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Submission + - 'Killing in the Name' UK No. 1 thanks to Facebook (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Josh04
Josh04 writes: Due to a 900,000+ Facebook campaign, 90's rap metal group Rage Against the Machine are this year's Christmas number 1, beating out Simon Cowell's X-Factor contestant Joe McElderry to the top spot, making 'Killing in the Name' the first ever UK download-only Christmas number 1. The popular 90's rock song had support from celebrities and the BBC, who got in trouble earlier in the week for allowing five 'fucks' to slip through the censor on a live performance.

Submission + - Not Just Drones; Military Aircraft Susceptible Too (wired.com) 2

Submitted by azoblue
azoblue writes: Tapping into drones’ video feeds was just the start. The U.S. military’s primary system for bringing overhead surveillance down to soldiers and Marines on the ground is also vulnerable to electronic interception, multiple military sources tell Danger Room. That means militants have the ability to see through the eyes of all kinds of combat aircraft — from traditional fighters and bombers to unmanned spy planes. The problem is in the process of being addressed. But for now, an enormous security breach is even larger than previously thought.

Submission + - Utah Senate Considering Anti-Cybersquatting Bill (tp1.ca)

Submitted by
soren42
soren42 writes: "Utah State Senator Stephen Urquhart, Chairman of the Transportation and Public Utilities and Technology Committee, has proposed the "Utah E-Commerce Integrity Act", a law that creates a stronger deterrent against the practice of cybersquatting. The law also expands the liability for cybersquatting activity to include the registrant's authorized licensee, agent, affiliate, representative, domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority that knowingly and actively assists a violation of this Act by the registrant. This could potentially set a precedent for similar changes at the federal level."
Earth

US Patent Office Fast Tracks Green Patents 136

Posted by samzenpus from the government-always-liked-you-best dept.
eldavojohn writes "A new initiative is being piloted where 'green' patents are given special priority over other patents in the backlogged system. David Kappos (Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO) said, 'Every day an important green tech innovation is hindered from coming to market is another day we harm our planet and another day lost in creating green businesses and green jobs. Applications in this pilot program will see a significant savings in pendency, which will help bring green innovations to market more quickly.' The details of how you qualify for a green patent (PDF) are available with patent blogs offering opinions on this initiative."
Patents

Submission + - Red Hat Files Amicus Brief in Bilski Patent Case (groklaw.net)

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Red Hat has filed a friend of the court brief with the Supreme Court in regards to the In Re Bilski case, which has become incredibly important due to the possibility that it could redefine the scope of patentable subject matter in a way that affects software patents. In the brief, Red Hat argues that software should not be considered patentable subject matter because it causes economic harm due to patents being granted with vague subject matter, which makes it impossible to say that a given piece of software doesn't arguably infringe upon someone's patent. They also point out Knuth's famous quote that you can't differentiate between 'numeric' and 'non-numeric' algorithms, because numbers are no different from other kinds of precise information. It's a pity, though, that they don't seem to directly address Professor Lee Hollaar's brief that gave a hand-waving excuse about the Curry-Howard correspondence being merely 'cosmetic' (whatever that means), even though you can turn ZFC into a program (ZFC being the axiomatic framework in which almost all math is done) and you can turn programs into math in order to verify them. Of course, this is the guy who called the successor function 'essentially nonsense', presumably because he doesn't think that mathematicians can differentiate between assignment and equality the way computer scientists can."
Security

Microsoft Blocks Pirates From Security Essentials Software 291

Posted by samzenpus from the not-for-you dept.
CWmike writes "Microsoft will block users running counterfeit copies of Windows from installing the free Security Essentials antivirus software, said Alex Kochis, director of Microsoft's Genuine Windows team, in a post to a company blog. On-again, off-again debates about the wisdom of blocking security-oriented downloads like patches or defensive software have centered around the argument that Microsoft should protect all users, including pirates, since hijacked PCs threaten the entire Windows ecosystem. In this case, though, one analyst isn't buying that line. 'I can't see any justification for making Microsoft give away Security Essentials [to counterfeit Windows users],' said John Pescatore, Gartner's primary security analyst. 'Those people have many other choices, including free. There are plenty of alternatives to Security Essentials,' he said, adding that that makes a difference. Windows patches, on the other hand, aren't available from anyone but Microsoft."

