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Submission + - DHS Abandons RFID

Submitted by on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @04:28PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Department of Homeland Security has abandoned plans to embed RFID chips in arrival and departure forms carried by foreign nations in the U.S. The decision comes shortly after a General Accounting Office report found that the chips often were not properly scanned by sensors, and that they provided no additional assurance that the person arriving in the country was the same as the person leaving the country. Privacy groups had criticized the plan to embed the chips out of fear that they would allow people on the street to be scanned for forms that would identify them as non-citizens.

Submission + - IBM SW evaluation DVD with all its Linux apps

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @04:10PM

An anonymous reader writes: This is the easiest way to get all of the fresh releases of IBM applications for Linux. A DVD with all DB2, Rational, Websphere, Informix, Tivoli, and Workplace applications for Linux will be sent to you at no cost.

Submission + - RIAA Prepares to Sue 400 College Students

Submitted by on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @03:51PM

An anonymous reader writes: The RIAA sent out "pre-litigation settlement notices" to 400 network users at 13 U.S. universities today, continuing a PR blitz that began last week with a much-publicized list of the 25 most notified universities for copyright infringement. Once again, Ohio University tops the list, with one out of every eight notifications. From the press release: "The RIAA will request that universities forward those letters to the appropriate network user. Under this new approach, a student (or other network user) can settle the record company claims against him or her at a discounted rate before a lawsuit is ever filed."

Submission + - The Green Grid helps IT to save money and power

Submitted by squishylimbs on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @03:44PM

squishylimbs writes: A new industry group called The Green Grid is made up of Intel, AMD, and other big tech firms, and it's trying to make the data center more efficient. Why? Because they claim that current servers are wasting almost 35 percent of their power through power conversion alone.

From the article: "Electricity is being wasted at an alarming rate by most current servers. A typical 2U server with dual processors runs on a 450W power supply. Of that, 35 percent (160W) is lost just in the power conversion process inside the machine. This doesn't just cost money for a bit of wasted power; it also costs money for the additional cooling required to keep the datacenter at a constant temperature, and it limits the total number of servers that can be installed in a datacenter due to power constraints."

Submission + - MPAA Fires Back at AACS Decryption Utility

Submitted by RulerOf on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @03:23PM

RulerOf writes: The AACS Decryption utility released this past December known as BackupHDDVD originally authored by Muslix64 of the Doom9 forums has received its first official DMCA Takedown Notice. It has been widely speculated that the utility itself was not an infringing piece of software due to the fact that it is merely "a textbook implementation of AACS," written with the help of documents publicly available at the AACS LA's website, and that the AACS Volume Unique Keys that the end user isn't supposed to have access to are in fact the infringing content, but it appears that such is not the case. From the thread:

"...you must input keys and then it will decrypt the encrypted content. If this is the case, than according to the language of the DMCA it does sound like it is infringing. Section 1201(a) says that it is an infringement to "circumvent a technological measure." The phrase, "circumvent a technological measure" is defined as "descramb(ling) a scrambled work or decrypt(ing) an encrypted work, ... without the authority of the copyright owner." If BackupHDDVD does in fact decrypt encrypted content than per the DMCA it needs a license to do that.

Submission + - Google, meet Uncle Sam

Submitted by

InternetVoting

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @03:00PM

InternetVoting writes: "Looks like Google is trying to increase its stake in government and military operations. At a meeting of about 200 federal contractors, engineers and uniformed military members Google pitched enhanced versions of Google Earth; search engines that can be used internally by agencies; and the new Google Apps. From the article:
"Google has ramped up its sales force in the Washington area in the past year to adapt its technology products to the needs of the military, civilian agencies and the intelligence community. Already, agencies use enhanced versions of Google's 3-D mapping product, Google Earth, to display information for the military on the ground in Iraq and to track airplanes that fight forest fires across the country.""

Submission + - DOT gets Between Airline Passangers and Doom

Submitted by

JonLesser

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @02:55PM

JonLesser writes: "On Dec. 8, 2005, Virgin America filed an application with the DOT to provide air service in the US. Shortly after the application was filed, Continental, American, United, and Delta filed the first of a wave of opposition briefs and legal motions to try to stop or slow down the DOT approval process.

VA set up a website in an effort to mobilize a grass-roots campaign to support their application. A key selling point for the public is the linux-based in-flight entertainment system. In a video on the website Charles Ogilvie, Director of In-Flight Entertainment and Partnerships, demos Doom and claims VA is planning to reach out to Linux game developers in search of more games for the system."

Submission + - C-SPAN Takedown Notice to U.S. Congress

Submitted by

Carl Malamud

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @02:28PM

Carl Malamud writes: "The New York Times reported on a dustup between C-SPAN and the new Speaker of the House. Speaker Pelosi placed a minute of a congressional hearing on her blog, and C-SPAN sent her a takedown notice. Pelosi caved in and removed the offending video. I think she should have asserted her rights to fair use and told C-SPAN to f*ck off.

The issue of congressional hearings on-line is an important one. Many of the committees, as a matter of policy, refuse to provide archives and everything is streaming-only, low resolution, proprietary. As a partial solution, I've started ripping those streams and uploading them to Google Video and the Internet Archive. (BoingBoing story)

As to C-SPAN, I think they're wrong, and I sent a letter to Brian Lamb yesterday offering to purchase all 6,251 DVDs in his collection that are congressional hearings, and pointed him to >1 minute of C-SPAN video which I have on-line and asserted fair use. Here's my letter to Brian. He hasn't answered my offer, but if he does, I'll then be faced with a $1,059,544 question. :)"

Submission + - Electrical charge helps re-grow body part

Submitted by

MattSparkes

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @10:21AM

MattSparkes writes: "Tadpoles can regenerate their tails thanks to a technique that alters the electrical properties of their cells, a new study shows. The build-up of electrical charge at the site of amputation helps guide tissue regeneration. They speculate that doctors might one day be able to regenerate tissue in patients — such as those who have suffered spinal cord injury, or even those who have lost fingers — by altering the flow of positively charged molecules out of cells."

Submission + - Boycott the RIAA in March

Submitted by Barrien on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @08:50AM

Barrien writes: The guys over at Gizmodo have declared a boycott of the RIAA during the month of March. They are not advocating piracy, instead they suggest buying non-signed artist's music, or music that is available online. The full scoop can be found on their webpage, or here's a direct link to their plan. This is how we make our stand against the monster that is the RIAA.

Journal Journal: Charging $419 Dollars To Replace A Hard Drive 1

Journal by Alien54 on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @12:08AM

A sad tale in which Geek Squad charged $419 to replace a harddrive, and also made the customer retrieve his own data.

Submission + - Firefox 3.0 Opens Door to Web Apps, Mozilla Says

Submitted by MilwaukeeCharlie on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @09:01PM

MilwaukeeCharlie writes: CIO Magazine is reporting some buzz about Firefox 3.0, due to be released later this year.

Some of the likely new features include:

Offline support for web apps

New paradigm for "bookmarks" and "history"

Built-in database (SQL Lite), used for full-text indexing of the cache

Support for Javascript 2

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