Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that computer science students with the entrepreneurial spirit may want to look for a different major, because if Thomas M. Siebel, founder of Siebel Systems, is right, IT is a mature industry that will grow no faster than the larger economy, its glory days having ended in 2000. Addressing Stanford students in February as a guest of the engineering school, Siebel called attention to 20 sweet years from 1980 to 2000, when worldwide IT spending grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 17 percent. 'All you had to do was show up and not goof it up,' Siebel says. 'All ships were rising.' Since 2000, however, that rate has averaged only 3 percent. His explanation for the sharp decline is that 'the promise of the post-industrial society has been realized.' In Siebel's view, far larger opportunities are to be found in businesses that address needs in food, water, health care and energy. Though Silicon Valley was 'where the action was' when he finished graduate school, he says, 'if I were graduating today, I would get on a boat and I would get off in Shanghai.'"

happierr writes "The gaming industry has been struggling in the last few months, and it is about to struggle even more when OnLive and Gaikai launch later this year. The new services are both a step in the right direction to counter piracy and provide easily-accessible gaming to people with low-end PCs. They might even do for PC gaming what the Wii did for casual gaming; greatly expand the market and draw interest from people who would not ordinarily play games. The services are a real threat for the Big Three video game companies (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo). How will they combat these revolutionary services? There are a few steps that the Big Three are taking to combat the New Two, such as an increased reliance on peripherals and vision cameras, exclusivity deals, and more online multiplayer features, which OnLive and Gaikai will have a hard time matching."

FullBandwidth writes "Paper-thin batteries that can be printed onto greeting cards or other flexible substrates have been demonstrated at Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems in Germany. The batteries have a relatively short life span, as the anode and cathode materials dissipate over time. However, they contain no hazardous materials."

The Narrative Fallacy writes "The Washington Post reports that online swindling takes dedication even in the best of times but succeeding in the midst of a worldwide economic meltdown takes patience, resolve, and hard work. 'We are working harder. The financial crisis is not making it easy for them over there,' said Banjo, 24, speaking about Americans, whose trust he has won and whose money he has fleeced, via his Dell laptop. 'They don't have money. And the money they don't have, we want.' US authorities say Americans — the easiest prey, according to Nigerian scammers — still lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year to cybercrimes, including a scheme known as the Nigerian 419 fraud, named for a section of the Nigerian criminal code. 419 is cemented in Nigerian popular culture. and the scammers, known as 'yahoo-yahoo boys,' are glorified in pop songs such as 'Yahoozee,' which gained even more fame after former secretary of state Colin L. Powell danced to it at a London festival last year."

Al writes "Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a crucial step toward building a practical quantum computer: multiple computing operations on quantum bits. The NIST team performed five quantum logic operations and 10 transport operations (meaning they moved the qubit from one part of the system to another) in series, while reliably maintaining the states of their ions — a tricky task because the ions can easily be knocked out of their prepared state. The researchers used beryllium ions stored within so-called ion traps and added magnesium ions to keep the beryllium ones cool and prevent them from losing their quantum state." In related news, another reader links to an Australian study indicating that quantum computers "can continue to work perfectly even if half their components, or qubits, are missing."

mrchaotica writes "I'm in the market for a new HDTV (in the $1200-or-slightly-more range, as I won the extended-service-plan lottery and have a Sears store credit). Several of the TVs I've looked at have various 'Internet TV' features (here are Samsung's and Panasonic's). Some manufacturers appear to be rolling their own, while others are partnering with Yahoo (maybe in an attempt to create a 'standard?'). Moreover, these TVs also tend to run Linux under the hood (although their GPL compliance, such as in Panasonic's case, may leave something to be desired). Finally, it's easy to imagine these TVs being able to support video streaming services (YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, etc.) without a set-top box, but I don't know the extent to which that support actually exists. Here are my questions: 1) Is this 'Internet TV' thing going to be a big deal going forward, or just a gimmick? 2) Which manufacturers are most [open standard|Linux|hacker]-friendly? 3) Which TV models have the best support (or best potential and community backing) for this sort of thing?"

