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Submission + - Glenn Beck Does Not Understand Net Neutrality

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apparently Net Neutrality is so confusing that Glenn Beck and the expert they bring in do not understand what it means either. Today, The Glenn Beck Show (on Fox News Network) aired a segment where they appear to compare net neutrality to "giving away radios". Hopefully the FCC has a better grasp of the concept when they make their decision on Thursday when they vote to begin crafting regulations.
Handhelds

Submission + - Nokia 810 Revealed

Submitted by saintlupus
saintlupus writes: Nokia has announced the N810 Internet Tablet, the successor to the N770 and N800 models. More details here and here.
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Sony cuts prices on PS3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sony has announced price cuts on the high-end model, and also is introducing a new low-end model in the US($399). The new model has lost the ability to play PlayStation 2 games, a decision based on the "extensive" lineup of PlayStation 3 games. The 80GB model, which retains backward compatibility, will now retail for $499.
Handhelds

Submission + - Palm Foleo cancelled

Submitted by
garyebickford
garyebickford writes: "Palm has just sent out a letter to its newsletter list, announcing the cancellation of the Foleo. The notice is also posted to their Blog.

"As many of you are aware, we are in the process of building our next generation software platform. We are very excited about how this is coming together. It has a modern, flexible UI, instant performance, and an incredibly simple and elegant development environment. We are working hard on this platform and on the first smartphones that will take advantage of it. In the course of the past several months, it has become clear that the right path for Palm is to offer a single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts. To that end, and after careful deliberation, I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all our energies on delivering our next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market. We will, of course, continue to deliver products in partnership with Microsoft on the Windows Mobile platform, but from our internal platform development perspective, we will focus on only one."
According to the email, 'Foleo II' will be based on the new platform (which I surmise is the Linux based PDA platform) They also say that this cancellation will cause a $10 million charge-off — 'a lot of money, but less than the costs of supporting two platforms', and offer both thanks and apologies to developers and potential customers."
Graphics

Submission + - AMD 2GB R600-Based Pro Graphics Card Emerges (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Images have emerged of the first ATI R600-based graphics card to sport 2GB of frame buffer memory. The Diamond Multimedia VFX 2000 shown here is based on AMD's ATI R600 GPU, but the card's PCB and firmware has been modified from the standard HD 2900 XT reference design to support the workstation-class features inherent to the FireGL line of professional graphics cards. GPU and RAM frequencies were not available, but word is the VFX 2000 will likely be similar to ATI's high-end FireGL V8650 only a lot less expensive."
Microsoft

Submission + - Polands vote on OOXML: yes

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to PKN Polish decision is "approval with comments":
"approval with comments" — 17 votes
"abstain" — 3 votes
"disapprove" — 0 votes

Here's the official site (in polish):
http://www.pkn.pl/index.php?pid=dis29500&cid=1
Privacy

Submission + - Betcha.com beats US ban on Online Gambling? (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by
Jared
Jared writes: "Bills itself as the world's first "honor-based betting platform" that connects people "who like to bet" and likens the site to "gentleman's bets," calling it "betting," not "gambling. Betcha.com claims that it's a legal service under the premise that bettors are allowed to welch on their bets, meaning that there's no gambling actually taking place. Users are given an eBay-style rating based on whether or not they pay up after losing a bet.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8859/P2P+Betting%3F+B etcha.com+Exploits+Loophole+in+US+Online+Gambling+ Law"
Upgrades

Submission + - DARPA Urban Challenge

Submitted by saldate
saldate writes: I was surprised that this was overlooked by Slashdot readers, I found it to be pretty cool and somewhat inspiring. The DARPA Urban Challenge (think of it as DARPA Grand Challenge v2.0) is pushing autonomous automotive travel to the next stage of development, the urban zone. Obviously, the initial target of the project is aimed at military application, but simultaneously paves the way for commercial use. Have a look at the video and articles below:

Video:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/ a/2007/06/15/BUROBOCARTEST15.DTL&o=0

Articles:
http://origin.mercurynews.com/news/ci_6147098?ncli ck_check=1
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/06/how_stanford s_r.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/technology/15rob ot.html?_r=1&em&ex=1182052800&en=5ff9a120cd2b0a2d& ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6191180.html
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/15/stanfords-junio r-volkswagen-passes-first-darpa-test/
http://news.com.com/2300-11394_3-6191150-1.html
Biotech

Submission + - Genetically Engineered Maize Is Toxic

Submitted by gandracu
gandracu writes: It appears that a variety of Genetically Engineered maze produced by Monsanto is toxic for the liver and kidneys. What's worse, Monsanto knew about it, but tried to conceal the facts in its own publications. Greenpeace had to fight in court to obtain the incriminatory data and had it analyzed by a team of experts. MON863, the variety of GE maze in question, has been authorised for markets in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, the Phillipines, and USA, besides the EU. Here is a link[PDF] to Greenpeace's brief on the study, and here is their account[PDF] of how the story was unearthed.
Linux Business

