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Internet Explorer

IE Market Share Drops Below 70% 640

Posted by timothy from the probably-too-late-to-open-source-ie dept.
Mike writes "Microsoft's market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. It's too early to tell for sure, but if Net Applications' numbers are correct, then Microsoft's Internet Explorer will end 2008 with a historic market share loss in a software segment Microsoft believes is key to its business."
Networking

Storm Causes AT&T Outage Across Midwest 213

Posted by CmdrTaco from the guess-who-this-includes dept.
dstates writes "AT&T left users across several Midwestern states without cellular phone service yesterday. The outage apparently resulted from a power failure at a Michigan switching center and spread to affect level3 Internet communications. The powerful windstorm also left 400,000 users without electricity. Interestingly, except for a few reports in Chicago and Indianapolis papers, AT&T has managed to keep this out of the mainstream media. Widespread communication failures also followed Hurricane Ike in Texas earlier this year. With the increasing trend for users to drop landlines and rely only on cell phones, this is becoming an emergency preparedness issue." Yes this included me. Still does. At least my office still has power — maybe we'll just camp here tonight. :)

Comment Re:Nothing in the EULA (Score 1) 136

by giminy (#26133405) Attached to: Realtek's Wireless Driver Drives Thoughts of an Apple Netbook

The fact that RealTek does not make -or may never make- hardware for Macs is immaterial.

But they do! RealTek makes chips which are placed on PCI wifi cards (check out the RTL8185).

With this driver, those wifi cards can be used in a Mac Pro or Power Macintosh with PCI slots.

So Realtek has a legitimate reason to make these drivers. osx86 support is just a side effect.
Privacy

Digital Photos Give Away a Camera's Make and Model 260

Posted by kdawson from the nobody-saw-me-you-can't-prove-anything dept.
holy_calamity writes "Engineers at Polytechnic University Brooklyn have discovered that digital snaps shorn of any metadata still reveal the make and model of camera used to take them. It is possible to work backwards from the relationships of neighboring pixel values in a shot to identify the model-specific demosaicing algorithm that combines red, green, and blue pixels on the sensor into color image pixels. Forensics teams are already licking their chops."
Security

California's Wireless Road Tolls Easily Hackable 354

Posted by timothy from the no-sir-I-was-in-seattle-at-the-time dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nate Lawson, a researcher at RootLabs, has found a way to clone the wireless transponders used by the Bay Area FasTrak road toll system. This means you can copy the ID of another driver onto your own device and, as a result, travel for free while others foot the bill. Lawson also raises the interesting point of using the FasTrak system to create false alibis, by overwriting one's own ID onto another driver's device before committing a crime. Luckily, Lawson wasn't sued before he could reveal his research, unlike those pesky MIT students."
Security

AI Could Power Next-gen CCTV Cameras 173

Posted by samzenpus from the the-unseen-mechanized-eye dept.
Barence writes "UK researchers are working on fitting CCTV cameras with artificial intelligence, allowing them to more quickly respond to crimes. The technology, being developed by University of Portsmouth scientists, would allow cameras to "hear" violent sounds and react, swiveling quickly in the direction of a broken window or somebody shouting abusively for example, before alerting an operator. The artificial intelligence powering the camera would also be able to respond to visual cues such as fights, or violent behaviour."
OS X

Apple Expected to Demo Leopard Successor Next Week 432

Posted by timothy from the or-not dept.
4roddas writes "Reports circulated Wednesday that Apple may demo the next iteration of Mac OS X next week or even release code to developers in preparation for an early-2009 launch. According to an account on Mac enthusiast site TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog), Apple may provide early copies of Mac OS X 10.6 at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which opens Monday and runs through next Friday in San Francisco. Mac OS X 10.6 will run on Intel-based hardware only, said TUAW, and so will mark the ditching of support for the older PowerPC processor-equipped Macs. Apple announced it would shift to Intel processors three years ago, and unveiled the first systems in January 2006; most analysts have said that move is largely behind the reason for Apple's renewed success selling personal computers. It has never disclosed how long it would support the PowerPC with OS upgrades, however. Ars Technica also weighed in Wednesday on Mac OS X 10.6; its sources pegged with OS with the code name 'Snow Leopard.'"
Space

Spitzer's 5-Gigapixel Milky Way 124

Posted by kdawson from the zoom-zoom dept.
James Harold writes "Today NASA unveiled a new infrared mosaic of our galaxy. The result of over 800,000 individual images collected by the Spitzer Space Telescope, it is the largest, highest-resolution, and most sensitive infrared picture ever taken of the Milky Way (and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future). Because Spitzer sees in infrared, it penetrates much farther into the galaxy, revealing previously hidden star clusters, star-forming regions, shocked gases, glowing 'bubbles' and more. The complete mosaic is about 400,000 by 13,000 pixels, and a 180' printed version is being shown at the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis. A zoomable, annotated version of two different variants on the image (as well as some additional information on the science) is available at Alien Earths, a NASA- and NSF-supported education site." The Spitzer survey is already causing a stir potentially bigger than that raised when Pluto was deemed not a planet: two minor spiral arms of the Milky Way may be demoted.
Science

New Superconductor Found "Immune To Magnetism" 201

Posted by kdawson from the north-south-it's-all-the-same-to-me dept.
Lisandro sends in news that testing of the new class of superconductors we discussed a while back (compounds of iron, lanthanum, and rare earths) has turned up a major surprise: magnetism doesn't shut off the superconducting state. Magnetic fields represent one of three factors that limit expanded applications for superconductors (the others are current density and temperature dependence.) The research will appear in Nature; here's a preprint (PDF).
Government

National Archives Cuts Back On Web Site Archiving 45

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-remember-everything dept.
hhavensteincw writes "The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is coming under fire for a new policy to stop the "harvesting" of a digital snapshot of all federal agency and Congressional Web sites after every Presidential and Congressional term. NARA, which archived more than 75 million Web sites in 2004 after George Bush's first term ended, will not harvest agency and Congressional Web sites when his current term is over because it says agencies are supposed to be archiving Web content on their own. But NARA has been criticized by some for opting out of preserving these important historical archives on the Web."
The Internet

Discussion of Internet Addiction as Mental Illness Resurfaces 279

Posted by Zonk from the i-can't-quit-you-internets dept.
Lone Writer writes "The editorial section of the American Journal of Psychiatry for March offers the opinion that Internet addiction is a 'compulsive-impulsive' disorder, and should be added to the official guidebook of disorders. The editorial characterizes net addiction as including 'excessive gaming, [online] sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging'. From the article: 'Like other addicts, users experience cravings, urges, withdrawal and tolerance, requiring more and better equipment and software, or more and more hours online, according to Dr. Jerald Block, a psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Dr. Block says people can lose all track of time or neglect "basic drives," like eating or sleeping. Relapse rates are high, he writes, and some people may need psychoactive medications or hospitalization."
Microsoft

Tellme Founder Tells Yahoo Not to Worry Over Microsoft Takeover 117

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the don't-worry-be-happy dept.
Tellme founder and previous Yahoo co-founder, Mike McCue hasn't spoken to past-partner Jerry Yang since the Microsoft takeover bid for Yahoo, but he wanted to let his friend know that being acquired by Microsoft isn't such a terrible proposition. "After being assured that Tellme would be able to retain its Silicon Valley office, identity and quirky culture, McCue negotiated an $800 million sale to Microsoft and agreed to stay on as general manager. It's a decision that he says he doesn't regret 10 months into the marriage. 'We are pretty much doing everything we were doing before - just a lot more of it,' said McCue, 40. Because of the vast differences in size, the Tellme deal obviously isn't an apples-to-apples comparison to Microsoft's proposed $40 billion acquisition of Yahoo, which contends it's worth even more money despite a two-year earnings slump."
Censorship

Wikileaks Gets Domain Back, Injunction Dissolved 70

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the it-all-sounds-like-dirty-pool-to-me dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The judge in the Wikileaks case has dissolved the injunction against Wikileaks, which means that it can get its .org domain back. He defended his prior ruling because it was based on the pittance of information the bank and registrar had provided him, saying 'This is a case in which we had a (dispute) with named parties, and the parties were duly served. One of which properly responded and came to this court with a proposed settlement in this lawsuit... Nobody filed any timely responses to the court's order.'"

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