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Censorship

Submission + - Thai government shuts down political chat rooms

Submitted by
patiwat
patiwat writes: "Less than a week after censoring Youtube, the military government of Thailand has shut down the Kingdom's most popular web discussion board, Pantip.com, for reasons of national security. Other webboards were warned not to allow political messages to be posted, lest they also be shut down. Thailand currently censors over 10,000 websites, including sites of the deposed government and sites containing censorship circumvention software and links anonymous proxy servers."
Google

Submission + - YouTube aids censorship

Submitted by cyberianpan
cyberianpan writes:
BBC Reports: The video-sharing website YouTube has offered to show Thailand how to block material deemed insulting to King Bhumibol Adulyadej. YouTube executives said they would not take down material that did not violate policies but would show authorities how to block individual items. YouTube's head of global communications, Julie Supan, said it would prefer Thailand to have the power to remove items rather than have the whole site blocked.
So what happens the "do no evil" ? Yes whilst YouTube/Google's offer of a masterclass on censorship is hardly doing the deed itself isn't it as bad: aiding , abetting & implicitly condoning ? At least in China the authorities asked them to do it, here they're volunteering.
Communications

Submission + - What causes cell phone connection errors?

Submitted by Anonymous Cell Phone User
Anonymous Cell Phone User writes: Earlier today, I called a friend on my cell phone and was connected to "Tom", a stranger. I knew I didn't have the wrong number because my friend's number was saved in my phone. I tried the same number again and got my friend this time. My friend told me he had just gotten a call from somebody wanting to speak to Tom, but his caller ID had said that the call was from me. This has happened to me a few times, both when I tried calling somebody on a landline from my cell phone and also when somebody tried to call me on my cell phone from a landline (it might also have happened between two cell phones once, but I'm not sure about that). The information in the caller ID seems to always match the intended call, but the voices get switched. I have had this happen with a Cingular/ATT contract in the USA and with a Vodaphone pay-as-you-go card in Germany (different phones). I am wondering if this error is due to a limitation of the GSM protocol or how it's implemented. I'm hoping that there's some cell phone / telecommunications expert here that can shed some light on the issue. Can anybody here explain how/why these errors happen?
Microsoft

Submission + - Has Microsoft Patented A Successor To Clippy?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: IWeek blogger Alex Wolfe theorizes that Microsoft might be searching for a successor to 'Clippy, the iconic paperclip which was featured in Office from 1997 until the folks at Redmond got tired of the ridicule and retired it in 2004. The most promising candidate may be an eye with a rotating iris. What's equally notable is that Microsoft seems to be taking a page from its attempt to trademark the English word "Windows," and has patented the icon for a camcorder. Do you think this is the typical patent work of a big company, or has Microsoft got something up its sleeve here?
Google

Submission + - Google Bought, Burned NC Seniors' Homes

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Nicholas Carr has a nice roundup of the latest Googlegate News, including the heartwarming story of how NC government officials acting on Google's behalf hounded the elderly into selling their homes, keeping prices down by using a nonprofit front funded by Google to conceal the search giant's identity from folks like Eugene and Violet Anderson, both 86. As former homeowners took up residence in apartments and doublewides, the local fire department burned down a number of their homes to make way for Google, whose tax incentives are now being pegged at $260M."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Build A World

Submitted by
queenb**ch
queenb**ch writes: "A new open source development is roaming the net. They've found a home over at BuildaWorld.net. They're taking the Delta3D engine and turning it into something a bit more user friendly and ready to build a game with. It's getting the networking components added back in along with avatar inventory and a user interface. That should make it ready for a RPG or FPS game. Their "mission statement" and "purpose" is as follows... Now a small bird told me that they're getting close to releasing the network code and that the avartar inventory and UI won't be far behind it. You can visit them at http://www.buildaworld.net/ for more information.

Mission Statement

We are an alliance of smaller teams that are working to build a rules-independent world-independent Free Software-licensed game engine that we can share.

Purpose

Our purpose is for several teams to come together to create tools that let you build your own virtual world, roleplaying game, or whatever else you can imagine. Our purpose is to create a game engine and at least one "reference world."

