TechCrunch has released a few more technical details, pictures, and general comments about their CrunchPad project as a recent accidental leak saw a new round of images posted to the web. It seems that the tablet has continued to grow and evolve with the help of an Intel Atom chip (as opposed to the Via chip previously used), new software from Fusion Garage, and a bottom-up Linux install. "I wanted something I couldn't buy, and found people who said it could be built for a lot less than I imagined. The goal — a very thin and light touch screen computer, sans physical keyboard, that has no hard drive and boots directly to a browser to surf the web. The operating system exists solely to handle the hardware drivers and run the browser and associated applications. That's it."

An anonymous reader writes "Apple has posted a counter of App Store downloads as they approach one billion downloads. The lucky billionth downloader gets to walk away with a stash consisting of a MacBook Pro, 32GB iPod Touch, Time Capsule and $10,000 iTunes gift certificate. The App Store now has over 30,000 applications."

bhodge writes "Aside from the obvious 'it stops working' answer, how does flash media — such as USB, SD, and CF — fail? Unlike with traditional hard drive, where anyone who's worked with computers for a while knows what a drive failure looks like, I don't know anyone who has experienced such a failure with flash. I've haven't been able to find more than scant evidence of what such failures look like at the OS level. The one account I have found detailed using a small USB drive for /var/log storage; it failed very quickly, and then utterly (0 byte unformatted device), after five years of service in the role. This runs contrary to other anecdotal claims that you should still be able to read the media after you can no longer write to it. So my question is: what have you seen of the nature of flash media failure, if anything?"

megamerican alerted us to a leaked document (PDF) from a Virginia Fusion Center titled "2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment." The document is marked as "Law Enforcement Sensitive," not to be shown to public. Citizens for Legitimate Government has a write-up. Slashdot gets a mention on page 45 — not as a terrorist organization itself, but as one of the places that members of Anonymous may hang out: "A 'loose coalition of Internet denizens,' Anonymous consists largely of users from multiple internet sites such as 4chan, 711chan, 420chan, Something Awful, Fark, Encyclopedia Dramatica, Slashdot, IRC channels, and YouTube. Other social networking sites are also utilized to mobilize physical protests. ... Anonymous is of interest not only because of the sentiments expressed by affiliates and their potential for physical protest, but because they have innovated the use of e-protests and mobilization. Given the lack of a unifying creed, this movement has the potential to inspire lone wolf behavior in the cyber realms." According to the report, cell phones and digital music players have been used to transfer plans related to criminal activity, and therefore presumably could be grounds for suspicion. Podcasting is also suspicious.

supersloshy writes "I'm a user of Ubuntu Linux and I have been for a little while now. Recently I've been trying to copy DVDs onto a portable media player, but everything I've tried isn't working right. dvd::rip always gets the language mixed up (for example, when ripping 'Howl's Moving Castle,' one of the files it ripped to was in Japanese instead of English), Acidrip just plain isn't working for me (not recognizing a disc with spaces in its name, refusing to encode, etc.), Thoggen is having trouble with chapters (chapter 1 repeated twice for me once), and OGMRip has the audio out of sync. What I'm looking for is a reliable program to copy the movie into a single file with none of the audio or video glitches as mentioned above. Is there even such thing on Linux? If you can't think of a decent Linux-based solution, then a Windows one is fine as long as it works."

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Southern Denmark have modified a Wiimote so that it can control an industrial lawn mower. The project is called Casmobot (Computer Assisted Slope Mowing Robot). 'The Casmobot project is about making grass cutting more efficient,' said Kjeld Jensen, a robotics researcher at the University of Southern Denmark who developed the system. It uses a standard Wiimote that communicates via Bluetooth to a computer and robotics module built into the mower. Actions of the mower are matched to tilt actions of the remote. For example, if you tilt the remote down the mower moves forwards; tilt it up, and it moves backwards, and so on. The Wiimote can be used to control the mower manually or in computer-assisted mode, where the mower uses autonomous navgiation based on RTK GPS positioning to cut larger areas."

narramissic writes "Citing legal reasons, Facebook has ended its brief relationship with The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay added a 'Share on Facebook' button around two weeks ago to its site that allowed its users to post links to small information files on Facebook that are used to download audio, video, etc. via BitTorrent. Facebook is now blocking those 'bookmarklets' as well as any links from The Pirate Bay, said Peter Sunde, of The Pirate Bay. Sunde said he received an e-mail from Facebook justifying the action because of the legal proceedings against Sunde and three others. The men are awaiting return of a verdict on April 17 from a trial that concluded early last month in Stockholm. They are charged with helping to make available material under copyright."

