Comment Why pay for 3g? (Score 1) 395
With the availability of WIFI why pay for 3g
Comcast Launches Broadband Meter 199
nlawalker writes "Beginning on Tuesday, January 12, Comcast high-speed internet users in Washington state will have access to an online tool that displays their bandwidth usage for the most recent three calendar (not billing) months of usage, including the current month. Washington is the second market to receive access to the tool, following its introduction in Portland. 'For the fraction of less than 1 percent of our customers who are concerned about exceeding our excessive use threshold, we believe this meter will help them monitor and calibrate their usage,' said spokesman Steve Kipp. Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should take it as a challenge."
Massive Power Outages In Brazil Caused By Hackers 462
Hugh Pickens writes "CBS reports on 60 minutes that a massive two-day power outage in Brazil's Espirito Santo State affecting more than three million people in 2007, and another, smaller event in three cities north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005, were perpetrated by hackers manipulating control systems. Former Chief of US National Intelligence Retired Adm. Mike McConnell says that the 'United States is not prepared for such an attack' and believes it could happen in America. 'If I were an attacker and wanted to do strategic damage to the United States, I would either take the cold of winter or the heat of summer,' says McConnell, 'I would probably sack electric power on the US East Coast, maybe the West Coast and attempt to cause a cascading effect.' Congressman Jim Langevin says that US power companies need to be forced to deal with the issue after they told Congress they would take steps to defend their operations but did not follow up. 'They admit that they misled Congress. The private sector has different priorities than we do in providing security. Their bottom line is about profits,' says Langevin. 'We need to change their motivation so that when see vulnerability like this, we can require them to fix it.' McConnell adds that a similar attack to the one in Brazil is poised to take place on US soil and that it may take some horrific event to get the country focused on shoring up cyber security. 'If the power grid was taken off line in the middle of winter and it caused people to suffer and die, that would galvanize the nation. I hope we don't get there.'"
Tech Allows Stable Integration of Wind In the Power Grid 235
diegocgteleline.es writes "One of the most frequently raised arguments against renewable power sources is that they can only supply a low percentage of the total power because their unpredictability can destabilize the grid. Spain seems to have disproved this assertion. In the last three days, the wind power generation records with respect to the total demand were beaten twice (in special conditions: a very windy weekend, at night): 45% on November 5 and almost 54% last night (Google translation; Spanish original). There was no instability. These milestones were accomplished with the help of a control center that processes meteorologic data from the whole country and predicts, with high certainty, the wind and solar power that will be generated, allowing a stable integration of all the renewable power. You can see a graphic of the record here."
Tired of Flash? HTML5 Viewer For YouTube 372
An anonymous reader writes "Instead of spending the next 10 years trying to find a Flash implementation for Linux or OS X that doesn't drain CPU cycles like there's no tomorrow, NeoSmart Technologies has made an HTML5 viewer for YouTube videos. It loads YouTube videos in an HTML5 video container and streams (with skip/skim/pause/resume) against an MP4 resource, and an (optional) userscript file can update YouTube pages with the HTML5 viewer. The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are supported. Personally, I can't wait until the major video sites default to HTML5 and we can finally say goodbye to Flash."
Web Open Font Format Gets Backing From Mozilla 206
A new format specification has reached consensus among web and type designers and is being backed by Mozilla. Dubbed Web Open Font Format (WOFF), it is an effort to bring advanced typography to the Web in a much better way. Support for the new spec will be included as a part of Firefox 3.6 which just recently hit beta. "WOFF combines the work Leming and Blokland had done on embedding a variety of useful font metadata with the font resource compression that Kew had developed. The end result is a format that includes optimized compression that reduces the download time needed to load font resources while incorporating information about the font's origin and licensing. The format doesn't include any encryption or DRM, so it should be universally accepted by browser vendors — this should also qualify it for adoption by the W3C."
Pirate Bay Closure Sparked P2P Explosion 560
Barence writes to share that the closure of The Pirate Bay seems to have done nothing to stem the flow of potentially copyrighted materials. In fact, there has been an estimated 300% increase in the number of sites providing access to copyright files, according to McAfee. "In August, Swedish courts ordered that all traffic be blocked from Pirate Bay, but any hope of scotching the piracy of music, software and films over the web vanished as copycat sites sprung up and the content took on a life of its own. 'This was a true "cloud computing" effort,' the company said in its Threats Report for the third quarter. 'The masses stepped up to make this database of torrents available to others.'"
IT Snake Oil — Six Tech Cure-Alls That Went Bunk 483
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan surveys six 'transformational' tech-panacea sales pitches that have left egg on at least some IT department faces. Billed with legendary promises, each of the six technologies — five old, one new — has earned the dubious distinction of being the hype king of its respective era, falling far short of legendary promises. Consultant greed, analyst oversight, dirty vendor tricks — 'the one thing you can count on in the land of IT is a slick vendor presentation and a whole lot of hype. Eras shift, technologies change, but the sales pitch always sounds eerily familiar. In virtually every decade there's at least one transformational technology that promises to revolutionize the enterprise, slash operational costs, reduce capital expenditures, align your IT initiatives with your core business practices, boost employee productivity, and leave your breath clean and minty fresh.' Today, cloud computing, virtualization, and tablet PCs are vying for the hype crown." What other horrible hype stories do some of our seasoned vets have?
An Inbox Is Not a Glove Compartment 316
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes
"A federal judge rules that government can obtain access to a person's inbox contents without any notification to the subscriber. The pros and cons of this are complicated, but the decision hinges on the assertion that ISP customers have lowered privacy interests in e-mail because they 'expose to the ISP's employees in the ordinary course of business the contents of their e-mails.' Fortunately for everybody, this is not true — most ISPs do not allow their employees to read customer e-mails 'in the ordinary course of business' — but then what are the consequences for the rest of the argument?"
Read on for the rest of Bennett's analysis.
Comment Once again Monkey boy put food in mouth (Score 1) 1142
Once again MS show how much it cares about this country and customers. All Ballmer and MS want is your money. The facts are that companies move work off shore for cheaper labor not taxes. Now that loss tax revenue need to be made up and its only fair that companies like MS who create the situation pay up.
Apple Plans $1 Billion iDataCenter 260
1sockchuck writes "Apple is planning a major East Coast data center to boost the capacity of its online operations, and may invest more than $1 billion in building and operating the huge server farm. That's nearly twice what Google and Microsoft typically invest in their massive cloud computing centers. The scope of the project raises interesting questions about Apple's plans, and has politicians in North Carolina jumping through hoops to pass incentives to win the project. The proposed NC incentives build on a package for Google that later proved controversial."
Creating a New Yorker Cover On the iPhone 226
Jaime Leifer writes "The cover of the June 1, 2009, issue of The New Yorker, entitled 'Finger Painting,' was drawn by Jorge Colombo entirely on his iPhone — a first for the magazine. Colombo, a New York-based artist and illustrator, uses the iPhone's Brushes application to vibrantly depict New York street scenes." There's a video recapitulating the creation of the piece, omitting all of the undos.
Tiered Data Plans Coming To the iPhone? 142
jfruhlinger writes "For years analysts have been insisting that Apple must introduce a cheaper iPhone, and soon. So, when Business Week heard that cheaper plans were coming, it reported the news in a positively giddy tone. But, I'm convinced that this is an under-the-radar move to shift to tiered data plans. Everyone who loves their all-you-can-eat iPhone data: enjoy it while it lasts."
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