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Submission + - West Virginia is geothermically active (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Researchers have uncovered the largest geothermal hot spot in the eastern United States. According to a unique collaboration between Google and academic geologists, West Virginia sits atop several hot patches of Earth, some as warm as 200C and as shallow as 5 kilometers. If engineers are able to tap the heat, the state could become a producer of green energy for the region.

Submission + - GoogleSharing, Now With No Trust Required

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: GoogleSharing, the popular Google anonymizing service created by well known privacy advocate and security researcher Moxie Marlinspike, has released a major new version today. The biggest change is leveraging Google's SSL search option to provide an anonymizing service which doesn't require you to trust either Google or GoogleSharing. This means that anyone who wishes to opt out of Google's data collection practices can now do so without having to trust the operator of the anonymizing service.
IT

Submission + - Take This GUI and Shove It (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Deep End's Paul Venezia speaks out against the overemphasis on GUIs in today's admin tools, saying that GUIs are fine and necessary in many cases, but only after a complete CLI is in place, and that they cannot interfere with the use of the CLI, only complement it. Otherwise, the GUI simply makes easy things easy and hard things much harder. 'If you have to make significant, identical changes to a bunch of Linux servers, is it easier to log into them one-by-one and run through a GUI or text-menu tool, or write a quick shell script that hits each box and either makes the changes or simply pulls down a few new config files and restarts some services?' Venezia writes. 'And it's not just about conservation of effort — it's also about accuracy. If you write a script, you're certain that the changes made will be identical on each box. If you're doing them all by hand, you aren't.'"
Censorship

Submission + - Monkey Island creator slams Apple control freaks (grumpygamer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ron Gilbert, co-creator of classic games Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island 1 and 2, and many more, speaks out against corporate censorship in the way of large companies getting a say on what does or does not get published on the distribution channels they control. Although his insightful rant applies to a number of corporations (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and Comcast are mentioned), most of the direct examples single out Apple. A few choice excerpts:

"...Apple has maintained an almost North Koreanish dictatorial control over the devices, becoming the arbitrator over what is good and bad, what is allowed and not allowed. They don't have this control over the Mac because it is a real computer and an open device, but they can do this with the iPhone because we (as consumers) were convinced by the cell phone carriers that they needed this control to protect their networks (in the same way they wouldn't let us own our own telephones in the 70s) and Apple was happy to jump on that ship because they could finally control everything that went on the device and we bought it into it. Apple apologists say that Apple needs this control to maintain the "specialness" of the device. I say that's a load of crap. Anyone that uses a Mac will tell you that much of the software (completely out of Apple's control) is beautiful and highly functional, unlike the sea of garbage that finds it's way onto Windows. Apple set a high aesthetic standard and challenges people to follow it and it's worked great. No one tells me what I can or can not buy and use on my Mac, yet it's all lovely and special.

"Ideas are often censored not because they are bad, but because they are not understood and mistaken for bad. The damage here is that truly brilliant ideas can take a while before their importance and genius is truly appreciated or that people are ready for them. Ideas can also be upsetting and disruptive to the status quo, the very institutions that have the power to censor.

"If Gutenberg's press could have be shackled with DRM and technology to prevent anything unauthorized from being printed, you know it would have been. And then where would be be today? I don't need corporations to protect me and limit what I can or can not create, express or enjoy. I'm an adult.

He also mentions Adidas dropping out of iAds because they couldn't accept Apple's excessive creative control, a photography app that was rejected because it used the volume buttons as trigger ("[it] was pure genius [but was banned] to avoid consumer confusion") and art being created on the iPhone and the iPad in spite of the devices and not because of it ("[Sam & Max and Monkey Island artist] Steve Purcell ... would sit in team meetings and create to most incredible jaw dropping pictures on an Etch-A-Sketch, but that doesn't mean it was suddenly a serious tool for the creation of art").
Botnet

Submission + - Comcast Warns Customers Suspected of Bot Infection (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Comcast is pushing a new program nationwide that warns customers if they might have a bot infection. It puts a semitransparent overlay on the top of the website you're viewing warning you that you may have a bot installed if the provider detects botnet traffic from your residence. Of course, if you have multiple machines running behind a router or modem then you're going to have a difficult time pinning down which machine might have the infection.
Image

"Super Monkey" Security Force Used At Commonwealth Games 66

Posted by samzenpus from the fight-monkeys-with-monkeys dept.
The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has increased the strength of its monkey security team for the Commonwelath Games. The large langur monkeys are used to scare away smaller, more troublesome primate species from sporting arenas and food stalls. "From tomorrow onwards we will increase the number of langurs from 28 to 38. The additional langurs will take care of the Games venues and other important areas," an NDMC official told the Press Trust of India news agency. Sounds like a good idea until the monkeys learn how to throw barrels.
Image

George Washington Racks Up 220 Years of Late Fees At Library 146

Posted by samzenpus from the at-least-he-read dept.
Everyone knows that George Washington couldn't tell a lie. What you probably didn't know is that he couldn't return a library book on time. From the article: "New York City's oldest library says one of its ledgers shows that the president has racked up 220 years' worth of late fees on two books he borrowed, but never returned. One of the books was the 'Law of Nations,' which deals with international relations. The other was a volume of debates from Britain's House of Commons. Both books were due on Nov. 2, 1789."