Submission + - A Look Inside Microsoft's New Container Farm (datacenterknowledge.com) 1

Submitted by
1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: "Microsoft today opened the doors on its $500 million container data center near Chicago, an immense 700,000 square foot structure that is a key ingredient in the company's ambitions for its Live suite of cloud computing services. The new data center allows Microsoft to deploy 40-foot long double-decker containers, with the bottom level packed with up to 2,000 servers while the top container holds power and cooling infrastructure. Microsoft announced the facility back in 2007, but in the meantime Google has disclosed that it built its own container-filled data center in late 2005. Google also holds a patent for a data center container design."
Science

Submission + - Cosmic ray intensity reaches its highest levels in (popsci.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A NASA probe found that cosmic ray intensities in 2009 had increased by almost 20 percent beyond anything seen in the past 50 years. Such cosmic rays arise from distant supernova explosions and consist mostly of protons and heavier subatomic particles — just one cosmic ray could disable unlucky satellites or even put a mission to Mars in jeopardy. http://www.popsci.com.au/node/38966

Submission + - Nvidia discloses details on next-gen Fermi GPU (techreport.com)

Submitted by
EconolineCrush
EconolineCrush writes: "The Tech Report has published the first details describing the architecture behind Nvidia's upcoming Fermi GPU. More than just a graphics processor, Fermi incorporates many enhancements targeted specifically at general-purpose computing, such as better support for double-precision math, improved internal scheduling and switching, and more robust tools for developers. Plus, you know, more cores. Some questions about the chip remain unanswered, but it's not expected to arrive until later this year or early next."

Submission + - NVidia Cripples PhysX "Open API" 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a foot-meet-bullet type move, NVidia is going to disable PhysX engine if you are using a display adapter other than one that came from their company. This despite the fact that you may have an NVidia card on your system specifically to do this type of processing. "For a variety of reasons some development expense, some quality assurance and some business reasons Nvidia will not support GPU accelerated PhysX with Nvidia GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non-Nvidia GPUs." Time to say hello to Microsoft dx physics or Intel's Havok engine.
Businesses

Submission + - Oracle Fined for Benchmark Claims

Submitted by
pickens
pickens writes: "Information Week reports that the Transaction Processing Council, which sets benchmarks for measuring database performance, has fined Oracle $10,000 for Oracle's ads published August 27 and September 3 on the front page of the Wall Street Journal which violate the "fair use" rules that govern TPC members by "comparing an existing TPC result to something that does not exist." The ads said to expect a product announcement on October 14 that would demonstrate that some sort of hybrid Oracle-Sun setup would offer two-digit performance on the TPC-C online transaction processing test compared to IBM's 6 million transaction per minute result on its Power 595 running AIX and DB2. The TPC Council serves as a neutral forum where benchmark results are aired and compared. "At the time of publication, they didn't have anything" submitted to the council says Michael Majdalany, administrator of the council adding that that Oracle is free to use TPC numbers once it submits an audited result for the Sun-Oracle system. Fines by the TPC are infrequent with the last action a $5,000 fine levied against Microsoft in 2005 for unsupported claims about SQL Server. "It takes a fairly serious violation to warrant a member being fined," says Majdalany. Oracle published the claims as the company faces steepening losses of Sun Sparc customers to IBM and HP, which have seen the period of uncertainty over the future of Sun's hardware as a time to poach Sun customers."
Chrome

IE8 Beats Other Browsers In Laptop Battery Life 263

Posted by timothy from the not-without-windows-it-doesn't dept.
WARM3CH writes "AnandTech tested a laptop with an AMD CPU, a laptop with an Intel CPU, and a netbook to compare battery life while running Internet Explorer 8, Opera 10, Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Chrome. They tested on simple web pages and flash-infested ones. IE8 had the best battery life on both laptops (followed by FF + AdBlock), and Safari had the worst battery life. On the netbook, Chrome was slightly ahead of IE8. The report concludes: 'Overall, Internet Explorer and Firefox + AdBlock consistently place near the top, with Chrome following closely behind. Opera 10 Beta 3 didn't do as well as Opera 9.6.4, and in a couple quick tests, it doesn't appear that the final release of Opera 10 changes the situation at all. Opera in general — version 9 or 10 — looks like it doesn't do as well as the other major browsers. Safari is at the back, by a large margin, on all three test notebooks. We suspect that Safari 4 does better under OS X, however, so the poor Windows result probably won't matter to most Safari users.'"
Biotech

Father of Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug, Dies at 95 227

Posted by timothy from the a-billion-here-a-billion-there dept.
countincognito writes "Norman Borlaug, a genuinely remarkable man and the father of the Green Revolution in agriculture, has died of cancer at his Dallas home aged 95. His life's work on developing high-yield, disease-resistant crops has been credited with having saved an estimated one billion people from famine, and one billion hectares of forest and rainforest from being cleared for agricultural production."

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