25
Nov
Another mobile handset maker predicts doom and gloom in 2009. A look at why semiconductor stocks are trading with P/E ratios in the teens.
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All posts from April, 2012
25
Nov
In one of NASA’s most successful embraces of new online opportunities, personnel at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used Twitter to provide updates on the activities of the Mars Phoenix Polar Lander. We spoke to the woman behind the tweets, Veronica McGregor, to find out what NASA learned from the experience.
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25
Nov
We’ve discussed in the past how ridiculous it is to call video gaming an “addiction” when almost all of the evidence suggests that compulsive video gamers are usually retreating to video games as a result of
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt
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25
Nov
OLEDs make further progress, with better blues and improved power efficiency. Also, Samsung demos a portable with a “foldable” OLED screen at a recent display conference.
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25
Nov
Blockbuster has finally unveiled its own set-top box that can stream thousands of movies to the living room. The company is once again playing catch-up to the competition, but a lack of subscription fees and a unique introductory offer could help it gain lost ground.
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25
Nov
I originally saw this story Sunday night, about a guy
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25
Nov
You may have cyberchondria if you constantly find yourself combing the web for information on that headache, only to find that you could have lupus. Microsoft examined millions of search results and surveyed its employees to find out how people use medical information online, and it found that too much information can be debilitating.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica
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25
Nov
Comic books and video games have had a long, incestuous life together. Ars explores the links between the two art forms, and interviews some of the best talents making sure the cross-overs are high-quality.
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25
Nov
25
Nov
Carbon dioxide, released from burning fossil fuels, doesn’t just enter the atmosphere; it dissolves into the seas, too, making them more acidic. New data suggests this is happening even faster than we thought, and that’s bad news for shellfish.
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25
Nov
The developers behind the Fedora project announced today the official release of Fedora 10. Ars takes a close look at the new features, including glitch-free PulseAudio, RPM 4.6, and the new version of Network Manager.
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25
Nov
If only spammers actually had money and could be forced to pay up when they lose lawsuits… Facebook might have actually found a business model that paid. It appears a judge has ruled in Facebook’s favor against a spammer,
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25
Nov
The case against Lori Drew looks weaker and weaker by the day. The defense has
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25
Nov
BelAir wants to take metro-scale networks indoors through the addition of an 802.11n access point that integrates with existing networks’ management and authentication. Could muni WiFi ultimately succeed by creeping inside?
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25
Nov
When Intellectual Ventures first came about, Nathan Myhrvold convinced tech companies to back him, with a business plan that was all about pooling resources to buy patents for defensive purposes. The original pitch was that by joining with IV, you could make use of the patent portfolio to protect yourself against potential patent lawsuits. Except that once things got going, Myhrvold admitted that to make this work, the threat of also suing people for patent infringement had to be on the table (though, it hasn’t reached that point yet). So, consider me quite skeptical of some former IV execs who have gone off to
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt
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24
Nov
A few weeks back, I wrote how, economically speaking, online news has no choice but to
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24
Nov
24
Nov
24
Nov
Substitute teacher Julie Amero’s life was hijacked along with her browser, but her long legal battle is finally over — along with her teaching career.
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24
Nov
Generating random numbers is quite difficult, and it’s doubly hard to do quickly. Researchers have now demonstrated a pair of lasers that can generate a random bit sequence at a rate of 1.7Gb/s, a boon for strong encryption systems.
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24
Nov
Well, here’s a fun one. A guy who was found guilty of faking his credentials to get a job as a maintenance engineer for the airline Qantas tried to get a lighter sentence by submitted four sterling references. But…
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt
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24
Nov
Internet usage isn’t killing TV; in fact, TV watching has hit record levels in the US. So why aren’t broadcasters rolling in fat autumn piles of cash?
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica
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24
Nov
An anonymous reader submitted an interesting article about a growing controversy among students at various video game universities,
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt
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24
Nov
In the US, cell phone jammers can only legally be used by federal law enforcement agencies. But a move is afoot to expand their use in state and local law enforcement, an effort promoted in part by a company that makes the hardware.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica
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24
Nov
A few months ago, you may recall that there was a semi-popular “viral”video going around, showing a group of friends sitting around a table with mobile phones. They put the phones in the middle of a table surrounding a corn kernel, and then dialed the phones and watched the corn pop. This got some buzz, and a quick debate over whether or not it was real. It seemed rather obviously fake (and, in many ways, similar to another fake video from earlier about cooking an egg with mobile phones), but some people were tricked. About a week after the video became popular, a bluetooth headset manufacturer admitted to creating the video to try to sell more handsfree kits.
Now, the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus has
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24
Nov
France and the European Commission have fought another round in their battle over how to deal with online piracy. This time, the Council on Education, Youth and Culture blocked a French effort to write “three strikes” style penalties into its conclusions on distributing online content.
