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Media

Roku Finally Gets a 2D Menu System 80

Posted by samzenpus from the new-look dept.
DeviceGuru writes "Many of us have griped for years about Roku's retro one-dimensional user interface. Finally, in conjunction with the release of the new Roku 3 model, the Linux-based media streaming player is getting a two-dimensional facelift, making it quicker and easier to access favorite channels and find new ones. Current Roku users, who will now begin suffering from UI-envy, will be glad to learn that Roku plans to push out a firmware update next month to many earlier models, including the Roku LT, Roku HD (model 2500R), Roku 2 HD, Roku 2 XD, Roku 2 XS, and Roku Streaming Stick. A short demo of the new 2D Roku menu system is available in this YouTube video."
Mozilla

Submission + - Mozilla Labs Bring The Webian Shell (digitizor.com)

Submitted by kai_hiwatari
kai_hiwatari writes: Mozilla Labs has introduced its concept of a desktop replacement called Webian Shell. The Webian Shell basically consist of a browser which will replace the traditional desktop, and where the web applications are given more importance than the native applications. Right now, the prototype of the Webian Shell is nothing more than a full screen browser with a dock which holds the tabs and the clock.
Censorship

Submission + - Flickr Censors Anti-Obama Image (thomashawk.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An interesting article yesterday about the unmasking of the recent creator of the controversial and iconic Obama/Joker image that has been popping up around Los Angeles with the word Socialism under it. The Los Times has identified the images' creator as Firas Alkhateeb. Even more interesting though is the fact that after getting over 20,000 hits on the image at Flickr, Flickr removed the image from Alkateeb's photostream citing "copyright" concerns. The image in question is clearly both an independent derivative work and unquestionably a parody of the President and Time Magazine which would be covered under fair use. It has appeared on many other sites without issue on the internet. After Flickr also recently nuked an entire user's photostream over negative comments on President Obama's official photostream, it makes you wonder if there isn't a bit of Pro Obama censorship going on on the part of Flickr staff over at the Yahoo photosharing site.
Government

Submission + - Should Copyright Of Academic Works Be Abolished? (harvard.edu)

Submitted by
Dr_Ken
Dr_Ken writes: "From the Tech Dirt summary of this Harvard Cyber-Law Center study: "I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim. It leads to wacky situations where academics either ignore the fact that the journals they published in hold the copyright on their work, or they're forced to jump through hoops to retain certain rights. That's bad for everyone." Indeed it is and especially so given the huge amounts of tax dollars spent doing research that then gets published in proprietary journals where it can't be accessed without payment."
Robotics

Submission + - Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man 4

Submitted by Strudelkugel
Strudelkugel writes: The NY Times has an article about a conference during which the potential dangers of machine intelligence were discussed. " Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society's workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone. Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences. " The money quote: "Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years," Dr. Horvitz said. "Technologists are replacing religion, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture."
Microsoft

Submission + - CTR of incoming Bing users 55% higher than Google (techcrunch.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Techcrunch is running a story that shows some pretty significant differences in the clicking habits of users of Yahoo, Google, and Bing. As it turns out, folks who arrive at websites via Bing are 55% more likely to click on an ad than if they arrived from Google (data based on the Chitika network). Essentially, people who use Bing are far more susceptible to advertising.

Bing has acquired a decent market share in such a short time, but could it just be that they've reaped the low hanging fruit of those particularly persuaded by advertising? When their huge marketing campaign winds down, what kind of staying power will it have?
Biotech

Submission + - bacterial computer solves Hamiltonian path problem

Submitted by Rob
Rob writes: A team of US scientists have engineered bacteria that can solve complex mathematical problems faster than anything made from silicon. The research, published today in the Journal of Biological Engineering, proves that bacteria can be used to solve a puzzle known as the Hamiltonian Path Problem, a special case of the travelling salesman problem. The researchers say that this proof-of-concept experiment demonstrates that bacterial computing is a new way to address NP-complete problems using the inherent advantages of genetic systems. The story is also covered by The Guardian.
Cellphones

How Apple's App Review Is Sabotaging the iPhone 509

Posted by kdawson from the race-to-the-bottom dept.
snydeq writes to recommend Peter Wayner's inside look at the frustration iPhone developers face from Apple when attempting to distribute their apps through the iPhone App Store. Wayner's long piece is an extended analogy comparing Apple to the worst of Soviet-era bureaucracy. "Determined simply to dump an HTML version of his book into UIWebView and offer two versions through the App Store, Wayner endures four months of inexplicable silences, mixed messages, and almost whimsical rejections from Apple — the kind of frustration and uncertainty Wayner believes is fast transforming Apple's regulated marketplace into a hotbed of bottom-feeding mediocrity. 'Developers are afraid to risk serious development time on the platform as long as anonymous gatekeepers are able to delay projects by weeks and months with some seemingly random flick of a finger,' Wayner writes of his experience. 'It's one thing to delay a homebrew project like mine, but it's another thing to shut down a team of developers burning real cash. Apple should be worried when real programmers shrug off the rejections by saying, "It's just a hobby."'"
Censorship

