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Businesses

RIM Accuses Motorola of Blocking Job Offers 353

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the if-i-can-have-you-nobody-will dept.
theodp writes "Taking a page from the insanely-jealous-husband-playbook, Motorola management has adopted an if-I-can't-have-you-nobody-can stance on its fired employees, reportedly blocking RIM from offering jobs to laid-off workers. In a complaint filed in state court, Motorola is charged with improperly trying to expand a previous agreement 'to prevent the RIM entities from hiring any Motorola employees, including the thousands of employees Motorola has already fired or will fire.' Through its Compete America membership, Motorola has repeatedly warned Congress that failing to accommodate the lobbying group members' 'principled' demand for timely access to talent would not be in the United States' economic interest and would make the US second-rate in education and basic research."

Comment Star Control II (Score 4, Insightful) 125

I understand that they want to make a sequel to Star Control II, and that's awesome. However, I think that ship has long since passed. If they were really serious about carrying on the spirit of the game, they could simply make a new game in the Star Control style with a new background. That's why they're called "spiritual successors." I know that's not a true sequel, but that's about as good to one as we're going to get.
Privacy

New Bill To Rein In DHS Laptop Seizures 311

Posted by kdawson from the give-it-back-now dept.
twigles writes with news of a new proposed bill that seeks to curtail DHS's power to search and seize laptops at the border without suspicion of wrongdoing. Here is Sen. Feingold's press release on the bill. The new bill has more privacy-protecting safeguards than the previous one, which we discussed last month. "The Travelers Privacy Protection Act, a bill written by US Senators Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., would allow border agents to search electronic devices only if they had reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing. In addition, the legislation would limit the length of time that a device could be out of its owner's possession to 24 hours, after which the search becomes a seizure, requiring probable cause."
The Courts

5th Circuit May Stop Patent Troll "Forum Shopping" 76

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the small-speed-bumps-in-a-patent-troll's-daily-life dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Why is a 5th Circuit product liability case getting interest from lawyers all over the country? Because it might put an end to forum shopping by 'non practicing entities' (patent trolls) who prefer to file in the Eastern District of Texas, no matter how little relevance that forum has to their case. Thanks to the rules involving 28 U.S.C. 1404(a) motions and patent cases, people who get sued in Marshall, Texas usually can't get the case transferred elsewhere, even though that forum is seen as unreasonably favorable for patent plaintiffs. But, if the panel of judges in In Re: Volkswagen rules the way some anticipate, that could all change, and there are no less than six amici curiae who have filed briefs arguing both sides of it."
Google

Google Assists In Arrest Of Indian Man 609

Posted by CmdrTaco from the many-shades-of-evil dept.
An anonymous reader writes "After a Google user posted a profane picture of the Hindu saint Shivaji, Indian authorities contacted Google to ask for his IP address. Google complied. He was arrested and is reported to have been beaten by a lathi and asked to use the same bowl to eat and to use in the toilet. Not surprisingly, Google is a keen to play this down as Yahoo is being hauled over the coals by US Congress for handing over IP addresses and emails to the Chinese Government which resulted in a Chinese democracy activist being jailed." Readers are noting that these are 2 unrelated cases — the latter is several months old.
Data Storage

Stored Data to Exceed 1.8 Zettabytes by 2011 143

Posted by CmdrTaco from the less-than-eighty-percent-porn dept.
jcatcw writes "By 2011, there will be 1.8 zettabytes of electronic data stored in 20 quadrillion files, packets or other containers because of, among other things, the massive growth rate of social networks, and digital equipment such as cameras, cell phones and televisions, according to a new study by IDC. Data is growing by a factor of 10 every five years. According to John Gantz, IDC's lead analyst, "at some point in the life of every file, or bit or packet, 85% of that information somewhere goes through a corporate computer, website, network or asset," meaning any given corporation becomes responsible for protecting large amounts of data that it and its customers may not have created. The study, which coincided with the launch of a " digital footprint" calculator, also found that as the world changes over to digital televisions, analog sets and obsolete set-top boxes and DVDs "will be heaped on the waste piles, which will double by 2011.""
Math

Mathematician Solves a Big One After 140 Years 144

Posted by kdawson from the works-with-holes dept.
TaeKwonDood notes that ScientificBlogging.com has just written about a development in applied math that was published last year. "The Schwarz-Christoffel transformation is an elegant application of conformal mapping to make complex problems faster to solve. But it didn't do well with irregular geometries or holes, so it simplified too much for a lot of modern-day mechanical engineering applications. 140 years after Schwarz and Christoffel's work, a professor at Imperial College London has generalized the equation. MatLab users rejoice!"
Space

