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United States

Submission + - Scanning All Travelers Crossing US Borders Now in (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by conlaw
conlaw writes: Just the first paragraph of this Washington Post article is scary as all getout:

The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years.
Note that this includes "all people," including US citizens.
Television

Submission + - FCC vs Cable Round2,FCC Plan to Cap Cable Co. Size (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is moving toward resurrecting a proposal that would limit the size cable operators could reach on a nationwide basis, agency officials said Thursday. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is circulating the proposal among his fellow commissioners for a possible vote at the agency's next meeting, scheduled for Dec 18 and has enough support on the five-member commission to pass a measure that would bar cable companies from owning systems that have more than a 30-percent share of U.S. multichannel video subscribers. Fearing the potential monopoly power of cable television companies, Congress in 1992 directed the FCC to establish limits on how many customers cable television companies could reach nationwide. ( http://techluver.com/2007/12/02/round-2-set-in-fcc-vs-cable-fight-as-fcc-plan-to-limit-cable-companies-size/ )"
Wii

Submission + - Nintendo Is On The Move Against Mod Chip Stores (xuecast.com)

Submitted by
XueCast
XueCast writes: "Nintendo has just decided to go all out against stores in the Germany that are selling Mod Chips for the Nintendo Wii console, by sending warning letters to these stores. Through the letters, Nintendo is asking the Mod Chip stores to stop selling Wii Mod Chips immediately, destroy the Mod Chips in question and then disclose the name and the location of the Wii Mod Chips' manufacturer(s) to Nintendo, or else they will be litigated, Nintendo warns."
IBM

Submission + - IBM Embraces Solaris for the Mainframe (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
explosivejared
explosivejared writes: "In an example of the computer industry's higher level of abstraction — in this case, known as horse trading — IBM has called attention to a demonstration of Solaris running on the mainframe. It's also endorsed Sun Microsystems' xVM product, its entry into virtualization for x86 servers. The endorsement is notable at a time when Sun is seeking credibility for yet another hypervisor entrant into the virtualization market. IBM's xVM endorsement is practically the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, since it invented virtualization more than 40 years ago. Sun in turn has assisted a third party, the research and development firm Sine Nomine Associates in Ashburn, Va., in getting Sun's OpenSolaris operating system to run on the IBM mainframe, something that many observers said would never happen.

"We're thrilled to be able to reach new customers and market opportunities alongside IBM," said Rich Green, executive VP for software at Sun, in a statement released during Gartner's Data Center Conference in Las Vegas on Friday."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Top Ten Free Games of 2007 (midnightsynergy.com)

Submitted by
Midnight Synergy
Midnight Synergy writes: "With the season of big commercial game releases upon us, it is a great time to remember the many free, fun, inventive, and creative games that have been produced over the year.

To this end, Midnight Synergy has compiled a Top Ten Best Free Game Releases of 2007 . The list includes, among others, a surrealist adventure game, an island survival game, an educational puzzle game, and even an experimental sumo wrestling simulation. These games are virtually guaranteed to provide you with hours of fun on these cold winter nights (and are completely free).

To view the list and play the games, visit
http://www.midnightsynergy.com/topten2007

Notes:
1. The list was compiled based on coverage on major game websites and discussion boards, but as with any "Best Of" list, it contains a healthy dose of personal bias. This "Top Ten" concentrates on independent releases and does not include previously available commercial titles that have been re-released as freeware for promotional purposes.

2. We would be very interested in hearing feedback on this list. Which games do you think did not deserve the cut? Which ones did we miss?"
Security

Submission + - USAID server hacked to serve pornography

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) provides economic, developmental and humanitarian assistance around the world in conjunction with the foreign policy goals of the United States. It also provides porn, or so it appeared as of 2:00 pm PST on Friday. The hacked server was associated with USAID's Tanzania subdomain: Tanzania.usaid.gov.

