Google announced this week that their Google Earth application can now be used from the browser, instead of having to download and install the desktop application. “Google also launched an JavaScript API that lets you interact with the globe, draw markers, add layers or integrate with Google Maps. ‘The Google Earth Plug-in and its APIs let you embed the full power of Google Earth and its 3D rendering capabilities into your web pages.’ Google LatLong blog announced that each Google Maps mashup can take advantage of the new 3D view by adding a single line of code. ‘Our goal is to open up the entire core of Google Earth to developers in the hopes that you’ll build the next great geo-based 3D application, and change how we view the world.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Google’s open-source Android OS for mobile phones is maturing quite a bit. At the Google I/O conference this week, the company unveiled more UI polish and some innovative hardware integration, and it even opened up its web app hosting platform to all developers.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

The latest cyberterrorism fairy tale circulating in Washington posits that Chinese government hackers were responsible for the worst power failure in U.S. history. Next week: How Chinese hackers caused Hurricane Katrina, the mortgage crisis and climate change.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

Next Gen recently had a chance to sit down with Ubisoft and discuss the next addition to the Prince of Persia franchise. The team is excited that this isn’t just another tired rehash of the same characters and setting, however, promising a new prince and open world adventuring on top of the already rich world of the previous games. “‘We had a whole story with the previous trilogy, and Prince of Persia is a general universe where several different stories can unfold,’ [creative director Jean-Christophe] explains. ‘We’re starting afresh, in the same universe, and we wanted to bring something new while keeping what worked before. We introduce a new Prince, who won’t start as a prince, more a drifter and adventurer, lost in the desert. He’ll be confronted by a lot of fantasy settings, as opposed to Assassin’s Creed, which was more realistic. Here he will come to a land and be engulfed in the conflict between two ancient gods, in this very specific region of Persia. It’s based on an old Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, and the battle between light and darkness.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

For years, we’ve covered Major League Baseball’s ridiculous attempts to falsely claim that it has

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

CNet is reporting that while Novell still has a long way to go before they start making Red Hat nervous, they have at least gotten a seat at the grown-up table. Reporting 31% year-over-year growth in their Linux business, Novell attributes very little of this success to their Microsoft partnership, looking to their Redmond connection mainly for interoperability work. “Novell’s core Linux business is growing. By “core,” I mean that our non-Microsoft- related Linux business is growing. These are Suse Linux Enterprise Server subscriptions sold directly by the Novell sales force or by our channel partners, without any Microsoft certificates or Microsoft salespeople involved. However, the important thing is that our total revenue picture for Suse Linux Enterprise is growing, as our customers increasingly don’t distinguish. As we’ve said before, Microsoft offers an alternate avenue for purchasing subscriptions but we are focused on growth of the whole category.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic has filed a complaint against Facebook, asking the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to review the site’s policies. The group describes Facebook as “a minefield of privacy invasion.”

Read More…

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

sufijazz writes “The US government is not alone in wanting to snoop on everything citizens do over email/phone. The Indian government wants that right too. RIM is stating they have no means to decrypt, no master key, and no back door to allow the government to access email.” The article notes that 114,000 BlackBerries are in use on the Indian subcontinent. The government is concerned about attacks by militants and sees the BlackBerry as a security risk.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Valve thinks that PC gaming is strong, and getting better. The Steam service is about to evolve in an unexpected way: allowing you to access your games, files, and configurations from any PC, anywhere.

Read More…

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

On Thursday, we wrote about Metallica’s latest foray online, where it’s attempting to build a community around its latest music. Given Metallica’s history of attacking Napster all the way back in 2000, we expected there to be some pushback, but what was really stunning was how many of the comments were from people (many of whom had been big fans of the band) still pissed off about Metallica’s actions, and refusing to have anything to do with the band. We weren’t the only ones to notice. Wired had a story on Metallica’s efforts and discovered exactly the same thing. The vast majority of the comments were vehemently negative. Clearly, Metallica really tarnished its reputation by its actions eight years ago, and it’s still paying for it.

