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Submission + - Hacker refused extradition appeal (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Globally Mobile
Globally Mobile writes: According to the BBC, Computer hacker Gary McKinnon has been refused permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court against his extradition to the US.

The High Court ruled the case was not of "general public importance" to go to the UK's highest court.

Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon, 43, of Wood Green, London, is accused of breaking into the US's military computer system.

Mr Mickinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome, insists he was just seeking evidence of UFOs.

In July he lost a High Court bid to avoid extradition.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Google Wave (First few hours)

Journal by Globally Mobile

While I haven't been able to focus much in all honesty on the wave, as of yet, I must say, their mascot, Dr. Wave, is quite, well, I swear that face looks quite familiar to me.... here...

Submission + - 50th Anniversary of the Twilight Zone 1

Submitted by
pickens
pickens writes: "Fifty years ago on October 2, American television viewers first heard the words "you're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into... the Twilight Zone." Like the time-space warps that anchored so many of the show's plots, Rod Serling's veiled commentary remains as soul-baring today as it did a half-century ago, and the show's popularity endures in multiple facets of American pop culture appearing nearly uninterrupted through television, syndication and DVD releases and under license to air in 30 countries. "The whole idea of 'The Twilight Zone' jumped off the television screen and became a catchphrase, a buzzword for something much beyond the TV show itself," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "When you say Twilight Zone, it's its own genre." The original show ran just five seasons, 1959 to 1964 with 156 episodes filmed for the original series; Serling wrote 92 of them and other contributors included Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury. Anniversary observances are planned at Ithaca College in New York, where Serling taught from 1967 until his death in 1975, and which keeps Serling's archives; and at Antioch College in Ohio, where Serling was a student, met his wife, Carol and later taught. "I don't think he would have thought in a million years that Twilight Zone would be having an important 50th birthday or that it would still be on," says Carol Serling, widow of the show's creator. "Through parable and suggestion, he could make points that he couldn't make on straight television because there were too many sacred cows and sponsors and people who said you couldn't do that.""

Comment Re:Someone smack the submitter/editor (Score 1) 238

I consider myself smacked upside the head with a tuberculosis infected bat made from terbium. Though if you enter Google with the simple search define: Tb , you get terabit, terabyte, terbium, and tuberculosis. I should have made the extra effort to triple check myself before I got wrecked. Also, WTF, my spell-check does not have terabit as a word. Time to add yet another term to the dictionary file.

Comment Re:The Man Who Fell to Earth (Score 1) 238

Thanks for putting that out there for folks. I just have a love for Bowie in that film. Had a pretty heavy influence on me as a little kid. Specially all the technologies that he came out with to financially support his ultimate goal. In particular I remember being quite excited by the idea of holographic mini-cubes of music (almost like cubed Nico Nico Nicorri Jelly's)Now something else to add to my never ending list of must re-reads. And as far as Dicks Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep....
I can't dismiss the cinematography in Bladerunner, specially considering the time period that the movie was made, but it really can't hold a candle to the absolute mind-digger that is PKD's work. I think he might be an author who is better off read. I wish they could have included the mood-altering box that to me seemed to be a central device in that story.

Submission + - GE: 1Tb micro Hologram Disc Readable by a Modified 1

Submitted by
Globally Mobile
Globally Mobile writes: "The Register has this article concerning GE announcement that it has been developing a 1 Terabyte DVD size disk that can be read by a modified Blu-ray player. Peter Lorraine, GE's lab manager, talking at an Emerging Tech conference last week, said that license announcements could be expected soon. He also mentioned the notion of disks having the capacity of 100 Blu-ray disks, implying a 2.5TB or even 5TB capacity, gained by increasing the number of layers used for recording. The discs will be used for high-end commercial niches initially and then migrate to consumer markets in 2012-2015.
Also here is a video of the technology explained.
.Wish we could see this sooner! Reminds me of the technology that Bowies charecter came up with in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' Thanks to"

