lojoho - Slashdot User

Submission + - Google Tool Shows Government Intervention (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett on Tuesday September 21, 2010 @03:52PM

itwbennett writes: A tool on Google's newly launched Transparency Report web site lets people check the levels of availability of Google services in different countries. The aim: To show government-induced blocks and disruptions of the search company's services.Transparency Report also houses a previously launched interactive map that displays a digest, by country, of government demands for access to and removal of content and data hosted on Google services like Blogger, Gmail and YouTube. 'We believe that this kind of transparency can be a deterrent to censorship,'said David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, in a blog post on Tuesday.

Submission + - Seagate releases the first 1.5TB portable HDD

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 21, 2010 @12:30PM

An anonymous reader writes: Seagate is able to claim a first today by announcing the availability of a 1.5TB 2.5-inch portable hard drive. The 1.5TB FreeAgent GoFlex ultra-portable drive is the biggest 2.5-inch external drive on the market at the moment for both PC and Mac users. Seagate has also had the good sense to include USB 3.0 making transfers significantly faster than the more popular, but slower USB 2.0 standard.

Terry Pratchett's Self-Made Meteorite Sword 188

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday September 21, 2010 @10:15AM from the x4-crit-modifier dept.

jamie writes "Fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett says he was so excited after being knighted by the Queen that he decided to make his own sword to equip himself for his new status... the author dug up 81kg of ore and smelted it in the grounds of his house, using a makeshift kiln built from clay and hay and fueled with damp sheep manure."

Submission + - I will not leave $53B fortune to kids, says Bill G (news.com.au) 1

Submitted by kaptink on Monday September 20, 2010 @09:27AM

kaptink writes: from news.com.au:

MICROSOFT founder Bill Gates has revealed he won't be leaving his estimated $53 billion fortune to his children when he dies.

The global software giant brainchild, who ranks alongside the Medicis, Romanovs, Rothschilds and Rockefellers as one of history's wealthiest individuals, told UK newspaper The Sun that his billions will instead go toward defeating global poverty.

"I will give the kids some money but not a meaningful percentage," he said.

"Setting the number so that they need to work but they feel reasonably taken care of is hard to figure out."

Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have three children — Jennifer, 14, Rory, 11, and eight-year-old Phoebe.

"I knew I didn't think it was a good idea to give the money to my kids," Mr Gates said.

"That wouldn't be good either for my kids or society. So the question was, 'Can I find something that had incredible impact?' I knew I wanted to do that."

Along with his wife, he launched the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which so far donated $28 billion to fund mass vaccination programs to eradicate diseases such as polio and TB.

It also championed the search for the Holy Grails of health — vaccines for Aids and malaria.

Mr Gates is currently working on the U.N. Millennium Development Goals — a set of targets to reduce global poverty by 2015 — as a summit begins in New York on Monday.

"Once you improve health then the population comes down because people have fewer children because the survival rates are better," he said.

Submission + - Intel Threatens DMCA Using HDCP Crack

Submitted by

mikesd81

on Monday September 20, 2010 @09:20AM

mikesd81 writes: "Intel is apparently threatening to use the DMCA against anyone using the HDCP crack under the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause.
“There are laws to protect both the intellectual property involved as well as the content that is created and owned by the content providers,” said Tom Waldrop, a spokesman for the company, which developed HDCP. “Should a circumvention device be created using this information, we and others would avail ourselves, as appropriate, of those remedies.”
"

Submission + - YouTube videos on display at the Guggenheim (skunkpost.com)

Submitted by crimeandpunishment on Monday September 20, 2010 @09:01AM

crimeandpunishment writes: Move over Picasso....here comes "Charlie bit me"? 125 YouTube videos are now on display at Guggenheim museums around the world. The videos, chosen from more than 23,000 submissions, are part of an exhibit called "YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video", featuring both well-known YouTube hits and barely-seen works by students. This group of videos will be narrowed down to about 20 entries, which will be featured at the Guggenheim in New York next month.

Submission + - IBM Acquires Netezza For $1.5 Billion (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey on Monday September 20, 2010 @08:39AM

wiredmikey writes: Fresh off the news that it would acquire OpenPages, IBM today announced it has entered into definitive agreement for IBM to acquire Netezza, a publicly held company based in Marlborough, Mass., in a cash transaction at a price of $27 per share or at a net price of approximately $1.7 billion, after adjusting for cash.

Netezza provides analytics solutions built into a data warehousing appliance that can deployed quickly and handle complex analytic queries 10 to 100 times faster than traditional systems.

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