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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 21 declined, 4 accepted (25 total, 16.00% accepted)

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Christmas Cheer

Submission + - NORAD's Santa Tracking Goes Web 2.0 (noradsanta.org)

iluvcapra writes: NORAD Tracks Santa 2007, NORAD's perennial mission of tracking the progress of Santa's sleigh as he makes his yearly sortie, has gone Web 2.0 this year, including a Google Maps mashup showing Santa's current position on Earth (at time of submission, Keetmanshoop, Namibia), a KML link to let you track Santa on Google Earth, and plots and keyhole imagery on youtube.

My only question: When Santa crosses into the ADIZ, what does he set his squawk to?

Privacy

Submission + - US Democrats Accidently Publish Whistleblowers (tpmmuckraker.com)

iluvcapra writes: "The US House Judiciary Committee recently emailed all of its potential whistleblowers information about how it was restructuring its whistleblower program. Unfortunately for its sources, it emailed them this information with their addresses in the "To:" field (and not the Bcc: field). It also cc:'d this email to the Vice President.

I'd like to think think this is some sort of ingenious subterfuge, but I'm doubtful."

Communications

Submission + - 9th Circuit Very Skeptical of NSA Surveillance (mercurynews.com)

iluvcapra writes: Yesterday before a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, the US government argued that two class action lawsuits against the government and AT&T should be dismissed, because to litigate them in open court would cause the revelation of state secrets. The lawsuits allege that the government has installed a vast system of electronic surveillance gear at internet gateways along the US west coast to monitor all internet traffic, and that this information is monitored without a warrant, even when both endpoints are domestic. The panel was extremely skeptical of the governments argument:

"Is it the government's position that when the country is engaged in a war, that the power of the executive when it comes to wiretapping is unchecked?" asked 83-year-old Judge Harry Pregerson, one of the court's staunchest liberals, of a Bush administration lawyer. "The king can do no wrong, is that what it comes down to?"


The government was unwilling to even provide a sworn affadavit that the eavesdropping was only of foreign correspondence. If the 9th Circuit allows the lawsuits to proceed, the government will appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Data Storage

Submission + - Short-Run Data Entry?

iluvcapra writes: "I recently came into the possession of about a hundred paper handwritten pages with tabular data, which I'd like to get into some kind of computer format (tab-delimited or XML would be fantastic, but any open database format would be good too. OCR wouldn't work, the handwriting is a little too fiddly, and I don't think I could hack a program that would properly interpret.

I'd rather not type the data in myself, I'd be happy to pay someone to do it. Is anyone aware of services on the web or in general that would take my stuff as a PDF and send me back a text file? I know there are services out there, but they seem to be oriented toward bulk and repeat business, and I'm really just looking for a one-time deal, and particularly I was looking for a reference and a story about how it all worked out."
Handhelds

Submission + - 18 Months Free Service with an iPhone

iluvcapra writes: "TheStreet.com is reporting some interesting news from an AT&T Conference call:
Cramer said AT&T is one of the most interesting stories coming out of the tech period. In its call, the company made it very clear that it's going to use Apple's iPhone to get customers from Verizon Wireless by giving away its service for a year and a half to those customers who buy the phone.
"
OS X

Submission + - Cocotron Builds OS X Apps on Windows

iluvcapra writes: "Cocotron today released their MIT-licensed re-implementation of the Mac OS X Foundation and AppKit frameworks, which together form the dynamic libraries and resources that form the Cocoa environment on Mac OS X. In simple terms, this means a developer can write a program in Objective-C on Mac OS X with Xcode, and as long as he uses Cocoa widgets and objects, he can cross-compile a Windows version of his application; a bit like WINE in reverse. Here is a screenshot of TextEdit running on OS X beside TextEdit running on Windows."
Movies

Submission + - WarGames Sequel Now Filming

iluvcapra writes: "This news is a little late, but on November 20th WarGames 2: The Dead Code began filming in Montreal, produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (distributor of the original WarGames) and directed by Stewart Gillard (apparently the director of such gems as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3.) Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, the team behind the original film, are not involved, and the plot revolves around a hacker breaking into a terrorism-simulation computer.

I only became aware of the new production when I read MGM was suing the rightful owner of WarGames.com for his domain name."
Microsoft

Submission + - Allchin: "I'd buy a Mac" if I didn't work

iluvcapra writes: "Computerworld reports that in a 2004 company email read in the Microsoft-Iowa anti-trust trial, Jim Allchin, at the time head of Microsoft's Windows unit, would have bought a Mac if he wasn't currently working for Microsoft. "In my view, we lost our way," he writes about Microsoft. He continued:
"I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products."


It was also revealed by prosecutors that Bill Gates has an assistant who's primary responsibility is to "make sure no permanent record of Gates' e-mail existed.""

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