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Republicans

Submission + - Virginia AG's Fishing Expedition Ended (washingtonmonthly.com)

Submitted by
jamie
jamie writes: "Back in May, the Attorney General for Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, demanded "a sweeping swath of documents" from a prominent climate scientist. (Slashdot ran a story.) Today, a judge informed him that since his "subpoena failed to state a 'reason to believe' that Mann had committed fraud," it was set aside. Thus ends another politician's crusade against science. The next one begins in 5... 4... 3..."
Microsoft

Xbox Live Pricing To Go Up To $60 Per Year 199

Posted by Soulskill from the nickles-and-dimes dept.
donniebaseball23 writes "Microsoft has raised the annual price of Xbox Live Gold to $60, which is a price hike of $10. The new price goes into effect on November 1, but gamers can lock in the current Xbox Live price by renewing now. EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich is not surprised by the move, nor does he think it will really have much impact on the Xbox momentum."
Earth

Submission + - Preparing for future disasters (sendtheenterprise.org)

Submitted by
nido
nido writes: "University of Georgia marine sciences professor Samantha Joye and others are in the Gulf of Mexico looking for plumes of oil. When they find them, what will the people in charge of cleaning up the Gulf be able to do?

The only practical way to accelerate decomposition of the oil is to send oxygenated water into the plumes, using compressors and pumps powered by the U.S. Navy's portable nuclear reactors. The Navy's first nuclear aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise, isn't currently available, but perhaps they could send a submarine or two.

It would be helpful to have retired aircraft carriers serve as stand-by disaster response ships, as advocated at SendTheEnterprise.org. What else can we do to better prepare for the future?"
Open Source

Submission + - Why Microsoft is Being Nicer to Open Source (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Is open source's growth in emerging markets what is driving Microsoft to say 'we love open source' with an attempt at a straight face? 'The emerging markets (like the BRIC nations) are a huge potential market for Microsoft,' says Brian Proffitt. 'And I believe Redmond is wisely not taking the FUD route on open source software in those markets. Why? Because open source already has some strong roots in the BRIC nations (heck, in Brazil, open source is the whole darn tree), and any attack on open source would be seen as a foreign company attacking local software projects. If Microsoft attacked open source publicly in this environment, a lot of potential customers and developers in those countries could react in a protectionist manner and start giving Microsoft the stink-eye.'
Earth

Submission + - EPA proposes grading system for car fuel economy (cnet.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: The EPA and Department of Transportation on Monday proposed a fuel economy label overhaul to reflect how electric and alternative fuel vehicles stack up against gasoline passenger vehicles.

The changed label, mandated by the 2007 energy law, includes the same information on city and highway miles per gallon and estimated driving costs based on 15,000 miles a year now available.

But the new labels add more comparative information, rating cars on mileage, greenhouse gas contribution, and other air pollutants from tailpipe emissions. That means that consumers can look at a label to see how one vehicle compares to all available vehicles, rather than only cars in a specific class.

One label proposes grades, ranging from and A plus to a D. There are no failing grades, since vehicles need to comply with the Clean Air Act.

CNET News: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20015069-54.html

Submission + - Wikileaks to Move to Nuclear-Proof Facilities (www.idg.se)

Submitted by Buzzy_Bot
Buzzy_Bot writes: Wikileaks to Move to Nuclear-Proof Facilities

30 meters below ground, in a facility built to withstand anything but a direct hit from a nuclear warhead, that is where the servers of Wikileaks will be hosted from now on. Bahnhof, the Swedish ISP, has kept security in mind when choosing the new location of their server park. ”This rock shelter was supposed to be the heart of the defense against the Soviet Union” says Jon Karlung, CEO of Bahnhof. ”However, the most important aspects [for the clients] are the legal matters as well as the integrity”.
Privacy

Submission + - EU implements system to monitor radical groups

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The European Union is setting up an extensive framework for the surveillance of radical groups and gathering systematic information about the nature of such groups. This will take the form of a database, which is officially coined as "Instrument for compiling data and information on violent radicalisation processes." The tool is intended to be flexible. It will not only focus on organized terrorism, but can be adapted to apply to other radical groups as well, including political opposition for example against EU institutions.
HP

Submission + - HP Snaps Up 3PAR for $2 Billion

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: The bidding war between HP and Dell has reached a swift and dramatic conclusion. One could even say that the former company sniped the auction at the last minute—to the tune of $2 billion for the acquisition of data storage provider 3PAR. HP's not-so-subtle efforts to pull the company away from a preliminary merger agreement with Dell—a $1.15-billion arrangement announced August 16—took three successive bids to reach an ultimate conclusion. The final acquisition cost of $2 billion, confirmed by 3PAR late Friday, represents a price of $30 per share of 3PAR stock. That's triple the closing price of the company's stock before Dell's initial offer was made public, and more than double after.
Books

Submission + - Congress Opens Records of Anti-Comic Book Shrink (loc.gov) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Some light is being shone on comic book history today as Congress opens up the 222 boxes of a German psychiatrist's evidence and papers against comic books. Dr. Fredric Wertham is well known by comic book fans as the author of Seduction of the Innocent, a bestselling book linking comic books and juvenile delinquency — leading to a full blown congressional investigation (some say witch hunt) of the comic book industry. Wertham was long involved with criminal trials before campaigning against comic books and promoting industry and government censorship for children. Ars adds a little more context for the younger crowd and notes that he later tried to move against television violence but couldn't find the publisher backing he had against comic books.
AMD

Submission + - AMD axes ATI brand (thinq.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: If you have any kind of sentimental attachment to the familiar, red-bordered ATI brand with its friendly curvy letters, then dig out your mourning gear. Yep, it turns out that all the rumours were 100 per cent true. AMD is axing the ATI brand for good, and it's now official.

AMD says the decision to drop the 25-year-old brand was made after polling a large collection of "graphics-processor-aware consumers" in seven different countries, to ensure it had "permission" to dismiss it.
Wikipedia

Submission + - Prosecutor Loses Case for Citing Wikipedia (inquirer.net) 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Phillipine Daily Inquirer reports on a recent case where the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) lost an appeal after seeking to impeach the testimony of a defendant's expert witness by citing an article from Wikipedia. In her brief, the defendant said "the authority, alluded to by oppositor-appellant, the 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders DSM-IV-TR,' was taken from an Internet website commonly known as Wikipedia" and argued that Wikipedia itself contains a disclaimer saying that it "makes no guarantee of validity." The court in finding for the defendant said in its decision that it found "incredible ... if not a haphazard attempt, on the part of the (OSG) to impeach an expert witness, with, as pointed out by (the defendant) unreliable information. This is certainly unacceptable evidence, nothing short of a mere allegation totally unsupported by authority.""
Security

Stand-Alone Antivirus Software? 159

Posted by timothy from the lonely-job dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I work for a company that repairs specialty devices that have an embedded Mini-ATX motherboard without a CD-ROM drive and run Windows XP Home. And while the USB flash drives we insert into them have a physical write-protect tab, we still encounter a (rather annoying) display dialog from malware/viruses to remove the write-protect so the malware can infect the flash drive. We don't remove the write-protect, obviously, but would like to offer our customers the option of removing the malware/virus without having to install any software. We would rather not install/uninstall antivirus software even for one-time use, due to various licensing issues, nor do we want to connect to the Internet to use web-based online scanners. Is there any stand-alone anti-virus/anti-malware software for Windows that can be run directly from the write-protected flash drive itself?"

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