Five Technologies Iran Is Using To Censor the Net 122

Posted by kdawson from the many-mice-and-one-big-cat dept.
alphadogg sends in a Network World piece on the unexpectedly effective technologies Iran is now employing to thwart their citizens' access to the Net. "While the government's initial efforts to censor the Internet were blunt and often ineffective, it has started employing more sophisticated tools to thwart dissidents' attempts to communicate with each other and the outside world. Iranian dissidents are not alone in their struggle, however, as several sympathetic hacker groups have been working to keep them online. One such group is NedaNet, whose mission is to 'help the Iranian people by setting up networks of proxy severs, anonymizers, and any other appropriate technologies that can enable them to communicate and organize.' NedaNet project coordinator Morgan Sennhauser, who has just written a paper detailing the Iranian government's latest efforts to thwart hackers (PDF), says that the government's actions have been surprisingly robust and have challenged hackers in ways that the Chinese government's efforts at censorship have not."
Security

Submission + - Linux Kernel Exploit Affects RedHat 5 (zdnet.com)

Submitted by B1oodAnge1
B1oodAnge1 writes: ZDNet reports that proof of concept code was released last week that exploits a vulnerability in both the 64 and 32 bit versions of the 2.6.30 and 2.6.18 Linux kernel to gain root access. Apparently this affects Red Hat Enterprise Edition 5, which uses the 2.6.18 kernel.

From the source code:

A vulnerability which, when viewed at the source level, is unexploitable! But which, thanks to gcc optimizations, becomes exploitable :) Also, bypass of mmap_min_addr via SELinux vulnerability! (where having SELinux enabled actually increases your risk against a large class of kernel vulnerabilities)
Portables

Alienware Refusing Customers As Thieves 665

Posted by kdawson from the please-just-take-my-money dept.
ChrisPaget writes "Thinking about buying Alienware (now owned by Dell)? Think again. After buying an almost-new Alienware laptop on eBay, I've spent the last week trying to get hold of a Smart Bay caddy to connect a second hard drive (about $150 for $5 of bent metal). Four different Alienware teams have refused to even give me a price on this accessory, instead accusing me of stealing the machine since I didn't buy it directly from their eBay store. They want me to persuade the eBay seller I did buy it from to add me as an authorized user of his Alienware account — they have no concept of 'ownership transfer' and instead assume that if you're not in their system, you must be a thief."
Security

Work Resumes On Virtual Fence With Mexico 259

Posted by kdawson from the eyes-to-see-with dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Work resumed this week on the five-year project to link a chain of tower-mounted sensors and other surveillance equipment over most of the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. The network of cameras, radar, and communications gear is intended to speed deployment of US Border Patrol officers to intercept illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and other violators, yielding greater 'operational control' over the vast and rugged area. A $20M pilot project for the Secure Border Initiative, or 'SBInet,' carried out in the Bush administration, was generally considered a colossal IT failure. Since that time the DHS has given the prime contractor, Boeing, another $600M. The government says it has learned many lessons and made many changes in the program since the previous pilot rushed off-the-shelf equipment into operation without testing. The Obama administration has lowered the cost estimate for the 5-year project by $1.1B, to $6.7B, mainly by deferring work on the most difficult 200 miles of the border, in southwest Texas."
Wireless (Apple)

Macs With 3G — More Connectivity, More Problems 73

Posted by Soulskill from the multi-mobilization dept.
narramissic writes "In a recent blog post, Josh Fruhlinger muses on the possibility of 3G radio receivers turning up in future Mac notebooks (as foretold by Apple job postings and the mention of WWAN hardware in Snow Leopard beta releases). 'At first glance,' says Fruhlinger, 'this seems like a reasonably awesome idea.' But will the target market be willing to take on the additional telecom charge? 'And, more to the point,' he says, 'most of us have gotten accustomed to the idea of one Internet connection per household, shared with a wireless router. The latter idea could be covered by a router that connects to the Internet over a 3G connection — something like the MiFi hotspot. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple had such a thing in the pipeline, an Airport station (Airport Mobility?) that didn't need to be plugged into the wall. That would explain the search for 3G experts, anyway.'"
Businesses

Why Game Exclusivity Deals Are Feeding the Hate 205

Posted by Soulskill from the cut-it-out-jerks dept.
Parz writes "The recent announcement that the upcoming Ghostbusters game will be a timed PlayStation exclusive in the PAL territories — revealed a mere month before release — has set a nasty precedent which could have long-term repercussions for the industry. This Gameplayer article explores how this generation of gaming has spiraled into a tit-for-tat war on third-party exclusivity deals instigated by Sony and Microsoft, and the effect it is having on the psychology of the consumers. The Ghostbusters developers aren't pleased by Sony's deal, and the Guardian questions whether the game will be big enough to really affect console sales."

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