Comment Re:That's just crazy talk. (Score 1) 416
Where is the "Windows 7 Express Edition" to compete with ChromeOS?
Submission + - How to Generate Your Own Homemade Solar Power (blogspot.com)
clive09 writes: "Being green seems to be the "in" thing nowadays. Indeed, more and more people are becoming aware of the sorry state of our environment and are pledging to do something about it. There are people who try to help the environment by recycling then there are those that eat organic food and patronize organic products. The more serious ones have installed solar panels and wind turbines in their homes to stop relying on power companies for electricity. If you want to be like these people and if you want to know how to generate your own homemade solar power, then this article is for you. Here you will find valuable and useful information on how to generate your own homemade solar power."
Submission + - Hackers get serial numbers of new U.S. passports
schwit1 writes: Fox News has an AP story on a SF Hacker driving around and needing as little as 20 minutes to be successful in acquiring a passport number.
Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he'd "skimmed" the identifiers of four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security has been promoting broad use of RFID even though its own advisory committee on data integrity and privacy warned that radio-tagged IDs have the potential to allow "widespread surveillance of individuals" without their knowledge or consent.
In its 2006 draft report, the committee concluded that RFID "increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security," and recommended that "RFID be disfavored for identifying and tracking human beings.
Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he'd "skimmed" the identifiers of four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security has been promoting broad use of RFID even though its own advisory committee on data integrity and privacy warned that radio-tagged IDs have the potential to allow "widespread surveillance of individuals" without their knowledge or consent.
In its 2006 draft report, the committee concluded that RFID "increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security," and recommended that "RFID be disfavored for identifying and tracking human beings.
Submission + - Linux's big security blooper finally fixed? (moblinzone.com) 1
nerdyH writes: An architect of the Moblin Project has announced that Moblin 2.0 for netbooks and nettops is the first Linux distribution to run the X server as the logged-in user, rather than SUID'd to root. The fix to this decades-old security liability comes thanks to "NRX" (No-root X) technology reportedly developed by Intel, Red Hat, and others in the X community, and the Moblin-sponsored "Secure X" project. Besides making Linux netbooks a lot more snoop-proof, it seems like this could lead to an xhosting renaissance of sorts, since you wouldn't be risking the whole system just to open up a specific user's account to remote X servers.
Submission + - Crunchpad will be 'Dead Simple Web Tablet'
Hugh Pickens writes: "In four years, Michael Arrington has gone from knowing relatively little about the Internet or journalism to presiding over the hugely popular, influential and profitable Palo Alto-based TechCrunch network of blogs. Arrington has been talking for a year about building a touch-screen tablet for Web surfing and now it appears that the CrunchPad is close to becoming a reality. "We're going to make some really big announcements," said Arrington, who predicted a prototype would be ready for unveiling by the end of July. The purpose of the CrunchPad will be very simple: surfing the Web. Turn it on and up comes a browser — "an Internet consumption device," for reading, checking e-mail or watching video. The Crunchpad will not have a hard drive or keyboard and photos of the latest prototype show a device with a 12 inch screen. "The screen is now flush with the case and we've decreased the overall thickness to about 18 mm," writes Arrington. "The case will be aluminum, which is more expensive than plastic but is sturdier and lets us shave a little more off the overall thickness of the device." The Crunchpad boots directly into the browser with a Linux based operating system and a Webkit based browser and a video of an earlier Crunchpad protoytpe in action shows a device that unlike the iPhone runs flash. "The next time we talk about the CrunchPad publicly will be at a special press and user event in July in Silicon Valley," writes Arrington. "We're full on. These prototypes are real.""
Submission + - Pirate Bay snapped up by Swedish software firm (reuters.com) 1
suraj.sun writes: Reuters : http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE55T1QF20090630
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) — Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB said on Tuesday it had agreed to buy free file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, and that it would find ways to compensate copyright owners for downloaded material. The four Swedish men behind the website were sentenced in April to one year in jail and ordered to pay damages of 3.6 million dollars for running the site, which is one of the world's largest for downloading files on the Internet.
