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Transportation

Submission + - General Motors: Driverless cars ready by 2018

Submitted by
Gregor Stipicic
Gregor Stipicic writes: " Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say. "This is not science fiction," Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview. GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Burns said. He said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018. "
Announcements

Submission + - Steve Furber gets a CBE (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by bjorniac
bjorniac writes: Steve Furber, one of the creators of the legendary BBC Micro computer and innovator behind the revolutionary ARM processor received a CBE in the New Year's Honours List. He now joins the revered ranks of Kylie Minogue and Michael Parkinson.
Government

Submission + - Queen Elizabeth launches YouTube channel (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
l-ascorbic
l-ascorbic writes: "Following in the footsteps of politicians and corporations, the British Queen has launched a channel on YouTube. It will be used to share videos of her recent and historical appearances, as well as her traditional Christmas Day speech. A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said it was hoped the site would make the 81-year-old monarch's annual speech "more accessible to younger people and those in other countries". To this end, the speech will also be made available as a podcast, for those who need their royal fix when on the move."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft buys online mapping company Multimap (reuters.com)

Submitted by DeeQ
DeeQ writes: Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday it has acquired Multimap, one of Britain's top online mapping companies.

"This acquisition will play a significant role in the future growth of our search business and presents a huge opportunity to expand our platform business beyond the U.K. and globally," said Sharon Baylay, general manager of the Online Services Group at Microsoft.
Cellphones

Submission + - Canadian charged $85,000 for internet access.

Submitted by TihSon
TihSon writes: It seems Bell Mobility in Canada is trying to set a world record for robbing their customers blind. Canadians are used to being shafted by their mobile telcos, based on the rates we keep paying we almost seem to crave it, but this poor bugger got a bill for $85,000 in just over a month simply for passing data from his phone to his computer. Considering what he used his mobile for isn't all that crazy a thing ... it's not like he was running a server farm on the thing ... Bell might want to consider rethinking it's rates. The fact this bill was expected to be taken seriously, and the fact they allowed it to get this far out of hand in the first place, says a lot about how Bell sees its customers in the grand scheme of things.
Programming

Submission + - Adobe Flashes New Media Products (eweek.com) 1

Submitted by eweekhickins
eweekhickins writes: Adobe introduced a new family of products offering streaming media and real-time communication capabilities, making it easier for publishers to create and disseminate a higher-quality media experience. The new products offer industry standard H.264 video capabilities and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support. They also feature increased protection for streaming high-quality video and for the delivery of interactive media applications that work consistently across multiple browsers and operating systems.
Cellphones

Submission + - German court rules iPhone locking legal (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by l-ascorbic
l-ascorbic writes: Vodafone has had its temporary injunction against T-Mobile overturned by a court in Germany. Two weeks ago, the British mobile network won an injunction forcing T-Mobile to sell iPhones that were not locked to its network. They argued that it was an anti-competitive practice, and sought to force the German network to permanently allow the use of the phones on other networks. After the injunction was granted, T-Mobile offered the unlocked phones for 999 euros ($1477), and these will now be withdrawn from sale.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Nintendo's curious reasearch OS in javascript

Submitted by
Ayanami Rei
Ayanami Rei writes: "From The Ajaxaian, Nintendo apparently is working on an open source research operating system (translated SourceForge page here). It's an x86 kernel written in C++ with some basic drivers so far, bootable in QEMU and bochs. A particularly interesting feature of this work is that the entire userland is written in Javascript. They even bundled a Squeak interpreter running in the JavaScript environment as a demonstration. Firefox has demonstrated that JavaScript can be a capable language for developing graphical applications and interfaces. Nintendo's WiiShop is certainly written in it; could other Wii channels or other portions of the system be web technology powered, and what does this portend for future Nintendo products?"

Microsoft Withdraws Vista's Kill Switch 635

Posted by Zonk from the bit-less-damocles dept.
l-ascorbic writes "In what they are calling a change of tactics, Microsoft has removed the controversial 'kill switch' from Vista in SP1. This feature is designed to disable pirated copies of the OS, but had led to numerous reports of it disabling legitimate copies. It will be replaced with a notice that repeatedly informs the user that their OS is pirated. '[Microsoft corporate vice president Mike Sievert] added: "It's worth re-emphasizing that our fundamental strategy has not changed. All copies of Windows Vista still require activation and the system will continue to validate from time to time to verify that systems are activated properly." Microsoft said it had pursued legal action against more than 1,000 dealers of counterfeit Microsoft products in the last year and taken down more than 50,000 "illegal and improper" online software auctions.'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft withdraws Vista "kill switch" (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
l-ascorbic
l-ascorbic writes: "In what they are calling "a change of tactics", Microsoft have removed the controversial kill switch from Vista SP1. This feature is designed to disable pirated copies of the OS, but had led to numerous reports of it disabling legitimate copies. It will be replaced with a notice that repeatedly informs the user that their OS is pirated."
Google

Submission + - Candidates Stump at Googleplex

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "It's easy to forget that this is YouTube's first presidential campaign but when Google CEO Eric Schmidt asked Barak Obama "How do you determine good ways of sorting one million 32-bit integers in two megabytes of RAM?" at a recent candidate forum at Google Headquarters and Obama was prepped to answer "A bubble sort is the wrong way to go," it showed just how important a pilgrimage to the Googleplex has become in this election cycle. Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and Barak Obama have already gone to Google to sit exposed on the stage, without the protective lectern provided in a debate, answering questions for 45 to 60 minutes without the escape hatch of a timekeeper's buzzer. Among the seven visiting candidates, only Obama used his Google visit to announce details of policy proposals related to technology drawing attention to his plans for using technology to make government more accessible and transparent with, for example, live Internet feeds of all executive branch department and agency meetings. Though all of the candidate sessions at Google are available on YouTube, they are not YouTube-like: they require an investment of time that, by YouTube viewer standards, is inconceivable. A 43-minute video of Senator Clinton's Google session has been available since February and has drawn only about 54,000 "views," which count as soon as the video is begun but leave unknown the more interesting number: completed views."
Toys

Submission + - Microfluidic Chips made with Shrinky Dinks

Submitted by
SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: "When she started her job as a new professor at UC Merced, Michelle Khine was stuck without a clean room or semiconductor fabrication equipment, so she went MacGyver and started making Lab-on-a-Chip devices in her kitchen with Shrinky Dinks, a laser printer, and a toaster oven. She would print a negative image of the channels onto the polystyrene sheets and then make them smaller with heat. The miniaturized pattern served as a perfect mould for forming rounded, narrow channels in PDMS — a clear, synthetic rubber."
Government

Submission + - British Village Requests Removal from GPS Maps (nytimes.com) 6

Submitted by
longacre
longacre writes: "The tiny village of Barrow Gurney, England has asked GPS map publisher Tele Atlas to remove them from the company's maps. The reason: truck drivers using GPS navigation devices are being directed to drive through the town despite the roads being too narrow for sidewalks, and causing numerous accidents. At the root of the problem lies the fact that the navigation maps used by trucks are the same as those used by passenger cars, which don't contain data on road width or no truck zones. Tele Atlas says they will release truck-appropriate databases at some point, but until then they advise local governments to make use of a technology dating back to the Romans: road signs."

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