59537071
submission
alphadogg writes:
Some drivers would love to have a cellphone-free bubble around their cars, but when a Florida man allegedly created one every day on his commute, it didn't necessarily make the highway a safer place.
Jason R. Humphreys of Seffner, Fla., operated a cellphone jammer in his Toyota Highlander sport-utility vehicle during his daily commute for as long as two years before the FCC and the local sheriff tracked him down, the FCC said this week. Now he's facing $48,000 in fines, with 30 days to pay or file a response. Humphreys told the FCC he used the jammer to keep people from talking on their cellphones while driving. Talking on a cellphone while driving is legal in Florida, even without a hands-free kit, though texting while driving is banned. Using a cellphone jammer is illegal for everyone but federal law enforcement, regardless of intent, according to the FCC. Not only do jammers prevent consumers from making emergency calls, but they can disrupt critical communications by safety agencies, the FCC said.
59290991
submission
alphadogg writes:
Google is considering deploying Wi-Fi networks in towns and cities covered by its Google Fiber high-speed Internet service. The disclosure is made in a document Google is circulating to 34 cities that are the next candidates to receive Google Fiber in 2015. Specific details of the Wi-Fi plan are not included in the document, which was seen by IDG News Service, but Google says it will be "discussing our Wi-Fi plans and related requirements with your city as we move forward with your city during this planning process."
59219887
submission
alphadogg writes:
China is working on a Linux operating system that can replace the now-vulnerable Windows XP and protect the country’s networking infrastructure.The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will “beef up support for the development of such an OS,” according to China’s state news agency Xinhua. The agency says about 70% of PCs in China still run Windows XP despite the fact that Microsoft has shut down security updates for it, which makes XP progressively more vulnerable to attacks.
59173119
submission
alphadogg writes:
Apple is making a billion dollar bet on sapphire as a strategic material for mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad and perhaps an iWatch. Though exactly what the company plans to do with the scratch-resistant crystal – and when – is still the subject of debate. Apple is creating its own supply chain devoted to producing and finishing synthetic sapphire crystal in unprecedented quantities. The new Mesa, Ariz., plant, in a partnership with sapphire furnace maker GT Advanced Technologies, will make Apple one of the world’s largest sapphire producers when it reaches full capacity, probably in late 2014. By doing so, Apple is assured of a very large amount of sapphire and insulates itself from the ups and downs of sapphire material pricing in the global market.
59049131
submission
alphadogg writes:
Americans are optimistic about scientific inventions on the horizon, though are cautious about future uses of DNA, robots, drones and always-on implants, according to the latest Pew Research Center survey on future technology. http://www.pewinternet.org/fil... Asked about the likelihood of certain advances 50 years from now, survey respondents were most sure that lab-grown custom organs for transplant will happen (81%). Only 19% expect humans will be able to control the weather by then.
59045995
submission
alphadogg writes:
Stephen Randall, a cofounder of one-time mobile OS kingpin Symbian, has crowdsourced a song that pays tribute to those killed in and those who survived the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. "We Will Run Again" http://www.stephenrandallmusic... includes more than 90 voices of people and groups who uploaded their rendition of the chorus to SoundCloud, according to Randall, a mobile technology entrepreneur who designed the first digital guitar.
59016691
submission
alphadogg writes:
Many U.S. residents who have written the FCC https://fccgov.uservoice.com/f... to voice concerns about the move from copper-based telephone networks to Internet Protocol http://www.networkworld.com/ne... are concerned about the potential effects on health from mobile-headset radiation and what happens when the electricity goes out. More than 50 people have commented so far, with many appearing to be part of a coordinated effort to oppose the IP transition, although it's unclear what group is coordinating the comments.
58811723
submission
alphadogg writes:
Akamai Technologies, whose network handles up to 30% of all Internet traffic, said Sunday a researcher found a fault in custom code that the company thought shielded most of its customers from the Heartbleed bug. As a result, Akamai is now reissuing all SSL certificates and security keys used to create encrypted connections between its customer's websites and visitors to those sites. "In short, we had a bug," wrote Andy Ellis, Akamai's CTO, in a blog post. https://blogs.akamai.com/2014/...
