Online Voting writes “The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has published new voting systems testing and certification standards for 190 days of public comment. For all the critics of electronic voting, this is your opportunity to improve the process. This will be the second version of the federal voting system standards (the first version is the VVSG 05). To learn more about these Voluntary Voting System Standards see this FAQ.”

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By now it should be clear that politicians just can’t resist passing new legislation that they can use to claim they’re “protecting the children” — even when those laws quite often tend to be unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. While state legislatures keep on passing unconstitutional bans on video game sales to children (and keep getting smacked down by the courts), at the federal level, Congress basically just keeps trying to rewrite laws that get trashed by the courts, hoping that eventually, it will find that magic formula that’s allowed. As you may recall, the worst parts of the Communications Decency Act got thrown out in court about a decade ago, only to be followed up by similar, but slightly different laws. There was the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) which was smacked down earlier this year.

The Supreme Court is apparently hearing a case about another, similar, but more narrowly focused law, called the Child Pornography Prevention Act — and even though a lower court found the law unconstitutional, some feel that the Supreme Court’s early questioning suggests it might not have a huge problem with the law. Of course, it sounds like they were helped along by the lawyer making the case against the law. When the justices asked him to describe a situation where an innocent person would be harmed by the law, he was unable to do so. The key issue is whether or not advertising that you have child pornography is still a crime — even if what you have isn’t actually pornographic, and apparently many of the justices don’t have a problem with that being illegal. Of course, the lines are a little blurred by the details of this particular case, where the guy in question did, in fact, have child pornography — it’s just that it happened to be different child pornography than what he had offered. So while there is no question over his guilt on possession of child porn, there is the question of whether or not he’s guilty of advertising it — even though what he advertised didn’t exist. Either way, it sounds like maybe, just maybe, Congress has finally constructed a statue for protecting children that is narrowly defined enough to remain constitutional.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

An anonymous reader writes “A recent unfortunate casualty of anti-terrorism laws is the home chemistry set. Once deemed the gift that saved Christmas, most Slashdotters probably remember early childhood experimentation with one of the many pre-packaged chemistry sets that were on the market. Unfortunately the FBI has decided that home chemistry sets are a threat to national security and they are rapidly disappearing from the market entirely. Those that remain are shallow boring versions of the old kits.”

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Everex’s TC2502 gPC is the first mass-market $200 desktop computer, featuring a custom distribution of Ubuntu Linux and headed for selected Wal-Mart stores.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

mattnyc99 writes “PopularMechanics.com takes a peek into the growing world of high-tech piracy on the open seas, which the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard are looking to cut off by investing in a new fleet of superfast, gun-mounted unmanned surface vessels (USVs). From the article: “The Interceptor is available now. But the USV market is just getting started: Two months ago, British defense firm Qinetiq debuted its own robotic vessel, the jetski-size Sentry. Among its potential duties is intruder investigation, which could include scouting out unidentified boats, along the lines of the raft that detonated alongside the USS Cole in Yemen, as well as offering a first look at a possible pirate-controlled vessel.”"

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There’s lots of talk in the news today saying that Google is pretty close on a deal to have Verizon Wireless be the first to offer Google’s new wireless bundle of software that many people are referring to as the “GPhone” (which still hasn’t officially been announced). This might seem like an odd pairing to some. After all, it seems like the two companies are pretty vehement in disagreeing on some key telecom issues concerning things like 700 MHz spectrum and network neutrality. Besides, Verizon Wireless is infamous for being the US carrier most focused on walled gardens, while a big part of the supposed point of the GPhone is to force more openness into the wireless arena. So why the pairing? It’s actually fairly simple. Blame Apple. Verizon Wireless famously turned down the chance to be Apple’s partner for the iPhone, claiming that Apple had too many strict rules to make it worthwhile. So how do you fight back against the juggernaut of the iPhone? Yup, with the GPhone. It’s got nothing to do with openness, the features the Gphone provides or any of the other disputes. It’s all about Google’s brand and the fact that it’s, perhaps, the one brand on a phone that will attract enough attention to (maybe) come close to the hype surrounding the iPhone.

