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Android

Submission + - PlayStation 3 Controller on Android Devices (rootedsystem.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: You can now use the PS3 Sixaxis Controller on android phones and devices. This requires your phone to be rooted however it is incompatible with most HTC devices and some newer Samsung devices due to the need of specific Bluetooth protocol. It can sync four controllers at once with buttons completely configurable.
Censorship

Submission + - Writer Finds 8 Ways to Circumvent PROTECT-IP Act (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds
Dangerous_Minds writes: One of the things that the PROTECT-IP act is said to do is make DNS servers censor websites that have been accused of copyright infringement. Drew Wilson of ZeroPaid decided to look in to how many ways he could come up with that would circumvent such censorship. He found 8 ways to circumvent such censorship. The article includes pro's and cons and links to guides on how to carry out these methods. The methods are using a VPN service, using your HOSTs file, using TOR, using freely available DNS lookup tools, changing your DNS server to a non-US server, using command prompt, using Foxy Proxy, and using MAFIAAFire. If anything, the list raises serious doubts that the PROTECT IP Act will even put a dent on copyright infringement online.
Space

Submission + - Anti-Matter Belt Discovered Around Earth (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by hydrofix
hydrofix writes: A thin band of antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time. The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters [arXiv], confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth's magnetic field could trap antimatter. The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and cosmic rays. Aside from confirming theoretical work that had long predicted the existence of these antimatter bands, the particles could also prove to be a novel fuel source for future spacecraft — an idea explored in a report for Nasa's Institute for Advanced Concepts.
Education

Submission + - Computers Grade Essay Tests Better Than Profs (chronicle.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Robot essay graders could be the answer to grade inflation. New software being tested turns over the task of grading to computers — this article has an interactive demo of the software. One professor says the computer is far more fair than human graders, who get tired and become inconsistent, or play favorites.
Security

Submission + - DARPA Funds Hacking Projects to Fight Cyberthreats

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Fahmida Y. Rashid reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will fund new cyber-security proposals under the new Cyber-Fast Track project intended to cut red tape for hackers to apply for funding for projects that would help the Defense Department secure computer networks, says Peiter Zatko, a hacker known as Mudge who was one of the seven L0pht members who testified before a Senate committee in 1998 that they could bring down the Internet in 30 minutes and is now a program manager for the agency's information innovation office. Anything that could help the military will be considered, including bug-hunting exercises, commodity high-end computing and open software tools and projects with the potential to "reduce attack surface areas, reverse current asymmetries" are of particular interest. Under the Cyber-Fast Track initiative, DARPA will fund between 20 to 100 projects annually. Open to anybody, researchers can pitch DARPA with ideas and have a project approved and funded within 14 days of the application. Developers will retain intellectual property rights while DARPA will operate under government use rights. "It's time to start funding hacker spaces, labs and boutique security companies to make it easier to compete with large government contractors.""
Education

Submission + - Drop out and innovate (timeshighereducation.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The San Francisco-based founder of PayPal and co-founder of Facebook is offering two-year fellowships of up to $100,000 (£63,800) to 20 entrepreneurs or teams of entrepreneurs aged under 20 in a worldwide competition that closes this week.

With the money, the recipients are expected to drop out of university — Thiel calls it "stopping out" — and work full time on their ideas.

"Some of the world's most transformational technologies were created by people who stopped out of school because they had ideas that couldn't wait until graduation," Thiel says. "This fellowship will encourage the most brilliant and promising young people not to wait on their ideas either."

Thiel says the huge cost of higher education, and the resulting burden of debt, makes students less willing to take risks. "And we think you're going to have to take a lot of risks to build the next generation of companies."

But his plan also clearly challenges the ability of conventional universities to foster innovation. "I do think there are a lot of things people learn in school," Thiel says wryly. "I don't think they learn anything much about entrepreneurship."