An anonymous reader writes with word of the release of the first alpha of Firefox 3.6, "intended for developers and testers only." "As with Firefox 3.5, there are improvements to the performance; pages render faster, and pages with JavaScript code run much faster with the new Tracemonkey engine. Although this Firefox version carries the code name 'Namoroka' Alpha 1, it is also currently referred to as Firefox.next. And like other Firefox Alphas, it does not bear the Firefox logo. This release uses the Gecko 1.9.2 engine and will likely include several interface improvements in later versions, such as new graphical tab-switching behavior, which was removed from 3.5 with Beta 2." Update: 08/09 03:54 GMT by T : Read more at InaTux.com.

dcollins writes "The college where I work has decided to forego ordering a textbook for the computer class that I teach this fall. Does anyone know of a free, open-source textbook for basic computer literacy concepts (overview of hardware, software, operating systems, and file systems)?"

dasButcher writes "Viruses and worms get all the headlines, but poor password management is a worse problem according to a new study by Channel Insider and CompTIA. As Larry Walsh writes in his Security Channel blog, VARs and security service providers say they find more problems with password management than antivirus applications when they do security assessments. While password problems are nothing new, Walsh and those posting on his blog correctly assert that users remain cavalier about passwords and businesses are doing too little to address this serious vulnerability."

An anonymous reader writes "Whether you consider Opera an underdog browser or not, it came out on top in a feature on CNet this weekend. It was up against 'underdog Web browsers' Camino, K-Meleon, Shiira and Arora in a piece loosely aimed at determining whether these browsers are yet ready to steal significant numbers of users from Firefox, Safari, IE etc. Interesting most to me, however, is that it transpires that Shiira, the Mac browser from Japan, is one of the fastest browsers on the planet, beating the original Chrome v1.0, Firefox 3.5 and more in its benchmark tests."

ParticleGirl writes with this excerpt from the Detroit Free Press: "GM's unusual, government-engineered bankruptcy allowed the Detroit automaker to emerge as a new company — and to shed billions in liabilities, including claims that governments had against GM for polluting. Environmental liabilities estimated at $530 million were left with the old GM, which has only $1.2 billion to wind down. Administrative fees and other claims will soak up that money, and state and local officials told the Free Press they fear the cleanups will be shortchanged. ... The New York Attorney General's Office, seeking to protect environmental claims for cleanup at Massena and other sites, argued that federal and state regulatory requirements should not be eliminated by a bankruptcy sale. ... But [US Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber] ruled otherwise."

1sockchuck writes "State legislators have been offering huge tax incentives to attract data center projects from cloud-builders. But what happens if the political climate changes and the tax break disappears? If you're Microsoft, you can just take your cloud and move it someplace else. The infrastructure for the Windows Azure platform is being migrated out of a facility in central Washington after the state ruled that data centers no longer qualify for a tax exemption on equipment. Mike Manos, a key player in site selection for many major data centers, predicts that future cloud platforms will move often to chase lower taxes or cheaper power."

The Opposable Thumbs blog reports on a confluence of rumors and information leaks that suggest Sony will be unveiling a PS3 Slim sooner rather than later. Despite waning console sales, orders for PS3-related hardware have risen sharply. There's evidence to suggest that Sony is phasing out its 80GB model, which would help clear the way for a hardware revision. Some expect the official announcement to come as early as August 18th, during the gamescom expo in Germany.

d0rp writes with news that Tesla Motors has reported earning a profit for the first time in its six-year history. Sales of the $109,000 Roadster earned the company $20 million in revenue, which settled out to $1 million in profits. "Most of that money rolled in after Tesla delivered cars customers had already placed deposits on. Although the company has, according to spokeswoman Rachel Konrad, seen a 'surge' in orders for the Roadster and the higher-performance Roadster Sport (price: $127,500), it isn't likely to keep rolling cars out so quickly. Konrad says Tesla is 'definitely on pace' to meet its goal of 1,000 to 1,200 cars a year but didn't say when that might happen. Tesla has so far delivered about 609 Roadsters since production started in March, 2008." The company is working on a new 'Model S' sedan, with the help of $465 million in government loans, and has also entered into a partnership with Daimler to help the German auto company produce electric Smart cars.

bonch writes "On Friday, Microsoft posted to a mailing list that IE developers are reviewing the HTML 5 standard for future versions of Internet Explorer. They've given some feedback on the current editor's draft, saying that they 'have more questions than answers' and criticizing many of HTML 5's new tags, like <header>, <footer> and <aside>, calling them 'arbitrary' or unnecessary. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft waited too long to try to influence basic parts of the spec that most of their competitors have already adopted."