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Television

Submission + - Antenna Arrays Could Replace Satellite TV Dishes (gizmag.com)

Zothecula writes: There was a time not so very long ago when people who wanted satellite TV or radio required dishes several feet across. Those have since been replaced by today’s compact dishes, but now it looks like even those might be on the road to obsolescence. A recent PhD graduate from The Netherlands’ University of Twente has designed a microchip that allows for a grid array of almost-flat antennae to receive satellite signals.
Businesses

Submission + - Google Adds Licensing Server DRM to Android Market (afterdawn.com)

eldavojohn writes: According to AfterDawn, Google has given app makers the option to use a license server as DRM to ensure the user has paid for an app before they can download it. The report is that the market app will communicate with a Google license server using RSA encryption. It is important to note this is only available for non-free apps (built with SDK 1.5 and later) and it is instituted to provide a better solution to the old and widely criticized copy protection scheme that was criticized as susceptible to Android app piracy (like sideloading). For better or for worse, Android's Marketplace appears to now have an optional phone-home form of DRM.

Submission + - Windows 7 has lots of ‘GodModes’ (aviransplace.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: Those intrigued by the “GodMode” in Windows 7 may be interested to know that there are many other similar shortcuts hidden within the operating system. teven Sinofsky, Windows division president, said several similar undocumented features provide direct access to all kinds of settings, from choosing a location to managing power settings to identifying biometric sensors.
Google

Submission + - Google’s Book Scanning Technology Revealed (scitedaily.com)

blee37 writes: Google's patent for a rapid book scanning system was reported last March. This article describes and provides pictures of how the system works in practice. Google is secretive, but the system's inner workings were apparently divulged by University of Tokyo researchers who wrote a research article on essentially identical technology. There is also information about how Google wants to use music to help humans flip pages and videos of robotic page flippers.

Submission + - AT&T Moves Closer To Usage-Based Fees For Data (computerworld.com)

CWmike writes: AT&T has moved closer to charging special usage fees to heavy data users, including those with iPhones and other smartphones. Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, came close on Wednesday to warning about some kind of use-based pricing while speaking at a UBS conference. "The first thing we need to do is educate customers about what represents a megabyte of data and...we're improving systems to give them real-time information about their data usage," he said. "Longer term, there's got to be some sort of pricing scheme that addresses the [heavy] users." AT&T has found that only 3% of its smartphone users — primarily iPhone owners — are responsible for 40% of total data usage, largely for video and audio, de la Vega said. Educating that group about how much they are using could change that, as AT&T has found by informing wired Internet customers of such patterns. De la Vega's comments on data use were previewed in a keynote he gave in October at the CTIA, but he went beyond those comments on Wednesday: "We are going to make sure incentives are in place to reduce or modify [data]uses so they don't crowd out others in the same cell sites." Focus groups have been formed at AT&T to figure out how to proceed.
Science

Central U.S. Earthquake Info 120

ronbo142 writes "The United States Geological Survey site has real time (or close to it) information on the now two significant events of the day. Check out their site to enter your experience and view other event specific information."
Music

Tenth Anniversary of First Commercial MP3 Player 166

Pickens writes "The first commercially released personal music player capable of handling MP3 files was launched in March 1998 — the MPMan F10, manufactured by Korea's Saehan Information Systems with 32MB of Flash storage, enough for a handful of songs encoded at 128Kb/s. In the US, local supplier Eiger Labs wanted $250 for the F10, though the price fell to $200 the following year prompted by the release of the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300. The Rio was released in September 1998, but by 8 October had become the subject of a lawsuit from the RIAA which claimed the player violated the 1992 US Home Recordings Act. It was later ruled that the Rio had not infringed the Act because it was not responsible for the actions of its customers. Thanks to its lesser known name, the F10 avoided such legal entanglements, but at the cost of all the free publicity its rival gained from the lawsuit."
Privacy

Submission + - Using RFID and wi-fi to track students

An anonymous reader writes: The BBC reports on a proposal to use RFID and wi-fi to track students wherever they go on campus: "Battery-powered RFID tags are placed on an asset and they communicate with at least three wireless access points inside the network to triangulate a location." At The Wireless Event in London, "Marcus Birkl, head of wireless at Siemens, said location tracking of assets or people was one of the biggest incentives for companies, hospitals and education institutions to roll out wi-fi networks." The article points out that integration of RFID and wi-fi raises the possibility that RFID can be used for remote surveillance.
Space

