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Communications

HTC Dragging Feet On GPL Source Release For "Hero" Phone 181

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the something-about-defecating-where-you-eat dept.
Squiff writes to mention that despite being based on the Open Handset Alliance's Android platform and using several open source components, HTC are effectively refusing to release the source for the GPL parts of their "Hero" Phone code, saying that they are "waiting for their developers to provide it." It has been called an "object of lust," it's beating the iPhone for awards, and it seems to be the first Android phone that really is "the phone to have," to hear some people tell it. It has also just become available in the US after a June release in Europe.
Privacy

Massachusetts Police Can't Place GPS On Autos Without Warrant 194

Posted by Soulskill from the good-news-suspects dept.
pickens writes "The EFF reports that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has held in Commonwealth v. Connolly that police may not place GPS tracking devices on cars without first getting a warrant, reasoning that the installation of the GPS device was a seizure of the suspect's vehicle. Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime. According to the decision, 'when an electronic surveillance device is installed in a motor vehicle, be it a beeper, radio transmitter, or GPS device, the government's control and use of the defendant's vehicle to track its movements interferes with the defendant's interest in the vehicle notwithstanding that he maintains possession of it.' Although the case only protects drivers in Massachusetts, another recent state court case, People v. Weaver in the State of New York, also held that because modern GPS devices are far more powerful than beepers, police must get a warrant to use the trackers, even on cars and people traveling the public roads."

Submission + - The Dangers of "Social Spam" (slate.com)

Submitted by Kandinsky51
Kandinsky51 writes: Marketing ploys that trick you into contacting all your friends about a product, like the ViddyHo GChat epidemic from a few months ago or a more recent one from WeGame, expose the danger that social networks pose for a new sort of spam. Rather than send Rolex ads straight to your junk bin, these emails or IMs pose as social network updates that promise a photo or video. If you register and provide your webmail login--which plenty of people do, amazingly--the site can mine your contacts and email them all on your behalf. Most examples have been innocuous thus far, but it's a huge opportunity for more malicious spammers.
Intel

Submission + - Intel releases CPUs for gaming laptops & mobil

Submitted by
adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: "The Core i7 processor, codenamed "Nehalem," created quite the buzz in the desktop community, tearing up performance charts. Thankfully, every Intel chip that ends up in a desktop is usually followed by a mobile version. At the IDF this year, Intel introduced three top-shelf mobile Core i7s, codenamed "Clarksfield": The Core i7-920XM (Extreme), the Core i7-820QM, and the Core i7-720QM. The launch is focused primarily on high-end and gaming laptops that are also affordable. With Clarksfield, Intel gives us a glimpse of what to expect for laptops in the coming year. We knew performance would tip the scales in the Core i7's favor, and the benchmark tests proved it. The big picture here is that these processors, especially the Core i7 820QM and 720QM, will begin to show up in hardcore gaming and very high-end multimedia systems for a lot less than what you would pay for the Alienware M17x ($4,850) and Falcon Northwest Fragbook DRX ($6,449)."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - SPAM: Cell phones rated by radiation emitted

Submitted by
IP-192.com
IP-192.com writes: "Concerned about cell-phone radiation? The Environmental Working Group has you covered! The Washington, DC based advocacy group has rated cell phones, based on how much radiation they emit. The tracking tool allows visitors to check radiation levels for 1,200 models of cell phones and smart phones, and results can be reviewed using criteria such as carrier, regular and smart phones, and legacy phones."
Link to Original Source
Security

Submission + - Health care exemption on data breeches (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
Combat Wombat
Combat Wombat writes: "New data breach rules for US healthcare providers have come under criticism from a security firm that specialises in encryption. As part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which comes into effect from 23 September, health organisations in the US that use encryption will no longer be obliged to notify clients of breaches."

Submission + - Time & Attendance for the Mid-Size Business

Submitted by NuclearRampage
NuclearRampage writes: I work for a mid-size manufacturing company with ~2000 employee and 7 satellite sites all using leased ethernet barcode clocks with collection software from 1999. Not only is it expensive to lease the clocks, but is very hard to extract data from collection software to get the management customized reports. We started down the road of looking for new systems that we can host in-house and it seams ridiculous that simple clock with bar code scanner ranges from $500 to $1700 just because it communicates with the vendors specific software. Has anyone rolled their own time & attendance system or found a decent vendor that won't charge $100,000 to do time & attendance for 2000 people?
Censorship

Submission + - Amazon bans public domain from Kindle (sacred-texts.com) 6

Submitted by
John B. Hare
John B. Hare writes: "John B. Hare writes "Many publishers of public domain content on the Kindle are being turned away for reasons which Amazon declines to clarify. In the past two weeks any publisher posting a public domain book (or a book which appears to be a public domain book) have received the message "Your book is currently under review by the Kindle Operations team as we are trying to improve the Kindle customer experience. Please check back in 5 business days to see if your book was published to the store."

Amazon claims that this is a quality control issue, that readers can't figure out on their own that a five page Kindle book for $9.99 is a rip-off or yet another Kindle edition of 'Pride and Prejudice' is pointless. This was supposed to be the point of user feedback and the Kindle return policy: the user can quickly decide what the best choice is, and if they don't like it, back out without any harm done.

I own and run one of the primary contributors of new public domain etexts on the web: sacred-texts.com. When the ban went into effect, I was just back from an intense round of chemo. I was disappointed to get this message. I am (was?) in the process of converting all of the 2000+ ebooks at sacred-texts into Kindle editions. I use a homebrew preflight Kindle filter to construct the Kindle binary from my master files, which we have invested nearly a million dollars into creating. We spend thousands a month in-house doing legal clearance, scanning, OCRing, and proofing, often by domain experts. So we are hardly a fly-by-night operation. In fact, many of the PD texts floating around on the Internet and on the Kindle were originally done at sacred-texts at great investment of labor and time. Our Kindle return rate is close to zero.