Space Spotters Track Secret Satellites 110

Posted by Zonk from the better-than-sweeps-week dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "When government officials announced last month that a top-secret spy satellite would come falling out of the sky they said little about the satellite itself. They didn't need to. Spotters equipped with little more than a pair of binoculars, a stop watch and star charts, had already uncovered some of the deepest of the government's expensive secrets and shared them on the Internet. Thousands of people form the spotter community. Many look for historical relics of the early space age, working from publicly available orbital information. Still others are drawn to the secretive world of spy satellites, with about a dozen hobbyists doing most of the observing. When a new spy satellite is launched the hobbyists will collaborate on sightings around the world to determine its orbit, and even guess at its function. They often share their information on their web site, satobs.org."
Power

Submission + - Does any company power down at night? 11

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My Health Sciences Campus has about 8,000 computers on desks, and any night about half of them are left on. I know, because I track all the MAC addresses in case there is a virus outbreak. Aside from the current fad of "being green", has anyone had any success in encouraging users to power-down at night? Eliminate running bots, protect yourself from the next virus outbreak, keep your data safe, etc. My esteemed director's view: "I log off of my PC at night". Or does it matter, security wise, let alone power consumption wise?
Movies

Uwe Boll Returns To Small-Time Terrible Films 51

Posted by Zonk from the crawled-back-under-that-rock dept.
SatanicPuppy writes "According to Reuters Uwe Boll, the German director the critics love to hate, will return to low-budget filmmaking now that his latest and biggest production, the $70 million fantasy epic 'In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale,' bombed at the North American box office. The tax shelter loopholes that funded the previous films have been banned in Germany, making further large budget films unlikely."
Movies

Submission + - Blu-ray player 1.0? No bonus features for you! (consumerist.com)

Submitted by PontifexPrimus
PontifexPrimus writes: The current Blu-ray players won't be able to access content on disks released later on; the current generation (profile 1.0) won't be able to access the extras on newer disks (profile 1.1, "Bonus View"); the only exception being the Sony PS3. Further down the road we find profile 2.0 ("BD live") which requires internet connection capability for the player hardware. How will the owners of current players react when bonus features and other content will be denied to them on newer releases? Why would a standalone movie player require internet capability? And when will this generation be superseded by profile 3.0, profile 95 and profile XP?
Space

New Chip For Square Kilometer Radio Telescope 88

Posted by kdawson from the little-green-men-using-quantum-computers dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet Aus reported on a new low-noise chip that could help in building the $1.6B Square Kilometer Array, the world's largest radio telescope. Wikipedia claims the telescope will be 50 times as sensitive as current instruments. It will have a resolution able to detect every active galactic nucleus out to a redshift of 6, when the universe was less than 1 billion years old and way crazy. It will have the sensitivity to detect Earth-like radio leakage at a distance of several hundred to a few thousand light years, which could help greatly with the search for extraterrestrial life. The chip's designer, Prof. Jack Singh, commented on the chip's ability to help with quantum computing research, due to its ability to operate at millikelvin temperatures, necessary to prevent quantum decoherence."
Movies

Paramount to Drop HD DVD? 470

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this-might-be-it-folks dept.
zeromemory writes "The Financial Times reports that " Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD DVD after Warner Brothers' recent backing of Sony's Blu-ray technology, in a move that will sound the death knell of HD DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end." According to the Times, Warner Brother's recent defection to Blu-Ray allowed Paramount to terminate their exclusive relationship with HD DVD. Universal Studios remains the only major studio to exclusively support the HD DVD format, though rumors have surfaced that their contract may also contain a termination provision similar to that exercised by Paramount."
Security

Facebook Widget Installs Zango Spyware 137

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hate-when-that-happens dept.
BaCa writes "A malicious Facebook Widget actively spreading on the social networking site ultimately prompts users to install the infamous "Zango" adware/spyware. The tremendous success and lightning fast expansion of Facebook empowered the social networking giant with an impressive user base. Needless to say, in a digital world where web traffic equals money, such a user base attracts spammers, virus/spyware seeders, and other ethic-less online marketers like honey would attract flies."
Businesses

Submission + - FDIC closes Netbank, Inc.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of the first and best, in my opinion, internet banks in the country was closed by the FDIC today. Being a loyal customer for 8 years, I am saddened that an institution that provided me with so much great service and a cool, hi tech way [early 2000 way at least] to conduct my financial transactions is shutting down. Seems that mortgage defaults are to blame. Here's the link to the story and the defunct web page... http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200709281658DOWJONESDJONLINE000790_FORTUNE5.htm http://www.netbank.com/

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