Submission + - Texas Opens the Door for Linux

Submitted by
whurley
whurley writes: "State Senator John Carona (R-Dallas) has filed a bill designed to decrease expenditures on computing in the Texas state government. Recognizing that the State's procurement process requires bidding which favors proprietary software, SB 1579 opens the door to cost savings through exploitation of efficient technologies unavailable in the past. Senator Carona said his practical and innovative proposal was recommended by a constituent in private industry. One of the quotes from the Senator is "Through the implementation of Open Source Software we may lower our information technology costs, increase the reliability and security of our systems, improve service to citizens and produce much needed economic opportunities." Is Texas (or the government in general) finally getting smarter about open source?"
Data Storage

Submission + - What do you do when you can't afford a SAN?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: What's the next best solution to having a full SAN setup for central data storage? Setting up an enterprise level SAN is so expensive that the company I work for wants to know what other solutions there are to this situation. NAS is cool for at home, but would it work for a high trafficked website? I don't know of any self contained NAS solutions that offer data redundancy. The only way I can think of to get that would be to have an actual server with RAID set up on the disks. I have searched the web, reading white papers and other material, but I would like to hear from the horse's mouth what works best and is easiest to set up. One thing to keep in mind, and I know many /. readers will not like this but, we are in a Windows environment, and the gears that turn will not be able to change this.
Space

Submission + - Cassini Returns Amazing New Imagery from Saturn

Submitted by SeaDour
SeaDour writes: The Cassini spacecraft has recently entered a highly-inclined orbit around Saturn, revealing some never-before-seen images of the planet's ring system as seen from above and below the planet. "Finally, here are the views that we've waited years for," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute. "Sailing high above Saturn and seeing the rings spread out beneath us like a giant, copper medallion is like exploring an alien world we've never seen before. It just doesn't look like the same place. It's so utterly breath-taking, it almost gives you vertigo." The spacecraft will eventually return to its standard orbit parallel to the ring plane in late June.
Sony

Submission + - Blu-Ray DVD player to be as cheap as $299?

Submitted by
Jake
Jake writes: "Powered by the launch of the PlayStation 3 game system, sales of Sony Blu-ray titles have surpassed Toshiba HD DVDs. Tracking of sales on Nielsen VideoScan, as well as eproductwars.com, show Blu-ray titles are significantly outpacing the rival format. Blu-ray DVDs accounted for a 65 percent share of the market for the week ended Feb. 18, according to data from Nielsen. That marks a reversal from late November, when HD-DVD accounted for 63 percent of sales. Similarly, of the top 10 titles currently available in the formats on Amazon.com, Blu-ray titles averaged a sales rank of 246, while HD DVD titles averaged 763 earlier this week. Blu-ray started outpacing HD-DVD on a few of the key eproductwars.com charts on Jan. 15, said Tony Small, founder of the site. "By the end of January, [Blu-ray was] taking the lead consistently on nearly all of them," he said. HD DVD players hit the market several months before their competitor last year and their titles have led sales figures throughout the year. But Sony bundled Blu-ray into its PS3 game system, which has shipped about 700,000 units in North America since its November release. Blu-ray sales surpassed HD DVD the week after Christmas, according to Nielsen, which does not break out exact sales figures of the discs. Sony and Toshiba have been widely criticized for the format battle, which analysts say has stymied the home video market and caused consumer frustration and confusion. Sony, in particular, has been cited for overpricing its Blu-ray-bundled PS3 system. Some companies recently have sought to sidestep the battle by selling dual-format DVDs and players. On Monday, Sony Electronics President and Chief Operating Officer Stan Glasgow said the company will drop prices on its Blu-ray players significantly this year, possibly as low as $299, which could give Sony an even greater edge in the format war. Currently Blu-ray players retail for $999, compared with HD-DVD players, which retail for $499. If the Prices do drop that low I wounder if it will have an effect on the PS3. We will just have to wait and see."
Encryption

Submission + - Decryption Keys for HD-DVD found, confirmed

Submitted by kad77
kad77 writes: It appears 'muslix64' was the real deal, despite skepticism. Through a riddle posted here: http://pastebin.com/853659 members on the doom9 forum identified the Title key for the HD-DVD release 'Serenity'. Volume Unique Keys and Title keys for other discs followed within hours, confirming that software HD-DVD players, like any common program, store important run-time data in memory. Round One has been won for the Fair Use crowd, how will the industry respond? Links to decryption utility and sleuthing info in original doom9 forum thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119871

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