This brings up a good point, that we’ve mentioned in the past in the comments, but not so clearly in a post. A person, organization, band or company’s reputation is an important “scarce” good — and once damaged, it’s quite difficult (though not impossible) to rebuild the shattered goodwill. When talking about what would happen in a world without copyright, for example, people often say “but in a world without copyright, couldn’t someone just copy your own creation and pretend they were their own.” The answer is yes, but they do so at the risk to their own reputation. If the news comes out that the person/organization/band/whatever was taking others’ works and not giving credit where it was due, that would harm their reputation. And, as Metallica is learning, a tainted reputation can have serious long-term impact.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

Oh, what a year! 1993 contains the seeds of a new world — the military nails down GPS, awareness of climate change dawns, a bunch of kids in Illinois code the first useful browser for the web, Sears discontinues its paper catalog, the X-Files debuts and Wired magazine is born.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

Tom Moreland tips us to photos of Dell’s answer to the Eee PC on the Direct2Dell site. Dell posted these after an attendee at the D conference spotted Michael Dell carrying one. The company hasn’t released any details, so you can take these with a grain of salt — from a commenter to Dell’s post: “Here are the specs for the Dell Mini Inspiron: Atom 1.6 GHz, 3 USB ports, Ethernet, Card reader, Kensington lock, Adapter socket, Mic/line-out, VGA port, screen resolution at 1280×800. Scheduled to be released before the end of June 2008. It costs less than $500.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Residents of Santa Fe, NM, who claim to be sensitive to WiFi emissions plan to fight the city’s hotspot plan with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Oddly enough, they’ve never complained about cordless phones that operate on the same frequency as 802.11b/g

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

An anonymous reader writes “The Industry Standard has put together a list of 10 dot-com stars from the Internet bubble of the late 1990s, and tracked down what happened to the services and their founders. A lot of the services are still around, albeit under new ownership, including eToys, Garden.com, and DrKoop.com. Others have been completely reinvented — Boo.com, an online clothing retailer that burned through $125 million in funding in the late 1990s, is now an online travel community. Of the founders, many were able to cash out early and/or achieve later online success. Excite’s Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer later started JotSpot, which was bought by Google, and Kraus now directs work on Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Others did not fare as well, such as two of the co-founders of Garden.com, who declined to cash out at the height of the bubble, and are currently ‘between business ventures.’ The insiders’ post-mortems of the failed dot-coms are interesting — several suggest the concepts were good but too early for their time, while others identify specific factors that led to the failures — ranging from a lack of advertising to ‘intense’ greed.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

ManicMechanic and other readers sent in news of a tribe of aboriginal people from the border of Peru and Brazil that has been photographed by helicopter for the first time. The images show huts in a village and people in red body paint shooting arrows at the helicopter. The outfit that released the photos, Survival International, works to end illegal logging in the rainforest in order to protect the uncontacted tribes living there. They estimate that 100 uncontacted groups exist worldwide, about half of them in the Amazon basin.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

The Center for Democracy and Technology’s has a new report on the use of watermarks to track the purchasers of copyrighted content. The report is nominally about enhancing privacy, but it fails to point out that the best privacy protection is not to use such watermarks at all.

