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Government

US Open Government Initiative Enters Phase Three 572

Posted by kdawson from the madisonian-moment dept.
circletimessquare writes "The Obama administration opened a discussion forum in January of this year which has become an electronic suggestion box. It is now entering stage three, following brainstorm and discussion phases: the draft phase, in which the top subject matter is codified into suggestions for the government. 'Ultimately, the visitors advanced more than 3,900 ideas, which in turn spawned 11,000 comments that received 210,000 thumb votes. The result? Three of the top 10 most popular ideas called for legalizing marijuana, and two featured conspiracy theories about Mr. Obama's true place of birth.'"
The Courts

ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings 461

Posted by kdawson from the don't-even-think-about-whistling-the-beatles dept.
gerddie notes a piece up on the EFF site outlining the fairly outlandish legal theories ASCAP is trying out in their court fight with AT&T. "ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by 'publicly performing' it without a license. At least that's the import of a brief (PDF, 2.5 MB) it filed in ASCAP's court battle with mobile phone giant AT&T."
Transportation

US To Require That New Cars Get 42 MPG By 2016 1186

Posted by kdawson from the jevons-paradox dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "New cars and trucks will have to get 30 percent better mileage starting in 2016 under an Obama administration move to curb emissions tied to smog and global warming. While the 30 percent increase would be an average for both cars and light trucks, the percentage increase in cars would be much greater, rising from the current 27.5 mpg standard to 42 mpg. Environmentalists praised the move. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, called it 'one of the most significant efforts undertaken by any president, ever, to end our addiction to oil and seriously slash our global warming emissions.' Obama's plan also would effectively end litigation between states and automakers that had opposed state-specific rules, arguing that having to meet several state standards would be much more expensive for them than just one federal rule. The Detroit News reported that automakers were on board with the new rule and had worked with the administration on creating a timeline for the transition." There's a case to be made that raising the CAFE won't save oil or reduce greenhouse gases.
Security

Submission + - IIS 6 Attack Could Let Hackers Snoop On Servers (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "A flaw in the way that Microsoft's software processes Unicode tokens has been found to give attackers a way to view protected files on IIS Web servers without authorization. The flaw, exposed by Nikolaos Rangos, could be used to upload files as well. Affecting IIS 6 users who have enabled WebDAV for sharing documents via the Web, the vulnerability is currently being exploited in online attacks, according to CERT, and is reminiscent of the well-known IIS unicode path traversal issue of 2001, one of the worst Windows vulnerabilities of the past decade."
Biotech

Submission + - Gene Transfer Immunizes Against Monkey HIV (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
Al
Al writes: "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have immunized monkeys against the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), the animal model that is closest to HIV. They did so by shuttling a gene into the monkeys' muscles, making the muscle cells produce antibody-like molecules that work against SIV. With both SIV and HIV, the chameleon-like mutability of the virus's surface changes so quickly that most antibodies made by the immune system are soon rendered ineffective. Philip Johnson and colleagues designed DNA sequences for two antibodies known to be effective against SIV. They used antibody-like molecules, called immunoadhesins, in which the functional part of an antibody is fused with a more stable section of another antibody. The same approach could be used to deliver antibodies that are effective against HIV, but which the body doesn't normally produce."
It's funny. Laugh.

The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer 876

Posted by CmdrTaco from the overdriven-pet-peeves dept.
davidmwilliams writes "Those of us who work in technology have a jargon all of our very own. We know the difference between CPUs and GPUs, between SSD and HD, let alone HD and SDTV! Yet, our users are flat out calling everything 'the hard drive.' Why is it so?" As much as I hate to admit it, this particular thing drives me nuts. You don't call the auto shop and tell them that your engine is broken when your radio breaks!