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Just a day before a federal town hall on online tracking and advertising, privacy groups call for a federally run “Do Not Track” list. Advertisers deride it as invasive and unnecessary.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

A program promoted to Mac formers reportedly routes Mac users to phishing lures and serves adult-oriented ads. The Trojan may be the first professional attempt to target OS X users.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

theodp writes “Far from a PowerPoint killer, Slate’s Paul Boutin finds Google’s online presentation tool Preso more like a PowerPoint commercial — a half-baked app that shows how powerful Microsoft’s program really is. But if you have your druthers, Boutin suggests ditching both and opting for Apple’s Keynote, which helped snag an Oscar for Al Gore and inspired this Dear-PPT-Letter. ‘The first hurdle … You can’t use it on a plane. Google Preso only works if you’ve got a live, high-bandwidth Internet connection. You can save the finished product to an HTML presentation on your laptop, but you can’t edit the saved version or upload it back. The Splunkers would need to finalize their presos early in the morning in a rented conference room, where both Wi-Fi and Verizon wireless cards have been known to fail. That would kill the presentation.’”

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We’ve talked about the importance of “safe harbors” protecting service providers from the actions of users. Too often, companies go after service providers because they’re easier to target and because they have more money — but they’re not the ones actually breaking the law, and making them liable for the actions of their users would be an incredible burden on any company that allowed users to do… well… anything. However, a recent ruling has shown one limitation to the section 230 safe harbors found in the CDA: if you’re selling illicit phone records that were obtained via pretexting, you are still liable, even if you didn’t do the pretexting yourself. In this case, a company called Accusearch offered to sell phone records, but contracted out the actual pretexting work to obtain the phone records. So, when the FTC came calling to fine Accusearch, it claimed that it was protected under section 230. As Eric Goldman explains in the above link, some of the court’s reasoning was a little suspect, even if it came to the right conclusion at the end. One key point as to why this is different? This wasn’t about “users” generating content that was potentially a problem. This was a company specifically buying and then reselling content — so it was clearly a part of the process. If, say, a similar service opened up where it was simply bulletin boards where people posted illicitly gained phone records (or the ability to get them), then the company might have retained safe harbor protections.

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The Byelorrusian Spamtrap writes “Wired Magazine’s made its position clear on the state of play in America’s cellular industry, delivering a long, satisfying screed on why all of us should stop complaining and do something about it. ‘They own politicians – Sure, it’s just phones. In a world where worse things happen all the time amid the muck and despair of human existence, having to pay for premium text is hardly worth worrying about, is it? You can (and should) opt out, and not sign on the dotted line to begin with. But today’s cell towers might be tomorrow’s Pony Express: they’re TV stations, internet access, emergency 911 and news networks all rolled into one. WWAN could well end up supplanting copper sooner than anyone expects: do you want these companies in charge of it?’”

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An anonymous reader writes “InformationWeek is reporting that a court in Virginia has issued an injunction against controversial new patent rules that were supposed to go into effect tomorrow. The court granted a motion filed by GlaxoSmithKline, which is suing the US patent office over the issue. Among other things, the new rules would limit the extent to which existing patent applications can be modified. The patent office says the new rules would speed up the patent process, but critics say they hurt inventors.”

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gooman writes “The LA Times reports on a proposal to secretly scan suspects’ hard drives which is causing unease in a nation with a history of official surveillance. Along with several other European countries, Germany is seeking authority to plant secret Trojan viruses into the computers of suspects that could scan files, photos, diagrams and voice recordings, record every keystroke typed and possibly even turn on webcams and microphones in an attempt to gain knowledge of attacks before they happen.”

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Last week we wrote about a proposed bill that would push pharmaceutical firms to turn their patents over to the public domain in exchange for prizes. As we noted in the post (and the ensuing discussion), there are some serious problems with the way the current patent system sets up incentives for the healthcare industry. It really focuses research dollars into pharmaceuticals, rather than other types of technology that would not only be cheaper to make and to use, but also much more effective in helping and saving lives. It’s a fascinating area that I’ve been researching for a separate project, trying to help design better business models for the healthcare industry that will still allow for massive profits, but do so in a way that creates better incentives for actually keeping people healthy. There’s been some interesting research in this area, and I plan to share some of my own results when they’re ready (hopefully early next year).

The key, as always, is to recognize the real market that the business is in. For too long, pharmaceutical firms have believed they’re in the pill making business — rather than the “saving lives” business (even if they use the “saving lives” claim to get an emotional response when trying to push for legislation in their favor). The good news, though, is that it appears that some pharma firms are finally recognizing this. As Against Monopoly points out, the Economist notes that pharmaceutical firms are finally starting to experiment with new business models that go “beyond the pill.” They’re changing how they market and sell pills as well as starting to look into other areas of healthcare as well, from biotech to medical devices. The other interesting thing is that they’re starting to look at interesting ways to drastically reduce the costs and time of clinical trials using technology. While this won’t change their reliance on patents, it is a step in the right direction. With that diversification underway, it will hopefully be easier to show them additional new business models that can help them become more innovative, creating new opportunities to profit, without having to rely on artificial scarcity.

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BaCa writes with a link indicating that a survey of white collar US workers shows that something like a third of all employees break IT policies. Of those, almost a sixth actually used P2P technologies from their work PCs. Overall, the survey indicates workers aren’t overly concerned about any kind of security: “The telephone survey found that 65% of white-collar professionals are either not very concerned or not concerned at all about their privacy when using a workplace computer. A surprising 63% are not very concerned or are not concerned at all about the security of their information while at work. Additionally, most employees have the misconception that these behaviors pose little to no risk to their companies.”

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An anonymous reader writes “Intel’s Skulltrail dual-socket enthusiast platform has been making the rounds on the web for half a year or so, but we haven’t seen many details yet. TG Daily got a close look at an almost complete prototype, which surely sounds almost like a production ready version, judging from the article. Everything that TG Daily describes sounds like Skulltrail PCs will be very limited in availability and insanely expensive. Intel also has said it has developed ‘special’ Xeon processors with desktop processor attributes just for Skulltrail. These chips are currently running at a stable 5 GHz.”

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Get an eyeful — and an earful — of Guitar Hero’s worst nightmare, weeks before its Nov. 20 release.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

For years, we’ve been disappointed with the fact that none of the big web companies seemed to recognize the importance of establishing themselves as core to the web platform. In fact, Google has quite often done things to move away from being such a platform — which seemed like a dangerous strategic move leaving things open to other providers. Early on, it had seemed so obvious that Google should set itself up as a “web operating system” on which others could build applications — but the company has been slow to embrace that kind of vision, preferring to remain somewhat closed off. So far, surprisingly, Amazon had seemed like the most eager to embrace enabling the web platform with its S3 and EC2 services. However, in the last few months, Facebook has received much of the attention for its platform play. To be honest, we initially had high hopes for Facebook’s platform play, but despite the hype and attention it has generated, it’s actually gone in the wrong direction. It seems like Facebook’s attempt at being the platform is more about bringing apps into Facebook, rather than allowing outside apps to make use of Facebook as a component. In fact, it’s a little bit like Google’s misguided strategy — focused less on enabling things outside of its system, and more on bringing things inside.

However, both Google and Facebook are getting ready to launch new offerings that look like they hit directly at the other company — but which really demonstrate some of the tactics both companies are hoping to use in branching out from their core areas of business to become more of a web platform. And both involve hitting the other provider by doing what it won’t do in terms of opening up certain data to outside uses.

First up is Facebook, which is rumored to be launching a major ad network initiative designed to compete with Google’s ad platform. The key is using Facebook profile information tied to an ad cookie to make the ads that someone sees as they surf around the net a lot more relevant (or creepy, depending on your point of view). It’s this vision that Microsoft is buying into (as the supplier of the ads). This is a clever move. It’s something that Google can’t do as directly or efficiently, as Facebook in many cases will have a lot more data about the user’s specific interests and profile. But, it’s also an example of Facebook finally doing something that involves pulling data out of Facebook to do something useful elsewhere.

Then, there’s Google. The company is launching a new set of standards designed to make it easier to build apps that run across any willing social network. The company has built up an interesting alliance of networks, including (no surprise) its own Orkut, but also LinkedIn and Salesforce.com. The idea here is that developers can now have their apps easily work with a variety of social networks. Facebook hasn’t signed on to the deal, and may resist it for some time — but if it really starts to get some traction, the company may feel it necessary to join in. In effect, this is Google’s way of forcing social networks to open up more and be a part of the larger web platform — rather than being stuck in their own little silos. If it works well, Google could conceivably then build a similar ad offering on top of multiple networks of information, and it would also serve to protect Google somewhat from the faddish nature of social networks, as it wouldn’t matter if one particular network declined as another gained prominence — as long as they’re all using these standards.

Comparing the two strategies is interesting — as both revolve around doing the sorts of things the other company doesn’t want or cannot easily do, yet which will directly impact the other’s business. But, both also involve a somewhat tricky cat and mouse game of determining which parts of a business are really open and which are closed, with both seemingly hitting at each other’s key weakness within their core offerings. In other words, it’s about to get a lot more fun to observe how these strategies play themselves out. As for who wins? Despite thinking that Google should have opened up years ago, I think Google has the stronger position here. On top of simply having a lot more money available, it’s strategy is much more about enabling others to do much more online. Facebook’s strategy, on the other hand, risks consumer backlash over having private info spread outside of Facebook, and also leaves the company reliant on everyone staying within Facebook just as Google is about to make other social networks potentially more interesting.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

Craig Maloney writes “Over the long history of Linux, there have been many different distributions. One of the most famous distributions, love it or hate it, is the Ubuntu distribution. Ubuntu has come quickly from being the new kid on the block with the Warty Warthog release (4.10) to the most recent release Gutsy Gibbon (7.10). In that three year span, Ubuntu has grown from a handful of enthusiasts and developers to a thriving worldwide community. The Official Ubuntu Book is the official book from Canonical, which describes not only the Ubuntu distributions, but also the community from which Ubuntu is derived.” Read below for the rest of Craig’s review.

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Technical Writing Geek writes with a Reuters story about a collection of privacy groups looking to set up a ‘Do Not Track’ list online, similar to the ‘Do Not Call’ list meant to dissuade telemarketing. “Computer users should be notified when their Web surfing is tracked by online advertisers and Web publishers, argue the Consumer Federation of America, the World Privacy Forum and the Center for Democracy and Technology, among other groups in a coalition promoting the idea. Rather than burying privacy policies in fine print, companies should also disclose them more fully and provide easier ways to opt out, the groups said. The organizations submitted the proposals to the Federal Trade Commission, ahead of the consumer watchdog agency’s workshop on Nov. 1-2 to study the increasing use of tracking technology to target online ads.

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Neuroscientists use coral and jellyfish DNA to create colorful arrays of neuronal connections in mouse brains.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

Mac OS X Leopard is here, and it brings with it the new Core Animation engine developers can use to create immersive, animated application interfaces. To see what’s in store for application design on the Mac, Wired News has an exclusive sneak peek at the next version of Delicious Library.

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High definition boosts resolution to 720 lines or more and can update every line in each refresh pass: progressive scan. The latest TVs can display 1080p: progressive video at 1,080 lines of resolution. But can you really tell the difference?

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

Today, on the last day of our 10 year anniversary navel gazing spectacular, I present the final (thank god!) chapter in my 4 part history of Slashdot. I’ve written about the creation, the explosion, and the corporatization. Today I talk about where we are today, and what I see as our future, and how I feel about it. Clicky click the magic link below to read the last “thrilling” chapter, and celebrate with me the fact that I won’t have to spend this much time writing about Slashdot for another decade.

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Trent Reznor has certainly been doing some interesting things lately in trying to embrace file sharing and free music in a way that still makes business sense. It sounds like he’s open to plenty of new ideas as well. A few people wrote in last week when it was announced that in collaborating with musician Saul Williams, the two decided to follow Radiohead’s path and offer a new album with a “name your own price” system. They admitted that they had been toying with the idea, but once Radiohead did it, they figured why not do the same thing (how long until someone who is confused about how this all works accuses them of “stealing” the idea?).

However, what’s much more interesting is that in a NY Mag interview with Reznor and Williams, Reznor admits that he was an active member of OiNK, the file sharing site that was recently shut down, and then gives an eloquent explanation for why OiNK exists and why iTunes sucks. It’s not about “stealing,” even though Reznor does refer to it as stealing. It’s about people who love music:

“I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustled when I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that’s what’s such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they’re grateful for the person that uploaded it — they’re the hero. They’re not stealing it because they’re going to make money off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’m not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.”

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Glenn Fleishman writes “Apple has changed its license for Mac OS X Server 10.5 (Leopard Server) to allow virtualized instances. VMware and Parallels are poised to offer support. This probably presages a thoroughly overhauled Xserve product with greater capability for acting as a virtual machine server, too. ‘Ben Rudolph, Director of Corporate Communications for Parallels, told me, “Enabling Leopard Server to run in a virtual machine may take some time, but we’re working closely with Apple on it and will make it public as quickly as possible.” Pat Lee, Product Manager at VMware, concurred, saying “We applaud Apple for the exciting licensing changes implemented in Leopard Server. Apple customers can now run Mac OS X Server, Windows, Linux and other x86 operating systems simultaneously on Apple hardware so we are excited about the possibilities this change presents.” Although neither company committed to specific features or timetables, it appears as though we should be seeing virtualization products from both that will enable an Xserve to run multiple copies of Leopard Server in virtual machines.’”

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FixYourThinking writes “After nearly one and a half years of harassment from a relentless attorney, it seems that quietly a blogger in South Carolina has won a monumental ruling in favor of bloggers. In a summary judgement requested by the Defendant, Philip Smith was able to obtain a special sanction after the Plaintiff attorney put a ‘notice of lien’ (called lis pendens) on Smith’s residence. The judge also reprimanded the Plaintiff attorney for abusive deposition and court procedure. The case set forth the following; ‘It’s not the format; it’s the content and intention that make text journalism / reporting.’”

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It’s no secret that many, many people dislike mobile phone operators. Why? Well, beyond the issue of dropped calls, it appears that people are sick and tired of of the way mobile services are pitched to them. The operators hate giving people a clear picture of what they’re actually getting. Details of the plans remain hidden or not clearly explained and there are always hidden gotchas — like how your “unlimited” service isn’t really unlimited. So, here’s a simple suggestion for mobile operators: Be the first to be totally upfront about your plans and services, remove any high pressure sales techniques, stop making it difficult to compare plans, phones and service and dub yourself as the customer friendly mobile operator. Then see what happens. Of course, some mobile operators have taken steps in this direction over the years. They’re a lot more open about where various deadspots are than before and they’ve tried to be more open about specific features and plans — but the problem is that this “secretive” mentality exists up and down throughout the organization. If a company makes it clear policy from top to bottom that openness, clarity and customer satisfaction are keys, it would capture the interest of an awful lot of people.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

From Brisbane to Beunos Aires… From the UK to France to Romania… from New York to San Francisco and everywhere in between, we had well over 100s of parties and over 2,300 registered attendees scattered around the world. Many of them got boxes of t-shirts and ThinkGeek gift certificates (and some of them even got them on time). We’ve seen cakes with legos and logos, we seen nerf gun fights, and even a lawn sporking. I’ve put a tiny sampling of my favorite pictures online. The grand prize winner is of the $1k store credit at ThinkGeek is Lindsi from Minneapolis. Their party featured a lolcats cake, a taco bar and a dude in a helmet smashing computers with a sledge hammer in a raining parking lot. They earned it. We had a great time in both Palo Alto and Ann Arbor- I hope you guys had fun wherever you gathered. See you again in 2017!

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Whenever we talk about offshoring around here it seems to generate a lot of controversy, as a group of folks show up insisting that offshoring “costs” the US jobs — despite tons of evidence that that’s not true at all. It does change the nature of jobs and may emphasize different skills, but more efficient production tends to create more new jobs. In fact, we’ve tried to point out in the past that offshoring is really no different than automation, though it’s less efficient. So we wonder if people who are against offshoring are also against automation (or, well, any kind of productivity enhancement). Perhaps they should be. Slashdot points us to a recent article saying that more modern “web 2.0″ technologies are allowing firms to cut IT staff more significantly than offshoring. Yet, don’t be fooled. This is unlikely to mean fewer jobs in the long run — but it will change the types of skills that companies are looking for. But, in the meantime, pure unadulterated luddism is a lot more socially acceptable (if equally as pointless) than the garden-variety racism that comes out of people when talking about offshoring. It’s just equally as pointless.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

Vitamin D provides many benefits for the human body, but helping cure cancer doesn’t appear to be one of them, a study from the National Cancer Institute concludes.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

Scientists studying the things that make people nervous or scared are reporting breakthroughs they say will lead to more effective treatment of anxiety disorders.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

Companies like Comcast and Time Warner can no longer impose exclusive agreements on owners of apartment buildings, the FCC rules. This should mean lower cable prices for apartment dwellers.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

The sky’s the limit for the most powerful online company, apparently, as investors help boost its overall market value by 30 percent in just two months.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

We’ve seen so many cases recently of companies trying to shut down negative criticism online by suing critics, it’s nice to point out a case where those cases get shot down by the courts. Eric Goldman has the details on how a court has thrown out the lawsuit filed by BidZirk, one of many, many companies that will sell your stuff on eBay for you, against a blogger for criticizing BidZirk’s service in a blog post. The lawsuit claimed defamation, privacy invasion and trademark violations — all of which seem like a stretch. If anything, this sounds like a SLAPP situation, where the company isn’t suing because anything wrong was done, but because it just doesn’t like criticism. In this case, the court found no defamation, as the blog post was clearly the guy’s opinion. It found no trademark violation because the guy used the company’s name in the course of reporting on the company, which is perfectly legal. As Goldman notes, the unfortunate part of this story is that a blogger had to spend a year and a half in court dealing with this lawsuit. While it’s great that he eventually won, many bloggers wouldn’t have the time, money or stamina to deal with such lawsuits — which is why they’re likely to keep happening.

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By now, most people are familiar with how phishing scams work, usually preying on individuals and tricking them into handing over data that allows the scammers access to bank accounts or other useful info. However, scammers have been aiming a bit higher lately. One tactic is commonly referred to as “spear phishing,” where scammers focus on business targets, and attempt to convince them that they’re actually coming from partners or suppliers. Apparently one such spear phishing attempt nearly worked to the tune of $10 million. The scammers sent two emails to someone at the headquarters of the supermarket chain Supervalu, purporting to be from Supervalu suppliers American Greetings and Frito-Lay. Both emails claimed that their bank account info had changed and Supervalu now needed to deposit payments into different accounts. Someone at Supervalu followed the instructions, leading approximately $10 million to be deposited into the two accounts over a period of about 4 days. At this point, someone from Supervalu figured out there was a problem and alerted the authorities, who were then able to recover most of the money before the scammers withdrew it. However, it appears that no one has yet figured out who opened the accounts, though Supervalu has filed a lawsuit in order to try to get that information.

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Review: The palm-sized Kodak EasyShare camera makes the reviewer giddy. It’s close to a digital SLR in performance, but fits in your pocket.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

Would you buy a used spaceship from this guy? How about a few spare parts to pimp your rocket?

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Fear is a handy evolutionary mechanism for staying out of danger. So why do we get off on it sometimes?

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Vote on the latest in Halloween nerdwear and submit photos of your own costume.

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Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard introduces lots of tiny visual enhancements as well as some usability advancements beyond the Tiger defaults. But changes are not automatically improvements. If you’re underwhelmed by your new OS’s upgraded user interface, or you just want your good friend Tiger back, Wired’s How To Wiki can help you tweak and customize Leopard. But it’s incomplete. Please help us fill in the blanks and create a wiki that gets people what they want: a better Leopard.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

An extreme shortage of oenophile gizmos is undoubtedly the reason most nerds shun the fruit of the vine. Problem solved! Commentary by Lore Sjöberg.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

Impressive evidence of the Chinese government’s ability to monitor and control electronic communication shows one reporter how far the country is going in order to control and “purify” the internet. He applies what he learns, supplying tips on how to breach China’s Great Firewall.

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Once developers sink their teeth into Core Animation, a powerful developer’s toolkit embedded in the new Mac OS, we’ll likely enter an advanced era of user interface design. Commentary by Leander Kahney.

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With World War I approaching its climax, the last thing the Turkish garrison at Beersheba expects is an attack by a horse-mounted enemy. But that’s exactly how the Aussies hit them.

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A massive Sunday spam attack supporting Republican candidate Ron Paul is traced to computers in South Korea, Japan, Nigeria, Brazil and elsewhere.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

Wired News readers go to town on orange gourds, turning pumpkins and flames into sci-fi, fantasy and just plain nerdy works of art.

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Lala.com, which launched in 2006 as a CD-swap service, spins into a new business model offering free, unlimited on-demand music streams from major labels. The company hopes to recoup its $160-million investment in licensing deals through music sales — downloads, physical CDs and vinyl — with more revenue streams on the way.

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We’ve all seen the practice of somewhat sleazy “opt-out” offerings on things. You sign up to buy something at an e-commerce site and you have to uncheck a box or you’ll get bombarded by promotional emails for the rest of your life. However, Jeremy Wagstaff is pointing out one that’s even more questionable. Apparently, on a Lenovo page for journalists, it includes two confusing checkboxes. The first says: “Please use e-mail to send me information about other offerings.” The second says: “Please do not use this data to send me information about other offerings.” They’re checkboxes (not radio buttons), meaning that you can check none, one, the other or both… which raises some interesting questions. What happens if you check none or if you check both?

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In the past, casual video games have often been referred to as “bored housewife” games, as they were thought to mostly be popular with older women, rather than the traditional video gaming market, which most people considered to be popular with younger guys. However, it seems like that breakdown is a bit misleading, as a new study shows that men are just as likely to play casual video games, they’re just a lot less likely to admit to it. Anyone wonder if that’s true in the other direction as well? Perhaps a lot more women enjoy playing first person shooters and don’t like to admit it. Either way, this really just highlights that game makers probably should stop worrying about “games for women” or “games for guys” and simply focus on making games people like. The success of the Nintendo Wii seems to support that plan. As for the bored housewife description… perhaps we can just change it to bored employees and be happy.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt