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Censorship

Submission + - Saudi says Blackberry deal reached (skunkpost.com)

Submitted by crimeandpunishment
crimeandpunishment writes: There's a deal on the table to avert a ban on Blackberry's messenger service in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi regulatory official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press the deal involves placing a server in Saudi Arabia....and letting the government monitor users' messages, easing Saudi concerns over security and criminal usage. The deal could have wide-ranging implications, given how many other countries have expressed similar concerns, or in the case of the United Arab Emirates, have threatened to block Blackberry email and messaging services.

Submission + - TSA Solution: ban electronics. (calacanis.com) 1

Submitted by MickyTheIdiot
MickyTheIdiot writes: Part of TSA's great (read reactionary) solution to the dumb terrorist incident on Christmas: turn off wi-fi, TV, phones, and other communication devices in the last hour of flight. This is in addition to the other reactionary measures such as "not keeping items in your lap for the last hour of flight" and being escorted to the toilet. It is apparent our security in the U.S. is run by lunatics.
Idle

Submission + - Oh Xmas Tree, Oh PDF Xmas Tree

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: It's too late for this year, but perhaps next year you should consider decorating a Rasterbator-generated Christmas tree, which CS student Carolyn notes is just the ticket for those confined to dorm rooms during the holiday season. She used The Rasterbator to transform a tree template into a huge, rasterized image in easily-printable PDF format document measuring 40"x60" (30 pages). 'It won’t fool anyone during the day,' notes Carolyn, 'but at night with the colored lights on the effect is rather striking.'
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Cops Use Xbox Live to Nab Christmas Crook

Submitted by nandemoari
nandemoari writes: Here's a piece of advice for thieves this holiday season: if you steal a game console, don't go online to play games with your crooked friends. Doing just that helped cops find a stolen Xbox 360 over the weekend. Twenty-two-year-old Jeremiah Gilliam is facing huge larceny charges this morning after cops found a veritable pile of stolen electronics in his Bronx home. According to police, Gilliam had an incredible collection of global positioning systems (GPS), video game consoles, laptop computers, cellphones and other electronic devices in his home. Usually these kinds of repeated petty crimes are difficult for police to sniff out, but thanks to some very smart cops (who I think might be gamers themselves), a game console was used to help nab Gilliam.
Science

Submission + - Extinct Ibex Resurrected by Cloning (telegraph.co.uk) 1

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
" rel="nofollow">ScuttleMonkey writes: "The Telegraph is reporting that for the first time an extinct animal has been brought back via cloning. The Pyrenean ibex, a type of mountain goat, was declared officially extinct in 2000 but thanks to preserved skin samples scientists were able to insert that DNA into eggs from domestic goats to clone a female Pyrenean ibex. While the goat didn't survive long due to lung defects this gives scientists hopes that it will be possible to resurrect extinct species from frozen tissue. "Using techniques similar to those used to clone Dolly the sheep, known as nuclear transfer, the researchers were able to transplant DNA from the tissue into eggs taken from domestic goats to create 439 embryos, of which 57 were implanted into surrogate females. Just seven of the embryos resulted in pregnancies and only one of the goats finally gave birth to a female bucardo, which died a seven minutes later due to breathing difficulties, perhaps due to flaws in the DNA used to create the clone.""
Patents

Submission + - The top underreported tech stories of 2009 (infoworld.com)

Submitted by GMGruman
GMGruman writes: Think your wireless service is crummy? Just wait until next year when the spectrum drought really hits home. And maybe you've been telling your users that installing a graphics card in an office PC is a waste of money. If that's the case, you're missing a chance to make them a lot more productive (as long as the games stay at home). You've known about CMOS for years. But do you know that an emerging technology called PCMOS, which uses non-Boolean logic, is on the verge of slashing power consumption in ASICs? Those are just three of the 10 top technology stories of 2009 you probably haven't heard about but should have heard more of. Bill Snyder reports on all 10 of these stories that haven't gotten the media attention they deserve.
Cellphones

Why Open Source Phones Still Fail 322

Posted by Soulskill from the strange-and-spooky dept.
adeelarshad82 writes "Truly open-development, open-source phones like the Nokia N900 will never hit the mainstream in the US because wireless carriers in the country hate the unexpected, writes PCMag's Sascha Segan. The open-source philosophy is all about unexpected, disruptive ideas bubbling upwards, and that drives network planners nuts. So, you get unsatisfactory hybrids like Google Android, which uses some open-source components but locks third-party developers into a crippled Java sandbox. The bottom line is that while Linux the OS, the kernel, and the memory manager are attractive to phone manufacturers, Linux the philosophy — and users banding together ad hoc to create new things — is anathema to wireless carriers."

Submission + - CRU head steps down, Michael Mann investigated (wsj.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Phil Jones, head of the British climate-research center at the heart of the swirling controversy over hacked emails, has stepped down temporarily, pending an internal review. On the other side of the pond, Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, who was included in some of the 1,000 emails, is also subject of an internal “inquiry” by the university that will determine whether a full investigation is warranted."
Cellphones

Submission + - Sprint Reveals Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times (dubfire.net) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sprint started a portal for law enforcement to access Sprint customer data. It's been a hit. According to a researcher covering the story:
"Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009"
To put that in perspective, Sprint has ~50 million customers. One request per six customers seems a little steep.

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