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The Internet

Submission + - Avoiding Red Lights by Booking Ahead (discovery.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Peter Stone, associate professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, has presented an idea at the AAAS meeting today for managing intersections: a computer in a car calls ahead to the nearest intersection it is headed towards, and says it will arrive at a given time. The intersection checks to see if anyone else is arriving then, and if the slot is open, it tells the car to proceed. If it isn't, it tells the car that and the car is responsible for slowing down or stopping.

He says that even with only a few connected cars, the system still works, even if the benefits are still only to those who have the connected vehicles.

Comment Re:LOL! (Score 1) 446

by Name Anonymous (#38952337) Attached to: Tapeheads and the Quiet Return of VHS

One of the many reasons why I won't spend a dime on Bluray.

I can think of one case where you might buy a Bluray player. If you needed a new player. Remember you can borrow Bluray Discs from most libraries. And if you have to spend the money on a new player, you may as well get something multiformat.
Censorship

YouTube Disables Comments and User Uploads For Korean Users 237

Posted by timothy from the somewhere-a-congressman-drools dept.
Craig Mundie may want a driver's license for the Internet, but Korea has actually implemented something of that kind. And, as first-time accepted submitter Pseudonym Authority writes, in the form of an excerpt from PC World: "Google has disabled user uploads and comments on the Korean version of its YouTube video portal in reaction to a new law that requires the real name of a contributor be listed along each contribution they make. The rules, part of a Cyber Defamation Law, came into effect on April 1 for all sites with over 100,000 unique visitors per day. It requires that users provide their real name and national ID card number."
Google

Submission + - Youtube Blocks Parts of Youtube from Corea (pcworld.com) 2

Submitted by
Pseudonym Authority
Pseudonym Authority writes: "Google has disabled user uploads and comments on the Korean version of its YouTube video portal in reaction to a new law that requires the real name of a contributor be listed along each contribution they make.

The rules, part of a Cyber Defamation Law, came into effect on April 1 for all sites with over 100,000 unique visitors per day. It requires that users provide their real name and national ID card number."

Comment Re:+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC (Score 2, Insightful) 757

by Name Anonymous (#32914346) Attached to: Droid X Self-Destructs If You Try To Mod

...

This is what can be done when you don't shut out your customers - I am an HTC purchaser for life now.

Or until HTC does something really stupid and doesn't back down. There are many companies who used to be great, then they changed. I'm not saying HTC will change in a bad way, but you just never know.

Comment Re:Ignorance abounds (Score 1) 559

by Name Anonymous (#31954028) Attached to: Google Street View Logs Wi-Fi Networks, MAC Addresses

In regards to Streetview itself and recording SSIDs and such, there is simply no privacy concerns. When you are in public, people can see you. When you broadcast signals, people can receive them. If you don't want to be seen, don't go out in public. If you don't want people to see the SSID of your AP, don't broadcast it.

If you're not broadcasting the SSID and are using some form of encryption, is Google still getting this data? I would hope not, because at that point, they're dealing with data that has not been made public.

Comment Will this change the meaning? (Score 1) 323

by Name Anonymous (#29909169) Attached to: Amazon Patents Changing Authors' Words
Many words have multiple meanings. Will Amazon pick the synonym that has a compatible meaning? Or will they change the work totally?

Also what if a word they pick is also the name of an item? This would break the work they modified.

An example works for both: "Grill" do they mean to cook or to interrogate? And what if it is a grill as in the item to cook with?

And as for changing the spelling of words, well what if it becomes another word? Or maybe it gets changed into a name used in the book - this would cause confusion. And what about people learning the wrong spelling for words?

Of course there is also the issue of possibly violating the authors copyright by changing the work in question.
Microsoft

Get on the 'Gates for President' Bandwagon 654

Posted by Zonk from the jobs-for-vice-president dept.
netbuzz writes "Dilbert's Scott Adams kicked off the idea in his November 19th blog post, saying there isn't anything wrong with this country that President Bill Gates couldn't cure in less time than it takes to get a new operating system out the door. Today, the idea is moving forward with a brand-new 'Bill Gates for President' Web site. Adams is also back on the campaign trail, flogging the site and Gates' candidacy." A blog post at Network World includes a lot of eye-rolling about this idea, but neither Adams nor the folks at the 'Gates for President' website seem to be taking this lightly.

USB To Go Wireless 212

Posted by Zonk from the realizing-the-bluetooth-dream dept.
Troy Samuel writes "The WiMedia Alliance is planning to make the technology known as 'ultrawideband,' or UWB, work among a wide variety of consumer electronics devices. Various organizations, including the Bluetooth SIG, have chosen the WiMedia Alliance's version of UWB technology as the foundation for a next-generation short-range networking technology." From the article: "UWB technology can deliver data rates at up to 480 megabits per second at around 3 meters, with speeds dropping off as the range grows to a limit of about 10 meters. Real-world speeds will probably be a little slower, but this is as fast as the wired version of USB 2.0 and much faster than current Wi-Fi networks are capable of transmitting data. 'This stuff is plumbing,' Roger Kay, an analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates, said of the newer-generation wireless technology. 'It's important that it be there, it's going to be handy for getting rid of cables hanging around your desk.'"

US Outlaws Online Gambling 579

Posted by kdawson from the you-bet-your-life dept.
imaginaryelf writes, "As reported earlier on Slashdot, in the closing hours of the US Congressional session on Friday, September 29, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (H.R.4411.RH) was attached to the Safe Port Act of 2006 H.R.4954.EAS. To the surprise of many, the bill passed both the House and the Senate, and Bush is expected to sign it into law this week. This effectively outlaws online gambling in the US, by way of making it illegal for credit-card companies to collect payments for bets. The financial markets punished the stock of online gambling companies as some prepared to pull out of the US entirely."

Will the Next Election Be Hacked? 904

Posted by kdawson from the privatizing-vote-counting dept.
plasmacutter writes to let us know about the new article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone, following up on his "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" (slashdotted here). Kennedy recounts the sorry history of electronic voting so far in this country — and some of the incidents will be new even to this clued-in crowd. (Had you heard about the CERT advisory on an undocumented backdoor account in a Diebold vote-tabulating database — crediting Black Box Voting?) Kennedy's reporting is bolstered by the accounts of a Diebold insider who has gone on record with his concerns. From the article: 'Chris Hood remembers the day in August 2002 that he began to question what was really going on in Georgia... "It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told me. "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from [president of Diebold election unit Bob] Urosevich...' According to Hood, Diebold employees altered software in some 5,000 machines in DeKalb and Fulton counties, the state's largest Democratic strongholds. The tally in Georgia that November surprised even the most seasoned political observers. (Hint: Republicans won.)

PostgreSQL Slammed by PHP Creator 527

Posted by Zonk from the yay-luge dept.
leifbk writes "'The Web is broken and it's all your fault' says Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP. He talks about not trusting user input, and the brokenness of IE, which is all fine. Then he makes a statement about MySQL vs PostgreSQL: 'If you can fit your problem into what MySQL can handle it's very fast,' Lerdorf said. 'You can gain quite a bit of performance.' For the items that MySQL doesn't handle as well as PostgreSQL, Lerdorf noted that some features can be emulated in PHP itself, and you still end up with a net performance boost. Naturally, the PostgreSQL community is rather unimpressed. One of the more amusing replies: 'I wasn't able to find anything the article worth discussing. If you give up A, C, I, and D, of course you get better performance- just like you can get better performance from a wheel-less Yugo if you slide it down a luge track.'"

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