The buyer said the website, for which it would pay 60 million Swedish crowns ($7.7 million), was viable based on plans for a new business model that would satisfy both content providers and copyright owners.
"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," said Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya in a statement.
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ComputerWorld : http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=009134974
IDG News Service — The owners of The Pirate Bay have agreed to sell the site to a Swedish Internet cafe operator for 60 million Swedish kronor (US$7.8 million), the company said on Tuesday.
Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) said it wants to find ways to pay content providers and copyright holders when their content is downloaded via The Pirate Bay, which tracks who is sharing files over the BitTorrent peer-to-peer service.
Although The Pirate Bay has been successful in attracting visitors, in order to live on it needs a new business model that satisfies the requirements of content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary, GGF said.
GGF also plans to acquire Swedish company Peerialism, which has developed its own P-to-P technology, for 100 million kronor — of which at least 50 million will be in cash and up to the equivalent of 50 million in newly issued shares, according to GGF.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) — Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB said on Tuesday it had agreed to buy free file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, and that it would find ways to compensate copyright owners for downloaded material. The four Swedish men behind the website were sentenced in April to one year in jail and ordered to pay damages of 3.6 million dollars for running the site, which is one of the world's largest for downloading files on the Internet.
The buyer said the website, for which it would pay 60 million Swedish crowns ($7.7 million), was viable based on plans for a new business model that would satisfy both content providers and copyright owners.
"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," said Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya in a statement.
---------------
ComputerWorld : http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=009134974
IDG News Service — The owners of The Pirate Bay have agreed to sell the site to a Swedish Internet cafe operator for 60 million Swedish kronor (US$7.8 million), the company said on Tuesday.
Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) said it wants to find ways to pay content providers and copyright holders when their content is downloaded via The Pirate Bay, which tracks who is sharing files over the BitTorrent peer-to-peer service.
Although The Pirate Bay has been successful in attracting visitors, in order to live on it needs a new business model that satisfies the requirements of content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary, GGF said.
GGF also plans to acquire Swedish company Peerialism, which has developed its own P-to-P technology, for 100 million kronor — of which at least 50 million will be in cash and up to the equivalent of 50 million in newly issued shares, according to GGF.
Submission + - Graphene Could Make Magnetic Memory 1000x Denser (technologyreview.com)
KentuckyFC writes: "The density of magnetic memory depends on the size of the magnetic domains used to store bits. The current state-of-the-art uses cobalt-based grains some 8nm across, each containing about 50,000 atoms. Materials scientists think they can shrink the grains to 15,000 atoms but any smaller than that and the crystal structure of the grains is lost. That's a problem because the cobalt has to be arranged in a hexagonal close packing structure to ensure the stability of its magnetic field. Otherwise the field can spontaneously reverse and the data is lost. Now a group of German physicists say they can trick a pair of cobalt atoms into thinking they are in a hexagonal close packing structure by bonding them to a hexagonal carbon ring such as graphene or benzene. That's handy because the magnetic field associated with cobalt dimers is calculated to be far more stable than the field in a cobalt grain. And graphene and benzene rings are only 0.5 nm across, a size that could allow an increase in memory density of three orders of magnitude."
Submission + - The New Evil of Zune DRM 1
Rjak writes: "Further to last week's post about Zune DRM (which we are now blissfully free of), this morning I fired up my wife's old Zune software and discovered yet another interesting restriction. Zune's licensing servers are down, so if we were still Zune customers we wouldn't be allowed to listen to the music we bought. Note that this isn't Zune Pass stuff — we never subscribed to Zune pass — this is stuff we bought outright, and we would be disallowed to listen to it because a machine somewhere in the world is down for maintenance.
