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Submission + - "Don't tase me bro" police cleared

Submitted by Fozzyuw on Wednesday October 24, 2007 @04:30PM

Fozzyuw writes: WFTV.com's website has news on the University of Florida police involved in the Andrew Meyer tasering have been cleared of using excessive force. It also includes a link to the full report, which shares details of the incident and events leading up to the incident.

Submission + - Homeland Security Confiscates Indie Rock Music (nielsenhayden.com)

Submitted by

ErikInterlude

on Monday October 22, 2007 @10:29PM

ErikInterlude writes: "I don't know if this has already been submitted, but it was too bizarre not to send it. Apparently Homeland Security decided to confiscate a hard drive containing new music by the band Deathcab for Cutie. The link is very light on details, but apparently a courier was bringing freshly produced tracks in from Canada. Apparently he got stopped and the hard drive containing the songs got whisked away. No one knows where it is now or what anyone is looking for on it.

More (well, not much more...) here."

Submission + - 75-Year-Old Woman Takes Hammer to Comcast Office (cepro.com)

Submitted by

unger814

on Monday October 22, 2007 @04:24PM

unger814 writes: "Mona Shaw, a 75-year-old Bristow, Va. woman, recently went on a rampage at her local Comcast office after the service provider missed a scheduled appointment, came without completing the installation, and then cut off her service. She went to the Comcast office with her hammer, broke keyboards, phones and a monitor, then received a $345 fine."

Submission + - Another Microsoft unwanted update... IE6 --> IE (google.com) 5

Submitted by A little Frenchie on Monday October 22, 2007 @11:35AM

A little Frenchie writes: On Friday, October 5, Microsoft has made an update without our consent. We have more than 70 computers, 95% were using IE6 (Win98 WinXP SP1 and 2).

Our network responsible was on leave that day. However, during lunch time, a lot of computers have been restarted with the return, IE7 installed. Yet our responsibility did not authorize this update and all the computers had the option to upgrade automatic non-active (it is the system that pushes updates, usually on Wednesday).

It's as if Microsoft had forced an update of which nobody wanted! We are under Novell and information logs indicated that the update had not been accepted. But it happened anyway!

Submission + - EVE Online Has been hacked

Submitted by

jkcity

on Friday October 19, 2007 @08:27PM

jkcity writes: "on the 19/10/2007the EVE Online servers were taken down for 10 hours after it was discovered, that someone had hacked into the CCP network and managed to gain direct entry to the eve online databses and used the access to add stuff to his account in eve online. There were many rumours during the outages as they took down all websites and only form of communication was from IRC chat channels which no one knew if was actually real or not."

Submission + - Collecting YouTube Fingerprinting False Positives (vortex.com)

Submitted by

Lauren Weinstein

on Friday October 19, 2007 @04:46PM

Lauren Weinstein writes: "In the hopes of enabling better public understanding of the effects of YouTube/Google's new video fingerprinting DRM system, I'm now collecting reports from anyone who feels that their video submissions to YouTube were incorrectly or inappropriately tagged as in conflict with video rights owners, resulting in takedowns, refused submissions, or the like. Please see the PFIR YouTube "False Positive" Reporting Form for the details. Your assistance with this effort is much appreciated! Thanks. — Lauren — Lauren Weinstein Co-Founder, PFIR — People For Internet Responsibility"

Submission + - Is China Hijacking Google,Microsoft,Yahoo'sTraffic (techluver.com)

Submitted by

Tech.Luver

on Thursday October 18, 2007 @06:11PM

Tech.Luver writes: "TheRegister is reporting via TechCrunch, on Chinese internet providers China Netcom, China Telecom bowing to pressure from Chinese Government Authorities and hi-jacking Google, Microsoft and Yahoo's search traffic to re-route / re-direct it to Baidu. When TheRegister contacted Google, "the company confirmed that the Chinese are up to their old tricks. "We've had numerous reports that Google.cn and other search engines have been blocked in China and traffic redirected to other sites," said a company spokesman. " While Microsoft said "it was looking into the matter." ( http://techluver.com/2007/10/18/is-china-hijacking-google-microsoft-and-yahoos-traffic/ )"

Submission + - Ann Arbor Becomes LED City, to Cut 2,425 Tons CO2 (techluver.com)

Submitted by

JagsLive

on Thursday October 18, 2007 @06:01PM

JagsLive writes: "Ann Arbor, MI Embraces LED Technology to Reduce Energy Consumption, Greenhouse Gas Emissions. City to install more than 1,000 LED streetlights, joining Raleigh and Toronto in growing LED City community. ANN ARBOR, MI., OCT. 16, 2007 — Cree Inc, a leader in LED solid-state lighting components, and the City of Ann Arbor, Michigan, today announced that Ann Arbor will join Raleigh, N.C. and Toronto, in the growing LED City(TM) initiative. In an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, Ann Arbor plans to become the first U.S. city to convert 100 percent of its downtown streetlights to LED technology. Ann Arbor expects to install more than 1,000 LED streetlights beginning next month. The City anticipates a 3.8-year payback on its initial investment. The LED lights typically burn five times longer than the bulbs they replace and require less than half the energy. Each fixture draws 56 watts and is projected to last 10 years, replacing fixtures with bulbs that use more than 120 watts and last only two years. Full implementation of LEDs is projected to cut Ann Arbor's public lighting energy use in half and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2,425 tons of CO2 annually. ( http://techluver.com/2007/10/18/ann-arbor-mi-becomes-an-led-city-to-cut-2425-tons-of-co2-annually/ )"