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24
Nov
One of the absolute worst copyright decisions of the last few decades
was the
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt
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24
Nov
What would you do if you were awarded $873 million? If you’re Facebook, you’ll probably… do nothing. The site recently won a default judgment against a spammer who used the site to peddle porn and male enhancement pills, but it doesn’t actually expect to collect much of the money.
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24
Nov
DVDs are Hollywood studios’ most significant moneymaker these days, but
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24
Nov
Movie theaters have had an alternately hot-and-cold relationship with 3D technology for over a century, but this may be the first time a major sporting league has taken such an interest. The NFL has partnered with 3D imaging company 3ality to explore the feasibility of broadcasting games in 3D, beginning with theaters that already support the technology.
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24
Nov
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This is a case from the Insight Community, a powerful new marketplace that connects companies with intelligent communities like Techdirt.
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24
Nov
After recently going free, Quicken Online gets a feature update and complete redesign that brings new financial prediction features and more reminder options for budgetary spending limits.
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24
Nov
You may recall that BT was one of the bigger supporters of Phorm, the controversial clickstream tracking system that would allow ISPs like BT to insert their own behaviorally targeted ads into your web surfing. The company held
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24
Nov
Households that are dependent upon over-the-air analog TV broadcasts will still find sets going (mostly) dark in February 2009, but a recently-passed Senate bill will help stragglers by offering emergency information and DTV transition help on analog channels for an extra month.
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24
Nov
We’ve been covering the ongoing race to claim the
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24
Nov
The Microsoft Malware Protection Center has released data regarding a fake antivirus tool that was removed this month by the company’s Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT). However, there’s more to this story than just the 994,061 pieces of malware that were removed; real antivirus programs appear to be working well.
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24
Nov
At a recent green energy conference in New York City, companies described their visions for generating power without burning fossil fuels. Ars profiles three of the most promising, involving construction waste, solar brushes, and portable nuclear reactors.
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24
Nov
In a case of what appears to unfortunately be “too little, too late”
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24
Nov
The Guild has long been a hit on YouTube, largely thanks to star and writer Felicia Day. While such content is usually hard to monetize, the show now has an unlikely new patron: Microsoft.
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24
Nov
One of the great things about Matt Mason’s The Pirate’s Dilemma books is the never-ending examples of how allowing people to take content and remix it leads to greater overall creativity and almost always opens up new opportunities for the original — even as the original creator sometimes freaks out about it. A great example of this is with movie fan edits — attempts by fans of certain movies to make the movie even better by re-editing it, changing scenes around, cutting out certain scenes, adding in new special effects or even new scenes entirely. Such efforts are non-commercial, and tend to increase attention and interest in the original film. The first such popular fan edit came after the release of The Phantom Menace, back in 2001, when fans were upset about a variety of things (Jar Jar Binks’ character being a big problem). What came out of it was
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt
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24
Nov
Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 1 is now available for download. New packages have been merged in from Debian and work is progressing on the ARM port. Plans are also beginning to coalesce for a Mono 2.0 transition.
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24
Nov
Drop.io has introduced a number of enhancements over the last few weeks to its unique hosting service, which handles everything from file sharing to blogging to conference calling. Now, it’s topping off these enhancements with a complete redesign that should make the service’s vast potential much easier to grasp for both visitors and admins.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica
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24
Nov
24
Nov
Judge Dale A. Kimball has handed down the final judgment in the SCO case. He dismissed SCO’s claims and sustained his previous decision, which orders SCO to pay Novell $2.54 million.
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24
Nov
So, the economy is collapsing, consumer spending is way down, banks and auto companies are
on the verge of going out of business, unemployment is up, foreclosures are up, and some
might have you
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23
Nov
Throughout 2002 and 2003 there was a ton of speculation concerning when Google would “finally” go public. Everyone knew the company was making a lot of money and growing fast, but it wasn’t clear how big the company was nor how successful. The company’s top execs insisted that they did not want to go public and tried to avoid any discussion of it. However, in early 2004, the company tripped a specific level that required them to start reporting their earnings publicly. If you have over 500 shareholders, even as a private company, you are required to file earnings reports, just as if you were a public company — and at that point, Google execs realized there was no additional benefit in remaining private. So that single event pushed Google to finally IPO, and some were beginning to wonder if the same might push Facebook into an oncoming IPO.
It looks like that won’t be happening.
Facebook’s lawyers requested and received
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23
Nov
The Ars Technica Holiday Gift Guide has gone super-size this year, with 25 full pages of geek-approved gadgets that are perfect for any budget. Find the perfect gift for the geek in your life, or just look and be amazed at the eye-popping variety of goodies collected between two (virtual) covers.
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23
Nov
A virtual think tank devoted to privacy issues boots up, but will its ties to industry be an asset or a liability?
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23
Nov
Only a few weeks after a licensing scandal involving EA and the NFL resulted in a substantial payout to some wronged players, a new controversy has ensnared some UFC fighters who may be compelled to appear in THQ’s upcoming UFC Undisputed 2009.
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23
Nov
20 million HDTV sets could be adversely affected by Selectable Output Control, a trade association warns. Another group calls that estimate low.
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