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Social Networks

Facebook User Arrested For a Poke 394

nk497 writes "A woman in Tennessee has been arrested for poking someone over Facebook. Sharon Jackson had been banned by courts from 'telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating' with the apparent poke recipient, but just couldn't hold back from clicking the 'poke' button. She now faces a sentence of up to a year in prison."
Input Devices

Eee Keyboard Details Released 166

Details on the new Eee keyboard, previously held secret during the FCC filing, have now been made available. You can now take a look at the innards and a full spec sheet detailing exactly what is being promised. "Beneath the 5-inch, 800 x 480 pixel touch panel (with stylus) we'll be getting Windows XP Home running on an Intel Atom N270, 945GSE / ICH7-M chipset with Broadcom AV-VD905 video decoder, 1GB of DDR2 memory, either 16GB or 32GB of flash storage, 4-hour battery, Bluetooth, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and VGA outputs, integrated stereo speakers and mic, 3x USB, headphone and mic jacks, and external WiFi / UWB antenna. The Eee Keyboard's on-board Ultra-Wideband (UWB) throws 720p content to your TV within a 5-meter range (10-meters for non-video transmissions) via a UWB receiver packing 2x USB ports, another mini-USB port, audio out, and HDMI."

Comment Re:Is it just me (Score 0) 130

It's £9.99 in the UK, which would buy you about 1 new album per month (which you get to keep). For the same price, from Spotify, you get all you can eat music, on your computer and/or smartphone. If you listen to more than 1 new album per month it's worth it.
Mars

Phoenix Lander Discovers Nighttime Snowfall On Mars 48

Many outlets are reporting on the recently released results of the various experiments and observations of NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander. Most notable is the discovery of nighttime snowfall on the planet, lending credibility to the idea of a hypothesized active water cycle based on earlier data collection. "The papers rely on evidence from a variety of the instruments on the lander, and the description of the data provides an impressive catalog of the various ways that Phoenix could prod and query the Martian pole. In the months before Martian winter shut the lander down, it managed to dig a dozen trenches, taking soil samples from each. These samples went into wet and dry chemistry labs, had their conductivity tested, and were even examined using an atomic force microscope. Meanwhile, cameras and a LIDAR system (a laser-based range detector) scanned the surroundings. The overall conclusion is that the northern pole has an active water cycle. This had been suggested by a variety of evidence from orbital sensors, as well early images returned from Phoenix. It's also not a huge shock, given the seasonal growth and retreat of the polar ice cap. Still, Phoenix provided some significant details on the cycling of water in the area where it landed."
Internet Explorer

Submission + - AntiVirus Products fail to find Simple IE malware (beskerming.com) 4

SkiifGeek writes: "Didier Stevens recently took a closer look at some Internet Explorer malware that he had uncovered and found that most antivirus products that it was tested against (courtesy of VirusTotals) failed to identify the malware through one of the most basic and straight forward obfuscation techniques — the null-byte. With enough null-bytes between each character of code, it is possible to fool all antivirus products (though additional software will trap it), yet Internet Explorer was quite happy to render the code.

Whose responsibility is it to fix this behaviour? Both the antivirus / antimalware companies and Microsoft's IE team have something to answer for."

Software

Submission + - Adobe may launch Office rival 1

Ulysees writes: Adobe may launch its own office-application suite, taking it into direct competition with Microsoft.

In an interview, Mike Downey, group manager for platform evangelism at Adobe, said that, although he could not reveal any plans at the moment, the possibility should not be dismissed.

"Though we have not yet announced any intentions to move into the office productivity-software market, considering that we have built this platform that makes it easy to build rich applications that run on both the desktop and the browser, I certainly wouldn't rule anything like that out," Downey told Wired.com.
GUI

Submission + - Automatix Activly Dangerous to Ubuntu

exeme writes: Ubuntu developer Matthew Garrett has recently analysed famed Ubuntu illegal software installer Automatix and found it to be actively dangerous to Ubuntu desktop systems. In a detailed report which only took Garrett a couple of hours he found many serious, show-stopper bugs and concluded that Ubuntu could not officially support Automatix in its current state. Garrett also goes on to say that simple Debian packages could provide all of the functionality of Automatix without any of the problems it exhibits.
Space

Submission + - "Puddles" of Water Sighted on Mars (newscientist.com)

eldavojohn writes: "Further reinforcing the theory of a wet Mars, NewScientist is reporting on what appear to be water puddles in newly taken images from the Mars rover. While these results are controversial, the assumption for these blue 'puddles' to be water rely on engineers measuring the uniform smoothness of the surface of them & also in their analysis of apparent opaqueness whereby in some areas they claim to see pebbles underneath the surface of the blue areas. Truly water resisting the temptation to evaporate off the face of Mars or merely an anomaly of stereophotography gone wrong? We'll have to wait and see as the "Face on Mars" has taught us not to trust your eyes when viewing the red planet."
The Courts

TorrentSpy Ordered By Judge to Become MPAA Spy 372

PC Guy writes "TorrentSpy, one of the world's largest BitTorrent sites, has been ordered by a federal judge to monitor its users. They are asked to keep detailed logs of their activities which must then be handed over to the MPAA. Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney responded to the news by stating: 'It is likely that TorrentSpy would turn off access to the U.S. before tracking its users. If this order were allowed to stand, it would mean that Web sites can be required by discovery judges to track what their users do even if their privacy policy says otherwise.'"

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