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The Courts

Journal Journal: Consequences 5

Journal by Shadow Wrought
I went up to court yesterday for a hearing in a civil case. It was delayed by a sentencing which I went ahead and sat in on it. The Defendant had struggled with a meth addiction close to 20 years earlier. He had cleaned himself up since then, found Christianity in a big way, and actually volunteered with youth to help them avoid similar mistakes. Unfortunately he suffered some type of serious injury on the job (the details of which I never learned) which caused him to start taking prescripti
Windows

Submission + - How To: Stability with Open Source and Windows

Submitted by
Henry Coolridge
Henry Coolridge writes: "Anyone looking to deploy open source scripting and backend technologies on Windows Server 2003 and IIS should be concerned with stability, security, reliability, and performance. NeoSmart's guide/review covers just which open source technologies work and those that don't on Windows and IIS — and just how well. Whether you're a Windows fan or not, IIS is a major player in the world of webservers, and it's always good to know what open source companies have support for their Windows consumer-base... and those that don't. Covers PHP, Python, Perl, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and more — with solutions on how best to achieve stability with each open source technology on Windows."
Data Storage

Submission + - A review of the top four external hard drives

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "There's a really good, detailed review in Computerworld on the top four external hard drives with more than 500GB of capacity. The story reveals some big flaws in the external drives, like malfunctioning one-touch backup buttons, USB 2.0 ports that don't recognize the drives, and drives coming out of the boxes unformatted. It's also an eye opener with regard to actual backup speeds."
The Internet

Submission + - Opera Users Most Satisfied

Submitted by
Kelson
Kelson writes: "A survey of web users found that while Firefox leads in the overall number of satisfied users, Opera's users are the most satisfied. "When the browser share is factored into the best browser voting, the analysis is even more revealing. The results imply that Opera has the most satisfied user base, followed by Firefox and [Apple's] Safari." This follows other trends, such as a survey last year which showed that Apple leading in customer satisfaction among PC manufacturers, despite its relatively small share of the market.

Opera has also just released version 9.20. In addition to security and compatibility fixes, it sports new developer tools and a "speed dial" feature to quickly access frequently-visited sites."
Robotics

Submission + - Fab@Home: 3D objects from your printer

Submitted by CaffeineFree
CaffeineFree writes: Ars Technica did an interview with Evan Malone of Fab@Home, the open-source project that provides drivers, applications software, and detailed design plans for assembling a three-dimensional desktop fabricator. In it, he discusses the project and what it means for home fabrication enthusiasts. From the article:

Malone's machine puts fabbing within hobbyist budgets for the first time. Since the first Model 1 Fabber began life in the summer of 2006, Malone has launched a wiki and built a community of enthusiastic tinkerers, all in his spare time.

The project has already attracted worldwide attention; Malone has taken his device to South Africa at the request of the government there, and one of the first Model 1 machines has already been requested for an exhibit at the Science Museum in London. Early machines are still primitive, but they work reliably. A Model 2 revision is already in the works.

Fab@Home is about more than making small plastic objects in your living room, however. Malone and his mentor, Dr. Hod Lipson, believe that such devices can change the world.
The Internet

Submission + - Court Reverses Penalty Over MySpace Post

Submitted by PDone
PDone writes: A judge violated a juvenile's free-speech rights when he placed her on probation for posting an expletive-laden entry on MySpace criticizing a school principal, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled. The three-judge panel on Monday ordered the Putnam Circuit Court to set aside its penalty against the girl, referred to only as A.B. in court records.
Encryption

Submission + - AACS Licensing Authority Throws The First Grenade

Submitted by mrneutron2004
mrneutron2004 writes: In an effort to stem the tide of discovered encryption keys, the AACS Licensing Authority announced that is has "taken action, in cooperation with relevant manufacturers, to expire the encryption keys associated with the specific implementations of AACS-enabled software." So, those with some clue will wait for BackupHDDVD and AnyDVD HD to get updated. Meanwhile the average clueless consumer who rarely even thinks about updating anything will soon be in for a shock when their HD disc playing software goes into self-destruct mode with new HD releases. The end result? Perhaps, and this is just an educated guess, more and more legitimate consumers will likely be turned into encryption cracking evildoers, simply because they want to play what they PAID FOR. Sigh... Why is this so predicatable? http://www.fastsilicon.com/latest-news/aacs-licens ing-authority-throws-the-first-grenade-into-the-fo .html?Itemid=60
Google

