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DoJ objects to (revised) Googlebooks pact

The Register - Fri, 05/02/2010 - 01:59
Um, you didn't fix our problems

The US Department of Justice is still concerned that Google's $125m book-scanning settlement conflicts with class-action, copyright, and antitrust law, even after Google and American authors and publishers negotiated changes to the pact meant to appease its critics.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Pluto — a Complex and Changing World

Slashdot - Fri, 05/02/2010 - 01:57
astroengine writes "After 4 years of processing the highest resolution photographs the Hubble Space Telescope could muster, we now have the highest resolution view of Pluto's surface ever produced. Most excitingly, these new observations show an active world with seasonal changes altering the dwarf planet's surface. It turns out that this far-flung world has more in common with Earth than we would have ever imagined."

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Craig Mundie Wants "Internet Driver's Licenses"

Slashdot - Fri, 05/02/2010 - 00:50
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Craig Mundie, Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer, called for the creation of an 'Internet Driver's License' at the World Economic Forum in Davos, saying, 'If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance.' Of course, there are quite a few problems with this. For starters, internet use cannot yet cause death or dismemberment like car accidents can; and this would get rid of most of the good of internet anonymity while retaining all of the bad parts, especially in terms of expanding the market for stolen identities. Even though telephone networks have long been used by scammers and spammers/telemarketers, we've never needed a 'Telephone Driver's License.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Artificial pancreas diabetes hope

BBC Technology - Fri, 05/02/2010 - 00:06
Scientists in Cambridge show that an "artificial pancreas" can be used to regulate blood sugar in children with Type 1 diabetes.

Keep SSH Sessions Active, Or Reconnect?

Slashdot - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 23:23
borjonx writes "Is it safer to log out of an SSH session, and re-establish it later, or just keep the connection open? Like many of you, I use OpenSSH to connect to my Slackware Linux boxes remotely from Linux and WinXP (putty.exe) clients. At home and at work, I wonder if it would be safer to just leave the connection open (my clients are physically secured, the servers limit connections with hosts.allow). Is it more secure to re-establish the connection over an insecure link (big bad internet) where people can sniff that handshaking, or is it more secure to just remain connected? I connect 1 to 4 times per day, most days."

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AT&T lets 3G Sling TV onto iPhone

The Register - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 23:22
Timing is everything

Updated  AT&T has reversed an earlier stand, allowing Sling Media's player for the iPhone touch to stream live or recorded television over 3G.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

How Infighting Hampers Innovation At Microsoft

Slashdot - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 22:40
Garabito writes "Dick Brass, former vice-president at Microsoft, published an op-ed in The New York Times, where he states that 'Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator' and how 'it has lost share in Web browsers, high-end laptops and smartphones.' He attributes this situation to the lack of a true system for innovation at Microsoft. Some former employees argue that Microsoft has a system to thwart innovation. He tells how promising and innovative technologies like ClearType and the original TabletPC concept become crippled and sabotaged internally, by groups and divisions that felt threatened by them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


How Infighting Hampers Innovation at Microsoft

Slashdot - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 22:40
Garabito writes "Dick Brass, former vice-president at Microsoft, published an op-ed in The New York Times, where he states that 'Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator' and how 'it has lost share in Web browsers, high-end laptops and smartphones.' He attributes this situation to the lack of a true system for innovation at Microsoft. Some former employees argue that Microsoft has a system to thwart innovation. He tells how promising and innovative technologies like ClearType and the original TabletPC concept become crippled and sabotaged internally, by groups and divisions that feel threated by them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Domain auction house wrestles with alleged shill

The Register - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 22:37
SnapNames in legal action against ex-exec

Oversee.net CEO Jeff Kupietzky has revealed that the company is in active but pending legal action against the former executive who allegedly fixed tens of thousands of its domain-name auctions under the pseudonym “halvarez."…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Police Want Fast Track To Get At Your Private Data

Slashdot - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 21:55
An anonymous reader writes "According to this story on CNET, police again are pushing for new laws requiring ISPs and webmail providers to store users' private data for five years and also want a new electronic way of speeding up subpoenas and search warrants via police-only encrypted portals at all ISPs and webmail providers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


US bill seeks cybersecurity scholarships

The Register - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 21:13
Send your kid to hacker school

The US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill that would direct almost $400m toward research designed to shore up the nation's cybersecurity defenses.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Adobe to Jobs: 'What the Flash do you know?'

The Register - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 21:12
Flash never ships with bugs we're aware of

Adobe has fired back at Steve Jobs after the Apple boss allegedly attacked Adobe Flash for being "buggy" and referred to the Flashmakers as "lazy."…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

Symbian Completes Transition To Open Source

Slashdot - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 21:12
Grond writes "Symbian, maker of the the world's most popular mobile operating system, has completed the transition to a completely open platform months ahead of schedule. While the kernel was opened up last year, the entire platform is now open source, primarily under the Eclipse Public License. A FAQ is available with more information about the platform opening." Adds an anonymous reader, linking to PC Magazine's story on the transition: "By putting Symbian fully in the public domain, the Symbian Foundation is pitting it against Google's Android. Symbian is well known across most of the world, but it's mostly a foreign curiosity in the US, AT&T is the only carrier that currently has a symbian phone in its lineup, the Nokia E71x."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Following Tech's Money Trail In Washington

Slashdot - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 20:28
snydeq writes "Having outlayed $111 million to gain political influence in 2009, the tech industry is clearly learning how to play the lobbying game, writes InfoWorld's Bill Snyder. And while longtime lobbying stalwart General Motors nearly outspent the tech industry on its own, the rise of lobbying among tech giants, especially those under antitrust scrutiny, is staggering. Google, which has been drawing interest from the feds over its online advertising business, has increased its efforts twelve-fold in the past four years. And while Google frames its sudden increased interest in Washington as a matter of growth inspiring greater civic responsibility, the company may find itself sucked further into Washington, now that it is party to an international spat involving both the US and Chinese governments. Among those that top the list of tech lobbyists, Oracle, Intel, and Microsoft all have come under scrutiny in the past year, with Intel accused of monopolistic practices and Oracle requiring sign off on its merger with Sun."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot

Slashdot - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 20:00
cremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."

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Do Google's search warrant police run IE6?

The Register - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 19:55
The Not Quite Anti-Microsoft

According to popular perception, Google is the anti-Microsoft: a new-age outfit bent on re-architecting a flawed interwebs using nothing but open source software. The company runs its own flavor of Linux. It funded the rise of Firefox. And it eventually fashioned its own open source browser, Google Chrome.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

IE Flaw Gives Hackers Access To User Files

Slashdot - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 19:44
snydeq writes "Microsoft warned that a flaw in IE gives attackers access to files stored on a PC under certain conditions. 'Our investigation so far has shown that if a user is using a version of Internet Explorer that is not running in Protected Mode an attacker may be able to access files with an already known filename and location,' Microsoft said in a security advisory. The vulnerability requires that an attacker knows the name of the file they want to access, according to the company."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Apache terminates 'outdated' web server

The Register - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 19:41
We, and the world, move on

An increasingly creaky version of the web's most popular web server has finally been retired after twelve years serving billions of pages.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

Juniper bakes 250Gbps core router chip

The Register - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 19:35
Preemptive Cisco strike

Juniper Networks has said it has new silicon in the oven that will soon let its T Series core routers reach a full duplex per-slot capacity of 250 gigabits per second.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

Cisco's California sales on the double

The Register - Thu, 04/02/2010 - 19:11
400 sees gold in them thar servers

With business brewing again over at networking giant Cisco Systems and poised for a recovery in spending on networking, the company's competitors in the server racket - mainly Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Oracle - were perhaps annoyed to see that Cisco's "California" Unified Computing System blade and rack servers are continuing to gain traction in the market.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

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