Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Submission + - Obama Directs FCC to Mandate All Cell Phones Be Unlocked (washingtonpost.com) 1

globaljustin writes: "Several months after calling for legislation to unlock cellphones, the White House filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday asking that all wireless carriers be required to unlock all mobile devices so that users can easily switch between carriers."

This move should be met with universal acclaim from cell phone users, right?

Submission + - DARPA Launches Military Spaceplane Project

RocketAcademy writes: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a new program to develop a reusable first-stage launch vehicle. Experimental Spaceplane 1 (XS-1) would be capable of flying 10 times in 10 days, with a small ground crew, reaching speeds of Mach 10, and deploying a small upper stage to place a 3,000-pound satellite into orbit.

The XS-1 program is complementary to the Air Force's Boeing X-37, which is a reusable upper stage. The X-37 is currently launched by an expendable Atlas rocket but could be launched by a vehicle derived from XS-1 in the future.

Military planners have dreamed of a two-stage, fully reusable Military Spaceplane (MSP) for several years, but funding has not materialized up to now.
Star Wars Prequels

Submission + - The People vs George Lucas / Who owns art? (bbc.co.uk)

Aguazul writes: "The BBC has an interesting take on George Lucus' meddling with our memories: "Fans of Star Wars are not happy. Someone has been tampering with their movie history." They speculate on who really owns a piece of art. Even the artist doesn't really know what he's created, and a work doesn't become 'something' until given value by an audience: "the artist is merely the medium for his or her work". Many people contributed to the Star Wars trilogy. Is Lucas' over-inflated idea of his own importance in the process the reason he is stopping people seeing the unmodified originals?"
AMD

Submission + - AMD To Develop "Open-Source Friendly" GPUs (phoronix.com)

skaroo writes: Phoronix is reporting that future AMD GPUs will be more open-source friendly. After AMD started releasing their GPG specifications to the open-source community, questions arose whether there would be information covering their Unified Video Decoder (UVD) found on the Radeon HD 2000 graphics cards. The UVD information is needed in order for hardware-accelerated video playback, but it likely cannot be opened as it's ingrained with DRM. However, an AMD representative said that moving to a modular UVD design is a requirement for future GPUs and that they will be more open-source friendly. They will also be opening the video acceleration information for their earlier graphics cards. A win for the open-source community or too little too late?
Censorship

Submission + - SCO Chairman Fights to Ban Open Wireless Networks

cachedout writes: "SCO's Ralph Yarro had the floor yesterday at the Utah Technology Commission meeting in front of Utah lawmakers. Yarro proposed that free wireless sites and subscribers should be held responsible should any porn be delivered to minors because hotspots are apparently where kids go to watch porn all day long. Yarro told lawmakers that open wireless access points should be made a crime because we have an Internet out of control."

Slashdot Top Deals

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. -- Ambrose Bierce

Working...