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Patents

Steve Jobs Patents "The Dock" 580

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what's-next dept.
theodp writes "If you're a PC, you may be unfamiliar with The Dock, the bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of a Mac and provides easy access to Apple applications. But don't count on it becoming a standard on the PC. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Apple — and inventor Steve Jobs — a patent for their User Interface for Providing Consolidation and Access, aka 'The Dock,' after a rather lengthy nine-year wait."
It's funny. Laugh.

Prevent Gmail From Emailing Under the Influence 258

Posted by kdawson from the chili-meter-with-brains dept.
mikesd81 writes "Google has developed 'Mail Goggles,' a Gmail add-on that makes sending email from Gmail more difficult during certain times (which you can set). If you have Mail Goggles installed, it will force you to answer a series of math questions before sending out any new messages. You can adjust the math difficulty and times this option is in effect. If you get any of the questions wrong, Mail Goggles will say, 'Water and bed for you. Or try again.' Of course, if you set the math settings too high, you may have a tough time solving some of those problems in under 60 seconds, even when sober. Then again, if you're sober, you could just turn Mail Goggles off and hit send on that impassioned letter to your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend or that flame to your boss."
Encryption

Google's Obfuscated TCP 392

Posted by kdawson from the shake-hands-when-you-say-that dept.
agl42 writes "Obfuscated TCP attempts to provide a cheap opportunistic encryption scheme for HTTP. Though SSL has been around for years, most sites still don't use it by default. By providing a less secure, but computationally and administratively cheaper, method of encryption, we might be able to increase the depressingly small fraction of encrypted traffic on the Internet. There's an introduction video explaining it."
Portables (Games)

Nintendo DSi Software Will Be Region Locked 148

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-import dept.
aliquis writes with news that software made for the recently announced Nintendo DSi will be region-locked. Nintendo's reasoning is that the DSi "embeds net communication functionality within itself and we are intending to provide net services specifically tailored for each region." It's also been discovered that accounts with the DSi's online store won't be linked with the Wii store, so points for one won't work with the other. Nintendo has stated that they don't intend for digital distribution to replace retail sales. We discussed the DSi's announcement last week.

Comment Re:The blog is right (Score 1) 353

by A.K.A_Magnet (#24847585) Attached to: How HP Could Turn a Novelty Into a Revolution
My only experiences with HP are good. That is, calculators from HP48GX to the HP49 line ;). Best calculators ever :P.

The scandals that happened (pretexting, spying and whatnots) have little to do with the engineers. However you're right, HP and Compaq (now merged, that can be only worse) always tried to make their memory incompatible, and their hardware seem pretty cheap (then again, nowadays most hardware is). The problem with HP is that they lack a vision, they don't "Invent". Mainly because it's a management/marketing driven company. So I wouldn't mind having HP "on my side" the day they ditch all the white-collars and have a CEO with a vision. HP's CEOs, including the current one, really suck.

On the other hand, HP is the largest technology vendor in terms of sales (before Dell), and thus probably first Windows vendor. They could hurt Microsoft badly if they made the move :).
Novell

Submission + - SPAM: Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Open-source pioneer and Novell Vice President Miguel de Icaza Thursday for the first time publicly slammed his company's cross-patent licensing agreement with Microsoft as he defended himself against lack of patent protection for third parties that distribute his company's Moonlight project, which ports Microsoft's Silverlight technology to Linux. "I'm not happy about the fact that such an agreement was made, but [the decision] was above my pay grade; I think we should have stayed with the open-source community," de Icaza said. He was speaking on a panel at a conference in Las Vegas that also included representatives from Microsoft and open-source companies Mozilla and Zend.
Link to Original Source
Security

Submission + - Fake nuclear explosion on Czech television

Submitted by ledvinap
ledvinap writes: Those who watched a Czech public TV channel in the morning could have seen the nuclear explosion (youtube) in the Krkonose Mountains during a program that normally shows weather at different places.

Artistic group Ztohoven broke via the internet into a camera / camera server which provided images from the Krkonose Mountains as part of the morning panorama program. They fed a 30 second film which showed images of an atomic explosion and the group's web address. According to initial investigations by the Czech authorities, the CT2 network itself was not affected, the compromised camera server was operated by an outside contractor.

CT2 has reported the matter to the police, and should someone be successfully prosecuted, a one year prison sentence could be imposed.

English links here and here, lot's of coverage in Czech media media
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Undeletable porn video on YouTube (alx5000.net)

Submitted by
alx5000
alx5000 writes: "meneame.net (the Spanish Digg) is reporting that a German hacker has posted an undeletable porn video on YouTube. So far, the video has been watched more than 100,000 times since it was posted 2 days ago, and the account of the poster blocked, but the video still remains viewable. You can watch it here (NSFWFGS!)"
Operating Systems

Submission + - GPL Code Found In OpenBSD Wireless Driver

Submitted by NormalVisual
NormalVisual writes: The mailing lists were buzzing recently when Michael Buesch, one of the maintainers for the GPL'd bc43xx Broadcom wireless chip driver project, called the OpenBSD folks to task for apparently including code without permission from his project in the OpenBSD bcw project, which aims to provide functionality with Broadcom wireless chips under that OS. It seems that the problem has been resolved for now with the BSD driver author totally giving up on the project and Theo De Raadt taking the position that Buesch's posts on the subject were "inhuman".

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