Read More…

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

A while back T-Mobile received a trademark on the color magenta for use in selling mobile phone services in certain markets, but it seems to be taking the trademark a little more seriously than it should, even to the point of threatening the blog Engadget for having a magenta-colored logo. It also took mobile operator Telia to court in Denmark for its own use of a magenta logo, but missed out on a couple of important facts: Telia and T-Mobile don’t compete in the same markets in Denmark and (more importantly) Telia’s magenta is a different shade of Magenta. The court has not just tossed out the lawsuit, but has dumped the court costs and Telia’s legal fees onto T-Mobile’s bill. Hopefully that will teach them that trademark law shouldn’t be abused.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “You can’t make stuff like this up. The EU is actually testing a prototype system of cameras in airplanes to monitor passengers’ facial expressions in order to detect both terrorism and ‘air rage.’ The Security of Aircraft in the Future European Environment (SAFEE) project used an Airbus A380 fuselage with six wide-angle cameras to watch for people running or loitering near the cockpit door, as well as a camera in the back of every seat to watch for facecrime like sweating too much, or acting nervous. But that’s okay, because the system won’t alert anyone until it sees a ‘combination of signs,’ instead of just one stray expression, or they might accidentally catch a lot of people who are afraid of flying or of being watched.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Security appliance maker Barracuda Networks has proposed a deal to acquire Sourcefire, the company behind the popular open source Snort and ClamAV security software. Barracuda is currently defending ClamAV from patent litigation and has a long history of contributing to open source security software projects.

Read More…

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

kickassweb writes “If you think your ISP is sniffing packets, or worse yet, sending reset packets to stop torrents, there’s now a beta Network Measurement Tool to detect them, courtesy of Lauren Weinstein of the Net Neutrality Squad. It’s released under the LGPL and runs under Win2K, XP, and Vista. Quoting: ‘While the reset packet detection system included in this release is of interest, NNSquad views this package as more important in the long run as a development base for a broad range of network measurement functionalities and associated communications and analysis efforts.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Fallen Andy notes that Comcast, one of the largest US ISPs, lost control of its domain name to what appeared to be juvenile social engineers of the old school — i.e. not in it for the money. The intruders got into Comcast’s registrar account at Network Solutions and repointed the domain’s DNS records. A blog entry at SANS points out how trivially easy this can be. Reader ElvenKnight points out an insightful interview up at Wired with the two young guys who perpetrated the hack.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

ruphus13 takes us to ZDNet for an analysis of comments by Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, about how open source is “much more potentially disruptive” to Microsoft’s business strategy than Google. Ozzie also spoke about the future of Microsoft’s search technology, which will develop with or without Yahoo. There is a related interview at OStatic with several Microsoft employees about how they view and interact with the open source community. The head of Microsoft’s global open source and Linux team is quoted saying: “The other thing I think is missing is implementation of a basic principle of economic fairness. Thousands of developers have put very hard work into building software used by millions of people and companies, yet only a fraction of these developers are rewarded financially. Currently there are perfectly good projects that have been abandoned by their developers despite being used by large corporations. Subsequently the projects fall out of use. This is unnecessary waste that would often be prevented by making it easy for companies to pay the developers directly. I think it’s important to solve this so that the sustainability of open source projects is improved.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

The entertainment industry in the US has been conducting a worldwide campaign to diminish the concept of “fair use” — even to the point of accusing other countries that have US-style fair use systems of allowing piracy. However, the campaign appears to have failed in Japan, which does not currently have a “fair use” exception in its copyright law. However, as sent in by Petrea Mitchell, Japan is now adding the concept of fair use to its copyright law, and doing so following the US’s own concept of fair use. Does this mean that Japan will soon be added to the bogus watch list of foreign countries that don’t respect copyright?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

Over a dozen civil rights groups are denouncing FCC Chair Kevin Martin’s latest “à la carte” scheme. But some of them endorsed the XM/Sirius merger, which also includes an à la carte system.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

erikaaboe notes that the US Department of Energy has announced a competition to develop efficient solid-state lighting technology. The “L Prize” program will allocate as much as $20 million in cash prizes for innovations to replace the common light bulb. Further details are available at the L Prize website. From the press release: “Lighting products meeting the competition requirements would consume just 17% of the energy used by most incandescent lamps in use today. The plan also includes a rigorous evaluation process, including testing of proposed products by independent laboratories (conducted through DOE’s CALiPER test program), as well as field evaluations by DOE and utility partners to assess products in real world conditions. Four major California utilities … have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with DOE, agreeing to work cooperatively to promote high-efficiency solid-state lighting technologies.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

