iammichael writes "The Apache Software Foundation has resigned its seat on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee due to a long dispute over the licensing restrictions placed on the TCK (test kit validating third-party Java implementations are compatible with the specification)."

An anonymous reader writes "During an in-depth and informative interview, Doom creator and id Software co-founder John Carmack opines on iOS game development, the economics of mobile development vs. console development, why mobile games lend themselves to more risk-taking and greater creativity, and finally, why he's not too keen on the Android Marketplace as a money-making machine. '...I'm honestly still a little scared of the support burden and the effort that it's going to take for our products, which are very graphics-intensive.'"

RimmerExperience writes "Hard to believe that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is 20 years old. This NY Times article provides a brief synopsis from the humble but inspired beginnings in a Midwest TV studio, to the making of MST3K: The Movie, to what the creators are up to today. It's interesting that the original creators are still involved in MST3K-style riffing in some way. So if you are looking for your traditional Turkey Day fix, plug in your old VHS, tune into BitTorrent or check out their current projects — Riff Trax (Mike Nelson) or Cinematic Titanic (Joel & Trace). Keep circulating the tapes, er, MPEGs."

blackbearnh wrote in with a story that's not really about the iPhone, but if your office speakerphones beep like mine does, read on: "If you own an iPhone, you may have noticed that it has a distinct and very annoying effect on clock radios, computer speakers, car radios, and just about anything else with a speaker. The folks at O'Reilly Media aren't immune, so they set out to discover just what is it about iPhones that makes them such bad RF citizens. The iPhones aren't the only bad apples in the cell phone basket and there's not much you can do about the problem. We're really in an interesting time in that there has never been so many high-powered personal transmitters just wandering loose in the world."

trackpick points out a recent ACLU initiative to publicize a recent expansion of authority claimed by the Border Patrol to stop and search individuals up to 100 miles from any US border. They have created a map of what they call the US Constitution-Free Zone. "Using data provided by the US Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders. The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This 'Constitution-Free Zone' includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.'"

Dekortage writes "According to the latest ComScore rankings, YouTube's search traffic for August surpassed Yahoo's. The latter dropped roughly 5% in traffic from July. Among other things, this means that Google now owns both of the top two search engines. AdAge further speculates on Google's experimental 'promoted videos' cost-per-click advertising on YouTube, suggesting the obvious: more money."

The Starcraft 2 gameplay panel was an eventful one at Blizzcon today. The developers faced an obstacle when designing the game; the plans they had were just too massive to implement in a single game on anything approaching a reasonable timeline. Their solution was to divide the game up into three separate, stand-alone titles: Terran: Wings of Libery, Zerg: Heart of the Swarm, and Protoss: Legacy of the Void. Read on for further details.

jgoguen writes "Nagios, originally known as Netsaint, has been a long-time favourite for network and device monitoring due to its flexibility, ease of use, and efficiency. Nagios provided, and still provides today, a low-cost, versatile alternative to commercial network monitoring applications. Nagios 3 takes a huge step forward compared to Nagios 2, providing improved flexibility, ease of use and extensibility, all while also making significant performance enhancements. Due to its extensibility and ease of use, no device or situation has yet been found that cannot be monitored using Nagios and a pre-made or custom script, plug-in or enhancement." Read on for the rest of jgoguen's review.