by dr. fuzz
dr. fuzz writes: The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has ruled in favor of John Law tracking you with secret GPS devices in Massachusetts provided a warrant is obtained. You've been warned. To the dissenters' credit Justice Ralph Gants is quoted with "Our constitutional analysis should focus on the privacy interest at risk from contemporaneous GPS monitoring, not simply the property interest"

Submission + - Cirque DuSoleil Founder will pay $35 Million to Cl (reuters.com)

Submitted by TechnologyResource
TechnologyResource writes: Guy Laliberté, the Canadian founder of Cirque DuSoleil, will pay $35 million to blast into space from a Russian space station on September 30, 2009. His mission is to put on a two-hour live show for the astronauts in orbit on the eleven day trip. Laliberté is also using the event to promote global access to clean water. Laliberté wants to "tickle the station's astronauts" just in case mach 12 at 17,500 mph into space doesn't tickle them enough. The live clown show will be broadcast from the International Space Station on October 9, 2009. Laliberté will be the first clown (with a red nose) and the seventh private citizen to tour space.
Games

Submission + - Major MMO Publishers Sued for Patent Infringement (maximumpc.com) 1

Submitted by GameboyRMH
GameboyRMH writes: Maximum PC reports that major MMO publishers (Blizzard, Turbine, SOE, NCSoft, and Jagex) are being sued by Paltalk, which holds a patent on "sharing data among many connected computers so that all users see the same digital environment" — a patent that would seem to apply to any multiplayer game played between multiple systems, at the very least. Paltalk has already received an out-of-court settlement from Microsoft earlier this year in relation to a lawsuit over the Halo games.

If Microsoft can't fend off Paltalk's legal attacks, the odds don't look good for their latest group of targets.
The Courts

Lawyer Demands Jury Stops Googling 517

Posted by CmdrTaco from the justice-has-no-wifi dept.
coomaria noted an unsurprising story about how courts are having problems with jurors Googling during cases. As anyone who has ever been called for jury duty knows, you aren't allowed to get outside information about the case you are hearing, but apparently the iPhone makes it far too easy to ignore this advice. A lawyer is trying to get jurors to sign a form explicitly stating they won't "use 'personal electronic and media devices' to research or communicate about the case." Of course, I'm not exactly sure why a juror should need to sign something for your iPhone but not a newspaper.

Submission + - SPAM: A few teachers at my school have incorporated vide

Submitted by sm_maven
sm_maven writes: Creating and incorporating videos can transform lessons, activities and even entire courses. Learning content featured in videos can be checked for understanding with tests and quizzes administered online or in a face-to-face classroom.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Twitter survey causes tweet-alanche (skepticblog.org)

Submitted by JLavezzo
JLavezzo writes: Brian Dunning, host of the Skeptoid podcast, decided to combine a survey he needed data for with an experiement into the dynamics of Twitter's social networking. Did it work?
'The good parts worked better than I hoped,' he says 'and unfortunately, undesired side effects ... which rendered your Twitter account nearly useless on September 14 and 15, if you follow me or anyone else who follows me ... were just as potent. Now, before I describe what happened, let me state outright that it was shockingly naive of me not to foresee what would happen. It was dumb, it annoyed a lot of people, and I have no excuse other than failure to think it through very well. So, my apologies, and I offer no defense of what turned out to be a giant mess.'
Read on so you'll be prepared when your marketing director asks you to set up the same thing.
Space

Submission + - Planck Satellite Releases First Images (wordpress.com)

Submitted by davecl
davecl writes: The Planck Satellite has released its first images. These are from the 'First Look Survey' and show a strip of the sky scanned at a range of radio and submillimetre wavelengths. The results are already better than what was seen by the previous microwave background satellite, WMAP. ESA's coverage of the results can be found here, with more details and images available in English and French. The Planck Mission Blog contains more details of the project and continuing coverage. I maintain the mission blog but even I am impressed with these first images!
Transportation

