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Cloud

No PDFs, No Co-editing On Underwhelming Apple iCloud 189

An anonymous reader writes "Apple's iCloud service has been a little overlooked in the bunfight for the iPhone 4S. When it was first announced some predicted it would wipe out companies like Box.net, DropBox and so on. As the NYTimes put it, "Maybe Apple will kill them all.' Box.net's CEO disagreed and it looks like he was right. You can't store PDFs and images on iCloud except with PhotoStream, there's no co-editing, and the document management interface is a shambles."
Transportation

Submission + - Robot Batcopter to improve drone flight (suasnews.com)

garymortimer writes: "The objective of my week in the Texan back-country was to perform some experiments on trajectory planning in bats, alongside some other bat researchers from Boston University.

These Brazilian Free-tailed bats (also called Tadarida) come together in the millions in caves all over Texas, leaving every night in swarms so big they can be detected by doppler radar. Somehow, they manage to fly through this dense self-clutter without major collisions, and so our goal is to better understand this behavior. The goal is to fly a UAV through the dense clutter, and record the bats’ response with three ground-based high-speed FLIR cameras, and an airborne 3D HD GoPro camera. The hope is to extract fundamental control laws of flying behavior in order to achieve better autonomous UAV flight."

Piracy

Submission + - Luxury lifestyle of "hard-up" file-sharing lawyer (pcpro.co.uk)

nk497 writes: "A lawyer who targeted file-sharers dodged a £200,000 fine for a data breach after convincing watchdogs he was on "limited means" — despite living in a £700,000 home and driving a Bentley Arnage.

Andrew Crossley's ACS Law sent letters demanding payments of £500 from accused file sharers, leading online activists to target his website and leak an email database. The Information Commissioner initially intended to fine ACS £200,000, but instead levied a fine of £800 against Crossley after he shut the firm down and signed an affidavit swearing his limited financial means."

Patents

Tandberg Attempts To Patent Open Source Code 187

An anonymous reader writes "As if the current situation with software patents wasn't bad enough, it appears a new phenomenon is emerging: companies are watching the commit logs of open source projects for ideas to patent. In this case, Tandberg filed a patent that was step-by-step identical to an algorithm developed by the x264 project — a mere two months after the original commit. The particular algorithm is a useful performance optimization in a wide variety of video encoders, including Theora."
Hardware

Submission + - Stephen Fry and DVD Jon back USB Sniffer Project (kickstarter.com)

An anonymous reader writes: bushing and pytey of the iPhone DevTeam and Team Twiizers have created a Kickstarter project to fund the build of an open-source/open-hardware high-speed USB protocol analyzer. The board features a high-speed USB 2.0 sniffer that will help with the reverse engineering of proprietary USB hardware, the project has gained the backing from two high-profile individuals Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon) and Actor and Comedian Stephen Fry
Patents

Webvention Demanding $80k For Rollover Images 314

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Webvention is demanding that websites with rollover images pay $80,000 or face a patent lawsuit based on US patent 5,251,294, which it bought from Intellectual Ventures. Webvention claims to already have licensing deals with Apple, Google, Nokia, Sears, Sony and Orbitz. Right now, they're suing Abercrombie and Fitch, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dell, Gamestop, E*Trade, Neiman Marcus, Visa and ten others in a court in east Texas."
Handhelds

When You Really, Really Want to Upgrade a Tiny Notebook 104

Benz145 writes "The famous Sony VAIO UX UMPC may have been cancelled a few years back by Sony, but the community at Micro PC Talk won't let it die. Modder Anh has carefully removed the relatively slow 1.33Ghz Core Solo CPU and installed a much faster Intel Core 2 Duo U7700 (a process which involves reballing the entire CPU). On top of this, he managed to install an incredibly small 4-port USB hub into the unit which allowed for the further instillation of a Huawei E172 modem for 3G data/voice/SMS, a GPS receiver, and a Pinnacle HD TV receiver. All of this was done without modifying the device's tiny external case. Great high-res pictures of the motherboard with the modded hardware can be seen through the link."

Comment TFA has been withdrawn. (Score 2, Informative) 827

http://www.malcolmsteward.co.uk/?p=2495

---
The SATA Cable Saga
Posted by Malcolm Steward on 8/20/10 Categorized as Audio

I have withdrawn the article that appears to have upset so many computer enthusiasts.
---

etc. He claims that he received death threats. Some people have too much time on their hands, and/or take things way too far.