This morning I received an email stating:

Dear Publisher,

We're working on a policy and procedure change to fix a customer experience problem caused by multiple copies of public domain titles being uploaded by a multitude of publishers. For an example of this problem, do a search on "Pride and Prejudice" in the Kindle Store. The current situation is very confusing for customers as it makes it difficult to decide which 'Pride and Prejudice' to choose. As a result, at this time we are not accepting additional public domain titles through DTP, including the following: The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
Traces of a Hidden Tradition in Masonry and Medieval Mysticism
The History of the Knights Templar by Nicolas Notovitch...


If you believe that we have wrongly identified this title as a public domain title, and you are the copyright holder or are authorized to sell it by the copyright holder, then please reply to title-submission@amazon.com with appropriate documentation of your e-book rights.

Thank you, Amazon.com

As can be seen, this brings an entirely new issue into play: apparently, if I owned the rights to a public domain book and can prove it, they will reconsider. However, nobody can own a public domain book. Amazon is telling us that in order to post our books we need to prove a contradiction!

One key point is that Amazon has applied this ban completely non-selectively. Established publishers such as myself and others who have never had any quality control issues whatsoever, and give good value for the price, have all been tarred with the broad brush of 'Public Domain Publisher--do not post'.

By banning new public domain books from the Kindle, they are making an implicit decision as to which books people should read. You can argue that 'you can get these texts anywhere' but by excluding high quality Kindle books of them from the nascent Kindle marketplace, Amazon is implicitly trying to decide what is a valid part of our culture and what isn't. This trend does not bode well for the future of ebooks.

"
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft offers Windows 7 to students for $30

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft today announced students would be able to purchase upgrade versions of Windows 7 for a significantly reduced price until January 3, 2010 at 12:00am CST. A valid e-mail address given by a college or university must be used. An e-mail will be sent telling the student if he or she qualifies for the discount. Eligible students are allowed to purchase one copy of either Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional from the online store. The discount price applies to the following countries: the UK (£30) and the US ($30). More information is available at 741.com, a site just launched today that is dedicated to advertising Windows 7 to students.

"In the US, students can pre-order their copy of Windows 7 beginning September 17th and can download the OS beginning on October 22nd (general availability)," a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed with Ars. "Students in the UK can pre-order their copy beginning on September 30th for download on October 22nd. Students in all other participating markets can take advantage of the offer beginning on October 22nd. In most markets, the offer ends on January 3rd (in Australia the offer is available until March 31st).

Submission + - Security/Privacy Advice

Submitted by James-NSC
James-NSC writes: My employer is changing its policy towards employee use of social networks. I've been asked to give a 40 minute presentation to the entire company (attendance is mandatory) on the security and privacy concerns pertaining to social networking. While I was putting it together, I ended up with some miscellaneous information that pertains to security/privacy in general. Ex: the emerging ATM skimming (mainly for our European employees), a reminder that email is not private, malware/drive-by in popular search results, things of that nature. Since these don't really fall into the slated topic, I've ended up with a section titled "While I have you...". I'm going to have the attention of every employee and with attendance being mandatory, I thought it would be a great opportunity to give advice on security/privacy issues as a whole and not just those pertaining to social networks. As it's an opportunity that one seldom gets, I'd hate to not utilize it to its full potential. If you had the attention of an entire company with employees in the US, UK, Asia and Australia, what advice would you give?
Privacy

Submission + - Secret GPS tracking now legal in Massachusetts

Submitted by dr. fuzz
dr. fuzz writes: The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has ruled in favor of John Law tracking you with secret GPS devices in Massachusetts provided a warrant is obtained. You've been warned. To the dissenters' credit Justice Ralph Gants is quoted with "Our constitutional analysis should focus on the privacy interest at risk from contemporaneous GPS monitoring, not simply the property interest"

Submission + - Cirque DuSoleil Founder will pay $35 Million to Cl (reuters.com)

Submitted by TechnologyResource
TechnologyResource writes: Guy Laliberté, the Canadian founder of Cirque DuSoleil, will pay $35 million to blast into space from a Russian space station on September 30, 2009. His mission is to put on a two-hour live show for the astronauts in orbit on the eleven day trip. Laliberté is also using the event to promote global access to clean water. Laliberté wants to "tickle the station's astronauts" just in case mach 12 at 17,500 mph into space doesn't tickle them enough. The live clown show will be broadcast from the International Space Station on October 9, 2009. Laliberté will be the first clown (with a red nose) and the seventh private citizen to tour space.
The Courts

Lawyer Demands Jury Stops Googling 517

Posted by CmdrTaco from the justice-has-no-wifi dept.
coomaria noted an unsurprising story about how courts are having problems with jurors Googling during cases. As anyone who has ever been called for jury duty knows, you aren't allowed to get outside information about the case you are hearing, but apparently the iPhone makes it far too easy to ignore this advice. A lawyer is trying to get jurors to sign a form explicitly stating they won't "use 'personal electronic and media devices' to research or communicate about the case." Of course, I'm not exactly sure why a juror should need to sign something for your iPhone but not a newspaper.

Submission + - SPAM: A few teachers at my school have incorporated vide

Submitted by sm_maven
sm_maven writes: Creating and incorporating videos can transform lessons, activities and even entire courses. Learning content featured in videos can be checked for understanding with tests and quizzes administered online or in a face-to-face classroom.
Link to Original Source

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