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Google

Submission + - Google Voice rejected for its dialer functionality

Submitted by
whoop
whoop writes: "From TechCrunch, "In a letter to the FCC today, Google disclosed previously unpublished information about Appleâ(TM)s rejection of their Google Voice application... 'Apple representatives informed Google that the Google Voice application was rejected because Apple believed the application duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone'""
Image

Google Latitude Helps Catch Robber Screenshot-sm 5

Posted by samzenpus from the track-it-down dept.
linuxwrangler writes "Janina Valiente was robbed by a purse snatcher while waiting for a bus in San Francisco. But she remembered that she had recently downloaded Google Latitude as a joke so she and her sisters could 'stalk each other.' Using a bystander's phone, she called her sister who told her the phone was at Fell and Ashbury which is exactly where police located and arrested the robber."
Privacy

Privacy In BitTorrent By Hiding In the Crowd 240

Posted by CmdrTaco from the even-kids-can-still-find-waldo dept.
pinguin-geek writes "Researchers at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University have identified a new 'guilt-by-association' threat to privacy in peer-to-peer (P2P) systems that would enable an eavesdropper to accurately classify groups of users with similar download behavior. While many have pointed out that the data exchanged over these connections can reveal personal information about users, the researchers shows that only the patterns of connections — not the data itself — is sufficient to create a powerful threat to user privacy. To thwart this threat, they have released SwarmScreen, a publicly available, open source software that restores privacy by masking a user's real download activity in such a manner as to disrupt classification."
The Courts

Appeals Court Rules Against Google On Keyword Ads 39

Posted by timothy from the black-robes-and-handwaving dept.
Eric Goldman writes "The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Google in Rescuecom v. Google (PDF), a trademark infringement lawsuit over Google's keyword advertising practices. The court said: 'The Complaint's allegations that Google's recommendation and sale of Rescuecom's mark to Google's advertisers, so as to trigger the appearance of their advertisements and links in a manner likely to cause consumer confusion when a Google user launches a search of Rescuecom's trademark, properly alleges a claim under the Lanham Act.' While this result hampers Google's ability to end trademark lawsuits early, the case is still at an early stage and Google could still win."

Windows 95 Almost Autodetected Floppy Disks 334

Posted by timothy from the be-nearly-nostalgic dept.
bonch writes "Windows 95 almost shipped with a technique for detecting whether a floppy disk was inserted without spinning up the drive. Microsoft's floppy driver developer discovered a sequence of commands that detected a disk without spinup — unfortunately, unspecified behavior in the floppy hardware specification meant that half the drives worked one way and half the other, each giving opposite results for the detection routine. Microsoft considered a dialog prompting the user to insert a disk to 'train' the routine, but the idea was scrapped."
Music

How $1,500 Headphones Are Made 353

Posted by kdawson from the oiled-by-mother-nature dept.
CNETNate writes "A tour of Sennheiser's Hanover factory reveals for the first time how its audiophile headphones are assembled by hand. The company recently announced its most expensive and innovative headphones to date, the HD 800, which discarded the conventional method of headphone driver design for a new 'donut-shaped' ring driver idea. Only 5,000 of these headphones can be made in a year, and this gallery offers a behind-the-scenes look at the construction process."
Government

Federal CIO Kundra Takes Leave of Absence After Woes 193

Posted by Soulskill from the this-can-only-end-well dept.
CWmike writes "The fallout from Thursday's arrests of a District of Columbia IT security official and contractor quickly raised questions about the fate of Vivek Kundra, the new federal CIO who until recently ran the office now mired in bribery allegations. Appointed by President Barack Obama as CIO less than two weeks ago, Kundra was CTO for the District of Columbia. But yesterday, Kundra's former office in a downtown government building was a crime scene. A White House official, speaking on background, confirmed today that Kundra took a leave of absence from his new CIO job shortly after federal investigators arrested two men in the DC government office on bribery charges. The official would not elaborate on the reasons for the leave; there were no indications yesterday that Kundra was involved in any wrongdoing. Kundra's decision could slow his plan to create a 'revolution' in the federal government's use of technology."

Comment Re:SI units...... (Score 1) 209

by Lalakis (#27047087) Attached to: New Netbook Offers Detachable Tablet

...really? 0.90718474? Did you EVER take a science class? You can't add all that extra precision because it doesn't exist in the original measure.

Well, what if the original measure was 2.00000000 pounds? I guess that would make a difference for you.
HP

HP Releases New Netbook GUI For Ubuntu 261

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the user-friendly-the-new-goal dept.
dan of the north writes to tell us that a new custom version of Ubuntu aimed at netbooks and based on 8.04 Hardy Heron has been released by HP. Targeted to the HP Mini 1000 Mi, the netbook customization comes complete with OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Pidgin, and a few others. "Overall, HP has created one of the best thought out Linux interfaces for netbooks. The software is designed so that users who have never used Linux should have no trouble performing basic tasks. But experienced Linux users can always fire up a terminal window by hitting Alt+F2 and entering 'gnome-terminal.'"
The Internet

Germany Legislates For Mandatory Web Filters 309

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-got-a-finger-you-can-filter dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Germany's Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list (in English), which will be updated daily. The BKA (Germany's equivalent of the FBI) will be in charge of generating and maintaining the list. As usual, this is being brought in under the 'fight child porn' guise. The minister is quoted as saying: 'We must not water down the problem' in reply to being challenged that this law and technology could be used to censor other content. She then went on to say: 'I can't know what wishes and plans future governments will develop.' She has agreed the principle of the legislation with the interior minister and the technology minister, which in German coalition government terms means it's pretty much a done deal."
The Almighty Buck

Telephone Scammers Ordered To Pay $50M 88

Posted by kdawson
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission said a group of telephone scammers will pay out nearly $50 million to settle charges they deceived over a million people in a bank information fraud scheme. As is unfortunately the situation in many of these case, the $50 million restitution, while substantial, is dwarfed by the almost $172 million the FTC says Suntasia Marketing bilked out of its victims." The company used "negative option" programs, including memberships in discount buyer's and travel clubs, to keep dinging victims' bank accounts. The FTC said the eight interrelated companies running the scam employed more than 1,000 people.

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