Submission + - Astronomers Again Baffled by Solar Observations

SteakNShake writes: Once again professional astronomers are struggling to understand observations of the sun. ScienceDaily reports that a team from Saint Andrew's University announced that the sun's magnetic fields dominate the behavior of the corona via a mechanism dubbed the "solar skeleton". Computer models continue to be built to mimic the observed behavior of the sun in terms of magnetic fields but apparently the ball is still being dropped; no mention in the announcement is made of the electric fields that must be the cause of the observed magnetic fields. Also conspicuously absent from the press releases is the conclusion that the sun's corona is so-dominated by electric and magnetic fields because it is a plasma. In light of past and present research revealing the electrical nature of the universe, this kind of crippling ignorance among professional astrophysicists is astonishing.
User Journal

Journal Journal: End racism on Slashdot 15

I would urge people to join me in calling for an end to openly racist comments on /. directed against developing nations, principally India, or at least for them to be modded 'Troll.'

Feed Sex Lube Maker Finds Personal Info Quite Slippery (techdirt.com)

As personal data leaks go, this one's more potentially embarrassing than harmful, but the maker of the sexual lubricant Astroglide leaked the name and addresses of more than 250,000 people who asked for free samples over a four-year timespan. They've even got the gall to blame the issue on Google, since it was searches there that turned up the breach, and the search engine's cached copies haven't yet disappeared. Of course, this ignores the fact that the information was kept in a place where it was freely accessible, whether by Google's spiders, or by an individual. This leak really isn't particularly surprising given the regularity with which all kinds of personal info is leaked, lost or stolen these days. It just further illustrates that any information you provide to somebody can no longer be regarded as private. So little care is taken with personal information by so many companies these days, and these continual leaks bring only minor consequences. If companies can't even bother to keep something as innocuous as a name and address private, it's hard to have much faith they won't let other, more important information slide right on out too.

Feed Rogue Roomba breaks all iRobot's three laws of Roombotics (engadget.com)

Filed under: Robots

It's the stuff robotic room-cleaner nightmares are made of. According to The Onion, Ken Graney's third-gen Roomba (with Scheduler) is among the first known to have actually shattered iRobot's three prescribed laws of Roombotics:
  • Roombots must not suck up jewelry or other valuables, or through inaction, allow valuables to be sucked up.
  • Roombots must obey vacuuming orders given to it by humans except when such orders would conflict with the first law.
  • Roombots are authorized to protect their own ability to suction dust and debris as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
The most important set of robotics rules since Isaac Hayesimov's Three Laws, apparently model 4260 actually climbed dresser and sucked up a pair of heirloom cufflinks, as well as keys and a wrist watch. 4260 has also supposedly been known to climb up and down stairs -- even walls -- hide its own virtual walls, and has since being detected gone missing entirely. Graney fears for the worst: that his Roomba knows the source of its households messes, the very human that occupies it -- him. We face a grim, immaculate dystopian future indeed.

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OS X

Submission + - Apple Delays Leopard to October

SuperMog2002 writes: Apple Insider has the sad news that Mac OS X Leopard has been delayed until October. Apparantly software engineers and QA had to be reasigned to the iPhone in order to get it out on time, costing Leopard its release at WWDC. For now, the original press release from Apple can be found here, though Apple did not provide a permanant link to the story.
Privacy

Submission + - Blizzard Seeks to Block User Rights, Privacy

An anonymous reader writes: In the overlooked case between Blizzard and MDY Industries, the creator of the WoWGlider bot, Blizzard is arguing that using any programs in conjunction with the World of Warcraft constitutes copyright violation. Apparently accessing the copy of the game client in RAM using another program infringes upon their rights. Under that logic, users do not even have the right to use anti-virus software in the event that the game becomes infected. Furthermore, Blizzard's legal filings downplay the role of their Warden software, which actively scans users' RAM, CPU, and storage devices (and potentially sensitive data) and sends information back to Blizzard to be processed. Both sides have a good case, and it will be interesting to see how this one resolves.

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