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Submission + - Kansas to nix expansion of Google Fiber and municipal broadband (consumerist.com) 1

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: Consumerist is reporting on a bill to restrict municipal support of broadband expansion. Purportedly to ensure a "level playing field" to encourage commercial expansion in this area, these bills are usually referred to as oligopoly protection acts. Everywhere they have been implemented expansion of new broadband technology stops. In this specific case no municipal entity in Kansas will be able to enter the same sort of agreements that enabled Google Fiber. From the bill:

Except with regard to unserved areas, a municipality may not, directly or indirectly: (1) Offer to provide to one or more subscribers, video, telecommunications or broadband service; or (2) purchase, lease, construct, maintain or operate any facility for the purpose of enabling a private business or entity to offer, provide, carry, or deliver video, telecommunications or broadband service to one or more subscribers.

More details at Muninetworks.org and GigaOM

Submission + - Half of U.S. nuclear missile wing implicated in cheating (reuters.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Just over half of the 183 nuclear missile launch officers at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana have been implicated in a widening exam cheating scandal, the Air Force said on Thursday, acknowledging it had "systemic" problem within its ranks.

The cheating was discovered during an investigation into illegal drug possession among airmen, when test answers were found in a text message on one missile launch officer's cell phone. The Air Force initially said 34 officers either knew about the cheating or cheated themselves.

But Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told a Pentagon news conference on Thursday that the total number of implicated officers had grown to 92, all of them at Malmstrom, one of three nuclear missile wings overseeing America's 450 inter-continental missiles, or ICBMs.

Submission + - Surfing Robot Tracks Great White Sharks (phys.org)

Submitted by ackthpt
ackthpt writes: A network of fixed buoys and solar powered surfing robots called Wave Gliders are set to track Great White Sharks in the Pacific, off the California coast near San Francisco, between Monterey Bay and Tomales Point.

The self-propelled wave and solar-powered glider is part of a new network of data receivers on fixed buoys will pick up signals from acoustic tags on animals passing within 1,000 feet and transmit the data to a research team on shore, led by Stanford University Marine Sciences Prof. Barbara Block.

Related to the project is "Shark Net," a new iOS app available free of charge at the Apple app store, was created by Dr. Block and her colleagues with developers from TOPP, EarthNC and Gaia GPS to enable a direct, personal connection between the public and wild marine animals and to raise public awareness of the ocean wilderness teeming with life just off North America's West Coast.
Facebook

Submission + - Despite Audit, Facebook Holds Back Personal Data (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Facebook has reduced the amount of personal data it releases to users as required by European Union law. Due to the volume of requests since Europe v. Facebook began its campaign, Facebook is no longer sending CDs to people. Facebook said in a statement that the CD mailout 'contains a level of detail that is less useful for the average user — it is a much rawer collection of data.' Instead, users are now directed to a page where they can download their personal 'archive,' which according to Facebook is a copy of 'all of the personal information you've shared on Facebook.' But rather than the 57 categories of data early data requesters received, the new tool downloads just 22 categories."
Microsoft

Submission + - Skype Goes After Reverse-Engineering (phoronix.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It appears that Microsoft's Skype Division is cracking down on reverse-engineering of the Skype client. Skype recently rolled out a new set of APIs for integration into other desktop applications, but they have issued multiple DMCA takedown notices to a researcher publishing open-source code to send Skype messages.
Space

Submission + - Galileo To Be Europe's Answer To US GPS (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "Two Galileo satellites that will signify the start of the European Union’s answer to the American Global Positioning System (GPS) will be launched into orbit on Thursday aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. It's using Soyuz as it is cheaper than the French Ariane — and the satellite system is supposed to free Europe from dependence on a US-controlled positioning system."
Security

New Startup Hopes to Slay the Botnet

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the saint-nemean-and-the-botnet dept.
eldavojohn writes "How do you identify Botnet traffic on your network? Well, the problem with current commercial technologies is that they generate too many false positives. But a new startup name Nemean Networks hopes to solve all that by building signatures of traffic at many different levels of the network stack. 'Finding the proper sensitivity threshold for NIDS sensors has always been a problem for network and security administrators. Lower the threshold and some attacks get through the signature screening; raise it too high and false positives flourish. Nemean attempts to find the proper balance by gathering traffic sent to a honeynet to build signatures based on weighted data. The numerical weights are entirely subjective and based on the creators' expertise. The data is then clustered and fed through an algorithm to determine threat levels and develop signatures.'"

Feed news.com: Stirring GE's Ecomagination (news.com)

From feed by cnetfeed
Lorraine Bolsinger, who heads a major energy-efficiency initiative at General Electric, says companies can make green while being green.
Photos: Inside GE's clean-tech labs

Feed Science Daily: Customized Virus Kills Brain Tumor Stem Cells That Drive Lethal Cancer (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
A tailored virus destroys brain tumor stem cells that resist other therapies and cause lethal re-growth of cancer after surgery, a mouse study shows. The virus was tested against the most aggressive brain tumor which originates in the glial cells that surround and support neurons. This type of tumor is highly resistant to radiation and chemotherapy and so invasive that surgery almost never eliminates it. Patients suffering from this malignant glioma live on average for about 14 months with treatment. The new treatment forces tumor cells to devour themselves until they die.

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