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Communications

Activation Problems in iPhone Paradise 434

Posted by Zonk from the long-wait-short-celebration dept.
Thomas Hawk writes "Unfortunately it appears that some activations of Apple's new iPhone have gone badly. After waiting in line 36 hours I'm still unable to activate my phone. I'm documenting the AT&T circus call by call on my blog. I've had my hold calls dropped, been patched into other users unable to activate their phone instead of AT&T customer service reps, been told that my wife must get a new phone and that the family plan can't work for me. I've been told that the problem is that I'm not putting a new chip into my iPhone in the slot on the left side of my phone when no slot there exists. PR Blogger Steve Rubel has also been documenting his problems on his Twitterstream. According to an unscientific poll being conducted by Engadget about half of the people who bought iPhones have had activation trouble with about 38% of problems still unresolved." Even the folks at MacWorld weren't immune to these issues.
The Internet

Submission + - Net Neutrality dismissed by FTC (for now)

Submitted by Altery
Altery writes: The FTC has issued a report on broadband competition in which the Commission argues that there is no evidence that Net Neutrality laws are needed. Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said that legislators should "proceed with caution" in addressing the issue, adding that there are more questions than answers right now about what will and won't harm consumers. Still, the report made it clear that the FTC is on the lookout for abuse, but generally the report is a big win for the telecoms.
Security

Submission + - Controversial security paper nixed from Black Hat (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "A presentation scheduled for Black Hat USA 2007 that promised to undermine chip-based desktop and laptop security has been suddenly withdrawn without explanation. The briefing, "TPMkit: Breaking the Legend of [Trusted Computing Group's Trusted Platform Module] and Vista (BitLocker)," promised to show how computer security based on trusted platform module (TPM) hardware could be circumvented. "We will be demonstrating how to break TPM," Nitin and Vipin Kumar said in their abstract for their talk that was posted on the Black Hat Web site but was removed overnight Monday. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/062707-black -hat.html"
Sci-Fi

Blade Runner at 25, Why the F/X Still Matter 454

Posted by CmdrTaco from the beware-the-thighs-that-crush dept.
mattnyc99 writes "Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's dark vision of the future that changed the future of filmmaking and still stands up today, argues Adam Savage of The MythBusters (and the F/X crews of The Matrix and Star Wars). Between the "lived-in science fiction," pre-CGI master models, futuristic cityscapes and tricked-out cars, don't you agree? And after we got the first official glimpse of him from Indiana Jones 4 this weekend, isn't Harrison Ford still the man?"
Censorship

Submission + - Free Speech Takes a Hit in 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus'

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "The Supreme Court tightened limits on student speech Monday, ruling against a high school student and his 14-foot-long 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' banner. Schools may prohibit student expression that can be interpreted as advocating drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 5-4 ruling. Faring better with litigation was the student's father, who was awarded $200,000 after being fired over his son's legal fight by the company that insures the Juneau schools."
The Courts

Submission + - Supreme Court upholds White House faith program (cnn.com)

Submitted by
The Spoonman
The Spoonman writes: "In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court struck a blow against freedom of religion (which implies freedom FROM religion) in the U.S. The conservatively stacked court stated "taxpayers did not have "standing" to challenge in court the discretionary spending authority of the executive branch for its Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives." So much for "of the people, by the people, for the people"."

Mono Coders Hack Linux Silverlight in 21 Days 409

Posted by CmdrTaco from the break-out-the-red-bull-and-go-go-go dept.
Etrigoth writes "After the recent announcement of Silverlight by Microsoft at their Mix event in Vegas, Miguel de Icaza galvanised his team of developers in the Mono group at Novell to create a Linux implementation, a so-called 'Moonlight'. Remarkably, they achieved this in 21 Days. Although they were first introduced to Silverlight at the Las Vegas Mix, de Icaza was invited by a representative of Microsoft France for a 10 minute demonstration at the Paris Re-Mix 07 keynote conference, should they have anything to show.
Joshua, a blogger for Microsoft has confirmed that the Mono team did not know anything about Silverlight 1.1 before its launch. Other members of this team have blogged about this incredible achievement, Moonlight hack-a-thon. It's worth noting from a developer perspective that Moonlight is not Mono and doesn't require Mono to work"
Education

Submission + - UK Government rules Inteligent Design not Science (theregister.co.uk) 1

Submitted by blane.bramble
blane.bramble writes: The Register is reporting that there is no place in the science curriculum for Inteligent Design and that it can not be taught as science. The UK Government has stated that "The Government is aware that a number of concerns have been raised in the media and elsewhere as to whether creationism and intelligent design have a place in science lessons. The Government is clear that creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science."
Google

Submission + - Google Joins Forces w/Linux to Develop Google OS (osweekly.com)

