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Submission + - US Consumerism Poses Global Recession Threat (abc.net.au)

Submitted by

Horar

on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @09:05AM

Horar writes: "From the article: One of the world's leading economists has issued a scathing denunciation of American consumerism, saying overspending could lead to a "catastrophic" recession... He says the United States has a current account deficit of $US811 billion for last year, which means America is borrowing [more than two] billion a day from overseas.

What are the implications of this for the IT industry if there is such a recession? Alternatively, what would happen if rampant consumerism is brought under control? Isn't it that very consumerism that pushes the development of the devices and technologies which most slashdotters could not live without?"

Submission + - Vista tougher than XP on piracy (efluxmedia.com)

Submitted by

Josh Fink

on Tuesday December 04, 2007 @08:24AM

Josh Fink writes: "The folks over at efluxmedia have an intersting, if one sided piece on how Vista's piracy rates are half that of XP. From the article: "Microsoft announced yesterday that piracy rates for Windows Vista are half those of XP and this proves that the giant software maker really created its toughest operating system up to date....Additionally, Microsoft announced on Monday that it plans to offer an update for WGA that will run the piracy check regularly, without the computer users initiating the process." I do not believe that Vista is 'tougher' I just believe that it has not been accepted yet by the IT/user world yet. As for WGA being updated and running without consent, I think Microsoft might be called out in the world of privacy, just like how it was when WGA was released."

Submission + - New telescope to challenge theory of universe (cio.com.au)

Submitted by Bergkamp10 on Tuesday December 04, 2007 @08:23AM

Bergkamp10 writes: Australian astronomers will be using a new specially constructed 'rapid survey' telescope to digitally map the southern sky, imaging in six filters with six exposures per filter. The filters have been specially designed to 'decode' stars, with astronomers calling it a 'new window' into the parameters of the universe. The impact on stellar astrophysics will be significant, allowing for much more insightful data collection on how stars were formed and how they got to where they are today. The telescope, called Skymapper, can look at objects in our solar system and according to the report can focus its 'decoding' powers on objects at the farthest regions of the visible universe. Once the project to digitally map the southern sky is complete the results will become available to anyone via an online virtual observatory.

Submission + - Girls make history, win top honors in science (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Josh Fink

on Tuesday December 04, 2007 @08:18AM

Josh Fink writes: "The New York Times has an interesteing piece about how girls have made history by winning top honors in Math, Science and Technology in one of the nation's most prestigeous science competitions: The Siemens Competition . The event took place at New York University on December 3, 2007. "James Whaley, president of the Siemens Foundation, which oversees the competition for Siemens AG, a global electronics and engineering company, said the competition results send a great message to young women.""

Submission + - 1949 Truck Stolen via Internet Con, I Got it Back (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

benadamsdotcom

on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @10:17AM

benadamsdotcom writes: "Don't Mess With Texas. Four months ago, my 1949 Chevy truck was stolen through an elaborate ebay scam that included a fake cashier's check, a face-to-face meeting (he looked me in the eye and shook my hand), a Texas Drivers License, an invalid license plate, and organized criminals. In November, I tracked down my truck through cyber-space to the other side of Texas. After setting up an elaborate sting, I drove across Texas and recovered my truck."

Submission + - Digital mutiny: 2,000 page iraq leak (wikileaks.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09, 2007 @05:10AM

An anonymous reader writes: Looks like them wikileaks guys are finally putting something out there.

from the site:

This spectacular 2,000 page US military leak consists of the names, group structure and equipment registers of all units in Iraq with US army equipment . It exposes secretive document exploitation centers, detainee operations, elements of the State Department, Air Force, Navy and Marines units, the Iraqi police and coalition forces from Poland, Denmark, Ukraine, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania, Armenia, Kazakhstan and El Salvador. The material represents nearly the entire order of battle for US forces in Iraq and is the first public revelation of many of the military units described. Among other matters it shows that the United States has violated the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Submission + - Media founders arrested for publishing subpoena (phoenixnewtimes.com)

Submitted by

tubesteako

on Friday October 19, 2007 @12:17PM

tubesteako writes: "The founders of the alternative Phoenix newspaper, New Times, were arrested yesterday after publishing details of a grand jury subpoena. The subpoena ordered the paper to release to the authorities: "Every note, tape, and record from every story written about Sheriff Arpaio by every reporter over a period of years." As well as: "All internet web site information for the Phoenix New Times internet site related to the web pages.""

Submission + - The world's biodiesel potential

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Friday October 19, 2007 @11:58AM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Two researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-M) have ranked 226 countries according to their potential to make large volumes of biodiesel at low cost. Their evaluation of the world's potential to produce biodiesel shows that Malaysia, Thailand, Colombia, Uruguay and Ghana are the developing nations most likely to attract biodiesel investment for several reasons including agricultural and political factors. The researchers have estimated that 'a grand total of 51 billion liters of biodiesel could be produced annually — enough to meet roughly 4-5 percent of the world's existing demand for petroleum diesel.' Read more for additional references and maps showing the global biodiesel potential and its production costs."

