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Comment The Netherlands has something similar (Score 4, Informative) 291

by MikeyVB (#48562751) Attached to: Comcast Sued For Turning Home Wi-Fi Routers Into Public Hotspots
Here in the Netherlands our largest cable providers (Ziggo and UPC) also turned every home cable modem into a public hotspot about a year or two ago. All customers are given an account to use the hotspot network anywhere in the country. It can be pretty handy if you are with a laptop in a city and need internet access. Your laptop will get get a connection and away you go. They are on separate IP space, and don't affect your usable bandwidth or throughput as they are lower priority traffic than your own subscription traffic. While this functionality is opt out rather than opt in, you can just login to the console of your cable modem and disable it as desired. When you opt out like that however you also lose the access to use hotspot network entirely. The cost of using the network is to participate. The only thing that I see wrong with it is that it is an opt out system rather than an opt in. But I can also see that something like this wouldn't reach the "critical mass" to make it all work otherwise.

Submission + - World Solar Challenge to start in less than two weeks (worldsolarchallenge.org)

Submitted by SustainableJeroen
SustainableJeroen writes: On October 6th, the 2013 World Solar Challenge will start. This year, 43 teams (more than ever before) from 24 countries around the world will compete in this biannual 3000 km road event, which runs from Darwin to Adelaide. In both 2009 and 2011, Tokai University (Japan), Nuon Solar Team (the Netherlands) and University of Michigan Solar Car Team (USA) finished in first, second and third position, respectively. Who will win this year? We'll know for sure on October 13th, the end of the event. Team details (photos, car specifications, links to websites) can be found here.

Submission + - World Solar Challenge about to start (solarwebsite.nl)

Submitted by SustainableJeroen
SustainableJeroen writes: On Sunday morning 08:30 (local time) — that's less than seven hours away — the World Solar Challenge will start. The first solar racing car and its support fleet will depart Darwin to traverse the 3000+ km to Adelaide through the Australian outback. It will be followed at two-minute intervals by 36 other racing teams, from twenty countries from all over the world..

The qualification round, held on Saturday, saw Solar Team Twente secure the first starting position in the race, closely followed by Nuon Solar Team and Michigan University. The top ten times in the qualification round were within eleven seconds of each other, and while driving one lap around a race track is very different from driving 3000 km on a public motorway, it does show that the top cars are quite close in performance.

With the top cars and teams being very, very close to each other it's sure to be a very exciting race. The fastest teams are expected to reach the official finish line just outside Adelaide late Wednesday or early Thursday (local time) after which the teams will continue on for the traditional dive in the fountain on Victoria square in Adelaide.

Comment Re:time to buy (Score 4, Informative) 235

by MikeyVB (#33330616) Attached to: Germany To Roll Out ID Cards With Embedded RFID

For the curious, it takes approximately 4 layers of aluminum foil to block a scanner from activating the RFID signal when your Al lined wallet is point blank from a standard scanner.

(After receiving an RFID enabled ID card here in the Netherlands last year, I tested it on our office copy/scanner RFID reader, and then simply lined my wallet with double the number of layers it took to block the signal. Works like a charm!)

Comment Call me paranoid (Score 3, Interesting) 184

by MikeyVB (#33089258) Attached to: Google Adds Licensing Server DRM To Android Market

With recent news about certain Android apps sending private information to whomever created it, I have recently installed DroidWall to filter access (e.g. - Battery meter apps!? Puh-leez!) to my phone's data connection.

If some app expects me to allow a data connection just to prove I am not a thief, sorry, I won't be buying it! And yes, I do purchase apps that I consider worthy.

And what happens if someone is abroad? Would they have to pay $20 in roaming charges to play some bubble bobble game for an hour while waiting in some airport?

Comment Re:So much for the seeds of .... (Score 1) 338

by MikeyVB (#24662405) Attached to: Teens Arrested For Motorized Office Chair

Where do you suggest they go to get "proper training" for a motorized office chair? ;-)

Since they were using it on the streets, they could start by getting a driving license like everyone else that operates a motorized method of transport in public.

Now I am not sure about this, but I think in Germany you can't get a drivers license until you are 18 (and they were 17). Ironically, it probably would be safer for these guys to be driving a car on the streets than that contraption they built.

I am all for inventing things like that and having fun with it - but on private property where they can only hurt themselves and their own property not other people if something happens to go wrong.
Privacy

Submission + - The iPhone Meets the Fourth Amendment (ssrn.com) 3

Submitted by background image
background image writes: According to Alan M Gershowitz, the doctrine of "search incident to arrest" may allow devices such as mobile phones, pdas and laptops to be thoroughly searched without either probable cause or warrants, and incriminating evidence found in such searches may be used against you whether or not it is germane to the reason for the original arrest.

