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Submission + - "Spaceport America Could Become a Ghost Town"

Submitted by
RocketAcademy
RocketAcademy writes: "A group of New Mexico legislators is warning that the $200-million Spaceport America "could become a ghost town, with tumbleweeds crossing the runways” if trial lawyers succeed in blocking critical liability legislation. The warning came in a letter to the Albuquerque Journal [subscription or free trial required].

Virgin Galactic has signed a lease to become the spaceport's anchor tenant but may pull out if New Mexico is unable to provide liability protection for manufacturers and part suppliers, similar to legislation already passed by Texas, Colorado, Florida, and Virginia. The proposed legislation is also similar to liability protection which New Mexico offers to the ski industry.

An eclectic group of business and civic interests has formed the Save Our Spaceport Coalition to support passage of the liability reform legislation, which is being fought by the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association."
Google

Submission + - 5 More Google Fiberhoods coming to KC (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by skade88
skade88 writes: If you live in KC, Google is doing their part to make sure you get your daily fiber. They are launching their gigabit home internet service in five new areas in KC.

'“In 2013, we’re going to hit the ground running, finishing installations in Dub’s Dread, and then quickly moving on to five more fiberhoods,” the company wrote, using its invented term for zones where Google Fiber will be deployed.

“Based on pre-registration results, the next fiberhoods on the list are Piper Schools, Delaware Ridge, Painted Hills, Open Door, and Arrowhead. And we have some more good news for folks in some of these areas—we’ve extended a few fiberhood boundaries slightly, so that more people can get Google Fiber. You can see the new boundaries below and on our website, where you can check to see if your home is now eligible.”'
Censorship

Submission + - UK Internet Porn Blocking Rejected (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Gordonjcp
Gordonjcp writes: The BBC are reporting that the proposed automatic blocking of porn websites by UK ISPs has been rejected by the government. Only 35% of the parents who responded to a survey on filtering wanted an automatic block. The report, drawn from over 3500 responses, found that 80% of all those who responded were in favour of no filtering of any kind.
Iphone

Submission + - Apple iPhone Infringes On Sony, Nokia Patents (infoworld.com)

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: A federal jury in Delaware has found Apple's iPhone infringes on three patents held by MobileMedia, a patent-holding company formed by Sony, Nokia and MPEG LA, InfoWorld reports. The jury found that the iPhone directly infringed U.S. patent 6,070,068, which was issued to Sony and covers a method for controlling the connecting state of a call, U.S. patent 6,253,075, which covers call rejection, and U.S. patent 6,427,078, which covers a data processing device. MobileMedia has garnered the unflattering descriptor "patent troll" from some observers. The company, which was formed in 2010, holds some 300 patents in all.

Submission + - Slashdot and Hacker News raise $43,200 for the FreeBSD Foundation in three days! (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The FreeBSD Foundation has posted blog article article talking about the remarkable surge in donations they've received in the last three days following a recent Slashdot article reporting on weak fundraising this year. Deb Goodkin reports that the FreeBSD Foundation, as with many non-profits, receives more than 50% of its annual funds at the end of the US tax year, but that the Foundation has never seen this rate of donations before, and will hit a new record for unique donors this year. She comments that it was Slashdot readers that made the difference! She does, however, appeal for further donations noting that they have a long way to go on their full goal.

Submission + - ITU will decide if 911 or 112 becomes official emergency number (yahoo.com)

Submitted by maijc
maijc writes: The International Telecommunication Union will determine the standard emergency phone numbers for new generations of mobile phones and other devices. AP reports that member states have agreed that either 911 or 112 should be designated as emergency phone numbers. 911 is currently used in North America, while 112 is standard across the EU and in many other countries worldwide.

Submission + - Netflix releases ISP speeds for North America (netflix.com)

Submitted by Carnth
Carnth writes: Netflix will start releasing monthly ISP speed reports. Google Fiber ranks at the top. Hopefully this will give consumers a better overall picture on how their ISP performs compared to others.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Valve Begins Listing Linux Requirements for Certain Games on Steam (techgage.com)

Submitted by
Deathspawner
Deathspawner writes: "Perhaps hinting at the fact that the official Steam for Linux launch isn’t too far off, Valve has begun updating some game pages to include Linux system requirements. That in itself isn't too interesting. What is, is the fact that some games don't list only Ubuntu as the main supported distro, with some listing Linux Mint and Fedora as well. A common theme is that Valve recommends you always use a "fully updated" OS, regardless of which distro you use. And based on the system requirements laid out so far, it's safe to say that Serious Sam 3: BFE will undoubtedly be the most system-intensive game released at launch."