We’ve been pointing out why record labels

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

FeatherBoa points out that the New Democratic Party in Canada has introduced legislation to limit the amount of control Canadian ISPs can exert over their subscribers. The bill would amend the Telecommunications Act to “prohibit network operators from engaging in network management practices that favour, degrade or prioritize any content, application or service transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination, subject to certain exceptions.” Support for net neutrality in Canada has been building for quite a while now. Quoting CBC News: “‘This bill is about fairness to consumers,’ said Charlie Angus, the NDP’s digital spokesman. It also looks to prohibit ‘network operators from preventing a user from attaching any device to their network and requires network operators to make information about the user’s access to the internet available to the user.’ The proposed bill makes exception for ISPs to manage traffic in reasonable cases, Angus said, such as providing stable speeds for applications such as gaming or video conferencing.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Last week, I wrote a post highlighting the faulty premises behind a secretly negotiated treaty between the US and many other countries, the so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Since then a bunch of news articles have been written about ACTA, with most of the focus on how it will have border guards going through your iPod and computers to see if you have any infringing content. A bunch of folks have been submitting stories on this all week, despite the fact that we wrote about it last week. However, what’s most interesting to me is how quickly this turned from a little story — first posted to Wikileaks and a few blogs, into something that’s been in major newspapers (oddly, mostly focused in Canada).

Even more interesting, however, is how this has so quickly turned into activism, with some newspapers already already calling for people to stand up against ACTA to protect our privacy rights. Think about that for a second. This was a treaty on the “boring” topic of copyright, that was basically pitched by the entertainment industry to politicians who wrote it up in secret. It leaked out to a single website, and within a week there were major newspaper editorials calling for people to stand up against it, and thousands, if not millions, of people informed about the potential harm this treaty could cause. So much for slipping it under the radar.

This is really the culmination of a few different factors, including the entertainment industry’s misguided and rapidly backfiring battle against consumers, that has catapulted copyright from a boring “wonkish” issue into one that people recognize effects so many aspects of their daily lives. Combined with the wonderful communications ability of the internet, it makes it harder for the entertainment industry to simply pull one over on people like this. Of course, as we’ve noted, the industry keeps on trying, and they love sneaking through legislation and treaties before anyone recognizes it — but the rapid response to ACTA (which is far from over, of course) suggests that some of the industry’s advantages are slipping away. Hopefully, this issue will continue to receive the attention it deserves so that there’s a real debate on whether or not such a treaty is needed (it’s not).

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

coondoggie brings us a Networkworld report detailing NASA’s selection of six mission proposals for further study by the Small Explorer (SMEX) Program. The goal of the program is to develop cheap, tightly focused science missions (PDF). Among the selected proposals are a satellite telescope bank for use in detecting exoplanets, and a solar coronograph which will study solar wind and coronal ejections. Networkworld provided links with more detailed information on most of the projects.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

D-Link’s newest media extender acts a lot like an Apple TV. Too bad an Xbox 360 can do the same job for the same amount of money and play both videogames AND DVDs.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

Over a month ago, Intel promised to accelerate the introduction of a new generation of fast, high-density flash chips for use in SSDs. The Intel/Micron joint flash venture delivered on that promise on Thursday, and now it’s up to Intel to convince customers that the SSD is ready for the enterprise.

Read More…

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

At the beginning of May, we mentioned that a bunch of gas stations were discovering that their older pumps couldn’t handle prices over $4. They ticked up to $3.99 9/10 / gallon and that was it. For now, it appears that some regulators are allowing such gas stations to start selling gas by the half gallon — or, rather charging half-price and doubling it at the register. They’re only allowed to do this if they can show that they’ve ordered new parts that will handle up to $9.99 — though, of course the folks who make such parts are running out of them quickly as a bunch of stations are rushing to upgrade. Any bets on how long until we’ll be writing about the gas stations running into problems when the price of gas reaches $10/gallon? What’s scary is that even at the half price ($2.03/half gallon), it wasn’t that long ago when that seemed really high for a full gallon.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

Google may be the man behind the curtain when it comes to lodging anonymous complaints over eBay’s plan to go PayPal-only in Australia. Google is certainly not the only party that is concerned over the elimination of competition, though.