1 — The license must permit anyone to use, modify, and distribute work based on our products.

2 — All decisions will be made by participating teams, not by a few individuals.

3 — Creation, administration, and maintenance of the demonstration shards will be shared by participating teams.

4 — The reference world will demonstrate that the game engine functions.

5 — The reference world will serve as a working "HOWTO" with examples of some basic tasks."
Programming

Submission + - Is Homebrew coming of age?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I saw this on Evil Avatar today. A blog called the pensive gamer has taken a look at how close we are to having homebrew readily available without hacks and modchips on all three consoles. While today's post looked at Xbox 360 (xna coding), they also looked at the Wii (web) and PS3 (linux and web). http://blogs.spouting-tech.com/thepensivegamer/200 7/02/here_comes_home_2.html
Biotech

Submission + - Automatic frozen rose photos

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The server at http://rose.makesad.us/ provides one new frozen rose photo everyday, using an innovative python application to automatically select "sad" frozen rose photos from Flickr. It has already been noticed by livejournal. Perhaps this is a new sign, pointing towards content aggregation sites that automatically grade their content based on emotions evoked?
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Amazing Cancer Drug Found; Scientist Annoyed.

Submitted by
sporkme
sporkme writes: "A scientist was frustrated when the compound she was working with destroyed her sample of cancer cells. Further research revealed that the substance was surprisingly well suited as a cancer treatment. From the article:

"I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died," Schaefer said. A colleague overheard her complaining. "The co-author on my paper said,' Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?' I said 'Oh', and took a closer look." They ran several tests and found the compound killed "pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen."
Lab test results on hapless mice have resulted in the destruction of colon tumors without making the mice sick. The PPAR-gamma compound is expected to be especially useful in combating treatment-resistant types of cancer."
Google

Submission + - Google "spelling mistake" deliberate

Submitted by Bob54321
Bob54321 writes: It appear the mis-spelling of Google as "Googe" in this years Valentines Day logo is deliberate. From the Google Blog "those with true romance and poetry in their soul will see the subtlety immediately".
Google

Submission + - Googe.

Submitted by
The Ocarina
The Ocarina writes: "Has anyone checked out www.google.com today? It seems that Google redesigned their logo again, but left out a critical element to their name — the letter 'L' — either accidentally or purposely. Either way, Valentine's Day is celebrated by Googe with chocolate-covered strawberries."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft complains about limiting choices

Submitted by
inode_buddha
inode_buddha writes: "Microsoft is accusing IBM of a large-scale campaign to limit users choices in Office formats. The article goes on to explain that IBM is pushing ODF via several standards bodies, while Microsoft tries to fast-track OOXML through the ECMA.

Microsoft seems to feel that the competition is unfair, according to TFA at El Reg, including quotes from a letter at MS InterOp. Pot, meet Kettle?"
Supercomputing

Submission + - First quantum computer demoed, plays sudoku

Submitted by
prostoalex
prostoalex writes: "Canadian company D-Wave Systems is getting some technology press buzz after successfully demonstrating their quantum computer that the company plans to rent out. Scientific American has more of technical description of how the quantum computer works as well as possible areas of application: "The quantum computer was given three problems to solve: searching for molecular structures that match a target molecule, creating a complicated seating plan, and filling in Sudoku puzzles." There are also some videos from the demo."
Announcements

Submission + - Disability groups on OpenDocument Format v1.1

Submitted by
peterkorn
peterkorn writes: "In the person of Curtis Chong, president of the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science, the "Voice of Nation's Blind" have spoken: "OpenDocument is no longer a thing to be feared." With the release of OpenDocument v1.1 as an OASIS standard, the accessibility issues raised by the members of the OASIS ODF accessibility subcommittee have been fully addressed. See my blog entry for the details, and lots of other quotes about the release of OpenDocument v1.1. (full disclosure: I'm co-chair of the OASIS ODF accessibility subcommittee, and have been involved in Sun's ODF and StarOffice/OpenOffice.org accessibility work, among other things)"

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