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Submission + - South Korea Bans Selfie-stick Sales

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: South Korea has instituted large fines for selling unregistered "selfie-sticks". The problem arises because many of the devices are using Bluetooth radio spectrum, and must be certified to do so legally. Expressing doubts that the regulations and stiff fines will influence sales, one official said of them, "It's not going to affect anything in any meaningful way, but it is nonetheless a telecommunication device subject to regulation, and that means we are obligated to crack down on uncertified ones,"

Submission + - Edsac Goes Live

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Britain's National Museum of Computing has flipped the switch on the venerable Edsac computer. The arduous task of reconstructing the 1949 behemoth, fraught with little in terms of the original hardware or documentation, was brought to fruition on Wednesday. As project lead, Andrew Herbert, is quoted as saying, "We face the same challenges as those remarkable pioneers who succeeded in building a machine that transformed computing." A remarkably shaky video of the event, replete with excellent views of the floor at the videographer's feet, can be found here.

Submission + - Google Announces Image Recognition Advance

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Using machine learning techniques, Google claims to have produced software that can better produce natural-language descriptions of images. This has ramifications for uses such as better image search and for better describing the images for the blind. As the Google people put it, "A picture may be worth a thousands words, but sometimes it's the words that are the most useful..."

Submission + - Head of FCC Proposes Increasing Internet School Fund

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: The commissioners at the FCC are expected to vote, on December 11, on a proposal by Chairman Tom Wheeler to increase the funding for the nation's largest educational technology subsidy program, E-Rate, by 62 percent. The proposal is intended to be paid for by higher fees on phone service. The increased cost is pegged at $1.92 a year, per telephone line. Support for the proposal, or lack thereof, appears to be falling along partisan lines. To quote Wheeler, however, "Almost two-thirds of American schools cannot appropriately connect their students to the 21st century." National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García adds, "Today's announcement will go a long way to help level the digital playing field for our country's students and ensuring equity."

Submission + - Head of FCC Proposes Increasing Internet School Fund

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: The commissioners at the FCC are expected to vote, on December 11, on a proposal by Chairman Tom Wheeler to increase the funding for the nation's largest educational technology subsidy program, E-Rate, by 62 percent. The proposal is intended to be paid for by higher fees on phone service. The increased cost is pegged at $1.92 a year, per telephone line. Support for the proposal, or lack thereof, appears to be falling along partisan lines. To quote Wheeler, however, "Almost two-thirds of American schools cannot appropriately connect their students to the 21st century." National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García adds, "Today's announcement will go a long way to help level the digital playing field for our country's students and ensuring equity."

Submission + - Mac and Android Users Charged More on Shopping Sites Than iPhone and PC Users (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Computer science researchers from Boston's Northeastern University have proved that e-commerce sites are tracking the online shopping habits of people and will charge individuals different prices, depending on what type of device they are using to access a website.

300 participants ran product searches earlier this year on the websites of 16 big US and international retailers, online travel agencies and car rental companies.

Their search results showed that retailers like Home Depot, Sears, JC Penneys, Macy's, Cheaptickets, Orbitz, Priceline, Expedia and Travelocity have been charging higher prices to users on Macs or Android devices, and some retailers had been giving out secret discounts to users on certain devices.

Submission + - Groupon Backs Down on Gnome

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Groupon has announced they will work with the GNOME Foundation to come to a satisfactory resolution over the recent naming controversy that had the open source community up in arms. Their statement is appended to this Engaget article. Bottom line, "... if we can't come up with a mutually acceptable solution, we'll be glad to look for another name."

My question is, does this represent Gnu thinking on the part of Groupon?

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