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Censorship

US Tests System To Evade Foreign Web Censorship 219

Posted by timothy from the worthy-objective dept.
D1gital_Prob3 excerpts from a Reuters story that says "The US government is covertly testing technology in China and Iran that lets residents break through screens set up by their governments to limit access to news on the Internet. The 'feed over email' (FOE) system delivers news, podcasts and data via technology that evades web-screening protocols of restrictive regimes, said Ken Berman, head of IT at the US government's Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is testing the system. The news feeds are sent through email accounts including those operated by Google, Microsoft's Hotmail, and Yahoo. 'We have people testing it in China and Iran,' said Berman, whose agency runs Voice of America. He provided few details on the new system, which is in the early stages of testing. He said some secrecy was important to avoid detection by the two governments."
Programming

Brendan Eich Explains ECMAScript 3.1 To Developers 94

Posted by timothy from the focus-on-the-blink-tag dept.
VonGuard writes "On April 9, ECMA International produced the final draft for the first major update to JavaScript since 1999. It's called ECMAScript 3.1, but will soon be known as ECMAScript, Fifth Edition. You'll know it as JavaScript, the Next Generation. Mozilla will begin implementing these features after Firefox 3.5, and Microsoft is already showing prototypes behind closed doors. The question, however, is what this will change for JavaScript coders. To get those answers, I tracked down Brendan Eich, Mozilla's CTO and the creator of JavaScript. I transcribed the interview without any editorial since he explains, perfectly, what's changing for programmers. Long story short: Json will be safer, getters and setters will be standard, and strict mode will make things easier to debug."
The Almighty Buck

Game Industry Optimistic About Surviving Economic Crisis 52

Posted by Soulskill from the food-is-boring-buy-a-console dept.
CNet is running a story about how the gaming industry is looking at the recent economic troubles. Despite their status as luxury items, games and game systems have seen strong sales numbers in recent months, and that trend is expected to continue into the holiday season. Most companies are optimistic, despite the fact that many of their stock values have been hit hard and that analysts' views are divided on whether game-related purchases will be one of the first things cut from consumers' budgets. "'I do think that the video game industry is going to do reasonably well in this time of recession because video games are a pretty damned efficient use of time,' said Bridges. 'That said, the...industry has some other problems that it has been ignoring for awhile and that are creeping up on it.' Essentially, Bridges explained, he thinks that the dominance of giant publishers like EA and their general reliance on physical, in-the-box, units, can't hold up. Instead, he said, new tools, ubiquitous broadband and hungry independent developers are going to all combine to eat away at the continued supremacy of the $60 big-name title. And that could spell big trouble for the industry."
Image

The Science of the Lightsaber 197

Posted by samzenpus from the the-force dept.
Smartcowboy writes "Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina. Therefore you know that a lightsaber is an amazing and versatile device that is able to cut through nearly anything in a matter of milliseconds. Have you ever wondered how these remarkable weapons work? Where does the energy come from, and how are they able to contain that energy in a rod-like column of glowing power? In this article, you will have a chance to look inside a lightsaber and discover the source of its incredible characteristics." I was sure the blade was made from the focused hate and disappointment of the last three movies.
Communications

Submission + - Record High Frequency Achieved

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Researchers at UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science managed to push our control of frequencies to another level when they hit a submillimeter 324 gigahertz frequency. As any signal geek out there might tell you, this is a non-trivial task. From the article, "With traditional 90-nanometer CMOS circuit approaches, it is virtually impossible to generate usable submillimeter signals with a frequency higher than about 190 GHz. That's because conventional oscillator circuits are nonlinear systems in which increases in frequency are accompanied by a corresponding loss in gain or efficiency and an increase in noise, making them unsuitable for practical applications." The article also talks about the surprising applications this new technology may evolve into including seeing through clothing. While one might dream up more perverse situations to use this in, it is unsurprising that this is instead targeting military/security applications for seeing hidden explosive devices and/or weapons."
Games

