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Portables

Submission + - Linksys Unveils New 'IPhone' Line

Submitted by
mikesd81
mikesd81 writes: "The Associate press is reporting that the iPhone has arrived. From the article: "The iPhone has arrived, but it's not made by Apple, which was widely rumored to be working a cell phone-iPod combination of the same name."

The phones use the increasingly popular Voice over Internet Protocol, better known as VoIP, and also allow users to switch over for traditional landline calling. They also can search the Web and allow users to see when friends are online and ready to accept calls. Several other companies have similar offerings. Howerver, the name has caused a stir: Cisco has owned the trademark on the name "iPhone" since 2000, when it acquired the company that originally registered the name, InfoGear Technology Corp. Speculation was that Apple would come out with one first. Much of the speculation about Apple's activity centers on an application the Cupertino-based company filed with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a "portable computing device capable of wireless communications." The company has not discussed its plans, and declined Tuesday to comment on "rumors and speculation.""
Security

Submission + - Feds: NJ Worker Put 'Bomb' in Computers

Submitted by
mikesd81
mikesd81 writes: "Associated Press is reporting about a computer administrator upset over the possibility of losing his job planted an electronic "bomb" in the systems of one of the nation's largest prescription drug management companies, prosecutors said Tuesday. Has the logic bomb gona off it could have wiped out critical information about patients.

Even after surviving a round of layoffs, Yung-Hsun Lin, 50, kept the code in the system and tinkered with it in an attempt to set it off, prosecutors said. The bug eventually was discovered and neutralized by the company. Among the targeted databases was one that tracked patient-specific drug interaction conflicts, prosecutors said. Before dispensing medication, pharmacists routinely examine that information to determine whether conflicts exist among a patient's prescribed medicines. The indictment alleges that Lin, who worked in the company's Fair Lawn office, planted the computer bomb in Medco's servers. It would have wiped out critical data stored on more than 70 servers, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Erez Lieberman. He could not estimate how many patients could have been affected. In addition to the drug-interaction information, other data on the targeted servers included patients' clinical analyses, rebate applications, billing and managed-care processing."
Announcements

Submission + - Drinking Alcohol May Extend Your Life

Submitted by Adolytsi
Adolytsi writes: MSNBC has an interesting article on an Italian study on alcoholism. While the obvious notion of overconsumption of alcohol being detrimental to one's health is supported, apparently drinking it in moderation can actually extend your lifespan. A study on over 1 million drinkers and 94,000 deaths yielded the results:

"According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol — up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women — reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18 percent, the team reports in the Archives of Internal Medicine. However, "things radically change" when consumption goes beyond these levels, study leader Dr. Augusto Di Castelnuovo, from Catholic University of Campobasso, said in a statement. Men who have more than four drinks per day and women who have more than two drinks per day not only lose the protection that alcohol affords, but they increase their risk of death, the data indicates."
Security

Submission + - Double Skype attack confuses security firms

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two different pieces of malware were set loose on Skype users this week and although neither seems to be causing serious problems, ZDNet is reporting that security firms are confused.

Just 24 hours after warning that there may be a worm exploiting the popular Skype Internet telephony service, Websense reclassified the pest as a Trojan horse. Symantec has published an advisory about a similar piece of malware attacking the same program but it is calling the malware a worm. Finnish antivirus firm F-Secure admitted the double attack has confused security firms.
Google

Google Deprecates SOAP API 240

Posted by kdawson from the washed-up dept.
Michi writes "Brady Forrest at O'Reilly Radar reports that Google has deprecated their SOAP API; they aren't giving out any new SOAP Search API keys. Nelson Minar (the original author of the Google SOAP API) argues that this move is motivated by business reasons rather than technical ones. Does this mark the beginning of the end for SOAP or for ubiquitous middleware in general?" Forrest's post quotes developer Paul Bausch: "This is such a bad move because the Google API was the canonical example of how web services work. Not only is Google Hacks based on this API, but hundreds of other books and online examples use the Google API to show how to incorporate content from another site into a 3rd party application."
Digital

Submission + - DVD Players Surpass VCRs in U.S. Households

Submitted by kog777
kog777 writes: For the first time, DVD players were found in more U.S. households compared to VCR players, according to new research. In the Nielsen Media Research third quarter report released Tuesday, 81.2 percent of American households had DVD players compared to 79.2 percent who had VCR players. Meanwhile, the VCR penetration rate has declined, with the VHS video tape market leveling off during the past six months.
Sony

Submission + - Sony: nobody will ever tap full power of PS3

Submitted by Tighthead Prop
Tighthead Prop writes: Sony executive Phil Harrison has made some brash comments about the Cell processor and the PlayStation 3. Harrison says that the current PS3 game lineup is using less than half of the machines power, adding that 'nobody will ever use 100 percent of its capacity.' Is he right? 'The major reason Harrison wants to hype up the "unlimited" potential of the PS3's architecture is to downplay comparisons between games running on Sony's console and Microsoft's Xbox 360. The two systems are not completely dissimilar: they both contain a PowerPC core running at 3.2 GHz, both have similarly-clocked GPUs, and both come with 512 MB of RAM.'
United States