Submission + - Auto-threading compiler could restore Moore's Law gains (drdobbs.com)

Submitted by Nemo the Magnificent
Nemo the Magnificent writes: Develop in the Cloud has news about what might be a breakthrough out of Microsoft Research. A team there wrote a paper (PDF), now accepted for publication at OOPSLA, that describes how to teach a compiler to auto-thread a program that was written single-threaded in a conventional language like C#. This is the holy grail to take advantage of multiple cores — to get Moore's Law improvements back on track, after they essentially ran aground in the last decade. (Functional programming, the other great white hope, just isn't happening.) About 2004 was when Intel et al. ran into a wall and started packing multiple cores into chips instead of cranking the clock speed. The Microsoft team modified a C# compiler to use the new technique, and claim a "large project at Microsoft" have written "several million lines of code" testing out the resulting "safe parallelism."
Microsoft

Submission + - Woz worries Microsoft is now more innovative than Apple (techcrunch.com) 1

Submitted by yvajj
yvajj writes: According to a techcrunch interview, Woz believes that Microsoft is now more innovative than Apple. Per the interview, it seems as though Apple is now just doing newer versions of the Iphone, and are potentially headed into a rut. Another gem from Woz is the fact that he treats all new hardware as something new to learn from and does not approach it with any preconceptions (irrespective of who the manufacturer is / what OS etc.). A great short interview from Woz.
The Internet

Submission + - US Offers New Plans 1 Month Before U.N. Meeting to Regulate Web (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: Slashdotters have been reading for months about the upcoming ITU conference next month in Dubai, which will propose new regulations and restrictions for the Internet that critics say could censor free speech, levy tariffs on e-commerce, and even force companies to clean up their “e-waste” and make gadgets that are better for the environment. Concerns about the closed-door event have sparked a Wikileaks-style info-leaking site, and led the State Department on Wednesday to file a series of new proposals or tranches seeking to ensure “competition and commercial agreements — and not regulation” as the meeting's main message. Terry Kramer, the chief U.S. envoy to the conference, says the United States is against sanctions. “[Doing nothing] would not be a terrible outcome at all,” Kramer said recently.
Encryption

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Is TSA's PreCheck System Easy to Game? (wordpress.com)

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE
OverTheGeicoE writes: TSA has had a preferred traveler program, PreCheck, for a while now. Frequent fliers and other individuals with prior approval from DHS can avoid some minor annoyances of airport security, like removing shoes and light jackets, but not all of the time. TSA likes to be random and unpredictable, so PreCheck participants don't always get the full benefits of PreCheck. Apparently the decision about PreCheck is made when the boarding pass is printed, and a traveler's PreCheck authorization is encoded, unencrypted, on the boarding pass barcode. In theory, one could use a barcode-reading Web site (like this one, perhaps) to translate a barcode into text to determine your screening level before a flight. One might even be able to modify the boarding pass using PhotoShop or the GIMP to, for example, get the screening level of your choice. I haven't been able to verify this information, but I bet Slashdot can. Is TSA's PreCheck system really that easy to game? If you have an old boarding pass lying around, can you read the barcode and verify that the information in TFA is correct?
Hardware

Submission + - New York Data Centers Battle Floods, Utility Outages (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: At least three data center buildings in lower Manhattan are struggling with power problems amid widespread flooding and utility outages caused by Hurricane Sandy. Flooded basements at two sites took out diesel fuel pumps, leaving them unable to refuel generators on higher levels. One of these was Datagram, which knocked out Buzzfeed and the Gawker network of sites. At 111 8th Avenue, some tenants lost power when Equinix briefly experienced generator problems.
Cloud

Submission + - NASA achieves data goals for Mars rover with open source software (opensource.com)

Submitted by
caseyb89
caseyb89 writes: "Open source projects Nginx, Railo CMS, and GlusterFS are powering Mars Curiosity's big data crunching. "Taken together, the combination of cloud and open source enabled the Curiosity mission to provide beautiful images in real time, not months delayed; at high quality, not "good enough" quality. A traditional, proprietary approach would not have been this successful, given the short time to deployment and shifting requirements that necessitated the ultimate in agility and flexibility.""
Windows

Submission + - Replacing Windows 8's Missing Start Menu (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "The Start Button, which has offered Windows users quick access to important programs, folders, and configuration options since 1995 and has looked more or less the same for all that time, has been re-engineered beyond recognition for Windows 8, replaced by a Start Screen of colorful Metro tiles that greets the user upon startup. One big problem: once you enter Desktop mode to access non-Metro apps, you lose easy access to all the stuff you expect from the Start Button. This has given rise to something of a cottage industry for Start Button replacements, with multiple replacement utilities available even before Windows 8 officially arrives."

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