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DRM

Submission + - Outlawed by Amazon DRM (bekkelund.net) 1

Submitted by Garabito
Garabito writes: Imagine one day you grab your Kindle and find out that it has been wiped. You contact Amazon's customer service to find that your account has been permanently disabled and all your digital purchases are now gone. And they won't even tell you why exactly, nor give you a chance to dispute their decision. This may seem like a dystopia, but it has already happened: Martin Bekkelund tells in his blog about this situation happening to a friend: "Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation. This is DRM at it’s worst."
Businesses

Submission + - Apple, ARM, and Intel

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Jean-Louis Gassée writes that Apple and Samsung are engaged in a knives-out smartphone war but when it comes to chips, the two companies must pretend to be civil because Samsung is the sole supplier of ARM-based processors for the iPhone. So why hasn’t Intel jumped at the chance to become Apple’s ARM source? "The first explanation is architectural disdain," writes Gassée. "Intel sees “no future for ARM“, it’s a culture of x86 true believers. And they have a right to their conviction: With each iteration of its manufacturing technology, Intel has full control over how to improve its processors." Next is pride. Intel would have to accept Apple’s design and “pour” it into silicon — it would become a lowly “merchant foundry“. Intel knows how to design and manufacture standard parts, but it has little experience manufacturing other people’s custom designs or pricing them. But the most likely answer to the Why Not Intel question is money. Intel meticulously tunes the price points for its processors to generate the revenue that will fund development. Intel’s published prices range from a “low” $117 for a Core i3 processor to $999 for a top-of-the-line Core i7 device. Compare this to iSuppli’s estimate for the cost of the A6 processor: $17.50. Even if more A6 chips could be produced per wafer — an unproven assumption — Intel’s revenue per A6 wafer start would be much lower than with their x86 microprocessors. In Intel’s perception of reality, this would destroy the business model. "For all of Intel’s semiconductor design and manufacturing feats, its processors suffer from a genetic handicap: They have to support the legacy x86 instruction set, and thus they’re inherently more complicated than legacy-free ARM devices, they require more transistors, more silicon. Intel will argue, rightly, that they’ll always be one technological step ahead of the competition, but is one step enough for x86 chips to beat ARM microprocessors?""
Security

Video Security Camp Is Not Space Camp, Just Based On It (Video) 38

Posted by Roblimo from the way-better-than-spending-summer-watching-TV dept.
The idea behind the United States Space Camp is to give kids (and some adults) a chance to do astronaut training-type things that will get them jazzed on science and technology, in addition to getting away from home for a while. Security Camp is sort of like that that, says instigator Marc Tobias, but is about security stuff rather than space, and somehow interviewer Timothy Lord didn't ask Tobias about plans to teach security, computer or otherwise, for space travelers, when he talked with Tobias at HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) in New York. Since Tobias is an expert in physical security (locks), and locksmithing is going to be taught at Security Camp along with electronic/hacking-type security skills, it's a good thing all participants will be checked for criminal records and tendencies before they're allowed to participate. If there are plans to make a movie about Security Camp, which Tobias didn't mention one way or the other during this interview, we hope it's better than the 1986 movie, Space Camp.
Power

UK Joins Laser Nuclear Fusion Project 199

Posted by Soulskill from the if-it's-worth-doing-it's-worth-doing-with-lasers dept.
arisvega writes with this quote from the BBC: "The UK company AWE and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have now joined with [the National Ignition Facility in the U.S.] to help make laser fusion a viable commercial energy source. ... Part of the problem has been that the technical ability to reach 'breakeven' — the point at which more energy is produced than is consumed — has always seemed distant. Detractors of the idea have asserted that 'fusion energy is 50 years away, no matter what year you ask,' said David Willetts, the UK's science minister. 'I think that what's going on both in the UK and in the US shows that we are now making significant progress on this technology,' he said. 'It can't any longer be dismissed as something on the far distant horizon.'"

Comment Re:implications (Score 1) 207

by lemonfresh33 (#35757122) Attached to: Involuntary Geolocation To Within One Kilometer
if I add in a random amount of time delay, but you average them out, you don't find out the time to my system, but the average amount of delay I have added PLUS the time to find my system. I'll end up looking further away than you think whatever happens. The only time when averaging out would sum to zero is if I sometimes add a negative delay, and sometimes a positive delay.
Space

Submission + - Brooklyn Father, Son Launch Homemade Spacecraft (wpix.com)

Submitted by Adair
Adair writes: A father and son team from Brooklyn successfully launched a homemade spacecraft nearly 19 miles (around 100,000 feet) above the Earth's surface. The craft was a 19-inch helium-filled weather balloon attached to a Styrofoam capsule that housed an HD video camera and an iPhone. The camera recorded video of its ascent into the stratosphere, its apogee where the balloon reached its breaking point, and its descent back to earth. They rigged a parachute to the capsule to aid in its return to Earth, and the iPhone broadcast its GPS coordinates so they could track it down. The craft landed a mere 30 miles from its launch point in Newburgh, NY, due to a quick ascent and two differing wind patterns. The pair spent 8 months researching and test-flying the craft before launching it in August. Columbia University Professor of Astronomy Marcel Aguera said, "They were very good but also very lucky."
Iphone

Submission + - Plane Finder iPhone app - aid to terrorist ? (ndtv.com) 1

Submitted by ProgramErgoSum
ProgramErgoSum writes: The Plane Finder AR application, developed by a British firm for the Apple iPhone and Google's Android, allows users to point their phone at the sky and see the position, height and speed of nearby aircraft. It also shows the airline, flight number, departure point, destination and even the likely course-the features which could be used to target an aircraft with a surface-to-air missile, or to direct another plane on to a collision course, the 'Daily Mail' reported. The programme, sold for just 1.79 pounds in the online Apple store, has now been labelled an 'aid to terrorists' by security experts and the US Department of Homeland Security is also examining how to protect airliners.

The new application works by intercepting the so-called Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcasts (ADS-B) transmitted by most passenger aircraft to a new satellite tracking system that supplements or, in some countries, replaces radar.
IT

Submission + - STEC Unveils Industrial-Strength SSD (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by geek4
geek4 writes: The ZeusRAM SSD is aimed at enterprises deploying heavy-duty workloads that need ultra-low latency

Solid-state storage drive maker STEC on 20 September introduced a new industrial-strength SSD aimed at enterprises deploying fast and/or continuous read/write workloads that include metadata logging, journaling, and database indexing applications.

The announcement was made at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco at the Moscone Centre.
STEC’s ZeusRAM, which is currently being tested by several high-performance OEMs, will be launched later this fall in a 3.5-inch standard form factor using a native 6Gb SAS interface, said chairman and chief executive Manouch Moshayedi.
Piracy

Submission + - Mass Mailer Worm Brings Email Misery Back (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by geek4
geek4 writes: A mass mailer worm that links to a UK website is a throwback to the days of old, security researchers said

A mass-mailer worm flooded inboxes at a number of high-profile organisations today. It struck havoc in the US yesterday and may be lurking in UK inboxes when the workforce logs-in today.

The worm, dubbed ‘Here you have’ because of its email subject line, contains what appears to be a link to an Adobe PDF file. In fact, the link takes the victim to a screensaver (.scr) file on a web page hosted on the members.multimania.co.uk domain. Users who agree to install the file are then infected by the worm which mails itself to the users’ email contacts.

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