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The Military

+ - Wearable Computers and Portable Power->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Last weekend, Silicon Valley VC Marc Andreessen called out "wearable computing" as a Next Big Thing. Now MC10, a three-year-old company making flexible electronics, is taking an old idea to new places. The startup is developing health sensors that conform to the human body, image sensors that curve like the retina, and stretchy solar cells (and other circuitry) that can be woven into the fabric of a tent or aircraft skin. Unlike organic or printed electronics, which tend to be inefficient, MC10 uses silicon islands linked by springy interconnects. It's still early, but the company has new backing from VCs, Reebok, and the U.S. government to develop wearable devices, mini-sensors, and portable power. Imagine a self-charging UAV with tiny cameras on board, and you can tell what the military wants out of this."
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Politics

+ - Congress to vote to repeal incandescent bulb ban-> 1

Submitted by Bob the Super Hamste
Bob the Super Hamste writes "CNN Money is running as story about a bill Congress is going to vote today to repeal the "incandescent light bulb ban" that was put into place during the Bush administration. The bill is supported by Republicans in congress who are claiming this places unnecessary restrictions on the market. For those of you wondering it does bring up the standard issues of energy efficiency, mercury (in both the bulbs and that emitted by coal power), and cost of the bulbs. The bill was introduced by Texas Congressman Joe Barton."
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Comment: Re:Panic (Score 1) 265

by Aquaseafoam (#35518050) Attached to: The Quake Through Eyes of Slashdot Japan
They're already, I believe at over 5,000 confirmed dead, with many more still considered missing. Certainly, it's horrible, but imagine if this had occurred off the coast of a third world country. On the subject of radiation, doesn't Japan (at least, certain sections of it.) already have a heightened occurrence of caner due to the Nuclear bombing during WWII? I doubt the minute amounts of radiation that have currently been observed will have any noticeable effect, especially with how quickly they evacuated the area.
Piracy

+ - Legally Burned CDs Are Too Similar To Piracy?->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The Boy Scouts of America publish "Scouting" magazine for parents, and apparently they're now telling parents not to listen to legally burned CDs because it's just too similar to pirated music, and kids are too stupid to understand the difference. The article also *blames* Radiohead for confusing things by giving away its music."
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Google

+ - Google Street View in Antarctica->

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes "Privacy concerns for Google's Street View may now extend to penguins, following the service's extension to a seventh continent — Antarctica.

The Antarctica imagery is so far limited, showing panoramas of the coast and penguins of Half Moon Island.

Google says its service now covers 25 nations on all the world's continents."
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Open Source

+ - SugarCRM Users Required to Pay for Key Features->

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes "SugarCRM continues its trend of making users of its open source customer relationship management (CRM) software pay for enterprise editions if they want user-friendly features, many of which are critical for serious business users. Want easy-to-use developer tools and user interfaces? That'll cost you. Want native mobile apps for your iPhone or Blackberry? Ka-ching. Sales forecasting and reporting? Open your wallets. Makes you wonder if there's anything useful in the community edition."
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First Person Shooters (Games)

+ - 'Death Strip' Game Sparks Controversy in Germany->

Submitted by gzipped_tar
gzipped_tar writes "A new computer game where players assume the roles of border guards and shoot people trying to escape from communist East Germany has unleashed a storm of controversy in Germany. The game's creator says he wanted to teach young people about history, but he has been accused of glorifying violence.

The name of the multi-player FPS game, "1,378 (kilometers)", was inspired by the length of the border between East and West Germany. Players choose between the roles of the border guards or would-be escapees: the escapee only has one goal — to get over the wall, but the border guard has more options, and can shoot or capture the escapee. He can also swap sides and try to clamber over the border defenses himself. By choosing to play the boarder guard and kill the escapee, the player would won an in-game medal from the government of East Germany. But then the guard would time-travel forward to the year 2000, where he would have to stand trial.

Jens Stober, 23, designed the game as a media art student at the University of Design, Media and Arts in Karlsruhe. He said that his intention was to teach young people about German history. "In the game, you ask yourself: 'What would I do?'" explained Stober. "You may come to the conclusion that you would not shoot at your fellow countrymen and women." But others disagree. "Basically you are just picking off people, as if you were shooting rabbits," said Axel Klausmeier, director of the Berlin Wall Foundation. Hubertus Knabe, head of the Berlin-Hohenschoenhausen Memorial to the victims of the Stasi secret police, has even filed criminal charges. He wants the Berlin public prosecutor to investigate whether the game glorifies violence. Rainer Wagner, from former East Germany, said it was like a punch in the face. "It feels like I'm being shot at again, emotionally," said Wagner, who was arrested by border guards during his escape attempt.

Initially, Stober's university and Professor Michael Bielicky, who had supervised Stober's work, defended the student. However, on Thursday a university spokesman said that the game will not be released on Sunday, the anniversary of German reunification, after all. Instead, the release is being postponed until December."
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+ - Paypal withholds donations to TortoiseSVN-> 1

Submitted by maphew
maphew writes "Paypal arbitrarily decided to withold the donations made to the TortoiseSVN project via Sourceforge's "donate to this project". After several days and unfruitful biolerplate exchanges the project lead, Stefan Küng, finally managed to get the account restored, and thereby access the money. However Paypal made it clear that future donations are not allowed, with the threat that if there are any the account will be frozen again. The grounds Paypal gave for freezing Küng's account appears to be because someone used Paypal Singapore to donate to his project. There is an associated ticket open with SourceForge, #13993, about warning SF users. As yet there is no information from SF as to how they will respond to this troubling development (it's been 5 days).

There was a similar story 2 weeks ago, PayPal Withholding Indie Game Dev's €600,000 Account"
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+ - U.S. Military "banned" from viewing Wikileaks.->

Submitted by carp3_noct3m
carp3_noct3m writes "The U.S. Pentagon has attempted to ban military members from viewing the recently leaked documents on Wikileaks. They say that just because the information is now in the public domain, that it is still classified, and that accessing the documents even from a personal computer is "willingly committing a security violation". I dug a bit further into this, and the Marine Corps apparently thinks that if military personell, especially those with security clearance, purposely accessed the wikileaks website to view classified info "they have willingly placed classified information on an open network not authorized to view classified information and have willingly committed a security violation." I am personally left almost speechless at this disconnect from reality the military is showing. I am an USMC Iraq war vet, and find these policies completely ridiculous and showing of the inability of our supposedly technologically knowledgeable military to fuse this knowledge with policy. Mostly due to the political pressure that has erupted to "take care of" the Wikileaks problem. What do my fellow /.ers think?"
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This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they're in trouble And I am not. -- A. E. Housman

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