Submission + - OpenProj complete replacement of Microsoft Project (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

Mike Johnson

on Friday October 19, 2007 @11:26AM

Mike Johnson writes: "OpenProj is a complete replacement of Microsoft Project. A great review came out in InfoWorld. OpenProj is free, open source and available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows. Microsoft Project costs $1,000 and drives over $1 billion in Microsoft revenue. It is the highest profit margin SKU within Microsoft. OpenProj is a complete replacement and even opens existing native Project files. This will have a big impact on a big profit driver for Microsoft."

Submission + - P2P decoy users and the RIAA

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19, 2007 @04:58AM

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at the University of California have analysed P2P traffic and found that the probability of association to a blocklisted (PDF) decoy user is 100%. Additionally they have found that this can be reduced by two orders of magnitude by simply avoiding systems maintained in publicly available and maintained lists. Finally they analyse ownership of the blocklisted domains and attribute 71% to government owned systems, and that less than 0.5% is in fact owned by "content providers" such as Time Warner Inc which support the RIAA.

Submission + - Twine: The First Mainstream Semantic Web App? (readwriteweb.com)

Submitted by

ReadWriteWeb

on Friday October 19, 2007 @03:20AM

ReadWriteWeb writes: "Radar Networks has announced a new Semantic Web application called Twine, which it says will be the first mainstream Semantic Web application. Founder Nova Spivack, who has worked in the past with Semantic Web and AI legends Ray Kurzweil and Danny Hillis (of Thinking Machines), showed a demo of Twine to several reporters today. Spivack described Twine as a "knowledge networking" application. It has aspects of social networking, wikis, blogging, knowledge management systems — but its defining feature is that it's built with Semantic Web technologies including RDF, OWL, SPARQL, XSL. Spivack told Read/WriteWeb that Twine aims to bring a usable and scalable interface to the long-promised dream of the Semantic Web."

Submission + - A Google blunder: the sad story of Urchin (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anenome on Tuesday October 09, 2007 @05:32PM

Anenome writes: Google has a track record of buying startups and integrating them into its portfoilo. But sometimes those acquisitions go terribly wrong, as Ars Technica argues has been the case with Google's 2005 purchase of web-analytics firm Urchin Software Corp. 'In the wake of Google's purchase of the company, inquiring customers (including Ars Technica) were told that support and updates would continue. Companies that had purchased support contracts were expecting version 6 any day, including Ars. What really happened is this: Google focused its attention on Google Analytics, put all updates to Urchin's other products on the back burner, and rolled out a skeleton support team. Everyone who forked over for upgrades via a support contract never got them, even though things weren't supposed to have changed. The support experience has been awful. Since the acquisition, we have had two major issues with Urchin, and neither issue was solved by Google's support team. In fact, with one issue, we were helped up until the point it got difficult, and then the help vanished. The support team literally just stopped responding.'

Submission + - Physics Nobel Prize 2007

Submitted by whizzter on Tuesday October 09, 2007 @06:07AM

whizzter writes: The prize was awarded for the discovery of the Giant Magnetoresistive Effect, Peter Grünberg of the Jülich Research Centre and Albert Fert of the University of Paris-Sud that lead the research will receive the prize. During the presentation the Nobel committe stressed how the research had helped decreasing harddrive sizes. The discovery was also the birth of the spintronics field. More information on the prize can be found at the Nobel site.

Submission + - MS Studies How Web Users Become Phishing Prey (itworld.com)

Submitted by

narramissic

on Friday October 05, 2007 @10:03AM

narramissic writes: "For a 3-month period last year, Microsoft Research spied on (or as they like to call it 'tracked password reuse' of) 500,000 Web users who downloaded the Phish Detective, part of the Windows Live OneCare Advisor package for the Windows Live Toolbar, to discover how many of them fell victim to phishing scams. In a presentation at the Anti-Phishing Work Group (APWG) E-Crimes Summit in Pittsburgh Thursday, Microsoft released findings of and methods used in that research:

Phish Detective sends URL information to servers at Microsoft when users with Phish Detective use the same password to sign in at two different sites. Some of these sites are legitimate instances of reuse — many Web users have the same password for more than one Web site they commonly visit. However, some are not, and this is the activity used to detect phishing.

"

Submission + - Court Limits Software Patents

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05, 2007 @06:24AM

An anonymous reader writes: Techdirt has the scoop on how a recent court ruling may severely limit the scope of both software and business model patents. The court found that "The routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention" isn't enough to get over the "non-obvious" hurdle that every patent is supposed to clear. This is a huge step in the right direction and one of the first admissions from the court system that perhaps software and business model patents have gone too far.

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