Imagine that police arrest an individual for a simple traffic infraction, such as running a stop sign. Under the search incident to arrest doctrine, officers are entitled to search the body of the person they are arresting to ensure that he does not have any weapons or will not destroy any evidence. The search incident to an arrest is automatic and allows officers to open containers on the person, even if there is no probable cause to believe there is anything illegal inside of those containers. What happens, however, when the arrestee is carrying an iPhone in his pocket? May the police search the iPhone's call history, cell phone contacts, emails, pictures, movies, calendar entries and, perhaps most significantly, the browsing history from recent internet use? Under longstanding Supreme Court precedent decided well before handheld technology was even contemplated, the answer appears to be yes.
Privacy

Submission + - E.U. Regulator Says IP Addresses Are Personal Data (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
NewsCloud
NewsCloud writes: ""Scharr told a European Parliament hearing on online data protection that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address, 'then it has to be regarded as personal data.' Scharr acknowledged that IP addresses for a computer may not always be personal or linked to an individual. If the E.U. rules that IP addresses are personal, then it could regulate the way search engines record this data. According to the article, Google does an incomplete job of anonymizing this data while Microsoft does not record IP addresses for anonymous search."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - FTC Defends Ethernet From Patent Troll (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "The FTC put a stop to Negotiated Data Solutions (AKA N-Data), a patent troll that bought a patent on an important part of the Ethernet networking standard and tried to jack up the royalties for licensing it. In a consent decree [PDF], N-Data agreed to continue licensing the patent at the formerly promised rates. The IEEE voted back in 2002 to make patent letters irrevocable, which could have prevented this, but neglected to make that clause retroactive."
Microsoft

Submission + - Saving in OOXML format considered harmful

Submitted by
orlando
orlando writes: "Bob Sutor recommends that while all the drama is unfolding before the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva at the end of February and the subsequent 30 day period while countries can still change their vote, saving your documents in OOXML format right now is probably about the riskiest thing you can do if you are concerned with long term interoperability. The reason? Nobody has the vaguest idea what OOXML will look like in February or even whether it will be in any sort of stable condition by the end of March."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Hacking MMO Teaches Programming and Web-Design

Journal by bcoe
A few friends and I have been working for several months now on Hack Wars, an interesting (and exceptionally nerdy) MMO. Found Here: http://www.hackwars.net/stats.php I am not a stranger to developing educational games, having helped conceive of the game 'Speare. Developing the game Hack Wars, however, was a much less bittersweet experience. Granted, Hack Wars is not as explicitly an educational game as 'Speare. This having been said, Hack Wars i

Feed Engadget: Passive Technologies intros Blu-ray / HD-DVD combo media center (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Desktops, Home Entertainment

It's far from the first, but those looking to go format neutral while still keeping things neat and tidy in a media center now have another option to consider from the folks at Passive Technologies, which has just introduced its new LifestationHD unit. While exact specs are still somewhat light, in addition to that Blu-ray / HD-DVD combo drive, you'll apparently get "silent operation" courtesy of unit's DynaChill 3 cooling system, along with an AMD processor of some sort, SSD storage (or up to 9TB with the optional Lifeserver), and "audiophile grade" audio, with a Bluetooth remote and keyboard also available as an option. No word on a price, but given that these things come custom-installed, it likely won't be cheap.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Feed Engadget: The "Is our machines learning?" machine 2.0 test-taking bot (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Robots

We never liked taking tests in a general sense, but there was always something fun about filling in the answers with that trusty No. 2 of ours. The "Is our machines learning?" bot, shown off at the 2007 NYU ITP Winter Show, takes over that delicious task but still leaves humans with the chore of answering the questions remotely over the internets. The bot's name is a not-so-subtle jab at President Bush's grammar skills, but if we told you more we might all be in danger of some educatin', and the world doesn't need any more of that!

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Feed Engadget: Nanosolar begins shipping "world's lowest-cost solar panel" (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We've heard plenty of promises about low(er) cost solar panels, but it looks like the heavily-funded upstart Nanosolar is actually getting around to churning out what it says is the "world's lowest-cost solar panel." As The New York Times reports, that feat was achieved by taking a different approach to lowering the cost than most -- namely, by reducing the manufacturing cost instead of trying to increase the efficiency. As a result, by using a new process that effectively "prints" photovoltaic material onto an aluminum backing, the company says they can profitably sell the solar panels for "less than $1 a watt" or, as The Times points out, the price at which solar energy becomes less expensive than coal. What's more, while Nanosolar itself is hanging onto one of the first panels for exhibit, and one is being donated to the Tech Museum in San Jose, Nanosolar is auctioning off one of the first three panels to be produced on eBay, where the bidding currently stands around $1,000. Anyone looking to actually put it to use may want to think twice, however, as the panel is being sold "as-is."

[Via The New York Times]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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