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Submission + - Lawmakers call on Amazon and Google to reconsider ban on domain fronting (cyberscoop.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Amazon and Google face sharp questions from a bipartisan pair of U.S. senators over the tech giants’ decisions to ban domain fronting, a technique used to circumvent censorship and surveillance around the world. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., sent a letter on Tuesday to Google CEO Larry Page and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos over decisions by both companies in April to ban domain fronting. Amazon then warned the developers of encrypted messaging app Signal that the organization would be banned from Amazon’s cloud services if the service didn’t stop using Amazon’s cloud as cover. “We respectfully urge you to reconsider your decision to prohibit domain fronting given the harm it will do to global internet freedom and the risk it will impose upon human rights activists, journalists, and others who rely on the internet freedom tools,” the senators wrote.

Submission + - Microsoft backflips, announces Xbox One backward compatibility (playerattack.com)

Submitted by dotarray
dotarray writes: Mike Ybarra is head of Platform Engineering at Xbox, and today he told the gaming world all about one of Microsoft's best-kept secrets — after more than a year of saying it couldn't be done, the Xbox One really is backwards compatible, so you can play all your Xbox 360 games on your next-gen console.

Submission + - LG Accidently Leaks Apple iMac 8K Is Coming Later This Year (primeinspiration.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: LG accidently revealed in blog post that Apple is planning to release 8K iMac later this year. This news comes as a surprise as the leak came from a different company rather than Apple. LG is one of Apple's biggest display partner and has already demonstrated 8K monitors at CES in Las Vegas, and notes that the panel boasts 16 times the number of pixels as a standard Full HD screen.
Businesses

Pay What You Want — a Sustainable Business Model? 133

Posted by Soulskill from the blasphemy-and-heresy-and-ooo-cheap-shinies dept.
revealingheart writes "As 2010 comes to a close, it could be remembered as the year pay-what-you-want pricing reached the mainstream. Along with the two Humble Indie Bundles, YAWMA offer a game and music bundle, and Rock, Paper and Shotgun reports on the curiously named Bundle of Wrong, made to help fund a developer who contracted pneumonia. More examples include when Reddit briefly let their users donate an amount of their choosing for upgraded accounts when they were having financial difficulties; the Indie Music Cancer Drive launched Songs for the Cure for cancer research; and Mavaru launched an online store where users can buy albums for any amount. Can pay-what-you-want become a sustainable mainstream business model? Or is it destined to be a continued experiment for smaller groups?"
Cellphones

Nokia Trades Symbian For MeeGo In N-Series Smartphones 184

Posted by timothy from the unfortunate-name dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia announced that moving forward, MeeGo would be the default operating system in the N series of smartphones (original Reuters report). Symbian will still be used in low-end devices from Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. The move to MeeGo is a demonstration of support for the open source mobile OS, but considering the handset user experience hasn't been rolled out and likely won't be rolled out in time for its vague June deadline outlined at MeeGo.com, could the decision be premature?"
Crime

Geologists Might Be Charged For Not Predicting Quake 375

Posted by timothy from the google-will-no-doubt-be-found-at-fault dept.
mmmscience writes "In 2009, a series of small earthquakes shook the region of L'Aquila, Italy. Seismologists investigated the tremors, but concluded that there was no direct indication of a big quake on the horizon. Less than a month later, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake killed more than 300 people. Now, the chief prosecutor of L'Aquila is looking to charge the scientists with gross negligent manslaughter for not predicting the quake."
Cellphones

Openmoko Phone Not Dead After All 101

Posted by timothy from the tut-mir-leid dept.
In response to the report I posted a few days ago that the Openmoko FreeRunner phone had been discontinued, Pat Meier-Johnson writes on behalf of Openmoko to say that this isn't so. "Some bloggers have been misinterpreting a presentation by Openmoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz last week in Switzerland to think that the company is getting out of the phone business. That's not true. In fact, the Openmoko FreeRunner (their current model) is alive and well. (Also in Switzerland, Sean announced another project — not a phone — that they are calling 'Project B.' No details yet.) The next version of the phone, codenamed GTA03, has been suspended and there were some associated layoffs, but the GTA03 was in constant flux as a design. So the company is being prudent and focusing on the FreeRunner which has lots of open source community and most recently, embedded developer support." Glad to hear this, because the FreeRunner is an interesting phone.
Government

Submission + - Virginia Says Slashdot Users May Be Terrorists 6

Submitted by megamerican
megamerican writes: A leaked document from a Virginia Fusion Center titled 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment lists Slashdot users and other websites alongside Al-Qaeda, HAMAS, "Lone-Wolf Extremists" and many others as potential terrorists. Slashdot and other websites have been labeled under the ominous sounding title of Anonymous:


A "loose coalition of Internet denizens", Anonymous consists largely of users from multiple internet sites such as 4chan, 711chan, 420chan, Something Awful, Fark, Encyclopedia Dramatica, Slashdot, IRC channels, and YouTube. Other social networking sites are also utilized to mobilize physical protests. Anonymous has no leader and is reliant on the collective power of individuals acting in such a way that benefits the movement.

According to the Report, cell phones, digital music players are signs that you may be a terrorist. It lists podcasting as a cause for concern citing a recent ban by Australia. Citizens for a legitimate government, where the document was leaked to has a write-up here.

Mandriva

Submission + - Mandriva: An open letter to Steve Ballmer

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An entry on the Mandriva Blog, written by Mandriva CEO François Bancilhon, is suggesting that the Nigerian government, after ordering thousands of Classmate PCs with Mandriva Linux installed, has suddenly decided that they will instead install Windows replacing the pre-loaded Mandriva Linux installation on the low-cost computing devices intended for children in the developing world. The blog suggests that this was not a decision that the Nigerian government made on its own. Is this just speculation, or is there something much bigger going on here?
Software

Submission + - Nokia Buys Navteq for $8.1 Billion (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Nokia, the world's biggest cellphone maker, said today that it had agreed to pay $8.1 billion for Navteq, the maker of digital mapping and navigational software based in Chicago, as it seeks to migrate satellite-based location services onto its range of phones.

Nokia's president and chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, said that location-based services were a cornerstone of Nokia's Internet services strategy, which is part of an overall plan to expand beyond the production of cellphones into user services like photos, video, music and games.

Navteq data is used by Google Maps, Google Earth , numerous other online services, and many GPS products."
Privacy

Site Claims to Reveal 'Tattle-tales' 565

Posted by Zonk from the true-capitalism-in-action dept.
Dekortage writes "Have you ever ratted somebody out? If it was a legal case, you might end up on Who's A Rat, an online database of police informants and undercover agents, identified through various publicly-available documents such as court briefings. The data-mined information is now available online at a price. As reported in the New York Times, 'The site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files available on the Internet.' Understandably, U.S. judges and law enforcement agents are upset, although defense lawyers seem to like the idea. Where do you draw the line between legal transparency and secrecy?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Documents Reveal U.S. Incompetence with Word, Iraq

Submitted by
notNeilCasey
notNeilCasey writes: "The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, which formerly governed Iraq, accidentally published Microsoft Word documents containing information never meant for the public, according to an article in Salon. By viewing the documents using the Track Changes feature in Word, the author has been able to reconstruct internal discussions from 2004 which reflect the optimism, isolation and incompetence of the American occupation. Download the author's source document or look for more yourself."

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