Comment Re:And? (Score 1) 179

Sure, I'll agree with you on some of these points, but:

Your phone rings, you pick up. You hear a momentary "click" as you're transferred to an operator, who tells you that you've just won a trip to Jamaica, and that he needs your credit card information to proceed with awarding you your trip. What do you do? Do you assume that he's legit and dole out your credit card to him, or do you use your brain?

The same thinking isn't applied to web objects often enough at all. So, Average Joe may not understand the fundamentals upon which a web application is built -- nor should they have to -- but they should certainly understand the fundamentals of human behaviour. If not, clicking on every link and every popup is certain to teach them a thing or two, fairly quickly.

Also, how is this Facebook's problem? They provide the medium, but they can't be responsible for the message it delivers, or they'd be actively censoring everything everyone does on their site. Have you seen some of the drivel these sites deliver? Can you imagine being one of the operators charged with keeping it all in line? I can't. I'd go mad. Or, rather, I'd go mad if I were policing today's level of FB content -- if FB were censored, I doubt it would ever have become this popular.

Comment And? (Score 5, Insightful) 179

This is not new news, really. There is always some scam going around that takes advantage of the inability of most users to distinguish untrusted content from trusted content, not to mention the people who click Yes to every pop-up without understanding what they've just done.

Facebook is a gold mine for scams like this. There are way too many people using the site that don't care about the dangers. Apathy and ignorance are best ways to spread this kind of thing, and they are found aplenty in any social networking crowd, at least when it comes to the technology behind the social aspect.

Music

LimeWire Sued Again, Publishers Seek $150,000 Per Song 168

betterunixthanunix writes "Another lawsuit has been filed against LimeWire, this time by the National Music Publishers Association. They claim that LimeWire also damaged them, and seek $150,000 per infringement, putting the maximum possible damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars. LimeWire seems to have become the latest music industry punching bag. 'David Israelite, chief executive of the publishers' association, said his organization had decided to bring the complaint because most publishers were not represented in the record company lawsuit and they were now confident that they had a winning case. ... LimeWire, which says it is trying to start a new paid subscription model, said in a statement on Wednesday that it welcomed the publishers to the table. '"
Censorship

Scientology Tries To Block German Documentary 565

eldavojohn writes "The Guardian is reporting on the strained relationship that Scientology is having with the German government and the airing of a pesky documentary on Southwest Broadcasting. Until Nothing Remains, a $2.3 million documentary, is slotted to air on German television at the end of this month. It recounts the true story of Heiner von Rönn and his family's suffering when he tried to leave the Church of Scientology. A Scientology spokesperson called the film false and intolerant and also said they are investigating legal means to stop the film from being aired. More details on the film can be gleaned here."
The Internet

Verizon Blocking 4chan 677

An anonymous reader writes "According to 4chan's owner and administrator 'moot,' Verizon has explicitly blocked all traffic on their network from boards.4chan.org, where all of 4chan's boards are located. Moot explains that only traffic to and from port 80 is being dropped and they were able to confirm that it was intentional. 4chan's downtime for Verizon users has been in effect for at least 72 hours since Saturday, February 7."
The Military

Android Goes To the Battlefield 128

wiseandroid writes "Google's mobile operating system Android has won plenty of adherents among cellphone makers and gadget manufacturers since its 2007 debut. Now defense contractor Raytheon is preparing it for a more urgent mission: saving lives in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Using Android software tools, Raytheon engineers have built a basic application for military personnel that combines maps with a buddy list. Raytheon calls the entire framework the Raytheon Android Tactical System, or RATS for short. Mark Bigham, a vice president of business development in Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems unit, says the company selected Android because its open source nature made developing applications easy."
Sci-Fi

How Do You Greet an Extraterrestrial? 803

The LA Times is running a story about Earth Speaks, a companion project to SETI, which focuses on how we would communicate with intelligent extraterrestrial life, should we happen to discover it. Far more effort has been devoted to searching for signals or a means to communicate than the question of what we might say once contact is established, and the folks at SETI have set up a website to gather opinions on what the best questions and statements are. "So far, the messages break down into a few distinct categories. Some people want to throw a block party to welcome the aliens to the neighborhood. Others, less trusting, would warn the aliens that we've got guns and know how to use them. Another group, possibly influenced by having seen too many movies, would have us hide under the bed until they go away. 'If we discover intelligent life beyond Earth, we should not reply — we should freeze and play dead,' wrote one contributor." What would you say first to an alien?

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