A reader writes "The Associated Press, who has been acting very bipolar lately about Google News (they get paid by Google for their content, and then complain about Google 'stealing' that content), has another issue with not knowing what their association is up to: they set up a channel on Youtube, and then threatened an AP affiliate for embedding that content."

jeffmeden writes "BusinessWeek reports today that Microsoft suffered a loss in federal court Monday. The judge rendering the verdict ordered Microsoft to pay $388 Million in damages for violating a patent held by Uniloc, a California maker of software that prevents people from illegally installing software on multiple computers. Uniloc claims Microsoft's Windows XP and some Office programs infringe on a related patent they hold. It's hard to take sides on this one, but one thing is certain: should the verdict hold up, it will be heavily ironic if the extra copies of XP and Office sold due to crafty copy protection end up not being worth $388 million."

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday iFixit tore apart the Nintendo DSi and found several internal upgrades from the outgoing DS Lite. It seems that an experienced hand can completely disassemble the DSi in less than ten minutes using standard tools, especially since the job does not require a tri-wing screwdriver. This should make repairing and tinkering with the DSi substantially easier. The DSi now includes two integrated cameras that, unfortunately, have only 0.3 megapixel resolution. This is certainly a bit underwhelming considering most mainstream phones have cameras of at least 1.3 megapixels. As for chips, Nintendo is using a Samsung MoviNAND integrated 256 MB Flash memory / MMC controller chip, as well as a custom ARM CPU + GPU is stamped with the revision code 'TWL.' The DSi's chips all had manufacture dates around September 2008, indicating that Nintendo has been stockpiling these devices for quite a while prior to the North American release."

Sooner Boomer writes "I'm trying to help drag a professor I work with into the 20th century. Although he is involved in cutting-edge research (nanotechnology), his method of literature search is to begin with digging through the hundreds of 3-ring binders that contain articles (usually from PDFs) that he has printed out. Even though the binders are labeled, the articles can only go under one 'heading' and there's no way to do a keyword search on subject, methods, materials, etc. Yeah, google is pretty good for finding stuff, as are other on-line literature services, but they only work for articles that are already on-line. His literature also includes articles copied from books, professional correspondence, and other sources. Is there a FOSS database or archive method (preferably with a web interface) where he could archive the PDFs and scanned documents and be able to search by keywords? It would also be nice to categorize them under multiple subject headings if possible. I know this has been covered ad nauseum with things like photos and the like, but I'm not looking at storage as such: instead I'm trying to find what's stored."

MrKaos writes "Proving that science fiction can still be great entertainment, J.J. Abrams appears to have impressed Star Trek fans at the official world premiere of Star Trek, who gave the film a five-minute standing ovation at the Sydney Opera House in Australia today. Meanwhile, mere hours beforehand, flummoxed fans at the Alamo Drafthouse theater in Austin, TX, deceived into thinking they were seeing a special, extended version of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, were pleasantly surprised when a disguised Leonard Nimoy greeted them and announced they would be seeing the new film in its entirety. ILM's influence on the film is reported as visually stunning, and lucky Australian fans are scheduled to see the movie first, as it opens a day before the American release."

notthatwillsmith writes "We've all seen the nifty demos of Microsoft's Surface PC. Now Maximum PC details how you can put together your own multi-touch tabletop PC. The article shows how you can build the cabinet and combine that with a standard PC, a decent projector, about $350 worth of assorted hardware (cameras, lenses, mirrors, and screens), and a handful of free apps to build your own Surface-like PC — without giving Microsoft $10,000."

A federal judge has thrown out the conviction of the senator who educated us all about the true nature of the Internet. Ted Stevens had been convicted last fall of lying about free home renovations that he received from an oil contractor, 8 days before he lost his Senate re-election bid. The judge blasted the US Department of Justice prosecutors for mishandling the case in ways that might rise to the level of criminality. "In 25 years on the bench, I have never seen anything approach the mishandling and misconduct in this case," Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said. He called the allegations "shocking and disturbing." According to the article, "Several jurors have told The Washington Post that the evidence against Stevens was overwhelming during a month-long trial that ended in October."

strongmantim writes "I manage an internal help desk (25-30 people) for a medium-large company in the healthcare industry. We're looking for an internal, secure, FOSS (if possible) instant messaging / presence awareness client and server combo. Transmission of Protected Health Information is a sensitive issue, so the server has to be able to log any conversations that occur. It is preferred that the client not support outside protocols such as AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc.; if it does, I will have to promulgate and enforce yet one more policy that my techs not connect to them. All of the computers that will connect run Windows XP. The system should be scalable up to ~100 people (in case we decide to include our entire office in the roll-out). Hardware and OS for the server are not an issue. Oh, and one more thing: It has to be free. Suggestions?"