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Cellphones

NTSB Recommends Cell Phone Ban For Drivers 938

Posted by Soulskill from the text-your-disapproval-from-behind-the-wheel dept.
ducomputergeek writes "According to this AP report, the National Transportation Safety Board says 'States should ban all driver use of cell phones and other portable electronic devices, except in emergencies.' 'The recommendation, unanimously agreed to by the five-member board, applies to both hands-free and hand-held phones and significantly exceeds any existing state laws restricting texting and cellphone use behind the wheel.' So what about all the cars today that come with built-in computers, navigation, internet capabilities, and cell phones?"
The Courts

Red Cross Debates If Virtual Killing Violates International Humanitarian Law 516

Posted by samzenpus from the waking-up-in-crazy-town dept.
Ron2K writes in with a story about a Red Cross committee that is debating if people playing war video games should be subject to the same humanitarian laws as people in a real war. Seriously. "With 62 billion kills in Call of Duty: Black Ops alone, a committee of the Red Cross is debating whether the International Humanitarian Law is applicable to online gamers, and if they are violating it. From the committee's site: 'While the Movement works vigorously to promote international humanitarian law worldwide, there is also an audience of approximately 600 million gamers who may be virtually violating International Humanitarian Law. Exactly how video games influence individuals is a hotly debated topic, but for the first time, Movement partners discussed our role and responsibility to take action against violations of this law in video games.' While it's questionable if gamers themselves can be prosecuted for not obeying the Geneva convention, the Red Cross committee's actions seem to be aimed more at game developers — as first person shooters become more realistic, do game developers have an obligation to include humanitarian elements?"
Image

Phelps Clan Tweets Intent To Picket Jobs Funeral Via iPhone Screenshot-sm 699

Posted by samzenpus from the god-hates-turtlenecks dept.
It comes as no surprise that Margie Phelps of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church has already declared the church's intention to picket Steve Jobs's funeral. What is interesting, is that she did so using an iPhone. The 142 characters of wrath read: "Westboro will picket his funeral.He[sic] had a huge platform; gave God no glory & taught sin. MT @AP: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has died at 56."
Portables

Solar Powered Laptops 120

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-not-easy-being-green dept.
smitty777 writes "Greentech is running a story on a solar powered laptop concept. The device was created by industrial designer Andrea Ponti, and includes a solar panel on the outside of the case as well as one below the keyboard. The idea seems to be taking shape; Samsung has a design they've been developing as well."

Comment Re:He raises a valid concern and offers a solution (Score 1) 384

Where did you get a 300 MHz Droid?

Yeah, I have a Motorola Milestone (GSM version of the same device) and it is also 550 MHz. My battery is about 30-40% when I plug it in at night, and if an app decides to misbehave, the phone is sometimes flat even before I get home from work.
Security

WordPress Hacked, Attackers Get Root Access 168

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-ya-neck dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A hacker has gained access to WordPress.com servers and site source code was exposed including passwords/API keys for Twitter and Facebook accounts. From the official blog post: 'Automattic had a low-level (root) break-in to several of our servers, and potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed. We presume our source code was exposed and copied. While much of our code is Open Source, there are sensitive bits of our and our partner's code. Beyond that, however, it appears information disclosed was limited.'"
Image

Book Review: Drupal 6 Theming Cookbook Screenshot-sm 21

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Trevor James writes "Piling up on my tech bookshelf are a bunch of excellent titles on the Drupal content management system. Earl & Lynette Miles Drupal's Building Blocks is the book on how to use the CCK, Views and Panels modules. It's part of Addison Wesley's Developer's Library and is the definitive guide to the 'trifecta' of Drupal modules. There's a lot of theory and concepts explained in granular detail here as well as recipe style tutorials — soak it up. It's an excellent resource." Read on for the rest of Trevor's review.
Twitter

Twitter Discards Client UI Community 127

Posted by Soulskill from the pack-your-junk dept.
Antique Geekmeister writes "Twitter has just decided to discard the community of developers who've created interesting and innovative UI applications. The announcement shows that they intend to switch from the 'bazaar' model of development to the 'cathedral,' with much tighter control of user interfaces for 'security' and 'consistency.'"

Comment Re:Almost worth it (Score 1) 95

by Jeremy Visser (#35346036) Attached to: Intel Completes McAfee Acquisition

McAfee is second only to Norton in the amount of effort required to remove it, and the resources it hogs.

MCPR.exe hasn't failed for me yet. That said, with regards to resource hogging -- I'll give you that. One of the many reasons we have switched to Sophos at work. 50 PCs now running Sophos -- we're never looking back.

In a perfect world, we'd be running some kind of Unix that doesn't encourage you to run as root all day long, but until that day arrives, we're stuck with supporting those that haven't yet made the switch.

Comment Re:Time to look at your own desk... (Score 1) 376

by Jeremy Visser (#34977736) Attached to: Last Days For Central IPv4 Address Pool

(If your router is anything like my OpenWrt one, if you don't run DHCPv6-PD, you'll get a dynamic /64 address on the ppp0 interface, but nothing on your LAN interface. You *could* then manually advertise that on the eth0 interface

My apologies — the end of my message seems to have been cut off. I can't remember what I was going to write, but hey. You should get the gist.

Comment Re:Time to look at your own desk... (Score 2) 376

by Jeremy Visser (#34971886) Attached to: Last Days For Central IPv4 Address Pool

You do not need to sign up for Internode's IPv6 trial.

All you have to do is change the domain in your username from "internode.on.net" to "ipv6.internode.on.net". Then, make sure IPv6 is enabled in your pppd config (e.g. check the "IPv6" box on your router, or on Debian, just add a line "ipv6 ," to /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider) and you should be away.

You'll also need to run a DHCPv6-PD client if you want the static /60 subnet, which if you bought one of the IPv6-ready routers from Internode wiil already be supported. Or on, say, Debian, just install the wide-dhcpv6-client software and you will get the static /60 subnet they are allocating.

(If your router is anything like my OpenWrt one, if you don't run DHCPv6-PD, you'll get a dynamic /64 address on the ppp0 interface, but nothing on your LAN interface. You *could* then manually advertise that on the eth0 interface

Comment Re:i'm interested in an android app for ssh tunnel (Score 1) 359

by Jeremy Visser (#34789110) Attached to: Smartphones For Text SSH Use Re-Revisited

My only complaint is that it doesn't remember passwords the way AndFTP does (another excellent tool, by the way). I'd like to not have to type in the darned password every time, but oh well, it's a lot better than no ssh.

You've never heard of SSH keys?

I've never typed a password to log on to any of my machines with ConnectBot. Nor am I planning to. There is no need for a password remembering feature (nor can I imagine there ever will be), because SSH keys makes that redundant.

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