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Earth

Plastic Circuits Designed To Enable Tough, Green Computers 67

Posted by timothy from the I-believe-the-plastics-are-the-future dept.
DanS writes "Computerworld has an article about two Australian engineers who have invented 'Circuits in Plastic' technology. CIP designs aim to be more environmentally friendly than traditional circuits as they can be made from recycled plastic, don't contain any hazardous substances, and since packaging is part of the base circuit board, there is no need for additional packaging material. As an added bonus, different 3D shaped circuits can be made using CIP, which are also waterproof. No more ruining cell phones by getting them wet! The hope is that the technology will reduce the amount of toxic electronic waste in landfills, as even with lead-free technology, etching of existing printed circuit boards (and disposal of the chemicals) is a significant issue during manufacturing."

Comment Actually there is (Score 2, Informative) 778

by jeevesbond (#28662531) Attached to: British Men Jailed For Online Hate Crimes

Actually, freedom of speech is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, 1689. However, keeping a freedom requires the populace to care about it. In Britain's case everyone's too busy hating Europeans (then going on holiday there), being paranoid about jails full of paedophiles and being scared of terrorists and KnifeCrime(tm) to worry about the finer points of freedom of speech. Obviously these two are a pair of scum bags, so no-one cares to defend them, for what it's worth I believe their freedom of speech should be guaranteed, but try telling that to the populace.

Here are a few ideas of w h o, and wh at, might be responsible for this situation. :)

The 1285 Statute of Westminster even gave the English people the right (actually it was a requirement) to bear arms, it was due to this -- and technologically 'advanced' longbows -- that we managed to trounce those ghaslty frogs at Agincourt, but that's another story.
Media

Pirate Party Coming To Canada 394

Posted by timothy from the but-the-vikings-hit-canada-hundreds-of-years-ago dept.
An anonymous reader writes "After scoring a surprise electoral win in Sweden and getting high-profile support in Germany, The Pirate Party is coming to Canada. The party's goals are fairly simple. People should have the right to share and copy music, movies and virtually any material, as long as it is for personal use, not for profit. It opposes government and corporate monitoring of Internet activities, unless as part of a criminal investigation. It also wants to phase out patents."
Security

UK Launches Dedicated Cyber Security Agency 60

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bet-they-get-free-foil-hats dept.
Jack Spine writes "The UK government is launching an office dedicated to cyber attack and defence. The Office of Cyber Security will focus on protecting Britain's IT infrastructure, and will be similar to the US Cyber Command model. While the Pentagon Cyber Command will be lead by the NSA, the UK Cyber Security Operations Centre, which will coordinate UK cyber efforts, will be based at GCHQ in Cheltenham."
The Internet

Canadian Politicians Reverse Course On DMCA 95

Posted by kdawson from the sudden-outbreak-and-so-forth dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist reports that the two Canadian Ministers responsible for copyright seem to have reversed course on copyright and now appear to oppose a Canadian DMCA. At a government event this week, Industry Minister Tony Clement spoke of how things have changed and of the need for consultation, while Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore emphasized the great potential of the Internet and how older politicians often don't get it."
It's funny. Laugh.

The Commodore 64 vs. the iPhone 3G S 238

Posted by timothy from the next-week-chocolate-torte-vs.-charles-manson dept.
Harry writes "The unfortunate news about Apple rejecting a Commodore 64 emulator from the iPhone App Store inspired me to compare the C64 to the new iPhone 3G S, in more detail than any rational person is likely to compare them, ever again. If nothing else, it's a snapshot of just how far technology has come since the C64's release in August of 1982."
Government

Newspaper Crowdsources 700,000-Page Investigation of MP Expenses 188

Posted by timothy from the would-like-to-see-this-for-the-us-federal-budget dept.
projector writes with an interesting project from the UK: "The Guardian are crowd-sourcing the investigation of 700,000 pages of UK MPs' expenses data. Readers are being invited to categorize each document, transcribe the handwritten expenses details into an online form and alert the newspaper if any claims merit further investigation. 'Some pages will be covering letters, or claim forms for office stationery. But somewhere in here is the receipt for a duck island. And who knows what else may turn up. If you find something which you think needs further attention, simply hit the button marked "investigate this!" and we'll take a closer look.'"
Cellphones

Canada Telecoms Launch Mobile Payment Service 107

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the can-i-request-money-all-day dept.
GregDz11 writes to inform us that Canada's three main wireless companies will be launching a service that allows customers to send, request, and receive money via their mobile phones. "The service, called Zoompass, will be managed by Enstream, a joint venture the three carriers first established in 2005, when it was called Wireless Payment Services, to investigate the potential of mobile commerce. [...] Money can be drawn from an account the user sets up or from their credit card. Each withdrawal will cost 50 cents from the account, or 3.5 per cent of the transaction if from a credit card. (As a result, sending dollar amounts under $15 are actually cheaper to do using a credit card.)"

Comment Re:Missing Option: ABS (Score 1) 291

by jeevesbond (#28338555) Attached to: MS Money Poll

Wow. Seriously, this looks pretty good, seems it can actually format invoices without having to learn an obscure LISP dialect (unlike GNUcash).

Your site could do with some globalisation though. For example: up here in Canada we have GST as well, but Americans probably have no idea what that is. In Europe/UK GST is called VAT. Your site aside, how well does the application handle the different global tax systems? Also, all your prices for the hosted service are in NZ dollars, it would be great if you could provide a currency select box, or country picker.

I'm a Web designer/developer, so I get grumpy when I see table-based layouts. Since it's accounting software I understand design isn't really your thing (nor should it be), but see how nice your site could look if you switch to a properly designed site, with separated code and layout! :) In particular your hosted plan page could be made to look a lot more inviting.

Anyway, not trying to be rude, just offering some constructive criticism. What you've got there looks really promising and I've been looking for a GNU/Linux friendly accounts package. Oh, and give me a shout if you need some help with the design side of things! ;)
Security

Submission + - 4Chan Attacks YouTube, Uploads Kids Clips w/ Porn (neosmart.net) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Anonymous members of the internet board 4Chan have organized an attack on YouTube, uploading a number of children's clips and cartoons that switch mid-movie to videos depicting adults engaged in various sexual acts. This is very reminiscent of their attack last year on an internet forum for epileptics, which triggered a number of photosensitive seizures by uploading fast-moving and colorful images to the forum.
Microsoft

Submission + - Download IE8 or Microsoft Will Let Children Starve 1

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Remember National Lampoon's famous If-You-Don't-Buy-This-Magazine-We'll-Shoot-This-Dog cover? As it kicked off its new 'Browser for the Better' campaign, Microsoft took a page from the Lampoon's playbook, announcing it will provide 8 meals to hungry children and adults for every completed download of Internet Explorer 8. CNET reports that Microsoft will donate $1 million to a food bank if 869,565 people in the U.S. use a special website to download IE8 by Aug. 8, 2009 (8-8, get it?). Microsoft adds that all meals must be claimed by June 30, 2010. How can something so right feel so wrong?"
Software

Canada Rejects Business Method Patents 68

Posted by timothy from the as-ought-we-all dept.
"Canadian Patent Appeal Board Rules Against Business Method Patents," says a new post from Michael Geist; Lorien_the_first_one writes "Looks like the US courts could face some peer pressure," and supplies this excerpt: "[T]he panel delivered very strong language rejecting the mere possibility of business method patents under Canadian law. The panel noted that 'since patenting business methods would involve a radical departure from the traditional patent regime, and since the patentability of such methods is a highly contentious matter, clear and unequivocal legislation is required for business methods to be patentable.' ... In applying that analysis to the Amazon.com one-click patent, the panel concluded that 'concepts or rules for the more efficient conduct of online ordering, are methods of doing business. Even if these concepts or rules are novel, ingenious and useful, they are still unpatentable because they are business methods.'"
Operating Systems

Linux Kernel 2.6.30 Released 341

Posted by Soulskill from the stick-a-fork-in-it-wait-let-me-rephrase dept.
diegocgteleline.es writes "Linux kernel 2.6.30 has been released. The list of new features includes NILFS2 (a new, log-structured filesystem), a filesystem for object-based storage devices called exofs, local caching for NFS, the RDS protocol (which delivers high-performance reliable connections between the servers of a cluster), a new distributed networking filesystem (POHMELFS), automatic flushing of files on renames/truncates in ext3, ext4 and btrfs, preliminary support for the 802.11w drafts, support for the Microblaze architecture, the Tomoyo security MAC, DRM support for the Radeon R6xx/R7xx graphic cards, asynchronous scanning of devices and partitions for faster bootup, the preadv/pwritev syscalls, several new drivers and many other small improvements."
Portables

ARM-Powered Linux Laptops Unveiled At Computex 272

Posted by Soulskill from the you-and-what-arm dept.
Charbax writes "At Computex in Taipei on June 2-6th, several companies unveiled ARM-powered laptops that are cheaper ($99 to $199), last much longer on a regular 3-cell battery (8-15 hours) and can still add cool new features such as a built-in HDMI 720p or 1080p output, 3D acceleration, connected standby and more. The ARM Linux laptops shown as working prototypes at Computex will run Ubuntu 9.10 (optimized for ARM), Google Android, Xandros OS for ARM, or some Red Flag Linux type of OS. In this video, the Director of Mobile Computing at ARM, is giving us all the latest details on the status for the support of full Flash (with all actionscripts), the optimizations of the web browser (accelerating rendering/scrolling using the GPU/DSP), the stuff that Google is working on to adapt Android 2.0 Donut release for laptop screens and interfaces and more. At Computex I also filmed an interview with the Nvidia team working on Tegra laptops, the Qualcomm people working on Snapdragon devices and the Freescale people doing their awesomely thin ARM laptops in cooperation with manufacturers such as Pegatron as well."

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Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

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