Submission + - New Utah law limits keyword advertising

Submitted by Dogggis
Dogggis writes: Google Inc. is objecting to a Utah law that limits the common practice of keyword-triggered advertising, where competitors can show their ads alongside a search query or with a news story on another brand. The measure was approved by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and a unanimous Legislature with little notice or fanfare despite warnings from state lawyers that it offered a "high probability" of being overturned in court. Aides to the governor said nobody protested before Huntsman signed the law March 19. Now, Google, other search leaders and trademark experts are taking notice of Utah's latest grand experiment in trying to control the global Internet. http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/217183/
Wii

Wii Shortages Could Last For Months 307

Posted by Zonk from the get-with-it-big-n dept.
Next Generation is reporting that, apparently, the Wii shortages could continue for some time yet. This is news from Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo's VP of marketing and corporate affairs, speaking to the Game Theory Podcast. Says Kaplan, "There is a lot going on behind the scenes in terms of working on what we are producing and the numbers continue to rise but the product is so very popular that we may see a supply / demand situation last for some time. We are at absolute maximum production and doing everything we can. The number of units that we have been able to produce has far exceeded our hardware production in the past and the production levels of a lot of our competitors but demand continues to be really high."
Displays

OLED TVs Arriving Within the Next Three Years 145

Posted by CowboyNeal from the cooler-screens-but-not-shows dept.
Anonymous Howard writes "Toshiba and Matsushita, in a joint venture, are going to be bringing OLED TV panels to market within 3 years! Granted, the size of the panel is only 20.8 inches, but that is a huge step up from the small OLED screens used in cell phones and other portable devices. It will have a resolution of 1,280 by 768 pixels (WXGA) and handles 16.7 million colors. No specifications on contrast, brightness, or refresh rates have been released, but such specs wouldn't necessarily be indicative of OLED displays to be released in three years' time."
Biotech

Submission + - 'Flexible' plastic for electronic circuits?

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "By adding a polymer acid to a common plastic, chemists at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a plastic with changeable conductivity which could be used to build future electronic devices. This 'doped' plastic can be manufactured at room temperature and can have a conductivity ten times higher than the 'non-doped' one. The flexible sheets of plastics obtained in the lab can be printed with wires and interconnects which could be used to design military camouflage that changes colors, foldable electronic displays and medical sensors. Read more for additional references and an image showing a pliable 'doped' plastic sheet with printed wires and interconnects."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft eating mail services!!

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "I've recently encountered an issue with clients sending mail to hotmail.com or msn.com e-mail accounts. Days were spent digging on this issue, mail logs showed the messages were being accepted by the hotmail servers for delivery. However, the messages never arrived! It as if they were abducted.


I began testing outside of the affected server and found that my entire netblock was being filtered in some way by Microsoft. Mail from some hosts would land in the "Junk Mail" folder others just never showed up. Identical messages to GMail, Yahoo or any other client were received just fine.


I contacted MSN/Hotmail and received only a canned response that, yes the IP I submitted the issue under was in fact blocked, but they are "not able to go into any specific details about what these filters specifically entail, as this would render them useless."


Microsofts response: "Hotmail has created the Smart Network Data Services program. This is a service that helps legitimate email senders work with their customers and partners to reduce spam originating from their IP. http://postmaster.msn.com/snds/. This program allows a sender to monitor the health of their IPs."


I recently found on the qmail-ldap mailing list that someone else is seeing the same issues. I posting to see who else is having the same issues. As you can imagine, dealing with Microsoft is like taking a banana from a 4,000lb gorilla. This obviously affects a large client base with the size of hotmail/msn.


I can understand that Microsoft wants to cut back on spam, who doesn't! Not giving any response, or just dropping messages that contain normal daily chatter doesn't seem like a good way to go about it. Not only that, they are more than unwilling to resolve the issue.


I have contacted various Microsoft reps via various channels and all give the same canned response to go check here and have a nice day!"

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