NotSanguine writes "Technology companies are up in arms about the FTC's pending rules change which would require explicit parental permission to allow websites to gather a wide range of data on children 13 and under. From the NYT Article: '"If adopted, the effect of these new rules would be to slow the deployment of applications that provide tremendous benefits to children, and to slow the economic growth and job creation generated by the app economy," Catherine A. Novelli, vice president of worldwide government affairs at Apple, wrote in comments to the agency (PDF).' But would that be a bad thing? As reported in the Times last week, Matt Richtel writes, 'There is a widespread belief among teachers that students' constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks, according to two surveys of teachers being released on Thursday.' So, will the new FTC rules end up helping children (by enhancing their privacy and, if industry pundits are right, reducing the amount of content available online for children — thus enhancing their attention spans), or will the negative effects on corporations have as deleterious an effect on the economy as to measurably reduce the quality of education?"

Entropy98 writes "Windows Live Messenger will be shut down by March 2013, after nearly 13 years of service, so Microsoft can focus its efforts on Skype, its recent $8.5bn acquisition. No word on whether users will be able to transfer their WLM accounts to Skype. 'According to internet analysis firm Comscore, WLM still had more than double the number of Skype's instant messenger facility at the start of this year and was second only in popularity to Yahoo Messenger. But the report suggested WLM's US audience had fallen to 8.3 million unique users, representing a 48% drop year-on-year. By contrast, the number of people using Skype to instant message each other grew over the period.'"

concealment sends this quote from Bloomberg: "Apple Inc. is exploring ways to replace Intel processors in its Mac personal computers with a version of the chip technology it uses in the iPhone and iPad, according to people familiar with the company's research. Apple engineers have grown confident that the chip designs used for its mobile devices will one day be powerful enough to run its desktops and laptops, said three people with knowledge of the work, who asked to remain anonymous because the plans are confidential. Apple began using Intel chips for Macs in 2005."

New submitter mc10 points out a post on the CloudFlare blog about the circumstances behind Google's services being inaccessible for a brief time earlier today. Quoting: "To understand what went wrong you need to understand a bit about how networking on the Internet works. The Internet is a collection of networks, known as "Autonomous Systems" (AS). Each network has a unique number to identify it known as AS number. CloudFlare's AS number is 13335, Google's is 15169. The networks are connected together by what is known as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP is the glue of the Internet — announcing what IP addresses belong to each network and establishing the routes from one AS to another. An Internet "route" is exactly what it sounds like: a path from the IP address on one AS to an IP address on another AS. ... Unfortunately, if a network starts to send out an announcement of a particular IP address or network behind it, when in fact it is not, if that network is trusted by its upstreams and peers then packets can end up misrouted. That is what was happening here. I looked at the BGP Routes for a Google IP Address. The route traversed Moratel (23947), an Indonesian ISP. Given that I'm looking at the routing from California and Google is operating Data Centre's not far from our office, packets should never be routed via Indonesia."

leppi writes "Nvidia has announced a huge increase in Linux gaming performance for their GeForce R310 drivers after almost a year of development alongside Valve and other game developer partners. Nvidia's announcement also indicated the Steam beta for Linux should be out today. Quoting: 'Available for download at www.geforce.com, the new R310 drivers were also thoroughly tested with Steam for Linux, the extension of Valve's phenomenally popular Steam gaming platform that officially opened to gamers starting today. ... Comparing 304.51 driver performance of 142.7 fps versus 310.14 driver performance of 301.4 fps in beta build of Left for Dead 2. All tests run on the same system using Intel Core i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz with 8 GB memory, GeForce GTX 680 and Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit.'" Update: 11/06 21:00 GMT by S : Valve has gone ahead and announced the Steam for Linux Beta. They've sent invites to a number of people who filled out the application, and they'll be inviting more as the test goes along. The beta test is available for installation on Ubuntu 12.04, with support for other distros to come: "We intend to support additional popular distros in the future; we’ll prioritize development for these based on user feedback."

An anonymous reader writes "I am not a fan of wireless except for Wi-Fi to a notebook, but have gotten frustrated by the vast amounts of tangled cables around my computers: I have two machines, four monitors, multiple external hard drives, cable modem, network switch, router, USB hubs — everything requires power and connection to the other devices. The tangles and tangles make it almost impossible to move anything without spending twenty or thirty minutes under the desk. I'd rather untie balled-up fishing line than try to snake a monitor cable out from some thirty or so other wires. Anyone have good ways to prevent this?"

Today is Election Day in the U.S., and polls are open even in Hawaii now. The current Slashdot poll gives a snapshot of how many readers have voted or plan to vote; more rigorous and wide-based polls are easy to find. If you're taking part in today's election, what have you found? Did you or will you vote electronically, or on paper? How long did you wait to vote? Did you vote weeks ago by mail? How much time did you put into making your choices? It would be helpful if in comments you start the subject of your post with your 2-letter state abbreviation, like this: "TX - About to go get in line to push some buttons."

Riskable writes "Version 1.1 of Gate One (HTML5 terminal emulator/SSH client) was just released (download). New features include security enhancements, major performance improvements, mobile browser support, improved terminal emulation, automatic syntax highlighting of syslog messages, PDFs can now be captured/displayed just like images, Python 3 support, Internet Explorer (10) support, and quite a lot more (full release notes). There's also a new demo where you can try out vim in your browser, play terminal games (nethack, vitetris, adventure, zangband, battlestar, greed, robotfindskitten, and hangman), surf the web in lynx, and a useful suite of IPv6-enabled network tools (ping, traceroute, nmap, dig, and a domain name checker)." Gate One is dual licensed (AGPLv3/Commercial Licensing); for individuals, it's pay-as-you-please.

colinneagle writes "Andrew Mayhall is 19 years old and is running a server company, called Evtron, whose product has reportedly set the world record for data density (4.6 petabytes per server rack) and has begun attracting attention from investors. One of those interested parties is reportedly Facebook, with whom the young CEO claims to have had casual discussions about a potential acquisition/hire agreement (Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on the talks). He says the opportunity to speak with Facebook was simply one he couldn't pass up, and seems more impassioned by entrepreneurship. He speaks often of building his company into an EMC or NetApp, and could very well compete with them soon. But if an offer from Facebook ever comes, should he accept, or try to build something on his own?"

An anonymous reader writes "Proud voters are already posting their ballots on Instagram but ProPublica's Lois Beckett reports that you may want to check your state laws first since showing your marked ballot to other people is actually illegal in many states."

Mark.JUK writes "Scientists working under an EU funded (3 Million Euros) project out of Bangor University in Wales (United Kingdom) have developed a commercially-exploitable way of boosting broadband speeds over end-user fibre optic lines by using Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OOFDM) technology, which splits a laser down to multiple different optical frequencies (each of which can be used to carry data), and low-cost off-the-shelf components. The scientists claim that their solution has the ability to 'increase broadband transmission by up to two thousand times the current speed and capacity' (most UK Fibre-to-the-Home or similar services currently offer less than 100 Megabits per second) and it can do this alongside a 'significant reduction in electrical power consumption.'"

sweetpea86 writes "... but retails for $130 more. Teardowns of the Apple iPad Mini and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD have revealed that the two devices cost almost the same amount to manufacture, despite the retail prices being significantly different. Andrew Rassweiler, senior principal analyst of teardown services for IHS iSuppli, explains that Apple is sticking to the premium brand strategy it has always used for its media tablet and smartphone products, whereas Amazon is banking on content."