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A friend of mine works for a company selling the iPhone 2. According to him if you lose your iPhone 2 you will 1. Have to pay full price to get a new one (not too surprising imo) and 2. Re-sign up for a 2 year contract... Also according to him the employees have been instructed specifically to not mention this fact to customers. Pretty screwy to me. Then again I am ignorant of how most cell phones work so I don't know if this is standard or not. I'm assuming based on his reaction its not.

mattnyc99 writes A month ago we discussed the accomplishment when researchers got monkeys to feed themselves with a robotic arm controlled by their brains. But after all the recent successful experiments with brain-computer interfaces, will the technology ever make it out of the lab and into hospitals — or even into our hands, for the closest thing imaginable to The Force? Popular Mechanics takes a look at the future of mind-machine control, speculating on several theoretical applications once brains can adapt to devices via direct communication between, say, synapse and prosthetic. Quoting the field's leading neuroscientist: 'For the foreseeable future, the main benefit is for rehabilitation. But the research is showing that the brain can act independently of the body. One day, you could be sitting in an office and controlling a device from across the room — or in another building. And it's not just flicking a switch. It could be a nanotool that's moving through a tiny environment, and you can control it and see what it's seeing.'"

His personal income (as reflected in his tax returns) does not reflect campaign contributions. But then, if you had half a clue about such things, you wouldn't be defending Republicans who are the telecom industry's bought-and-paid-for toadies. The "bank records" might better be interpreted as those records that indicate who paid what to whom and when in exchange for what no-bid contracts, etc., but the point is valid, nonetheless.

As rumored a couple of months back, Time Warner is starting a trial of metered Internet access. "On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte... [T]iers will range from $29.95 a month for... 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for... 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap."

An anonymous reader writes "In another example of the distorted reality in which airport security functions, the Daily Mail reports that a man was threatened with arrest for wearing a Transformers T-shirt:

Brad Jayakody, 30, from London, said he was stopped from passing through security at Heathrow's Terminal 5 after his Transformers T-shirt was deemed 'offensive.' Mr. Jayakody said the first guard started joking with him about the Transformers character depicted on his French Connection T-shirt. '"Then he explains that since Megatron is holding a gun, I'm not allowed to fly,' he said.

"

NOT in order of annoyingness:

Quicktime - It's both a terrible media player and it is insanely unwilling to be removed. Apple's central design concept seems to be preventing the user from doing what he wants. If I delete qttask.exe, it means I don't want that file anymore, not that I want it to be resurrected. If I disable it in msconfig, it doesn't mean that the next time Quicktime runs I want it to get a new startup entry.

iTunes - ituneshelper.exe is about the same as qttask, and iTunes is even worse at playing music than Quicktime is at playing movies. It's the single most bloated piece of software I've ever used. The iTunes store is another reason to avoid it, not to use it. It also crashes way too much on a new MacBook Pro, and since I don't know what Apple compatible software is a good replacement for it, I can't just replace it for my friend as I would if he had Windows.

Apple Updater - Everyone I know just installed Safari. They didn't mean to.

Flash - Thank you, Flashblock, for making the internet useable again. Thank you, bad web designers, for sticking retarded flash "intro pages" on your sites so I can see that they've been blocked and then avoid your company on principal.

HP Printer Philosophy - Thanks to you, too, HP, for making a printer that needs an IP to be set via a web interface in order to access that same web interface. Thanks to my neighbor for having a parallel cable sitting around so I could access it in a more traditional way.

Windows Desktop - Why do you lose my icon placement every time your resolution changes? Luckily, there are countless little freeware apps to save icon positions.

Real Player - You basically invented the Apple "if you uninstall me but I will grow more powerful than you can possibly imagine" routine, so you get extra evil points for originality.

Logitech Mouse Drivers - My mouse drivers are now 100 megs. Finally they fixed the two year problem of needing to run them manually after booting (running on startup caused them to fail), but they still involve two separate taskbar icons and take up a ton of RAM.

Word - I know how to make you do what I want, but it took years to learn how to both stop your autoformatting and then put in the formatting I want. I hate the way you place images. I hate the way you resize my stuff after I've already locked it down.

Verizon Phone UI - My phone had a great UI and lots of nice capabilities when it was made. You removed bluetooth file transfers so I'd have to pay you to get photos off my phone, and you made the interface ugly. You removed the ability to vibrate and ring at the same time. I'm glad my phone was so easily hackable.

Flash (again, but bear with me) movie players - The only reason you exist is to keep me from saving video to my hard disk. Guess what. I can still do it. Meanwhile, you're slow, often not resizable without using a magnifying tool to manually zoom onto your little box, and you require me to enable flash.

I know how to fix or replace all of you, but you kill me every time I have to use a new PC and wade through your bloated code again.

News.com has a piece looking at renewed efforts by both state and federal lawmakers to subject Internet sales to state taxes. "Two bills are pending in Congress that would allow tax collectors to target out-of-state Internet and mail-order retailers, and their supporters are optimistic about their political prospects... Meanwhile, pro-tax states are trying their own ways to circumvent a long-standing rule saying a retailer must have physical presence before it can be forced to collect taxes. One effort came from New York state, where legislators recently approved a measure requiring Amazon and other online retailers (that lack a physical presence in the state) to collect sales tax on New Yorkers' purchases... This is not exactly a new debate... But now, with a Democratic Congress and a potentially Democratic administration next year, the arguments may gain more political traction."

Gene writes "Todd Tiahrt is the Representative for the fourth congressional district of Kansas. While that may be interesting to some people, it is not very interesting to me since I live in California. That has not stopped Mr. Tiahrt from sending me monthly emails describing his positions on Air Force contract decisions and telling me that he is against wasteful spending. OK, everyone gets onto email lists that they don't remember signing up for. In this case however, Todd has been emailing me as "Norma Adams " I am not now nor have I ever been Norma Adams. But Norma is a name that I have occasionally seen as a recipient name on spam emails over the years. I don't know how it got linked with my name on some spammer's email list, but that's where it's been.

Now, how can I conclude anything except that that Todd Tiahrt has bought or otherwise acquired a mailing list from a spammer? I've emailed Todd's office twice, but have gotten no reply. Perhaps that will change with a little publicity."

The European Union's Article 29 Working Group has completed its report (PDF) on data protection and search engines and recommends that search engines only be allowed to hold onto search data for six months, according to Ars Technica's coverage. 'To hang onto data for longer, search engine operators will need to show that such data is "strictly necessary" to offer the service. Google and others have long said that they need to retain data in order to refine search results, prevent click fraud, and launch new services like spell check (which, in Google's case, was built from user search data). In addition, the data that is kept will need to be guarded more closely. The working group concluded that IP addresses could be used to identify individuals; if not by the search engine itself, then by law enforcement or after a subpoena.'
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080407-eu-issues-tough-data-protection-finding.html

Purdue scientists have unveiled the most high-resolution map of Americans' carbon dioxide emissions yet, including video of hourly changes to the nation's greenhouse gas profile.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/265979049/scientists-unve.html

maciarc writes "A p2pnet reader thinks he/she may have identified the RIAA's Settlement Center by looking up their phone number off of p2plawsuits.com and running it through CNAM and doing some google searches. I'm sure there are some defendants and lawyers out there that would love to see this verified. Is there anyone in Overland Park, KS that could swing by for a look?"
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/15512

longacre writes "The automated station announcements played on-board New York suburban commuter trains have been silent for the past couple of months after the U.S. Air Force switched on a Global Positioning System satellite that had previously been out of commission. On Feb. 26, the day the satellite was rebooted, riders on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad began hearing station announcements for the wrong stations, forcing the railroads to turn them off altogether. The problem: despite being delivered over just the past few years, the trains' receivers were not programmed to receive signals from the new satellite. NovATel, the Quebec-based vendor that supplied the receivers, blames the Air Force, while the Air Force says it notifies vendors well in advance of satellite changes. NovATel says it has shipped revised software to the railroads free of charge, but it could take months to update all 417 receivers just on the LIRR."
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-lilirr0408,0,442478.story

Big Content is currently engaged in a worldwide 'whisper campaign' against Fair Use. 'The counter-reformation in question takes the form of a "whispering campaign" in which ministries in different countries are told that plans to expand fair use rights might well run afoul of the Berne Convention's "three-step test." The Convention, which goes back to the late 1800s, was one of the earliest international copyright treaties and is now administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).'
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080407-patry-copyright-owners-wants-rights-expanded-to-were-rabbit-size.html

CelticCoder writes "Researchers have made a breakthrough in creating biogasoline from renewable cellulose like switchgrass. Unlike ethanol, biogasoline can be used just like current gasoline without the need for special transportation or engine modifications. This could tide us over until eestor's "batteries" are available in the Chevy Volt."
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111392&org=NSF

ICANN is finally taking action against Domain Registrar GoDaddy's controversial 'lockdowns'. GoDaddy has long had a policy of 'locking down' domain names for 60 days after a customer updated their contact details. This put customers in a Catch 22 position: ICANN requires customers keep their contact details up to date, or risk having the domain forfeited. Yet during the lockdown period the customer is prevented from transferring the domain from GoDaddy to another registrar. If the lockdown ran over the domain's expiry date, customers were forced to renew with GoDaddy or lose the domain. ICANN proposes to ban this practice.

ICANN who is charged with overseeing the Internet has long been accused of giving domain registrars a free ride. But recently after ICANN failed to discipline Network Solutions over a front-running scam, they found themselves both on the wrong end of a lawsuit by lawyers Kabateck Brown Kellner. Is ICANN's action a signal of increased vigilance in policing registrars, or is it a PR move paving the way for a complete removal of US Government oversight?