Submission + - Robot gun glitch kills 9 soldiers; software blamed

Submitted by on Thursday October 18, 2007 @05:45PM

An anonymous reader writes: Wired has a clip job on a robotic gun that killed 9 soldiers.

The South African National Defence Force "is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday."

...A female artillery officer risked her life... in a desperate bid " to save members of her battery from the gun." But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position. By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.

Submission + - Intel Snares 3 Photonics Patents 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17, 2007 @09:35PM

An anonymous reader writes: Intel has been awarded three optoelectronics patents, InfoWeek reports. They're apparently related to the prototypes it demonstrated in September of a working silcon-laser modulator-demodulator which can support a communication link of 40 Gigabits per second. This is sigificant because copper wire links top out at about 20 Gbps. With the patents, Intel may have locked up business rights to the technology. While this stuff is very important for low-latency interprocessor communications in the hundred-processor servers which will soon be common, it's more likely to have immediate use in fiber-optic communications systems and the story speculates that Intel may finally be on the verge of the first big successful market its found outside of microprocessors since the old DRAM days.

Submission + - Infrequent Anonymous Cowards Reliable on Wikipedia

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Wednesday October 17, 2007 @05:50PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Researchers at Dartmouth University have recently discovered that infrequent anonymous contributors, so called "Good Samaritans," are as reliable as registered users who update constantly and have a reputation to maintain.

By subdividing their analysis by registered versus anonymous contributors, the researchers found that among those who contribute often, registered users are more reliable. And they discovered that among those who contribute only a little, the anonymous users are more reliable. The researchers were most surprised to find that the reliability of Good Samaritans' contributions were at least as high as that of the more reputable registered users' contributions. "This finding was both novel and unexpected," says Denise Anthony, associate professor of sociology. "In traditional laboratory studies of collective goods, we don't include Good Samaritans, those people who just happen to pass by and contribute, because those carefully designed studies don't allow for outside actors. It took a real-life situation for us to recognize and appreciate the contributions of Good Samaritans to web content."
A graph from page 31 of the group's original paper (pdf file) shows that the quality of contributions of anonymous users goes down as the number of edits increases while quality goes up with the number of edits for registered users."

Submission + - Cisco offices raided, execs arrested in Brazil (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

whitehartstag

on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @06:29PM

whitehartstag writes: "So Cisco is not so wholesome after all — senior Cisco execs reportedly arrested in Brazil this week in a tax fraud investigation of the company."

Submission + - Rugged Computers that laugh (ha HA!) at danger

Submitted by

Esther Schindler

on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @06:05PM

Esther Schindler writes: "If you imagine that a computer is built tough because it can fall off a desk without breaking, think again. Rugged computers are designed to comfortably survive unreasonable environments... which just might make them suitable for the accident-prone people you work with. (Just how many cell phones have been replaced in the last six months, hmmmm?) In Tough Technology: Rugged Laptops, Phones, Mice, Drives and More CIO.com shows several extreme devices that'll make you say "Wow!" even if you don't look for the Order Now button."

Submission + - Why ISS Computers Failed (ieee.org) 1

Submitted by

Geoffrey.landis

on Monday October 15, 2007 @08:50PM

Geoffrey.landis writes: "It was only a small news item four months ago: all three of the Russian computers that control the International Space Station failed shortly after the Space Shuttle brought up a new solar array. But, why did they fail? James Oberg, writing in IEEE Spectrum, details the cause."

Submission + - 60 grams of fat for breakfast! (cnn.com)

Submitted by sobolwolf on Monday October 15, 2007 @08:42PM

sobolwolf writes: The people who brought you the Monster Thickburger and the 1,100-calorie salad are at it again — this time for breakfast.

"We don't try to hide what these are," a Hardee's spokesman said of the 920-calorie breakfast burrito.

Hardee's on Monday rolled out its new Country Breakfast Burrito ("country breakfast bomb") — two egg omelets filled with bacon, sausage, diced ham, cheddar cheese, hash browns and sausage gravy, all wrapped inside a flour tortilla. The burrito contains 920 calories and 60 grams of fat.

In 2003 the chain introduced a line of big sandwiches, including the Monster Thickburger. The 1,420-calorie sandwich is made up of two 1/3-pound slabs of beef, four strips of bacon, three slices of cheese and mayonnaise on a buttered bun.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based advocate for nutrition and health, has called the Hardee's line of Thickburgers "food porn."

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