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Google

Submission + - Google and X Prize Sponsor Moon Race (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
katicli
katicli writes: "Google and X Space have offered a prize to whoever can successfully get to the moon, land a rover, and beam a gigabyte of data. The rover must drive over a thousand feet. The team who sends the rover is completely responsible for designing and building the rover and lander and procuring their own launch vehicle. The purse is divided as follows: 20 million to whoever can do it before 2012, 5 million for second place, and 5 million for exceeding the minimum requirements. If nobody makes the 2012 deadline the purse drops to 15 million until 2014 when the contest expires. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070913/ap_on_hi_te/google_moon_prize"
Space

Submission + - Google back private Moon landings (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
ThatGuyPat
ThatGuyPat writes: ""Search giant Google is offering a $30m prize pot to private firms that land a robot rover on the Moon. Google said it would give bonuses of $5m if the rovers complete other objectives such as travelling further on the Moon, taking pictures of Apollo hardware, finding water-ice and surviving the freezing lunar night." BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6993373.stm This article and prize through the X-Prize Foundation makes me wonder — is it better to have governments landing on the moon (and other planets) or companies? Which would make for a more hectic landgrab?"
Space

Submission + - Google's $30,000,000 Lunar X PRIZE (googlelunarxprize.org) 1

Submitted by
chroma
chroma writes: "It's been a long time since anyone has explored the surface of the moon. But now Google has teamed up with the X PRIZE Foundation to offer a $30,000,000 bounty to the first privately funded organization to land a robotic rover on the moon. Google, of course, has offered the free Google Moon mapping service for a few years now. Looks like the other search engines have some catching up to do in the space exploration department."
Businesses

Submission + - Diebold rebrands what noone wants.

Submitted by Irvu
Irvu writes: Diebold has apparently failed in their bid to sell their tainted elections systems unit. Unable to find a buyer the CEO of Diebold promised that the system will be run more "openly and independently." To prove that they are serious, they renamed it. Diebold Election Systems is now Premiere Election Solutions. They still sell GEMS, AccuVote OS and the ever-unpopular AccuVote-TSX which performed so disastrously in California's Top-to-Bottom Review under the same names. Apparently their rebranding effort only goes so far.
Music

Submission + - Another example of RIAA legal incompetence

Submitted by
UnknowingFool
UnknowingFool writes: "In another move of legal brillance, the RIAA asked for a default judgement on January 25th in the case of Atlantic vs Boggs "on the ground that Defendant has failed to appear or otherwise respond to the Complaint . . ." The court denied the motion because the defendant did appear before the court a month earlier on December 20. What makes the motion appear so boneheaded is that not that the RIAA lawyers seemingly forgot that the defendant appeared, it is that defendant, representing himself at the time, appeared in person before the court while the RIAA phoned in, a move that the court admonished. The transcript seems to show that judge is sympathetic to the defendant in the case.

The Court: You're not here looking at Mr. Boggs, but I doubt seriously he's doing this. . . these titles don't seem to go along with Mr. Boggs persona."
"
Censorship

Submission + - France bans blogs from reporting violence

Submitted by
Picass0
Picass0 writes: "According to Yahoo News the French Constitutional Council has approved a law that would criminalize filming or broadcasting acts of violence by anyone other than a journalist. "The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law... ...exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991." The French government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, etc..."
Businesses

Submission + - Best Buy Confirms 'secret' Website

Submitted by Iberian
Iberian writes: Courant.com confirms Best Buy does indeed maintain a second website for what one could only assume is for fraudulent purposes.
State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ordered the investigation into Best Buy's practices on Feb. 9 after my column disclosed the website and showed how employees at two Connecticut stores used it to deny customers a $150 discount on a computer advertised on BestBuy.com.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - 3D Realms finally shows off Duke!...well a little!

Submitted by
LatexBendyMan
LatexBendyMan writes: "http://forums.3drealms.com/vb/showthread.php?t=249 63 This link takes you to the screenshot thread for the Duke Nukem Forever screenshot that was posted by 3drealms on a job website. George Brussard confirmed that this is indeed a in-game screenshot of the game and if you read through the entire thread you'll see talk from 3drealms about opening the floodgates. More pics maybe!?"
Slashdot.org

Submission + - This is what happens when you don't RTFA

Submitted by SQLGuru
SQLGuru writes: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070124/sc_nm/germs_sp onges_dc_3

People who read the article the other day that talked about how 2 minutes in the microwave would kill 99% of the bacteria on the sponge were complaining that they tried it and it ruined their microwave. Apparently, reading the whole article should have clued them in that the sponge needed to be wet. It isn't just Slashdot where people don't RTFA.
Media

Submission + - No prohibition against adult content on Blu-ray

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a recent Slashdot story it was reported that "No Blu-ray disk manufacturer would make their disks because Sony doesn't want porn on Blu-ray (just as with Betamax)." Reports now indicate that this is false. "'There's no prohibition against adult content,' Lisa Gephardt, a spokeswoman for Sony Corp. of America...."
Red Hat Software

Journal Journal: "Street kids raid poverty summit" 1

Journal by Otter
A funny story, if the kids don't wind up facing nasty retribution from the police, which they probably will...

You know that "World Social Forum" that runs as an anti-capitalist World Economic Forum? We usually get a story or two about it every year, about how Stallman gave a speech about how free software is good and Microsoft is bad and people who don't say "GNU/Linux" are even worse, and then responded to questions by pretending he doesn't know what "open source" is.

Feed Privacy Board Veils Wiretap Docs (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
A White House board overseeing privacy and civil liberties says no to a Wired News sunshine request for documents on the government's warrantless wiretapping program. Releasing the information would "not be in the public interest," it claims. In 27B Stroke 6.


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