Submission + - Freedom Tower construction begins at Ground Zero

Submitted by John Sokol
John Sokol writes: The Freedom Tower would be 1,776-foot tower and is to be completed in 2011.
The skyscraper's 2.6 million sq. ft. (234,000 sq. m.) of office space will actually top out at 1,500 feet (455 meters). Above that will be a 276-foot (84-meter), lattice-like structure containing windmills generating as much as 20 percent of the building's energy.
It's not clear if the Freedom Tower's extension would be considered a spire and not counted in it's height by CTBUH

The new building is to be 400ft taller than the original World Trade Center towers that was 1,350 feet (410 meters) and 110-stories.
At 1,450.5 feet, (442 m) tall, with antenna 1,758 feet (533 meters) the Sears Tower usurped New York's claim to the world's tallest building in 1974.
The Freedom Tower would be taller then the current world's tallest building, the 1667ft-high Taipei 101 in Taiwan, which recently surpassed the previous holder of the title, the 1,483 feet (450 meters) Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
This would make Freedom Tower the tallest structure in the world — at least until the completion of Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which is projected to be 2,313ft high and with spire 2,640 feet (800 m).
Canadians claim the 1,815-foot CN Tower in Toronto as the world's tallest freestanding structure.

The Petronas Towers and the Burj Dubai are very Muslim and built with Islamic symbols in every facet of their designs. In some respect, the battle for the worlds tallest building is a competition between the west and the Islamic world.

The most widely acknowledged authority on the tallest buildings is the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH).

Wikipedia, has a nice graphic of this
Debian

Submission + - spite or what?

Submitted by lpq
lpq writes: Just saw this:

"Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, codenamed Etch, had been due to arrive by December 4, 2006, but it's been delayed because some developers have deliberately slowed down their work. "

This seems to be a deliberate "sabotaging" of the project because some people are being paid to work on the release of the project full time.

On one hand, I can understand the feeling that it is just "unfair" that someone else is getting paid to work on their favorite fun project and I am not, but on the other hand, is this anything more than spite?

What do others think? Is it desirable to cut off your nose to spite your face? Is that what these developers are doing? Or are the developers upset, perhaps because they perceive that someone else might be making a living, indirectly, because of their work?

Just sucks that "money changes everything"...

-l
Robotics

Submission + - Robots to have human rights in 50 years -- report

Submitted by
futuresheet
futuresheet writes: "Robots will have basic rights like human beings in the year 2056, according to a report commissioned by the British government. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/5ae9b434-8f8e-11db-9ba3-00 00779e2340.html The government will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time. From the article: Robots and machines are now classed as inanimate objects without rights or duties but if artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the report argues, there may be calls for humans' rights to be extended to them. It is also logical that such rights are meted out with citizens' duties, including voting, paying tax and compulsory military service."
Power

Submission + - The Auto Efficiency Wedge

Submitted by
Prof. Goose
Prof. Goose writes: "In this piece, I wanted to take up a more precise consideration of how much auto efficiency improvements might contribute to solving what I called the terrible trio of energy dependence on unstable regimes, global warming, and the peaking or plateauing of liquid fuel supply. My examples are all US, but I think the lessons mostly carry over (if a little less urgently) to other developed countries.

I'll be reasoning mainly by looking at what we did in the 1970s, which was the last time we faced severe energy constraints that bled through into requiring a demand side response.

To begin with, let's refresh our memories about the history of oil prices, which tells the story of the oil shocks quite well.

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/12/17/1377/01 32"
Privacy

Submission + - UK government cancels central Identity Database

Submitted by meringuoid
meringuoid writes: After a good deal of controversy, it seems the British government have decided to abandon their plans to centralise all information on citizens in a single central database. Instead, when they do bring in their planned identity card system, they'll use existing databases. This will apparently mean losing out on some of the advantages the Government claimed for the new system, but it will save them a great deal of money...
Security

Small Businesses Worry About MS Anti-Phishing 291

Posted by kdawson from the green-means-good dept.
prostoalex writes "Ever get that warm feeling of safety, when the anti-phishing toolbar on Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 turns green, telling you it's safe to shop on the site you're visiting? Well, you probably don't, but the millions of Internet users who will soon be running IE7 probably will be paying attention to the anti-phishing warnings. WSJ.com is reporting on how Microsoft is making it tough for small businesses to assure they're treated properly by the anti-phishing algorithm." From the article: "[S]ole proprietorships, general partnerships and individuals won't be eligible for the new, stricter security certificates that Microsoft requires to display the color. There are about 20.6 million sole proprietorships and general partnerships in the U.S... though it isn't clear how many are engaged in e-commerce... 'Are people going to trust the green more than white? Yes, they will,' says Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner Inc. and an expert on online payments and fraud. 'All the business is going to go to the greens, it's kind of obvious.'"

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