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Operating Systems

Cinder Mobile OS Lets Users Send More Power To Slow Apps 92

Posted by timothy from the would-like-something-like-that-in-my-laptop dept.
alphadogg writes with this excerpt from Network World: "Stanford University researchers are designing an operating system from the ground up to handle the power and security requirements of mobile devices. The Cinder operating system is already working on an Arm chip, and members of the team are working on making it run on the HTC G1 handset, according to Philip Levis, a Stanford assistant professor. Levis spoke about Cinder at the Stanford Computer Forum on Tuesday. If an application isn't running as fast as the user wants, a Cinder-based phone could include a button to boost the energy allocated to that application, Levis said. Cinder also could allow users to download any code and run it safely on their phones in a 'sandbox' mode."
Privacy

Using Net Proxies Will Lead To Harsher Sentences 366

Posted by Soulskill from the no-word-on-mask-and-cape-penalties dept.
Afforess writes "'Proxy servers are an everyday part of Internet surfing. But using one in a crime could soon lead to more time in the clink,' reports the Associated Press. The new federal rules would make the use of proxy servers count as 'sophistication' in a crime, leading to 25% longer jail sentences. Privacy advocates complain this will disincentivize privacy and anonymity online. '[The government is telling people] ... if you take normal steps to protect your privacy, we're going to view you as a more sophisticated criminal,' writes the Center for Democracy and Technology. Others fear this may lead to 'cruel and unusual punishments' as Internet and cell phone providers often use proxies without users' knowledge to reroute Internet traffic. This may also ultimately harm corporations when employees abuse VPN's, as they too are counted as a 'proxy' in the new legislation. TOR, a common Internet anonymizer, is also targeted in the new legislation. Some analysts believe this legislation is an effort to stop leaked US Government information from reaching outside sources, such as Wikileaks. The legislation (PDF, the proposed amendment is on pages 5-15) will be voted on by the United States Sentencing Commission on April 15, and is set to take effect on November 1st. The EFF has already urged the Commission to reject the amendment."
Movies

Decent DVD-Ripping Solution For Linux? 501

Posted by timothy from the digital-camera-one-frame-at-a-time dept.
supersloshy writes "I'm a user of Ubuntu Linux and I have been for a little while now. Recently I've been trying to copy DVDs onto a portable media player, but everything I've tried isn't working right. dvd::rip always gets the language mixed up (for example, when ripping 'Howl's Moving Castle,' one of the files it ripped to was in Japanese instead of English), Acidrip just plain isn't working for me (not recognizing a disc with spaces in its name, refusing to encode, etc.), Thoggen is having trouble with chapters (chapter 1 repeated twice for me once), and OGMRip has the audio out of sync. What I'm looking for is a reliable program to copy the movie into a single file with none of the audio or video glitches as mentioned above. Is there even such thing on Linux? If you can't think of a decent Linux-based solution, then a Windows one is fine as long as it works."
Space

The Herschel Telescope Close To Blast Off 136

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the high-tech-to-the-lowest-bid dept.
pha7boy writes "The Herschel space observatory, the European Space Agency's answer to the Hubble Telescope, is about to be sent into orbit. With a mirror 1.5 times the size of the Hubble mirror, the Herschel will look at the universe in the infrared and sub-millimeter range. This 'will permit Herschel to see past the dust that scatters Hubble's visible wavelengths, and to gaze at really cold places and objects in the Universe — from the birthing clouds of new stars to the icy comets that live far out in the Solar System.'"
Image

Daemon 395

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
stoolpigeon writes "Have you ever been reading a book or watching a film and as the plot moves to involve some use of technology you begin to brace yourself, and the cringe as you are ripped out of the story by what is an obviously ignorant treatment of matters you know well? Do you find the idea of creating a "gui interface using visual basic" to see about tracking an ip address as more fit for a sitcom rather than crime drama? And if so, have you ever wondered what it would be like if one of us, a geek, wrote a techno-thriller? What if someone who grokked our culture and understood our tech wrote something? Would it be great, or would it just get bogged down in the techno babble?" Keep reading for the rest of JR's review.
Television

FCC Unanimously Approves White Space Wi-Fi 156

Posted by CmdrTaco from the think-of-the-possibilities dept.
Smelly Jeffrey writes "With the release of this whitepaper, the FCC unanimously approved plans for a new technology with strong supporters and even stronger detractors. White Space Wi-Fi effectively allows manufacturers of wireless devices to incorporate transceivers that operate on unused DTV channels. Although the deregulation is new, the idea seems to have caught Google's interest recently as well. It seems that this has been rather rushed through the normally stagnant channels at the FCC. While some view it as interference in the already crowded spectrum, it seems the FCC Chairman really likes the idea of re-purposing dark parts of the newly allocated DTV bands once more." Update: 11/06 18:15 GMT by T : You may want to look at Tuesday's mention of the decision as well, but the additional links here are interesting.
Sci-Fi

Paul Krugman Awarded Nobel Prize For Economics 425

Posted by kdawson from the too-smart-fr-government dept.
zogger writes in his journal, "The guy who put together the concept of geographical location combined with cheap transportation leading to 'like trades with like' and the rise of superindustrial trading blocs has won the Nobel economics science prize. He's a bigtime critic of a lot of this administration's policies, and is unabashedly an FDR-economy styled fella. Here is his blog at the NYTimes." Reader yoyoq adds that Krugman's career choice was inspired by reading Asimov's Foundation series at a young age.
Privacy

Give Up the Fight For Personal Privacy? 751

Posted by kdawson from the they-know-anyway dept.
KlaymenDK writes "Over the last decade or so, I have strived to maintain my privacy. I have uninstalled Windows, told my friends 'sorry' when they wanted me to join Facebook, had a fight with my brother when he wanted to move the family email hosting to Gmail, and generally held back on my personal information online. But since, amongst all of my friends, I am the only one doing this, it may well be that my battle is lost already. Worse, I'm really putting myself out of the loop, and it is starting to look like self-flagellation. Indeed, it is a common occurrence that my wife or friends will strike up a conversation based on something from their Facebook 'wall' (whatever that is). Becoming ever more unconnected with my friends, live or online, is ultimately harming my social relations. I am seriously considering throwing in the towel and signing up for Gmail, Facebook, the lot. If 'they' have my soul already, I might as well reap the benefits of this newfangled, privacy-less, AJAX-2.0 world. It doesn't really matter if it was me or my friends selling me out. Or does it? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. How many Windows-eschewing users are not also eschewing the social networking services and all the other 2.0 supersites with their dubious end-user license agreements?"

Comment The 2-party duopoly hates change (Score 2, Insightful) 337

by scotay (#11834801) Attached to: FEC Extending Election Regulation to the Internet
And the internet means change. Not only does the internet provide leverage to 3rd-parties that have no current power, it provides progressives and conservative groups to ability to effect the major parties in new ways.

That is the design of the awful McCain-Feingold "reforms." They are designed so the current gatekeepers remain in full control and this new scary thing called the internet has no chance to move the political process in new directions.

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