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Television

Submission + - From the "No-Wonder-I-Can't-Pay-Attention"

Submitted by oDDmON oUT
oDDmON oUT writes: While your mother may have told you that sitting too close to the tellie was bad for your eyes, the folks over at New Scientist have published a story relating that it's bad for your attention span:

"Watching television more than two hours a day early in life can lead to attention problems later in adolescence, according to a large long-term study."

What distinguishes this research is its longitudinal nature:

"The team studied the long-term habits and behaviours of more than 1000 children born in Dunedin, between April 1972 and March 1973. The children aged 5 to 11 watched an average of 2.05 hours of weekday television. From age 13 to 15, time spent in front of the television rose to an average of 3.1 hours a day."

It would be nice if....uh.....what was I doing?
The Internet

Submission + - Facebook Leaves Advertisers Exposed to Hate Speech (newscloud.com) 1

Submitted by
NewsCloud
NewsCloud writes: "Does Facebook believe that no publicity is bad publicity? Why else would they leave a group called, "Fuck Islam" open since July 21, 2007 despite more than 53,482 members joining an opposing group called petiton: if "f**k Islam" is not shut down..we r quitting facebook group. Furthermore, advertisers such as Sprint, Verizon, T Mobile, Target, Qwest and French's wouldn't be too happy to learn that they are paying for ads on the "Fuck Islam" group pages.

I'm not advocating a policy against free speech, just strict enforcement of Facebook's own Terms of Use. The group name is clearly vulgar and obscene. Arguably, inflammatory and hateful. Facebook has positioned itself as the darling of the social network world, without the spam, porn and the sex offender problems of MySpace. Yet, this sort of thing isn't new to Facebook (see Facing Up to Facebook Racism and Elder hate groups on facebook. There's even an active group called I hate Iraqis targeting Iraqi refugees fleeing to Jordan.
Shouldn't a startup like Facebook, worth reportedly more than a billion dollars with over a hundred employees be expected to comply with its Terms of Use in less than six weeks?"
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Sexuality And The Sims (rockpapershotgun.com)

Submitted by
Jim Rossignol
Jim Rossignol writes: "This article discusses how The Sims (mostly the original, but also the sequel) gets used for sexual purposes, and also examines how this kind of response is essential to the appeal of the game. Here's a extract:

"On sites like Simulated, Eight Deadly Sims, Pandora's Sims and Strange Sims we see increasingly bizarre uses of the modding tools. While mainstream sites are for all ages, these have reached such a level of risqué or alternative content that the majority hide behind pay-for-access barriers to ensure that the users at least have a credit card (i.e. aren't minors), and to earn a little cash. Of all the mod cultures online — and virtually every PC game has users making their own additional content either in publisher-supported or unofficial ways — it's only The Sims which has such an obvious number of sites which demand money for access. This is particularly unusual: there's a clause in EA's tool license that they can only be used "on your personal non-commercial website". That Electronic Arts hasn't gone after such a sizeable community is interesting in and of itself.""
Businesses

Submission + - Financial services firms simulate flu pandemic (computerworld.com)

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: The U.S. Government is co-sponsoring a three-week exercise that will simulate the impact of a flu pandemic on financial services firms, including their ability to support telecommuters. The exercise is expected to be the largest in U.S. history and will involve more than 1,800 firms. It won't cause long lines at ATMs or offline banking sites that might occur in a real pandemic.
Software

Submission + - Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian Translator Created (marketwire.com)

Submitted by DrJackson
DrJackson writes: A new ancient languages online translator has been developed. It can translate Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian and the hieroglyphic script of Egyptian (1 of the 3 anyway). This is the website: virtualsecrets.com . This is the first time I ever saw a translator for cuneiform. Something like this would be great for translating interesting historical records like the Amarna Letters.
Communications

Submission + - FBI's Unknown Eavesdropping Network (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Building off the design mandates of CALEA, the FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act, Wired News reports. The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.
Linux Business

Submission + - The impact of pirated software on free software (tlug.jp)

Submitted by
jmglov
jmglov writes: "Dave Gutteridge has an interesting take on why people are not interested in saving money by using a free-as-in-beer OS like Linux or *BSD: because Windows is free. At least, that is an all-too-common perception, thanks to bundling and piracy. Bundling is a well-known problem to the adoption of Open Source operating systems, so Dave takes a look at the piracy issue in depth. His title may offend you, but his well-written article will most likely get you thinking hard about the question, "how much *does* Windows cost?"."
Displays

Submission + - 3D Animations in Mid-Air Using Plasma Balls (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Japanese boffins are now making animations by creating small plasma balls in mid-air. The technology doesn't use vapor or strange gases, just lasers to heat up oxygen and nitrogen molecules: up to 1,000 brilliant dots per second, which makes smooth motion possible. They could be used as street signs, advertising or to create giant plasma monsters to destroy entire cities. Maybe.
Security

Submission + - Server with Top-Secret Data Stolen (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Forensic Telecommunications Services has confirmed the theft of a computer server containing thousands of top-secret mobile phone records and evidence from undercover terrorism and organised crime investigations. The company — whose clients include Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service — has assured the public that the server is security protected, and the breach will not compromise ongoing police operations. The information is made up of either old cases that have passed through the judicial process, or cases that are already in the judicial system and so subject to full disclosure to both defence and prosecution teams.
Censorship

Submission + - Austalia to force ISP filtering

Submitted by Phurge
Phurge writes: http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/veto-for-parents-on -web/2007/08/09/1186530535350.html "Internet service providers will be forced to filter web content at the request of parents, under a $189 million Federal Government crackdown on online bad language, pornography and child sex predators" "Today Mr Howard will hail the ISP filtering measure as a world first by any Government, and is expected to offer funding to help cover the cost. Parents will be able to request the ISP filter option when they sign up with an ISP. It will be compulsory to provide it."
Handhelds

Submission + - China copies iPhone; makes it even better (popsci.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: China duplicates a lot of well know products; now they are duplicating the iPhone. Yet apparently they are making it better. From the article "The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers." The cloned iPhone uses a Linux-based system. "The cloners hire a team of between 20 and 40 engineers to begin decoding the circuit boards. At the same time, coders start to develop an operating system for the phone with a similar feature set. (The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system.) "
The Internet

Submission + - Finaly we get new elements in HTML 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Pure HTML enhancements grew hardly at all in the last eight years. It basicaly stopped in 1999 with HTML 4. Now the future looks bright. Recently, HTML has finaly came back to life. Eight years is a long time to wait for new features, especially in the fast-moving world of the Web. Take a look at how HTML 5 is restoring some of the excitement of the early days of the web with its new enhancements.
Security

The Java Popup you Can't Stop 480

Posted by CmdrTaco from the once-you-pop dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In his brand new hackademix.net blog, Giorgio Maone, known as the author of the NoScript security extension for Firefox, reveals how popup blockers can be easily circumvented using Java. Worse, popups opened this way are really evil, because they can be sized to cover the whole desktop (the wet dream of any phisher) and cannot be closed by user (the wet dream of any web advertiser). Impressive demos available, all cross-browser and cross-platform, in the best Java tradition: 'Write once, hack anywhere' "

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