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+ - AT&T, Verizon Attempting to Get Government Approval to Cut Off Competitors.->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In Michigan, Senate Bill 636 will remove any remaining requirements of AT&T and Verizon to lease lines to other providers, effectively killing all competing phone and internet providers, including wireless providers, which rely on leasing any connectivity from AT&T or Verizon. Readers should not be fooled by the title of the bill into thinking it only applies to a hard-wired phone line coming into their home or office. What the consumer calls a landline differs greatly from what the law calls a landline."
Link to Original Source

+ - Newly Discovered Greenhouse Gas is 7,000 Times More Powerful Than CO2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Suzanne Goldenberg writes at The Guardian that researchers at the University of Toronto's department of chemistry have identified a newly discovered greenhouse gas, perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA), in use by the electrical industry since the mid-20th century, that is 7,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the Earth. "We claim that PFTBA has the highest radiative efficiency of any molecule detected in the atmosphere to date," says Angela Hong. Concentrations of PFTBA in the atmosphere are low – 0.18 parts per trillion in the Toronto area – compared to 400 parts per million for carbon dioxide but PFTBA is long-lived. There are no known processes that would destroy or remove PFTBA in the lower atmosphere so it has a very long lifetime, possibly hundreds of years, and is destroyed in the upper atmosphere. ""It is so much less than carbon dioxide, but the important thing is on a per molecule basis, it is very very effective in interacting with heat from the Earth." PFTBA has been in use since the mid-20th century for various applications in electrical equipment, such as transistors and capacitors. "PFTBA is just one example of an industrial chemical that is produced but there are no policies that control its production, use or emission," says Hong. "It is not being regulated by any type of climate policy.""
Businesses

UK Retailer Mistakenly Sends PS Vitas, Threatens Legal Action To Get Them Back 520

Posted by Soulskill
from the ethics-vs-free-stuff dept.
New submitter Retron writes "The BBC brings news that British retailer Zavvi mistakenly sent out PlayStation Vitas to people who had preordered a game called Tearaway. The company is now threatening legal action against those who have kept theirs despite a request to return them. It's unclear whether the Distance Selling Act protects consumers who have mistakenly been sent an expensive item, and forums such as Eurogamer seem divided on the issue."

+ - British retailer mistakenly sends Vitas, threatens legal action to get them back

Submitted by Retron
Retron writes "The BBC brings news that British retailer Zavvi mistakenly sent out PlayStation Vitas to people who had preordered a game called Tearaway. It's now threatening legal action against those who have kept theirs despite a request to return them. It's unclear whether the Distance Selling Act protects consumers who have mistakenly been sent an expensive item and forums such as Eurogamer seem divided on the issue."
Television

A Year After Ban On Loud TV Commercials: Has It Worked? 252

Posted by Soulskill
from the where's-the-beef dept.
netbuzz writes "It's been a year since the FCC implemented the CALM Act, a law that prohibits broadcasters from blasting TV commercials at volumes louder than the programming. Whether the ban has worked or not depends on who you ask. The FCC notes that formal complaints about overly loud commercials are on the decline in recent months, but those complaints have totaled more than 20,000 over the past year."

+ - A Year After Ban on Loud TV Commercials: Has It Worked?->

Submitted by netbuzz
netbuzz writes "It’s been a year since the FCC implemented the CALM Act, a law that prohibits broadcasters from blasting TV commercials at volumes louder than the programming. Whether the ban has worked or not depends on who you ask. The FCC notes that formal complaints about overly loud commercials are on the decline in recent months, but those complaints have totaled more than 20,000 over the past year."
Link to Original Source
Sci-Fi

Sci-fi Author Charles Stross Cancels Trilogy: the NSA Is Already Doing It 181

Posted by Soulskill
from the can-we-convince-the-NSA-to-spy-on-a-ringworld dept.
doom writes "Charles Stross has announced that there won't be a third book in the Halting State trilogy because reality (in a manner of speaking) has caught up to him too fast The last straw was apparently the news that the NSA planted spies in networked games like WoW. Stross comments: 'At this point, I'm clutching my head. Halting State wasn't intended to be predictive when I started writing it in 2006. Trouble is, about the only parts that haven't happened yet are Scottish Independence and the use of actual quantum computers for cracking public key encryption (and there's a big fat question mark over the latter-- what else are the NSA up to?).'"

+ - Charles Stross cancels trilogy: the NSA is already doing it 1

Submitted by doom
doom writes "Charles Stross has announced that there won't be a third book in the 'Halting State' trilogy because reality (in a manner of speaking) has caught up to him too fast. The last straw was apparently the news that the NSA planted spies in networked games like WoW. Stross comments: "At this point, I'm clutching my head. 'Halting State' wasn't intended to be predictive when I started writing it in 2006. Trouble is, about the only parts that haven't happened yet are Scottish Independence and the use of actual quantum computers for cracking public key encryption (and there's a big fat question mark over the latter-- what else are the NSA up to?).""
Encryption

FreeBSD Developers Will Not Trust Chip-Based Encryption 160

Posted by Soulskill
from the fool-me-once,-shame-on-you dept.
New submitter srobert writes "An article at Ars Technica explains how, following stories of NSA leaks, FreeBSD developers will not rely solely on Intel's or Via's chip-based random number generators for /dev/random values. The values will first be seeded through another randomization algorithm known as 'Yarrow.' The changes are effective with the upcoming FreeBSD 10.0 (for which the first of three planned release candidates became available last week)."

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