Those accessing the affected pages get presented with a fake error message indicating that updated video software is required. Interacting with the dialog menu, accepting it or canceling it, is likely result in the installation of the Zlob Trojan. Infected machines were then at risk of being conscripted to serve in some cyber criminal's bot army.
Graphics

Submission + - Samsung Develops Fastest GDDR5 Memory at 6Gbps (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "Samsung Electronics announced today that it has developed the world's fastest memory, a GDDR5 (series five, graphics double-data-rate memory) chip that can transfer data at six gigabits per second, which is more than four times faster than that of memories in state-of-the-art game consoles today. Samsung's GDDR5, which will be introduced at a density of 512 Mbit (16Mb x 32) chips, is capable of transmitting moving images and associated data at 24 gigabytes per second. ( http://techluver.com/2007/12/02/samsung-develops-fastest-gddr5-memory-at-six-gigabits-per-second-%E2%80%94-world%E2%80%99s-fastest-memory/ )"
United States

Submission + - Pro-Kremlin Parties Win Russian Election (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by
reporter
reporter writes: "The Russian election concluded on December 2, and according to a report by Bloomberg, the pro-Kremlin parties appear to have won the election. "The Central Election Commission announced that with 19.5 percent of the vote counted, United Russia had 63.5 percent, the Communists 11.3 percent, the Liberal Democrats 10 percent and Fair Russia 7 percent." If these percentages are maintained until the final tally, then 69.2% of the legislators in the Duma will hail from United Russia; that percentage gives them the power to arbitarily change the constitution in accordance with the wishes of the Kremlin. Only the Communists oppose (in a very loose sense of the word) the policies of the Kremlin and, ironically, will now be the only opposition party in the Duma. In 2004, Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Communist Party, had warned, "This is not an election, it's a special [Kremlin] operation with a predetermined result." ("The Washinton Post", 2004 March 14)

On Saturday (December 1), the "Wall Street Journal" published a front-page story about Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize for releasing the Eastern Europeans from the yoke of Soviet oppression. He has criticized the steadily eroding freedoms that he initiated in Russia in the late 1980s, but he has refrained from directly criticizing Czar Vladimir Putin."
Media

Submission + - Tech Journalist are morons (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Scott
Scott writes: Came across this whilst wasting time. I cannot believe that a tech journalist would say such a inaccurate statement. "But buying a HD TV involves making a difficult choice about which of the two competing HD formats you back." Even I know this sentence is completely false, but alas his message would of been spread around the world, and at this very moment some poor sales guy is being asked if the Tv being bought supports Blu-ray or HDDVD.
Google

Submission + - Satellite Dish Alignment with Google Maps (dishpointer.com)

Submitted by
Alan
Alan writes: "Anyone who ever installed a satellite dish knows how frustrating it is to point the dish at the right satellite. Here is a unique tool which actually shows a satellite image of your house and then draws a line where to point the dish. That easy and always spot on. It's a pretty neat use of Google Maps and comes with many other features, such as dish size calculator, satellite and channel charts, and a magnetic variation calculator for compass use based on the latest NGDC geomagnetic field model — DishPointer.com."
Slashback

Submission + - Common Slashdot Acronyms? (or CSA)

Submitted by cbart387
cbart387 writes: I come to slashdot because it usually has a good mesh of news. However, one of the offputting things is the amount of acronyms used. I'm not refering to the technical acronyms, I know it comes with the territory of computer science. Rather I mean the Aim-like acronyms.

My question is, If the slashdot users could provide common acronyms used on this site? It would help my understanding (and I'm sure others).
Education

Journal Journal: Government Lunch

Journal by timothy

A strange consequence of corralling the vast bulk of American kids into government holding facilities for many of their daytime waking hours between early childhood and late adolescence: arguments about how many calories and in what form should be funnelled into their gullets. An article today in the New York Times (subject to bitrot) quotes Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at something called the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who knows best which gullet stuffers ought
Announcements

Submission + - $100 Billiion 'Fix' For Global Warming Discredited (scienceblog.com) 4

Submitted by
slowboy
slowboy writes: "Science Blog reports that a $100 billion fix for global warming may not work. The discredited 'fix' is the fertilization of potentially millions of tons of iron or other nutrients into the ocean to promote an algae bloom. If this was to work then the algae would start sucking the carbon out of the atmosphere and reduce the effects of a major greenhouse gas. But guess what, that may just not work, regardless of how it would disrupt the ocean's ecosystem. It seems that the carbon may not get pumped into the deeper ocean, it may just lie near the surface and get taken back up into the atmosphere. Fortunately we are finding this out now, and not after $100 billion of you're, mine and others tax money went to the scheme."

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