Comment Re:It's not censorship (Score 1) 764
Alright, but what if the book store owner decides he doesn't want to sell book X so comes to your house and removes if from your bookshelf?
Comment Instant Market (Score 1) 764
This opens up a market for a web company selling banned books for the kindle.
Can "Page's Law" Be Broken? 255
theodp writes "Speaking at the Google I/O Developer Conference, Sergey Brin described Google's efforts to defeat "Page's Law," the tendency of software to get twice as slow every 18 months. 'Fortunately, the hardware folks offset that,' Brin joked. 'We would like to break Page's Law and have our software become increasingly fast on the same hardware.' Page, of course, refers to Google co-founder Larry Page, last seen delivering a nice from-the-heart commencement address at Michigan that's worth a watch (or read)."
Comment What About Genetic engineering? (Score 1) 575
Would this law help the rich few who are going to be able to increase their mental capacity and ability using genetic engineering to obtain jobs over the poor/middle class people who can't offered said enhancements?
Armed Robots Not Actually Gone From Iraq 263
NightFalcon90909 writes "You may have heard that armed robots were yanked from Iraq after a gun started to swivel without it being told to do so. 'A recent news report that armed robots had been pulled out of Iraq is mistaken, according to the company that makes the robot [Foster-Miller] and the Army program manager. 'The whole thing is an urban legend,' says Foster Miller spokesperson Cynthia Black, of the reports about SWORDS moving its gun without a command.'"
Bush Cyber Initiative Aims To Monitor, Restrict Access To Federal Network 120
dstates writes "Details of George Bush's Cyber Initiative are beginning to trickle out. The Cyber Initiative was created in January to secure government against electronic attacks. Newsweek says that over the next seven years, Bush's Cyber Initiative will spend as much as $30 billion to create a new monitoring system for all federal networks, a combined project of the DHS, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The U.S. government has launched a classified operation called Byzantine Foothold to detect, track, and disarm intrusions on the government's most critical networks. ComputerWorld reports that all data traffic flowing through agency networks will be checked, and that it will be inspected at a deeper level than the current system is capable of. BusinessWeek, meanwhile, reports that one requirement is to reduce the number of internet access points in the Federal Government from the thousands now in use to only 100 sites by June 2008. How this will impact public information resources such as the Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine or even the US Congress remains to be seen."
Tech That Will Save Our Species - Solar Thermal Power 648
NoMoreCoal writes "Salon has up a story by Joe Romm, former undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration, discussing a lesser-known alternative energy solution. It's a technology that (he claims) is ready to provide zero-carbon electric power big, fast, cheap and (most importantly) right now: solar thermal power. 'Improvements in manufacturing and design, along with the possibility of higher temperature operation, could easily bring the price down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour. CSP makes use of the most abundant and free fuel there is, sunlight, and key countries have a vast resource. Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources.'" Interesting stuff, even if he does mention the Archimedes Death Ray.
Microsoft Accommodating Eee With Lightweight XP 386
KrispyChips writes "In what could be a first Microsoft is working to create a special build of Windows, just because Windows doesn't run very well on a certain computer. ASUS' runaway success Eee PC is now 'officially' available with Windows XP, but (according to APC magazine) is not exactly a great experience. There are none of the nice pre-loaded apps that come with the Linux version, for example. And XP has some real problems coping with the screen size and limited system specs of the unit. As a result, ASUS says it is going back to Microsoft and working on a special XP build that will be lightweight and more suited to UMPCs."
Counterfeit DFI Motherboards Surface In Indonesia 216
crazyeyes writes "Those crazy counterfeiters have done it again. First they made counterfeit Intel boxed processors, now they are counterfeiting DFI motherboards! Quoting: 'The detail to the packaging, documentation and the motherboard printing really makes you wonder if the people responsible for this have only limited their activities to DFI motherboards. It's quite possible that there are fake ASUS or Gigabyte motherboards in the market as well.'" Update: 04/15 12:59 GMT by Z : As noted in the comments, the articles offer no speculation as to the origins of the counterfeits. Updated to clarify that.
Submission + - "First" OpenOffice virus emerges
NZheretic writes: "According to APCmag the "First" cross platform OpenOffice.org virus "SB/Badbunny-A" has been emailed directly to Sophos from the virus developers. It has not yet been seen in the wild.
Despite Sun's OpenOffice.org developer Malte Timmermann's claims to the contrary this kind of embedded scripting attack represents a real threat to OpenOffice.org users.
Back in June 2000 when Sun first announced the open sourcing of OpenOffice.org the twelfth email to the open discussion list put forward a two part solution for to provide OpenOffice users with Safe(r) Scripting using restricted mode execution by default and access by signed digital certificates. In October 2000 the issue of treating security as an "add-on" feature rather than a "system property" was again raised. Is it time to now introduce such measures to the OpenOffice.org Core to greatly reduce any future risk from scripted infections?"
Despite Sun's OpenOffice.org developer Malte Timmermann's claims to the contrary this kind of embedded scripting attack represents a real threat to OpenOffice.org users.
Back in June 2000 when Sun first announced the open sourcing of OpenOffice.org the twelfth email to the open discussion list put forward a two part solution for to provide OpenOffice users with Safe(r) Scripting using restricted mode execution by default and access by signed digital certificates. In October 2000 the issue of treating security as an "add-on" feature rather than a "system property" was again raised. Is it time to now introduce such measures to the OpenOffice.org Core to greatly reduce any future risk from scripted infections?"
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