58767675
submission
alphadogg writes:
Alex Ebert, whose band Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros is best known for its song "Home," is promoting a new website that lets Americans visualize where their tax dollars go vs. where they wish the money would go. TheNewIRS.com http://thenewirs.com/taxplan/n... team actually compliments Whitehouse.gov for providing “a great interactive webpage to see what tax money goes towards on a national level,” but faults it for only letting you see what happens after the fact. The goal of TheNewIRS.com site is to let tax filers find out whether their wishes for where tax dollars go after this year’s April 15 filing deadline match up with reality. TheNewIRS.com concept was conceived by Ebert at the Sundance Film Festival’s “Hackdance” hackathon.
58702617
submission
alphadogg writes:
There's a new sign on the door to Courtroom 5 at the federal courthouse in San Jose, the home to the Apple v. Samsung battle that's playing out this month: "Please turn off all cell phones." For a trial that centers on smartphones and the technology they use, it's more than a little ironic. The entire case might not even be taking place if the market wasn't so big and important, but the constant need for connectivity of everyone is causing problems in the court, hence the new sign. The problems have centered on the system that displays the court reporter's real-time transcription onto monitors on the desks of Judge Lucy Koh, the presiding judge in the case, and the lawyers of Apple and Samsung. The system, it seems, is connected via Wi-Fi and that connection keeps failing.
58644525
submission
alphadogg writes:
Canada Revenue Agency has halted online filing of tax returns by the country's citizens following the disclosure of the Heartbleed security vulnerability that rocked the Internet this week. The country's Minister of National Revenue wrote in a Twitter message https://twitter.com/KerryLynne... on Wednesday that interest and penalties will not be applied to those filing 2013 tax returns after April 30, the last date for filing the returns, for a period equal to the length of the service disruption. The agency has suspended public access to its online services as a preventive measure to protect the information it holds, while it investigates the potential impact on tax payer information, it said.
58388409
submission
alphadogg writes:
An argument between developers of some of the most basic parts of Linux turned heated this week, resulting in a prominent Red Hat employee and code contributor being banned from working on the Linux kernel. Kay Sievers, a well-known open-source software engineer, is a key developer of systemd, a system management framework for Linux-based operating systems. Systemd is currently used by several prominent Linux distributions, including two of the most prominent enterprise distros, Red Hat and SUSE. It was recently announced that Ubuntu would adopt systemd in future versions as well. Sievers was banned by kernel maintainer Linus Torvalds on Wednesday for failing to address an issue that caused systemd to interact with the Linux kernel in negative ways.
58325541
submission
alphadogg writes:
You'd almost think Apple rival Samsung underwrote the upcoming movie "Sex Tape" when you see the just released NSFW trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... A couple, played by Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, have their life turned upside down after they record a sex tape that then spreads through iCloud to a bunch of iPads they've given as gifts to family, friends and even the mailman. Poignant questions asked in the aftermath of the sex tape seeping onto the cloud include: "How the hell do you get it back?" and "You know the cloud?" (to which Diaz's character replies @*$)#&!
58292523
submission
alphadogg writes:
Oracle has overtaken rival IBM as the world's second-largest software vendor by pulling in $29.6 billion in software revenue during 2013, according to analyst firm Gartner. "Global trends around big data and analytics with business investment in database and cloud-based applications helped to drive Oracle's top-line growth," Gartner research vice president Chad Eschinger said in a statement. Microsoft retained its first-place ranking, at $65.7 billion in software revenue, while IBM moved down to third place with $29.1 billion. SAP remained in fourth place, at $18.5 billion, Gartner said.
58263265
submission
alphadogg writes:
Technology that remotely makes a stolen smartphone useless could save American consumers up to $2.6 billion per year if it is implemented widely and leads to a reduction in theft of phones, according to a new report. Law enforcement officials and politicians are pressuring cellular carriers to make such technology standard on all phones shipped in the U.S. in response to the increasing number of smartphone thefts. They believe the so-called "kill switch" would reduce the number of thefts if stolen phones were routinely locked so they became useless. But carriers have resisted these requests and there are now bills proposed at the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and California State Senate that would mandate such a system. The report, by William Duckworth, an associate professor of statistics, data science and analytics at Creighton University, found most of the savings for consumers would come from reduced insurance premiums.