Retailers Leak New TiVo HD Specs and Price 163

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the tastes-great-less-filling dept.
Brent writes "Retailers goofed and posted most of the specs of the forthcoming TiVo Series 3 Lite, which Ars says may be called 'TiVo HD' at launch. A comparison with the standard Series 3 shows that for a savings of $300, you only lose the OLED screen (do you need a screen on your TiVo?), the glowing remote (which you can pickup for $50 anyway), THX certification (worthless) and 90GB of storage. Looks like it may be a TiVo hacker's dream."
Education

Submission + - Testing Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance'

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Travelling to a time in the past is, as far as we know, not possible. However, Einstein postulated a faster-than-light effect known as 'spooky action at a distance'. The problem is, how do you test for such an effect? That test may now be here. If all goes well, hopefully by September 15th, John Cramer will have experimented with a beam of laser light which has been split in two to test Einstein's idea.

While he is only testing the quantum entanglement portion, changing one light beam and having the same change made in the other beam, his experiment might show that a change made in one beam shows up in the other beam before he actually makes the change.

An interesting sidenote is that the money for this project was raised not from the scientific community but from the public at large. His fans have sent him the money necessary to purchase the equipment to test Einstein's idea.

Comment Re:Just impeach his sorry ass (Score 1) 647

by neophyte13 (#19428321) Attached to: White House Derails Attempts to End Illegal Wiretapping
How can you even site failure to protect the boarder, but flip flop like a Massachusetts senator on the eavesdropping as a means to secure the nation during wartime? It's the sniveling groups like this that ignore the fact that we are at WAR(!!!!) and whine about Karl Rove setting them (again, and again) rather than doing something about the WAR(!!!). Here's some cheese!
Software

Submission + - Comcast goes to Zimbra

Submitted by tenchiken
tenchiken writes: Zimbra, an Open Source enterprise messaging app, just scored a major win. Comcast will be moving mail services for all of their customers to Zimbra. Zimbra has been picking up steam for a while now, and appears to really be challenging Microsoft in a area that Exchange has been dominated in. Add in support for Samba Domain Controllers and Linux Authentication, Offline Access and Evolution Support and we might finally have our long desired Open Source exchange killer.
Windows

Submission + - Vista vs. XP Game Stability and Performance

Submitted by
boyko.at.netqos
boyko.at.netqos writes: "HardOCP does a side-by side comparison with a battery of games to check stability and framerates in Windows XP and Windows Vista. In addition to the lowered framerates in Vista, they had stability issues in Need for Speed: Carbon and Prey. From the article:

As you can see, some games fared better than others with the new OS. For some titles, especially Company of Heroes and Need for Speed, we saw dramatic framerate discrepancies. What's more, both of these titles have recently released patches! Other titles showed a slight, but essentially negligible difference, such as BF2142, World of Warcraft, and Prey. Really, there was only one instance where Vista was able to pick up a few more frames than XP — World of Warcraft at greater than 90fps, where the human eye can't even see the difference. To see this overall trend against Vista is very interesting and makes us wonder as to the cause."
United States

Submission + - New Jersey Highways To Be Used As A Power Source

Submitted by New Jersites
New Jersites writes: New Jersey The state famous for the Turnpike, is considering wind turbines powered by the breeze generated from the renowned highways, to help reduce the amount of electricity being used. The wind turbines won't be built on the side of the highway. They will be built in under the road. By replacing sections of solid concrete with Darius turbines, they could harvest enough energy to power a light-rail line.
Censorship

Censoring a Number 1046

Posted by kdawson from the you-can't-copyright-that dept.
Rudd-O writes "Months after successful discovery of the HD-DVD processing key, an unprecedented campaign of censorship, in the form of DMCA takedown notices by the MPAA, has hit the Net. For example Spooky Action at a Distance was killed. More disturbingly, my story got Dugg twice, with the second wave hitting 15,500 votes, and today I found out it had simply disappeared from Digg. How long until the long arm of the MPAA gets to my own site (run in Ecuador) and the rest of them holding the processing key? How long will we let rampant censorship go on, in the name of economic interest?" How long before the magic 16-hex-pairs number shows up in a comment here?

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