I don't care what the license agreement says and I don't care that we glossed over it and didn't hire a lawyer to advise us on our Sunday morning music ... this is pure comedy
Screen Capture"
I don't care what the license agreement says and I don't care that we glossed over it and didn't hire a lawyer to advise us on our Sunday morning music
Screen Capture"
Submission + - Spirit Rover Begins Making Night Sky Observations (universetoday.com)
Nancy Atkinson writes: "Even though the Spirit rover is stuck in loose soil on Mars, she has an overabundance of electrical power due to a wind event that cleaned off her solar panels. While MER scientists and engineers are having the rover take pictures of her surroundings in an effort to figure a way to get her dislodged, there also is enough power (since the rover isn't moving anywhere) to do something extra: keep the rover "awake" at night and run her heaters so she can take images of the night sky on Mars. "Certainly, a month or more ago, no one was considering astronomy with the rovers," said Mark Lemmon, planetary scientist at Texas A&M University and member of the rover team. "We thought that was done. With the dust cleanings, though, everyone thinks it is better to use the new found energy on night time science than to just burn it with heaters.""
Submission + - SPAM: Google Phone Finally In India
gujaratstartups writes: "Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC is all set to launch G2, or the second generation premier Google phone that runs on Google's Android operating system, in India soon. It is likely to be priced between Rs 26,000 to 28,000."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Submission + - SPAM: Tutorials and material for graphic/web design
GraphDesigner writes: Graphicmania.net is an incredibly complete blog full of materials and tutorials regarding the most popular web animation and graphic design tools such as the adobe suite or Flash, it is a must for anyone interested in the matter.
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Submission + - Large Data Theft from Irish Energy Company (www.rte.ie)
c0mpliant writes: Over 75'000 customers are being told to check their bank accounts after it is revealed that a stolen Bord Gáis laptop contained unencrypted customer details. Bord Gáis, the Irish energy company, revealed that a laptop which was stolen from their offices in Dublin two weeks ago contained the data, including bank account details as well as names and addresses, of all new customers in the last 4 months, the last 4 months also happen to include a massive advertising campaign offering a new electricity service which would guarantee lower prices than the largest electricity company in Ireland (but not apparently guarantee the safety of your data!).
The company held off from making the announcement public until now, while Gardaí (Irish police) pursued lines of enquiry. This is the latest in a series of lost or stolen laptops containing large amounts of customer details in Ireland, but the first major incident in which the data was unencrypted.
The Data Protection Commissioner said his office informed Bord Gáis in the last two days that formal enforcement action would be taken if it did not immediately tell its customers about the theft.
The company held off from making the announcement public until now, while Gardaí (Irish police) pursued lines of enquiry. This is the latest in a series of lost or stolen laptops containing large amounts of customer details in Ireland, but the first major incident in which the data was unencrypted.
The Data Protection Commissioner said his office informed Bord Gáis in the last two days that formal enforcement action would be taken if it did not immediately tell its customers about the theft.
Submission + - 30 year old payroll system, $40 million fix (chicagotribune.com)
jaroslav writes: The University of Wisconsin is attempting to update a payroll system they have had in place since 1975, but spent $28.4 million in a 2004 attempt with no results, and now is experiencing new overruns in cost and time after "not hav[ing] the full picture of how complex this project would be". The current estimate of the redesign is $12 million and years of further work on top of the money already spent.
Submission + - Venture Capitalists want in on the SBIR program (nytimes.com)
Presto Vivace writes: "New York Times reports that:
The National Venture Capital Association is seeking to persuade Congress to allow venture capital-financed companies to compete for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants. Under the SBIR program, federal agencies set aside 2.5 percent of their R&D budgets to small, independently funded, businesses. Currently, companies backed by VCs cannot get SBIR grants.
I am not enthusiastic about this proposal."
Submission + - New Car Company emerges from the Ashes (bigblockblog.com)
Keith MacDonald writes: "An all-new American car company, backed by Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens and headed-up by former Mazda designer Tom Matano plans to build environmentally friendly vehicles in Louisiana.
According to their press release, V-Vehicle Company, or VVC, which is headquartered in San Diego, will begin assembling new cars in Monroe, LA. The project is slated to create over 1,400 direct jobs at an average annual salary of nearly $40,000, plus benefits, as well as a capital investment of at least $248 million."