Submission + - Seeking opinions on the best network hosts on the

Submitted by
Globally Mobile
Globally Mobile writes: "It has been quite a while sense I registered a domain name, and I am looking for the best hosting solution for the least amount of money (preferably free, although a trial period would also be great). Quite embarrassingly I spent everything I had left for the rest of this week on the actual domain name, after finding that it was available, and getting a fairly good deal on the registration. But now I am stuck with a domain name, a few great ideas, and nowhere yet to host my pages. I am hoping to utilize PHP & SQL as well as modern web technologies. I would love to be able to find a host that allows me the ability to ssh in, set things up the way I would like, and might also be interested in utilizing my own portal management, such as Joomla!, as well as group project management software like egroupware, virtualzation software like vmware, and possibly a solution like packetfence, though that might be a bit more then I need, at the current time. I want to be able to set all of these things up myself, and have a pretty good amount of freedom as well. I suppose the first question to ./ would be suggestions for free/virtually free (aka cheap) or free trial hosting solutions. I also would love to have suggestions on software that might serve me the best in these various areas. Thanks for any help you can give me in advance!"

Comment Wonder when companies will learn... (Score 1) 520

by Globally Mobile (#29603761) Attached to: Wii Update 4.2 Tries (and Fails) To Block Homebrew
that no matter how hard they try to 'break' someones ability to do something, those someones will quickly circumvent that 'break' in the system, if they wish to. Makes me flash back to the days of the T-shirts with the DeCSS code written right upon it, and all the controversy about them. Also the tshirts that printed with the PGP (probably also gpg)code that were considered munitions by the US government. Makes me chuckle, makes me sad. It's a mad world, to quote Tears for Fears (though I think I adore Jules version more). There are plenty of other examples, from recording a videotape to another, using analog methods (which to me seems one of the easiest and first methods to break most digital methods of 'breakage', though the quality does suffer, in many peoples opinions.)
I really don't forsee a day when people will quite hacking the 'breaks' in systems. Isn't that what they are there for in the first place? Why not spend all those research dollars into the improvement of the platform itself? Or finding new exciting artists? Etc...
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Why Games Cost $60 -- A View of the Pie (crispygamer.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Crispy Gamer is running a very interesting article on why games cost $60. Many games start out at this retail price but why? Did the makers of The Beatles Rock Band game just happen upon $59.99 as did — by coincidence — the makers of Batman Arkham asylum? After all those two titles surely took different amounts of man hours to develop and result in different averages of entertainment time enjoyed by the consumer. They interview a director at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research who breaks down the pie as $12 to retailer, $5 to discounts/returns/retail marketing, $10 toward manufacturing costs and shipping. That leaves $30 to $35 in the hands of the publishers. Though lengthy, the article looks at three forces of economics on why game publishers continuously end up in lockstep for pricing: sensible greed, consumer stupidity or evil conspiracy. David Thomas collects several interesting quotes in this article from organization leaders to lawyers. When asked about the next step up to $70 or $80, Hal Halpin (president and founder of the Entertainment Consumers Association) says, 'I'm not sure that we'll see a standard $70 price point at all. To my mind, emerging technologies, subscriptions and episodic and downloadable content should all enable price drops — increasing accessibility to a much wider audience. Free-to-play, ad-supported models, too, diversify the price landscape.' For those of you PC gamers that catch deals on Steam, you may be all too familiar with the change that Mr. Halpin is forecasting — will we see this on consoles?"
Wireless Networking

Submission + - SPAM: How Could iPhone MMS Crash AT&T's Network?

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "AT&T has said it is already seeing 'record traffic during peak hours of the night' with just the users selected for testing and so it is 'very nervous' about the spike in traffic that it expects will occur when it launches MMS service for iPhones on Friday. Of course, setting records for MMS traffic isn't that great a feat considering that 'the service in question has been out for years on other handsets and hasn't exactly taken the mobile world by storm:'

In 2008, MMS made up just 2.5 percent of all messages sent from phones worldwide, meaning about 97.5 percent were SMS text messages, according to ABI Research. ABI expects the MMS share to grow to just 4.5 percent by 2014.

However, the carrier's fears in one respect may have been justified, says ABI analyst Dan Shey: 'Interoperability between carriers has always been an issue, and that's why MMS usage hasn't really taken off.'"
Link to Original Source

Windows

Submission + - Ballmer: we screwed up Windows Mobile (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has blasted the company's own mobile operating system at the firm's Venture Capital Summit. One tweet from an attendee claims Ballmer said the company had "screwed up with Windows Mobile. Wishes they had already lauched WM7. They completely revamped the team". Another claims Ballmer said "we've pumped in some new talent. This will not happen again." It's not the first time Ballmer has attacked Windows Mobile, having publicly stated that version 6.5 was "not the full release we wanted"."

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