Was Videogaming Better Back in the Day? 381

Posted by Zonk from the these-new-fangled-gears-and-half-lives dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Sean Sands at Gamers With Jobs looks back at the dawn of videogaming, when we were all kids just typing in our games, one line of BASIC at a time. And he finds the present lacking: 'The dreamers became assets instead of leaders, and the rockstar designers became, well, Rockstar ... or Blizzard, or Valve. Publishers with cash-rich money to spend bought the creative process, and the minds of marketing professionals replaced four guys hopped up on sugar doughnuts and generic cola. So, how dare I be surprised that the price of today's gaming blitz is a little piece of last generation's soul?' Do you agree? Was simple gaming better, or are you a story in games fan?"
Media

Submission + - Enforced ad-watching coming to Flash video players

Submitted by Dominare
Dominare writes: The BBC is reporting that Adobe is releasing new player software which will allow websites that use their Flash video player (such as YouTube) e.g. to force viewers to watch ads before the video they selected will play. From TFA:

But the big seller for Adobe is the ability to include in Flash movies so-called digital rights management (DRM) — allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts, or restrict copying. "Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it," James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research said.

This seems to have been timed to coincide with Microsoft's release of their own competitor, Silverlight, to Adobe's dominance of online video.

Feed California gang members to sport GPS trackers (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: GPS

Things just seem to be going downhill ever since the courts ruled that dodgy GPS tracking wasn't unlawful, and here again we're seeing Big Brother tactics being used to keep a sharp eye on ex-criminals. While no variety of console is being handed out to folks who rat out San Bernardino County gang members, officials are hoping to get several Senate Bills and an Assembly Bill passed which would divvy out "harsher punishments and monitoring standards for gang members." Essentially, ex-gang members would be required to sport GPS tracking devices so The Man can "track adult gang members currently on probation," which certainly would give them a reason to ponder whether jumping at the next temptation is really worth it. Currently, the pilot program is up and running in Apple Valley and Victorville, and so far "35 adult probationers have been fitted with GPS devices," but if you mischievous ones are counting on a lack of funding to dry this initiative up real quick like, you should probably know that Sentinel is providing the devices for the current program "at no cost."

[Via TheRawFeed]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

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

Amazon Goes Web 2.0 Wild to Defend 1-Click Patent 77

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-really-it's-cool-when-we-do-it dept.
theodp writes "Six years ago, Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly urged the masses to give-patent-reform-a-chance as Richard Stallman called for an Amazon boycott. On Monday, the pair will reunite to kick off O'Reilly's new Amazon-sponsored Web 2.0 Expo with A Conversation with Jeff Bezos. Be interesting if the conversation turned to Amazon's ongoing battle against an actor's effort to topple Bezos' 1-Click patent, which The Register notes included dumping 58 lbs. of paperwork on the patent examiner, including dozens of articles from the oh-so-Web-2.0 Wikipedia, which the USPTO had already deemed an un acceptable source of information ('From a legal point of view, a Wiki citation is toilet paper,' quipped patent expert Greg Aharonian)."
Encryption

Submission + - full disk encryption, xen, windows, linux - ?

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "I'm in an industry that, more or less, requires full disk encryption. We use pointsec on windows currently. For the past 8 years, I've been running linux on my work laptop, and this is the first time I'm running in a windows only environment. I am interested in changing that, because I want to use linux as my main platform, and only drop in to windows if at all necessary (and use crossover if at all possible). I'm also interested in xen. Has anyone used pointsec for linux, with xen? My thought is that as long as pointsec is in dom0, and I use virtual disks for the windows vm, I should be covered, but I'd also like a machine that is usable, as opposed to waiting for months, as the virtual memory, virtual machine, pointsec, xen all thrash around while starting an app, or something."

Feed Stuart Cohen launches Collaborative Software Initiative (slashdot.org)

From feed by lcfeed
Stuart Cohen stepped down from his role as CEO of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) in in December, saying that he was going to "explore open source joint development using best practices in collaboration and building communities." Today,...

Feed Atree's UJUKE UJ10 personal media player (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Atree has a pretty new PMP by the name of the UJUKE UJ10. 9.9-mm thin with a 2.2-inch display for all your MP3/WMA/OGG audio and MPEG-4/WMV9 video needs. Good thing is also packs an FM radio and DMB mobile digital television since it's limited to either 2GB or 4GB capacities. No word on when or how much though it's pretty clear this one won't be straying too far from its Asian roots.

[Via Akihabara News]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

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

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke

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