Comment Good Grief Alienware (Score 1) 665

by theatrecade (#27893021) Attached to: Alienware Refusing Customers As Thieves
i work for a big Multitech company and one of the guys purchased an alienware pc. He then sold it to another tech. The other tech is a Linux guy so he tried to install several versions of it. All versions dropped his dual core to a measily 800Mhz. when he went to the site to find out what was going on, they said there was a bios update for the machine. He tried to sign up the machine to get the update. The website said something like that serial is already registered. he was stuck. he ended up finding the manufactor of the board and downloading their flash. voila golden. but because the guy before him registered the pc not even phone support would help him. When he went to sell the alienware laptop i stayed away from buying it like swine flu. I purchased a used mac instead. He's still stuck with the hardware because nobody can "reregister" the hardware. Big booo for alienware.
Emulation (Games)

Submission + - Project of the month on SourceForge.net: DOSBox (kingofgng.com) 1

Submitted by
KingofGnG
KingofGnG writes: "DOSBox, the emulator designed to run DOS games on modern operating systems (and not necessarily on a PC), has been chosen as project of the month for May 2009 on the open source platform SourceForge.net. It's the latest award granted to a software that "simply does what it is supposed to do", as the authors state, and that after having summed up more than 10 millions downloads is ready for an update awaited since almost two years."
Censorship

Submission + - Fired for writing concerns about anti piracy to MP (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by neurone333
neurone333 writes: France, may, 6th 2009, Libération reported this story, now all over French newspapers : A TV executive has been fired for writing his concerns about anti-piracy law (HADOPI aka 3 strikes and you're out) to his Member of Parliament, the UMP Françoise de Panafieu.

Françoise de Panafieu forwards this email to the UMP Christine Albanel, France's Minister for Culture and Communication, author of the anti-piracy law "HADOPI".

The email was then forwarded to TF1, the largest TV network in Europe. The author of the email, Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim.he was called into his boss' office and shown... an exact copy of his e-mail. He was then fired for "strong differences with the strategy"... in a private email sent from a private (gmail) adress.

Irish times has an explanation for "the incestuous relationship between his government and TF1" : TF1's owner, the construction billionaire Martin Bouygues, is godfather to Mr Sarkozy's youngest son, Louis. Mr Bouygues suggested to Mr Sarkozy that he ought to ban advertising on TF1's rival stations in the public sector, which was done in January. Laurent Solly, who was deputy director of Mr Sarkozy's presidential campaign, is now number two at TF1. Last year, TF1 sacked Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, the station's star presenter for the previous 21 years. Poivre had angered Mr Sarkozy by saying he "acted like a little boy" at a G8 summit. He was replaced by Laurence Ferrari. Mr Sarkozy reportedly told Mr Bouygues he wanted to see the young blonde on the news.
Google

Submission + - Google Creates a Unsend (5 Second send rule) (cnn.com)

Submitted by
theatrecade
theatrecade writes: "Ever Hit reply all when you didn't want to send that flaming message to everybody? Well Gmail users rejoice!

According to CNN: "Instead of hitting "reply" to an e-mail, we accidentally push "reply all," sending a potentially embarrassing or insulting message to those we didn't intend to see it. To address this problem, Google Inc.'s Gmail Labs has launched an experimental feature called "Undo Send" that gives users a chance to rewrite their message, correct settings or simply fix typos. When a Gmail user who enables this feature sends an e-mail, a button that says "Undo" will pop up on their screen for five seconds. If the user hits the button within that time, the service will retrieve the e-mail in draft form — allowing the user to make changes or cancel the message altogether.""

Comment Re:He's not totally wrong (Score 1) 1147

by theatrecade (#27282457) Attached to: Ballmer Scorns Apple As a $500 Logo
if i wanna play games i have machines that i can put software in and they designed to offer me optimal gaming experience and 36" tv to play them on.. for some reason games aren't fun on a 17inch screen at a desk i usually use my computer as a tool more than an entertaiment center. i've only got in the hardware race to 1005 more real looking than reality back in the in the voodoo days. Now my computer is use to produce more than just high scores

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