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Education

Evolution Battle Brews In Texas 916

Posted by Soulskill from the extraordinary-claims-require-extraordinary-evidence dept.
oxide7 writes "In Texas, a battle is brewing over the teaching of evolutionary theory as the Board of Education considers a new set of instructional materials to be used in science classrooms. [Two sections of the new material] deal with the origin of life. Those sections say the 'null hypothesis' is that there had to be some intelligent agency behind the appearance of living things. It is up to the scientists proposing a naturalistic explanation to prove their case."
Security

Submission + - Attacked By Anonymous, HBGary Pulls Out of RSA (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: HBGary Federal cancelled a talk the company's CEO Aaron Barr was planning to give at the BSides San Francisco conference on his investigation of WikiLeaks. 'I was receiving death threats,' Barr said in an interview Tuesday. 'There was lots of talk that was being made of in the Anonymous IRC channels of harassing us at our booth and sending people to heckle [HBGary speakers at the conference].' The company has also decided to pull its booth from the RSA Conference floor after it was vandalized on Sunday, said Jim Butterworth, HBGary's vice president of services. 'We... came back the next morning and it was very apparent that the group responsible for the activities in the news had decided to make another statement,' he said.
Android

Android Tablets Were Born Too Soon 480

Posted by samzenpus from the before-there-time dept.
adeelarshad82 writes "When you look at the Apple iPad's sales figures, it's not hard to see why every technology company on the planet is jumping on the tablet bandwagon, a lot of which are Android tablets. Unfortunately though, some of these Android tablets were born way too early. They are haunted with a series of problems including flimsy hardware, low-quality resistive touch screens, serious display resolution issues, and old Android versions with limited or non-existent access to apps. Even the Samsung Galaxy Tab came well before its time. Even though it's fast, well-designed, and comes with a decent Android implementation, its functionality is limited to that of an Android smartphone. So here's to hoping that Honeycomb's functionality make up for the lost ground."

Comment Re:China the new global superpower, and US decline (Score 1) 613

by daseinw (#34775866) Attached to: First Pictures of Chinese Stealth Fighter

The U.S. is in decline because a lot of people think the problem is overspending on the military. It's not.

No less a person than Donald Rumsfield (Secretary of Defense under both Gerald Ford and George W. Bush) would seem to disagree with you:

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion -- that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

Here's the source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml
Google

Google Loses Street View Suit, Forced To Pay $1 225

Posted by timothy from the token-victory dept.
Translation Error writes "Two and a half years ago, the Borings sued Google for invading their privacy by driving onto their private driveway and taking pictures of their house to display on Google Street View. Now, the case has finally come to a close with the judge ruling in favor of the Borings and awarding them the princely sum of $1. While the judge found the Borings to be in the right, she awarded them only nominal damages, as the fact that they had already made images of their home available on a real estate site and didn't bother to seal the lawsuit to minimize publicity indicated the Borings neither valued their privacy nor had it been affected in any great way by Google's actions."
Censorship

Google To Block Piracy-Related Terms From Autocomplete 275

Posted by timothy from the micromanaging-expectations dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google is making changes in the way it presents web search results to try to exclude links that may be tied to pirated content. In a move enthusiastically praised by the RIAA, Google says it will not include terms closely associated with piracy from appearing via autocomplete. The company acknowledged that it can be hard to know what terms are being used to find infringing content, but 'we'll do our best to prevent Autocomplete from displaying the terms most frequently used for that purpose.'"
Google

Google Faces EU Probe Over Doped Search Results 193

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that-doesn't-sound-nice dept.
Barence writes "The EU has launched an investigation into whether Google is deliberately doctoring its search results to favour its own services. The search giant stands accused of artificially lowering the search ranking of competing price-comparison sites in organic and paid-for search results, in favour of Google Shopping. 'There is a growing chasm between the enduring public perception of Google's search results as comprehensive and impartial, and the reality that they are increasingly neither,' said Shivaun Raff, CEO of British price comparison site Foundem, which lodged the complaint with the EU. Google has denied any foul play. 'Those sites have complained and even sued us over the years, but in all cases there were compelling reasons why their sites were ranked poorly by our algorithms,' it claims."
Medicine

Submission + - Researchers Find 70-Year-Olds Are Getting Smarter 1

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "AlphaGalileo reports that researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden have found in a forty year study of 2,000 seniors that today's 70-year-olds do far better in intelligence tests than their predecessors making it more difficult to detect dementia in its early stages. "Using the test results, we've tried to identify people who are at risk of developing dementia," says Dr. Simona Sacuiu. "While this worked well for the group of 70-year-olds born in 1901-02, the same tests didn't offer any clues about who will develop dementia in the later generation of 70-year-olds born in 1930." The study started in 1971 with an examination of 70-year-olds who were then regularly followed over a period of 30 years. The 70-year-olds born in 1930 and examined in 2000 performed better in the intelligence tests than their predecessors born in 1901-02 and examined in 1971. "The improvement can partly be explained by better pre- and neonatal care, better nutrition, higher quality of education, better treatment of high blood pressure and other vascular diseases, and not least the higher intellectual requirements of today's society, where access to advanced technology, television and the Internet has become part of everyday life," says Sacuiu."
Bug

Submission + - Stuxnet Infects 30000 Industrial Computers in Iran (computerworld.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: The BBC and AFP are releasing more juicy details about the now infamous Stuxnet worm that Iranian officials have confirmed infected 30,000 industrial computers inside Iran following those exact fears. The targeted systems that the worm is designed to infect are Siemens SCADA systems. Talking heads are speculating that the worm is too complex for an individual or group causing blame to be placed on Israel or even the United States — although the US official claims they do not know the origin of the virus. Iran claims it did not infect or place any risk to the new nuclear reactor in Bushehr which experts are suspecting was the ultimate target of the worm.