Read More…

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes “The RIAA just can’t get enough of going after University of Maine students, but it appears that the judges in Portland, Maine, may be getting wise to the industry’s lawyers’ antics. RIAA counsel submitted yet another ex parte discovery order to the Court (‘ex parte’ meaning ‘without notice’), in BMG v. Does 1-11, but this time the judge refused to sign, pointing out that there is no emergency since there is no evidence that records are about to be destroyed [PDF]. This is the same judge who has previously suggested the imposition of Rule 11 sanctions against the RIAA lawyers, accusing them of gamesmanship.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Internet TV network Revision3 suffered a network failure during Memorial Day weekend as a result of a massive denial of service attack perpetrated by MediaDefender. Revision3 has asked the FBI to investigate the attack.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

After certain NBC TV shows wouldn’t record on Microsoft’s Vista Media Center a few weeks ago, Microsoft admitted that Media Center includes broadcast flag technology, while NBC Universal admitted that it accidentally set the flag. However, now Microsoft is trying to clarify, claiming that it’s not actually the broadcast flag that it included, but an entirely different flag, called CGMS-A. NBC Universal concurs, saying that the mistake it made was in setting the CGMS-A flag. Of course… the real question is why does this matter at all? If the impact is identical (Microsoft willing to let TV networks declare a show un-recordable), then what does it matter which annoying copy protection scheme is used?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

Researchers use a combination of neural network programming and fMRI to begin the process of teaching computers the meanings of nouns.

Read More…

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Check out our exclusive screenshots of Android, Google’s nascent operating system for next-generation mobile phones. When it’s released later this year, it’s sure to give the iPhone a run for its money.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

An anonymous reader writes “I’m a fairly new physics professor at a well-ranked undergraduate university. When I arrived, I was surprised to discover there were no computer programming requirements for our majors. This has led to a series of fairly animated faculty curriculum conversations, driven by the question: to what extent should computer programming be a part of an undergraduate science education (in particular, physics)? This is a surprising line of questioning to me because in my career (dominated by research), I’ve never seriously even questioned the need. If you are a physics major, you learn to program. The exact language isn’t so important as is flow control, file handling, basic methods/technique, basic resource management, and troubleshooting. The methods learned in any language can then be ported over to just about any numerical or scientific computational problem. Read on for the rest of the reader’s questions and his experiences dealing with faculty who have their own ideas.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

A San Diego start-up says it’s using algae to create “green crude” that is chemically identical to petroleum and can be refined into renewable, carbon-neutral gasoline. Energy experts say it might be on to something big.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

Nathan Myhrvold may have a way with words, but it doesn’t mean that what he’s doing with Intellectual Ventures makes any sense. At the D: conference yesterday, Myrhvold

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

Forget to turn the lights off? Want to warm up the hot tub while you’re still on the slopes? Use free software and inexpensive wiring components to control your home appliances from afar. In Wired’s How-To Wiki.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

longacre writes “With the gaming industry now spending more to develop user interfaces than the Pentagon, the Army has begun putting all that R&D to good use in weaponry and training. Reversing the traditional role of games attempting to simulate real life killing machines, it is now the weapons makers using gaming technology to make their products more effective. Popular Mechanics notes, ‘Already, [Mark Bigham, director of business development for Raytheon Tactical Intelligence Systems] says that Raytheon has been experimenting with Wii controllers to explore the possibilities for training simulators and other applications that require physical movement. Just think, one day, the R&D that Nintendo put into Wii bowling could end up influencing basic training.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

With summer coming up, it’s time to take a look at the best — and worst — waterproof gadgets. We’ve got a handful of the highlights, from the Sony Walkman to waterproof flash media cards.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired: Top Stories

Deutsche Telekom has been charged with spying on journalists and employees. The case bears a striking resemblance to the 2006 HP pretexting scandal.

Read More…

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica