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jaaron writes "Mark Shuttleworth has created a mailing list for those interested in free-software-only laptop: "Right now, software freedom isn't a huge priority for most of the companies that make up components for the PC and laptop industry. If we want to get onto their radar screen, we need to show that its worth their while to think about it. To that end I'd like to build up a list of people who are interested in this idea, and would potentially buy a high-powered laptop if it were guaranteed to work completely with free software drivers and OpenBIOS.""
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/131

This year's E3 is substantially different than events of the past, with an easily navigated show floor just one of the signs of the changing times. There are a number of questions up in the air as to what the new face of E3 means. Hideo Kojima (creator of the Metal Gear series) went on record at the Konami conference saying that he considers the new format a waste of time. Game|Life's Chris Kohler has a piece up on this subject, and he says that the new E3 is all about the status quo: "Yes, there were press conferences. But when Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony all decide to only show their 2007 games (for the most part) and hold back on announcing huge news (entirely), you know something's up with the venue. At any rate, gamers hoping for some kind of shift in momentum, no matter which direction, didn't get their wish. This year's E3 is all about maintaining the status quo. Typically, it's been the 'battle of the press conferences' to see who 'wins E3.' This year, everybody surrendered."

An anonymous reader writes "CNN reports that Microsoft has admitted all xbox 360 consoles sold in the past 19 months suffer from a design flaw. But it does not have any plans to start a recall program.

It seems like everyone with a functional (like myself) are lucky. This seems to be a bad time for Microsoft. But as a 360 owner, I am glad they actually admitted this instead of denying and repeating their line on how the actual failure rate is very low."

An anonymous reader writes "Congressional investigators set up a bogus company with only a postal box and within a month obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that allowed them to buy enough radioactive material for a small "dirty bomb.""
http://www.townhall.com/News/NewsArticle.aspx?contentGUID=2ea12132-8c25-4d0a-9181-245e80a47cc5

jaaron writes "The Apache Software Foundation and the Eclipse Foundation have announced [PDF] a new conference for Asia — OS Summit Asia. To be held in November in Hong Kong, the event is unique in being the first joint conference between Apache and Eclipse, and marks a milestone in the rise of open source in China and Asia. The call for participation is still open but closes this week. So submit your proposals quickly. You just might be able to score a trip to Hong Kong and participate in this groundbreaking conference."
http://ossummit.com/

After a legal battle since 2004, the Belgian copyright watchdog SABAM has get what it wanted in court (the article is in Dutch since their English site is still under construction, but the pdf has been translated to English). According to the pdf: "The Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (SABAM) has just won an important legal battle within the context of the dispute that opposes it to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) TISCALI, which has become SCARLET EXTENDED Ltd. In its sentence of June 29, 2007, the Court of First Instance of Brussels is demanding from the access provider that it adopts one of the technical measures put forward by the expert in order to prevent Internet users from illegally downloading SABAM's musical repertoire via P2P software." There are rumors that Scarlet is forced to use the same software as myspace uses to filter the illegal p2p traffic from the legal p2p traffic (Audible Magic), which should be able to filter 70% of the illegal content. Is this the beginning of forcing more ISP's to block traffic, or is this just the start of more powerfull encryption on p2p-applications?
http://www.sabam.be/website/nl/home.htm

Dekortage writes "Despite the enormous popularity of Google in the U.S. and other countries, it barely has 2% of the market in South Korea. There, the most popular search results are gotten through Naver or Daum, according to a recent New York Times article. These sites are more like Yahoo Answers or Wikipedia in their approach, where participants freely answer other people's questions, building private databases of information that Google and other traditional search engines simply can't match."

Tinman_au writes "Medpage Today has an interesting report on a study that suggests "gaming" kids aren't all that much different to "normal" ones!

"These findings do not support the notion that adolescents who play video games are socially isolated," Cummings and Dr. Vandewater wrote.

Another popular notion of how video game play affects adolescents is "displacement," which assumes that gaming time takes away time that would otherwise be spent in more appropriate activities, they added.

"Although our findings are relevant to the magnitude and direction of the relationship between video game play and time spent in other activities, they cannot determine the direction of effects," they wrote. "We cannot assume that if adolescents were not playing video games, they would be interacting with their parents or friends or spending more time doing homework."

I remember my mother being concerned that I used to read too much sci-fi...I wonder if every generation worries about what the next does for entertainment?

The full article can be found here:
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/GeneralPedi atrics/tb/6069"

njyoder writes "A small clique consisting mostly of former and current admins, some with "top level clique connections," has collectively removed all (about 45,000) spoiler warnings on Wikpedia articles. Spoiler warnings are normally used to warn the reader where spoiler(s) contained in an article about fiction exist.

The justification used by the anti-spoiler group is that because most of the articles don't have the removals reverted and that this is a de facto consensus that they're not wanted. Others counter-argue that many may not have seen them yet or may be afraid to revert because of them being afraid to get into a revert war with the anti-spoiler group who has invested much more energy in this.

In some cases, reverts were performed restoring the spoiler warnings, but they were quickly reverted back. There are also allegations of users being threatened by admins when reverting.

For more information, read the mediation page and talk page on spoiler warnings."

TheBlackSheep writes "Hi, Did you remember Logo? a programming language for drawing with a little virtual turtle? well new times, new metaphor. Turtan is a tangible programming language where the instructions are objects on the table, it uses the reacTIVision software for tracking figures and TDesktop as base system. At the moment you can view the video here. There are no more information about ( almost in English ) but if you want to see more, here some screenshots pages: scr1 scr2"
http://bestsheep.no-ip.org/mediawiki

dmayle writes "

• Every Day
• Every 2 Days
• Every 3 Days
• Every 4 Days
• Every Week
• Whenever CowboyNeal feels like it

"