Submission + - PS3 Jailbreaks Galore Released 1

Submitted by YokimaSun
YokimaSun writes: Following up on yesterdays story about the PS3 being hacked by one of its own Official Controllers, theres now a guide in English that details how to Mod a Sixaxxis Controller, but thanks to the very latest releases, if you dont like soldering you can now use an Ipod, a Pandora Console or even a Dingoo Console. Finally Jaicrab has released a USB Firmware Loader which will come in handy once the first Custom Firmware for the PS3 is released. Maybe then we will get region free Blueray, PS1 and PS2 Games.
Cellphones

Submission + - Facebook is building an Android-based smartphone (bloomberg.com) 1

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Reports are surfacing of a Facebook-backed smartphone running Google's Android system, built by INQ (who also manufactures a phone for Skype). GigaOm's Om Malik says he's been aware of the project "for quite some time," and Bloomberg News reported that Facebook Inc. will release two AT&T smartphones in 2011, first in Europe and then in America. (Adding that 25% of Facebook users access the social networking site with their wireless devices.) "Like some people would love to have a Hello Kitty phone or a Batman phone, there are undoubtedly buyers waiting with bated breath for a phone that says Facebook on it..." notes one technology blog. "The buying public seems to be entranced with the idea of the phrase 'Facebook phone' so rumors persist."

Submission + - Crimanal action against speed trap tweeter (iol.co.za)

Submitted by martinlp
martinlp writes: Pigspotter is making big news in South Africa. The traffic authorities in Johanessburg, South Africa are looking at taking legal action against Pigspotter, an individual who is tweeting up to the minute information about speed traps in and around the city. He has recently stopped, stating that his Blackberry is going in for repairs but it may be out of fear of getting prosecuted. The police claim he must be getting inside information and suspect that disgruntled traffic officers may be involved. There is also speculation that it is more than one individual that is tweeting.
Security

Submission + - Hole in Linux kernel provides root rights (h-online.com)

Submitted by oztiks
oztiks writes: A vulnerability in the 32-bit compatibility mode of the current Linux kernel (and previous versions) for 64-bit systems can be exploited to escalate privileges. For instance, attackers can break into a system and exploit a hole in the web server to get complete root (also known as superuser) rights or permissions for a victim's system.

According to a report, the problem occurs because the 32-bit call emulation layer does not check whether the call is truly in the Syscall table. Ben Hawkes, who discovered the problem, says the vulnerability can be exploited to execute arbitrary code with kernel rights. An exploit (direct download of source code) is already in circulation; in a test conducted by The H's associates at heise Security on 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04, it opened a shell with root rights.

The kernel developers have remedied the flaw in the repository, and Linux distributors will probably soon publish new kernels to close the hole. Until then, switching off 32-bit ELF support solves the problem if you can do without this function. For instructions, see: "Workaround for Ac1db1tch3z exploit".

Hawkes says the vulnerability was discovered and remedied back in 2007, but at some point in 2008 kernel developers apparently removed the patch, reintroducing the vulnerability. The older exploit apparently only needed slight modifications to work with the new hole.

 
IT

Submission + - T-Mobile Censoring Text Messages Says Lawsuit (wired.com)

Submitted by Tootech
Tootech writes: mobile-marketing company claimed Friday it would go out of business unless a federal judge orders T-Mobile to stop blocking its text-messaging service, the first case testing whether wireless providers can block text messages they don’t like.

EZ Texting claims T-Mobile blocked the company from sending text messages for all of its clients after learning that legalmarijuanadispensary.com, an EZ Texting client, was using its service to send texts about legal medical marijuana dispensaries in California. “T-Mobile subjectively did not approve of one of the thousands of lawful businesses and non-profits served by EZ Texting,” according to New York federal lawsuit.

The suit against T-Mobile, which controls about 15 percent of the U.S. mobile market, comes as the company just announced it was raising its texting prices, which some claim is an abuse of its market share. And the case comes amid a fierce debate surrounding net neutrality, with net giant Google claiming that wireless carriers should not be bound by the same rules as wireline carriers.

Even the New York-based texting service acknowledges that the case raises novel issues. “At the very least, EZ Texting has raised serious questions about the legal ability of a wireless service provider, T-Mobile, to block its customers from exchanging text messages with EZ Texting’s customers,” according to the suit.

A similar text-messaging flap occurred in 2007, but ended without litigation, when Verizon reversed itself and allowed an abortion-rights group to send text messages to its supporters.

T-Mobile, of Bellevue, Washington, said in a statement: “We believe the claims in the lawsuit are meritless.”
Politics

Submission + - Facing oblivion, island nation makes big sacrifice (mongabay.com) 1

Submitted by Damien1972
Damien1972 writes: Kiribati, a small nation consisting of 33 Pacific island atolls, is forecast to be among the first countries swamped by rising sea levels. Nevertheless, the country recently made an astounding commitment: it closed over 150,000 square miles of its territory to fishing, an activity that accounts for nearly half the government's tax revenue. What moved the tiny country to take this monumental action? President Anote Tong, says Kiribati is sending a message to the world: "We need to make sacrifices to provide a future for our children and grandchildren."

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