Submitted by
techie
techie writes: "Google is working with Linux on a variety of fronts to continue to develop Google OS. Matt Hartley of OSWeekly.com comments, "How would it go down specifically? Probably something like this: As previously mentioned earlier, Google unfolds their plans with the help of Mozilla, Linspire and Canonical (Ubuntu sponsor). Using these three forces, Google begins working with a PC manufacturer, such as HP, to get an OEM deal out the door. Because Google is willing to take an initial cut in profits to start off with, they are willing to offer the low-end PCs for nothing, so long as the user understands that they will be exposed to Google advertising in exchange. In addition to this, I could even see bundled extras, should the user allow their efforts to be heavily tracked. Because of privacy concerns, however, this extra feature would be turned off by default."
Patents

Submission + - Nokia Countersues Qualcomm (lawbean.com)

Submitted by
Spamicles
Spamicles writes: "Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, has filed a patent infringement countersuit against Qualcomm Monday. Nokia filed the lawsuit in a Texas district court, and it is seeking damages and injunctive relief. Nokia stated that it believes the Qualcomm patents are not valid, as the alleged inventions have been patented or published by other companies before Qualcomm. It also said it does not believe Nokia's products infringe any of the patents."
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Is SDK-less iPhone out of business? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
InfoWorldMike
InfoWorldMike writes: "InfoWorld's Tom Yager hits a new low in his love affair with Apple, writing "Steve Jobs told the crowd in January that Apple's upcoming mobile device, iPhone, runs OS X. A Unix phone with Apple's UI panache? Touch, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and mobile phone in one device? I was ready to take a three month sabbatical from InfoWorld just to spelunk around inside iPhone's APIs and its OS X core. Looks like I'll have to continue to hone my mobile app development chops in the familiar domains of BlackBerry, Symbian/Nokia, and Windows Mobile. At the Worldwide Developer Conference this week, Jobs paved the way for the June 29 delivery of iPhone by telling a crowd of some 4,000 that where developers are concerned, iPhone is a handheld Safari browser. "You don't even need an SDK,' Steve said before he invoked the magic phrase 'AJAX and Web 2.0,' to let the press know that iPhone is open to all applications that take advantage of these state of the art paradigms. Steve cited Salesforce.com as the exemplar of the type of Web-based application one would run on an iPhone. That sounds pretty until you realize that of all the ways to write and package software, none is less suited to mobile use than a Web application. Salesforce makes this plain with Salesforce To Go, custom native software targeted to Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Symbian devices. I can handle having my expectations go unmet. But to trumpet AJAX and Web 2.0 as iPhone's development platform is worse than spin. It strains my faith in Apple." I did not help, either, that Yager's MacBook Pro's battery died during this deadening keynote, I'll add to this."
Space

Matter Discovered Traveling at Near Light Speed 403

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the celestial-slingshot dept.
mcgrew writes to mention New Scientist is reporting that scientists have clocked matter traveling at 99.999% the speed of light. "The fastest flows of matter in the universe shoot out of dying stars at more than 99.999% the speed of light, new observations reveal. When a massive star runs out of fuel, it collapses to form a black hole or a neutron star. In the process, some of the matter from the star also explodes outward at blistering speeds, producing an intense burst of gamma rays and other radiation."

Safari 3 vs. Firefox 2 and IE7 559

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-worth-it dept.
Bobcat writes "Ars Technica has a 'first look' at Safari for Windows, which is interesting because it's written from the perspective of someone new to Safari. It was tested against Firefox 2 and IE7 and aside from the slightly faster page loading, Ars didn't find much to recommend it to Windows users. 'The modest increase in rendering performance is hardly worth the deficiencies, and Safari's user interface simply doesn't provide the usability or flexibility of competing products. If the folks at Apple think that providing Windows users with a taste of Mac OS X through Safari is going to entice them to buy a Mac, it's going to take a better effort than the Safari 3 beta. Even if the final release is more polished and completely bug-free, it still won't be as powerful or feature-loaded as Opera or Firefox.'"
Sun Microsystems

Torvalds vs Schwartz GPL Wars 335

Posted by CmdrTaco from the which-one-is-han-solo dept.
javipas writes "The controversial message published by Linus Torvalds (mirrored) in the Linux Kernel Mailing List was from the beginning to the end an open attack to Sun and its Open Source strategy. Linus criticized Sun's real position on GPL, and claimed that Linux could be dangerous to Sun. Upon his words, "they may be talking a lot more [about Open Source] than they are or ever will be doing." Jonathan Schwartz's blog has been updated today with a post that is a direct response to Linus claims, but in a much more elegant and coherent way. Sun's CEO notes that "Companies compete, communities simply fracture", and tries to explain why using GPL licenses is taking so long."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft May Be Investigated By Attorneys General (cnn.com)

Submitted by
Null Nihils
Null Nihils writes: "Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has announced that a group of state attorneys general will decide later this week whether to pursue legal action against Microsoft over allegations of anticompetitive conduct that were brought on by Google.

From the article: "Google has complained that Microsoft's new operating system puts it, and other rivals, at a disadvantage. Google said that Vista makes it harder for consumers to use non-Microsoft versions of a desktop search function, which enables users to search the contents of their hard drives.

A group of state attorneys general including Connecticut and California is now determining how to react to the claims made by Google.""

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