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Hackers get Install Other OS back on the PS3->

Submitted by eonlabs
eonlabs writes "A little over a year ago, Sony played a nasty April Fools prank on its customers by stripping out the "Install Other OS" feature from it's PS3 gaming systems. Hackers have recently found a new way to put it back in. I have to wonder, since they've bypassed everything else, how long before someone creates a replacement for PSN. The current network's been down since the anniversary of patch 3.21."
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Microsoft

Microsoft to buy Skype for $8.5 billion->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes ""It could be the most expensive call Microsoft Corp. has ever made. In acquiring Internet phone service Skype for $8.5 billion, the technology giant is seeking new ways to make money as its core computer software business faces a growing threat from a new generation of powerful mobile devices.""
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Censorship

Geo-IP removal skips Aussie game censorship ->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Live in Australia and play video games? You sure do. Then you're likely familiar with the country's lack of an R18+ classification, which means that many popular games get heavily modified (think Left 4 Dead without the blood) to be sold on Australian shores. This censorship hit CD Projekt's upcoming game The Witcher 2 recently, cutting out an option which would see a player's character rewarded with sex for completing a side quest. But the company appears to have gotten around Australia's censorship — removing geo-IP targeting from its Good Old Games site in what appears to be a clandestine attempt to allow Australians access to the full game. It would be nice if Steam could do the same ..."
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Education

Ask Slashdot: Security Through Insanity?

Submitted by telekon
telekon writes "I work for an educational institution which is heavily invested in Microsoft technologies, and which uses a certain popular vendor for its campus card system. I work in the department responsible for that system, and we're moving into a new era of R&D for interfacing to that system. But we're a UNIX shop in an MS world. Recently, I proposed creating a darknet within the general infrastructure for a secure network of student card kiosks since financial transactions will be occurring on this subnet, but there's an obstacle: "network security" will object to traffic they can't observe. My response was, "Well, we do everything over SSH or TLS as it is, what's the difference?" MY boss replied, you're not thinking like a Windows admin. I said, "God for bid I ever do..."
My question is, has anyone come up against this, and how do you respond?"
Android

Android Honeycomb will not be open sourced-> 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In an effort to understand the landscape for developers, Andy Rubin was asked if, since Ice Cream Sandwich would be open, will Android 3.0 and/or 3.1 be granted the same courtesy. Rubin answered definitively in the negative. Honeycomb on its own would not be open, because its phone functionality is very broken. Ice Cream Sandwich will take all of the Honeycomb functionality and open source it alongside code that is much more universally friendly."
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Input Devices

Creating a "force field" invisible touch interface->

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes "Using infrared sensors like the ones on television remote controls, Texas A&M University students presented an inexpensive multitouch system at the Computer Human Interaction (CHI) conference in Vancouver. "I like to consider it an optical force field; it's like a picture frame where we shoot thousands of light beams across and we can detect anything that intersects that frame," said Jonathan Moeller, a research assistant in the Interface Ecology Lab at Texas A&M University. The frame is lined with 256 IR sensors, which are connected to a computer. When ZeroTouch is mounted over a traditional computer screen it turns the display into a multitouch surface. Taken one step further, if the screen is suspended then a user could paint a virtual canvas. (Pics and video in link.)"
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Apple

Apple, Google execs squirm before Senate privacy p->

Submitted by
Roberto123
Roberto123 writes "Officials of Google and Apple were forced to admit before a Senate Subcommittee today that they don't require third party application providers to create and offer a privacy policy to protect the personal information of consumers using mobile device software applications. The admission came at a hearing called in the wake of revelations that Apple had been recording and saving location-based data of users of iPhones and iPads even when users had turned off location permissions — and Google had followed a similar practice."
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Ubuntu

Ubuntu Powered Tablet Spotted! 169

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the yes-have-some dept.
dkd903 writes "The year 2010 had been all buzz with tablets and a similar trend is expected during the year 2011 too. We have already seen a lot of Android powered tablets. But how does a tablet powered by Ubuntu sound? A Chinese manufacturer TENQ has launched a tablet called P07. The device is said to be running Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition and the boot time reported to be almost instant."
It's funny. Laugh.

GOATSE Picture Shown In YouTube Debate

Submitted by
Penguinshit
Penguinshit writes "What makes the Internet so great, beyond showing a glimpse of a confusing world to millions of mouth-breathers? The answer, of course, is GOATSE (relax, this isn't THAT link...). One of those lame YouTube questions featured a split-second image of the horrible anus. As of this time, it is unclear as to how many Americans witnessed the outrage, but there are reports of as many as 200,000 phone calls made to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reporting the obscenity. CNN has yet to make an official statement regarding the matter, but a top spokesman was reportedly overheard denouncing the incident as "despicable."

The story is being reported in several aggregators and blogs."

QOTD: "I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance."