Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror
Businesses

Water is The New Oil

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Newsweek reports on a company called True Alaska Bottling that has purchased the rights to transfer 3 billion gallons of water a year from Sitka, Alaska’s bountiful reserves. If all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will soon be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally reserved for oil and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai. From there it will be dispersed among several drought-plagued cities throughout the Middle East. Think of it as a proof of concept for turning life's most essential molecule into a global commodity. By definition, a commodity is sold to the highest bidder, not the customer with the most compelling moral claim, so it's little surprise that the transfer of so much water from public hands to private ones troubles some. 'Water has been a public resource under public domain for more than 2,000 years,' says attorney James Olson. 'Ceding it to private entities feels both morally wrong and dangerous.'"
Transportation

Google Secretly Tests Autonomous Cars in Traffic->

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes "Autonomous cars are years from mass production, but technologists who have long dreamed of them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has. Now the NY Times reports that Google has been working in secret on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver. With someone behind the wheel to take control if something went awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light."
Link to Original Source
Google

Facebook moves ahead of Google->

Submitted by crimeandpunishment
crimeandpunishment writes "When it comes to our time online, socializing beats searching. According to new data from researchers at comScore Inc., Facebook has moved ahead of Google for the first time in Web users' minutes. In August, people spent more than 41 million minutes on Facebook....compared to just under 40 million for all of Google's sites combined."
Link to Original Source
Crime

Rogue Employees Sell World Cup Fans' Passport Data->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Reports are coming in that the Information Commissioner's Office has started investigating FIFA, the world football governing body, over allegations that details of thousands of World Cup fans' — including their passport data — were accessed by one or more members of staff and then sold on the black market. It is alleged that the details of more than 35,000 English fans — who visited Germany for the 2006 World Cup — had their passport and allied data sold to ticket touts for marketing purposes."
Link to Original Source

Android 2.2 Update Crashes O2 Phones->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "O2 has cancelled its initial rollout of Android 2.2 to HTC Desire handsets, after some users reported problems

O2 began rolling out the Android 2.2 “Froyo” software update to customers using HTC Desire handsets on Monday, but pulled the update after a number of users reported the software crashed their phones.

Froyo has been heavily promoted as a competitor to devices such as Apple’s iPhone 4. It boosts the handset’s performance and allows the device to be used as a wireless hotspot, as well as adding HD video recording, Adobe Flash support and other features."
Link to Original Source
Piracy

Pirate Bay down, police raids across Europe->

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes "BREAKING NEWS Torrent-tracking site The Pirate Bay is currently unavailable as reports come in of co-ordinated police raids against file sharers across Europe.

Police in up to 14 countries carried out raids against suspected file-sharing servers this morning.

According to file-sharing news site TorrentFreak, the bulk of police action seems to have taken place in Sweden.

Swedish Internet service provider ISP, which hosts both The Pirate Bay and whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, earlier denied rumours of a police raid, saying that officers had visited them to ask questions over two suspect IP addresses, and that no computers or other goods had been seized."
Link to Original Source
Security

Behind the Scenes and Inside Workings of a CERT->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Ireland's CERT differs from what you can find in most other countries, since it's not government-backed and relies mainly on the good will of several security professionals. In this interview, the founder and head of the CERT, Brian Honan, talks about how the CERT was formed, what equipment they use and what challenges they face in their daily work without having a government to back them up."
Link to Original Source
Cellphones

O2 Android 2.2 update bricks HTC Desire->

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes "O2 has withdrawn an update to the latest version of Google's Android mobile OS on its network after users reported it crashed their phones.

The update to Android 2.2, code-named Froyo, was rolled out to HTC Desire handsets yesterday — but almost immediately the company was met with a barrage of complaints.

A number of users reported that their phones stopped loading when it reached the blue O2 splash screen.

The problems affected some users, but not all — and O2's forums were soon rife with speculation as to the cause of the difficulties."
Link to Original Source

It's the same old story; boy meets beer, boy drinks beer... boy gets another beer. -- Cheers