Submission + - New split cycle engine may revolutionize cars (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
egghat
egghat writes: "Scuderi Group demoed the first real prototype of their new split cycle engine at the IAA in Frankfurt this week. Scuderi claims the torque and mileage of diesel engines combined with the agility and quietness of normal gasoline engines and up to 80% less nitrogen oxide. The trick is simple: Two cylinders work together. The first cylinder sucks and compresses air, pumps it to the second cylinder that fires and burns the gasoline. The Scuderi engine achieves pressures that a way higher than normal engines and are therefore more efficient. The good thing: Most parts of the engine (pistons, ignition plug, cylinders, etc.) are standard parts that are available today. Scuderi plans to build turbo and diesel version and even a hybrid that uses compressed air as an energy storage instead of electricity in batteries. 7 Geeky Tech Designs from the 2009 Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress Washington Times: Company says air is fuel of future"
Earth

Submission + - What happened to Google's Project 10 to the 100?

Submitted by Andy
Andy writes: Google will be turning 11 years old this month. It got me thinking about last year's media stunt: project 10 to the 100 . Google committed $10 million to implement the ideas that would change the world by helping as many people as possible. The plan was to announce the winners January of this year which has come and gone. The Slashdot community had a lot of great ideas. Some of us were even motivated enough to write them down and submit for Google scrutiny. What the hell's taking Google so long? If they don't have time to review, post them online and let the public decide — or at least weed out the dumb ideas.
Government

Submission + - U.S. government sets up online 'app store' (cnn.com)

Submitted by krapper
krapper writes: The Obama administration has unveiled a government "app store" designed to push the federal bureaucracy into the era of cloud computing. The Obama administration is pushing for the government to use cloud-computing technologies. The Obama administration is pushing for the government to use cloud-computing technologies. The change means some federal employees will begin using services like YouTube, Gmail and WordPress, which store data on private Internet servers instead of on those paid for with public money. The process will start small but will ramp up quickly, Vivek Kundra, the U.S. chief information officer, said in a blog post on Tuesday. "Our policies lag behind new trends, causing unnecessary restrictions on the use of new technology," Kundra writes in the post on WhiteHouse.gov. "We are dedicated to addressing these barriers and to improving the way government leverages new technology." The app store is designed for federal employees doing official government business and is not intended for use by the public. Also on Tuesday, Google announced the creation of a "government cloud," in which public data will be stored on Google computer servers by 2010. According to a Google blog post, this dedicated space will serve the needs of federal, state and local governments.
Linux

Submission + - Google releases the SDK for version 1.6 of Android (android.com)

Submitted by Qwavel
Qwavel writes: This release includes improvements to the Android Market, the Search Framework, and Text-to-Speech. It now has support for more screen resolutions and CDMA phones. Android 1.6 is based on v2.6.29 of the Linux kernel and is expected in phones that will be available next month. The mystery of Android 1.6, however, is Google's continued unwilling to commit to a Bluetooth API and any Bluetooth functionality beyond the basic audio functions.
Science

Submission + - Gene Therapy Cures Color-Blind Monkeys (wired.com)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: After receiving injections of genes that produce color-detecting proteins, two color-blind monkeys have seen red and green for the first time.

Except in its extreme forms, color blindness isn't a debilitating condition, but it's a convenient stand-in for other types of blindness that might be treated with gene therapy. The monkey success raises the possibility of reversing those diseases, in a manner that most scientists considered impossible.

"We said it was possible to give an adult monkey with a model of human red-green color blindness the retina of a person with normal color vision. Every single person I talked to said, absolutely not," said study co-author Jay Neitz, a University of Washington ophthalmologist. "And almost every unsolved vision defect out there has this component in one way or another, where the ability to translate light into a gene signal is involved."

The full-spectrum supplementation of the squirrel monkeys' sight, described Wednesday in Nature, comes just less than a year after researchers used gene therapy to restore light perception in people afflicted by Leber Congenital Amaurosis, a rare and untreatable form of blindness.
Space

Submission + - The First Rocky Extrasolar Planet Confirmed (google.com)

Submitted by chill
chill writes: As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet. Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Reduce Linux power consumption

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This article will get you up to speed on the components and concepts you need to fine-tune a Linux-based System x server for power efficiency. Learn how to enable the Linux CPUfreq subsystem, get instruction on C and P states, and determine which of the five Linux in-kernel governors you need to boost power efficiency on your system.

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