An anonymous reader writes "Intel is planning on selling off their XScale applications processor and 3G processor businesses for around $600 million to Marvell. From the article: 'Marvell is best known for its NIC (network interface card) chips, including wireless chipsets, and for other embedded, network infrastructure, and storage processors. The company has not previously competed in the market for mobile phone chipsets. However, it says it knows how to produce chipsets for high-volume consumer applications, which it has done for 11 years. Marvell earlier this year acquired a UT Starcom business unit in China that is working on mobile phone processors.'"

NewsForge (Also owned by VA) is reporting on a recent discovery by Warren Woodford about how the GPL could affect derivative Linux distributions. This could make life difficult for those small distros that are being maintained by one or two people in their spare time due to the high amount of work it creates. From the article: "Woodford does supply the source code for MEPIS' reconfigured kernel in a Debian source-package. His mistake seems to have been the assumption that, so long as the source code was available somewhere, he did not have to provide it himself if he hadn't modified it. While he has not contacted any other distributions, he suspects that he is far from the only one to make this assumption. 'We, like 10,000 other people, probably, believed we were covered by the safe harbor of having an upstream distribution available online,' Woodford says. 'I think, of the 500 distributions tracked by DistroWatch, probably 450 of them are in trouble right now per this position.'"

Ashtangiman writes to tell us The New York Times is running an article about geoengineering in which many solutions to global warming include decreasing the amount of sunlight that the planet sees. The ideas are not new, many have been around for quite some time, however they have been relegated to the fringes of science and many have never been published because of this. From the article: "Geoengineering is no magic bullet, Dr. Cicerone said. But done correctly, he added, it will act like an insurance policy if the world one day faces a crisis of overheating, with repercussions like melting icecaps, droughts, famines, rising sea levels and coastal flooding."

Bruce Schneier is reporting on his blog that a recent paper is discussing how to defeat China's national firewall. From the article: "However, because the original packets are passed through the firewall unscathed, if both of the endpoints were to completely ignore the firewall's reset packets, then the connection will proceed unhindered! We've done some real experiments on this -- and it works just fine!! Think of it as the Harry Potter approach to the Great Firewall -- just shut your eyes and walk onto Platform 9¾."

rs232 writes to tell us The Register is reporting on a publishing firm that got fined for using unlicensed fonts. The firm claimed to only be actively using one font, but was found to be using approximately 11,000. In addition to their font headaches, the firm was also found to be unlicensed on 95% of their Adobe software and 75% of their Microsoft software — talk about a bad week.

zombieinthebackofyourcar writes "The Escapist has done an entire issue on why we love and need horror games. Jon Schnaars, an expert in psychology and mental health issues, writes about how we need to be scared to generate pleasure from the game. From the article: 'Perhaps the most important change made in the game mechanics of RE4 was fixing the camera behind Leon, providing a tight third-person shot through which the player could experience the action. Through this move, Leon has become every protagonist from every horror film ever made. He is the lone survivor; steadily trudging into the dark when all our instincts tell us it's a bad idea. And as the player, it is actually us proceeding into the dark, receiving (when we're not getting beheaded) our genre pleasure.'"

Rinisari writes "The source for Songbird, a music-oriented XULRunner application, is now available via Subversion. Rob Lord, CEO of Pioneers of the Inevitable, released the source for the not-yet-0.2 version of the music player, which integrates a music library and the facility to purchase and download music from a variety of vendors. If you haven't heard of it, read the features list and try it out. Slashdot previously mentioned Songbird when it was released as a preview in February."

dstone writes "Vancouver, Canada has just become the first major city in North America to allow motorists to feed their parking meters with their cell phone. Drivers call a number on each meter, the system recognizes them by Caller ID, they enter how many minutes they want, and that's it. The system sends them a reminder text message before their time is up and they can extend their time remotely. The catch? The company contracted to provide the service, Verrus, makes their money through a 30-cent 'convenience fee.' Less pockets full of change, less parking tickets, seems like a step forward."

holy_calamity writes "A patent has been filed for bullets with built-in encryption. Pulling the trigger sends a radio signal to the cartridge in the chamber, but the charge only goes off if the right encryption key is sent. The aim is to improve civilian firearm security." Not sure I'm quite ready to trust the average techno-gadget failure rate on something like this just yet.

Lord_Slepnir writes "The European Union is unsatisfied with Microsoft's compliance with their anti-trust compliance from 2004, and is preparing to fine them 2 million Euros ($2.5m US) per day until they comply. Under that ruling, Microsoft must open up parts of their operating system to competitors, and change how they bundle Media Player." From the article: "On Monday, Microsoft said it had begun to provide the information Brussels had demanded, but the Commission has signaled the company acted too late. In December, Brussels informed the software giant that it had failed to comply with the original ruling it issued in March 2004."

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Google is set to introduce a test version of its GBuy online-payment service as early as this week, presaging a shake-up in the online-payments market now dominated by eBay's PayPal, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Here is how the service will work: Consumers who search for items like "shoes" or "strollers" on Google's search site will see text ads with a symbol or icon designating advertisers that accept GBuy payments. Shoppers normally would have clicked on an ad and been linked to that merchant's Web site. Now, while they will still be linked to the merchant's site, they will go through a different checkout process integrated with Google if they choose GBuy for their transaction. Details of the service could still change before Google's official GBuy announcement.'"

ches_grin writes "The (very real) t-shirt maker American Apparel has opened a virtual store in Second Life, becoming the first major retailer to set up shop in the SL universe. Though items cost only $1, the company hopes to bolster real life sales. Article includes some screenshots of the store and clothes." From the article: "The amount of money American Apparel has made so far on Second Life is probably not as much as they would make in a day at a single store ... But the idea meshes existing Korean online game models in which players can buy accessories for their avatars in micro-transactions, with the idea of the social Web--an online, virtual community. American Apparel's store suggests a new form of videogaming only starting to be explored in the U.S."

abb_road writes "Scientists creating new surveillance and defense technologies are studying the insect world for inspiration. Biomimetic researchers working on devices ranging from 360 degree lenses to mine-disabling robots are using biological principals as the backbone of their work. From the article: 'The tried-and-true designs of many insects are the product of millions of years of evolution. Even so, they are not perfect models. Natural selection isn't just a matter of physiological perfection, but how an organism's traits suit it for a particular environment, scientists say. For this reason, Bandyopadhyay stresses it is important not to just copy nature's work, but to take the best parts of it and apply it elsewhere.'"

Ground Glass writes "Next Generation has posted an abbreviated version of gaming's history by only chronicling the high points - the ten best years in the history of the medium. While it doesn't cover 1998 (and therefore forgets the birthdays of Half-Life, Starcraft, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time), most of the memorable moments are there. What was your best year for gaming?"

slashjunkie writes "BBC News is running a story about the Spanish firm Fon, selling subsidized Linksys WRT54GL Wi-Fi routers for $5, in exchange for the buyer agreeing to a 12 month contract of providing access to other Fon users within range. With the financial backing of Google and Skype, their goal is to create Wi-Fi networks, street by street, across Europe and the US. Buyers of the subsidized routers can classify themselves as 'Linuses', whereby they also get free access to all other Fon hotspots, or 'Bills', where they receive 50% of the revenue made by on-selling their Wi-Fi to other Fon users. 'Alien' users can buy 24-hour passes for 3 Euro. To deter misuse, all Fon users must identify themselves by a username and password before they can access the hotspot. As long as the owner's personal LAN is not accessible, this could be a good way to offset the costs of the average geek's bandwidth bill."