Submission + - Postal Trucks to Become Sensor Platforms? (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Postal Service may face insolvency by 2011 (it lost $8.5 billion last year). An op-ed piece in today's New York Times proposes an interesting business idea for the Postal Service: use postal trucks as a giant fleet of mobile sensor platforms. (Think Google Streetview on steroids.) The trucks could be outfitted with a variety of sensors (security, environmental, RF ...) and paid for by businesses. The article's author addresses some of the obvious privacy concerns that arise.
Moon

Moon May Have Once Had Water 89

Posted by CmdrTaco from the also-i-may-once-have-had-whisky dept.
Smivs writes "US scientists have found evidence that water was held in the Moon's interior, challenging some elements of the theory of how Earth's satellite formed.The Moon is thought to have been created in a violent collision between Earth and another planet-sized object. Scientists thought the heat from this impact had vaporised all the water. But a new study in Nature magazine shows water was delivered to the lunar surface from the interior in volcanic eruptions three billion years ago. This suggests that water has been a part of the Moon since its early existence."
Censorship

Nancy Pelosi vs. the Internet 561

Posted by timothy from the but-nancy-pelosi-was-in-the-other-room dept.
selil writes "A story popped up on the ChicagoBoyz Blog. It says 'Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would like very much to reimpose the old, so-called, "Fairness Doctrine" that once censored conservative opinion on television and radio broadcasting, is scheming to impose rules barring any member of Congress from posting opinions on any internet site without first obtaining prior approval from the Democratic leadership of Congress. No blogs, twitter, online forums — nothing.'"
NASA

Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement 400

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-can-see-your-house-from-there dept.
schliz writes "Nasa has announced that it intends to officially retire the aging space shuttle fleet by 2010, four years before it has a replacement craft ready. The space shuttle fleet will make ten more flights, mainly to add modules to the International Space Station and carry out repairs and upgrades to the Hubble orbital telescope. The retirement will leave the US without orbital capacity for at least four years, until the Ares booster programme is complete. European and Russian launchers will service the space station in the meantime."
Linux Business

Best Buy Is Selling Ubuntu 656

Posted by kdawson from the but-wait-you-also-get dept.
SirLurksAlot writes "It appears that Best Buy is now selling Ubuntu, both through its Web site and in its brick-and-mortar locations. Going by the release on the product page, Ubuntu has actually been available for the low, low price of $19.99 since May 6th of this year. It is being packaged as the 'Complete Edition.' While they don't specify on the site what version is being offered, a quick call to a local store revealed it to be Hardy Heron, the latest Long Term Support version. How did this development fly under the radar for over two months without anybody noticing?"
Announcements

Submission + - Amazon.com acquires dpreview.com

Submitted by Streetlight
Streetlight writes: Digital Camera Review (http://www.dpreview.com/) announced May 14, 2007, that they had been acquired by amazon.com.



"We're proud and excited to announce that Dpreview has been acquired by the world's leading online retailer, Amazon.com. Started as hobby site in 1998, dpreview.com has grown to be the number one destination for anyone interested in digital cameras and digital photography. Each month dpreview.com has seven million unique visitors (over 22 million sessions) who read over 120 million pages. 'We've worked very hard over the last eight years to deliver consistently high quality content to our readers', founder Phil Askey said. 'It will be fantastic to be able to expand and build on that without compromising our quality or independence. With the support and resources of Amazon we can achieve this.'"
Security

Submission + - Distributed Open Proxy Honeypot Project Results

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Honeypot Project is capturing live web attack data with sensors placed around the world to provide concrete examples of the types of attacks occurring "in the wild," in addition to raising awareness and developing effective countermeasures to new threats. Since January, the Honeypot Project has logged nearly one million web requests and here are the results.
Google

Submission + - Goolgle Indexes Links Found Only in Gmail?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Recently, I purchased a domain to use for a pro bono website I'm building for a local, annual event. I put up a placeholder site, pointed the domain at it, and mailed my contact at the organization (using my Gmail account) to tell her about the domain. This is the only place that the domain was ever mentioned — neither of us have mentioned it to anyone else or any any other website, and have sent no traffic there by any other means than typing the URL into our browsers or clicking on the links in the email. We didn't want anyone to see it yet, since it's not done (or even yet begun, for that matter). When I registered it (several weeks ago), numerous relevant Google keyword searches as well as an explicit search for the domain turned up no results. Now any of these searches brings up this site as the first hit.

From the Gmail Privacy Policy:

When you use Gmail, Google's servers automatically record certain information about your use of Gmail. Similar to other web services, Google records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, ads, links); and other log information (including browser type, IP-address, date and time of access, cookie ID, and referrer URL).
So my hypothesis is that Google gleaned address out of my email via its URL-tracking voodoo and then indexed it, and this possibility does seem covered by their privacy policy. But I still find this pretty disturbing: can't I email someone a URL without the whole world finding out about it? What if the contents of this site fell into what the broader Google Privacy FAQ classifes as "sensitive information"?

..information we know to be related to confidential medical information, racial or ethnic origins, political or religious beliefs or sexuality and tied to personal information.

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