Reuters - South Korean cellphone makers and
Swedish-Japanese rival Sony Ericsson forecast robust handset
sales, defying worries that a slowing U.S. economy and record
oil prices will hurt consumer demand. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:57 am
In the name of "defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt" the Associated Press is now selling "quotation licenses" that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that "fair use" -- the right to copy without permission -- means "Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.").
It gets better! If you pay to quote the AP, but you offend the AP in so doing, the AP "reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher's reputation."
Over on Making Light, Patrick Nielsen Hayden nails it:
The New York Times, an AP member organization, refers to this as an “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt.” I suggest it’s better described as yet another attempt by a big media company to replace the established legal and social order with with a system of private law (the very definition of the word “privilege”) in which a few private organizations get to dictate to the rest of society what the rules will be. See also Virgin Media claiming the right to dictate to private citizens in Britain how they’re allowed to configure their home routers, or the new copyright bill being introduced in Canada, under which the international entertainment industry, rather than democratically-accountable representatives of the Canadian people, will get to define what does and doesn’t amount to proscribed “circumvention.” Hey, why have laws? Let’s just ask established businesses what kinds of behaviors they find inconvenient, and then send the police around to shut those behaviors down. Imagine the effort we’ll save.
Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.
Welcome to a world in which you won’t own any of your technology or your music or your books, because ensuring that someone makes their profit margins will justify depriving you of the even the most basic, commonsensical rights in your personal, hand-level household goods.
The people pushing for this stuff are not well-meaning, and they are not interested in making life better for artists, writers, or any other kind of individual creators. They are would-be aristocrats who fully intend to return us to a society of orders and classes, and they’re using so-called “intellectual property” law as a tool with which to do it. Whether or not you have ever personally taped a TV show or written a blog post, if you think you’re going to wind up on top in the sort of world these people are working to build, you are out of your mind.
Chip manufacturing equipment maker Cadence Design says it has proposed to buy Mentor Graphics, a maker of electronics testing software, for $16 per share. Based on Mentor's shares... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:43 am
AP - Chip manufacturing equipment maker Cadence Design says it has proposed to buy Mentor Graphics, a maker of electronics testing software, for $16 per share. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:43 am
Michael Geist has begun a new series on the Canadian DMCA, Industry Minister Jim Prentice's no-consultation copyright law. In the five part series, Geist will show how the Canadian DMCA will criminalize out of the daily activities of a hypothetical Canadian family.
Jim and Josee live in a Calgary suburb together with their three children Stephen (age 16), Rona (age 10), and Diane (age 4). Jim is the chief librarian at the National Energy Library, while Josee teaches media and communications at a local high school.
This post focuses on Jim. Soon after he arrives into the office on Monday morning, he is contacted by a researcher located in the field who asks him to track down an article and to email an electronic copy as soon as possible. Jim finds the article, scans and sends it via email. After work, he drops into the local HMV and purchases a DVD copy of the movie Juno. At home, he transfers a copy of the movie to his video iPod for viewing on an upcoming business trip.
I've been hearing from Boing Boing readers who've written to the government to protest the bill, and the government line is "We're not taking away rights, we're giving them to the public! We're making it legal to rip CDs and make other personal copies!" (Indeed, Prentice sent a letter to the Toronto Star that says just this). This isn't mere disingenuousness: it's a flat-out lie. Yes, the bill will legalize ripping your CDs, so long as there's no DRM on them, and so long as the EULA doesn't forbid it. The Canadian DMCA says to rightsholders, "There are no exceptions to copyright law, except the ones you permit. If you want to prohibit a use that Parliament has protected, go right ahead! Just add some DRM or stick it in the EULA, and whatever you say will become the law of the land."
Makes you wonder why we're bothering to pay Parliament's salaries, if the laws are going to be made by record companies from now on.
Link
A newly discovered batch of well-preserved dinosaur bones, petrified trees and even freshwater clams in southeastern Utah could provide new clues about life in the region some 150 million Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:30 am
Company sees another record month FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., June 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Zaldiva(TM), Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: ZLDV.OB) (XETRA: UZ8.DE) (Frankfurt: Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:30 am
NASHUA, N.H., June 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SkillSoft PLC (Nasdaq: SKIL), a leading Software as a Service (SaaS) provider of on-demand e-learning and performance... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:30 am
Series B Funding Will Solidify ImageSpan's Leadership in Digital Content Licensing and Settlement Services SAUSALITO, Calif., June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- ImageSpan Inc.,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:30 am
Pretzelmaker / Pretzel Time Pledge $5,000 Purse for Best 'Pretzel Dogs Kick Bun' Video ATLANTA, June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Pretzelmaker and Pretzel Time, the innovators... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:26 am
Steven "Ghost Map" Johnson's location-based software project Outside.in just launched Radar, a fascinating tool for visualizing and taking action on the stuff happening near you.
Radar, as the name would suggest, organizes the news in dynamic, concentric circles around you. First it looks for news immediately around you, within 1000 feet. Then it searches for stories in your neighborhood. Then, in your city. And if you’re out in the middle of the desert somewhere, where there are no neighborhoods or cities, it will just keep on going until it finds something, then will ping it back to you. Just like the real thing.
What I like about Radar is that it drastically reduces the work involved in finding out what’s going on around you. No more sifting through various pages to find things near you that are interesting, no more scrolling down hundreds of lines of ledes to find the one story that catches your eye. The whole landscape of local online content is laid out before you in one simple cascade of headlines, along with their corresponding topics and places. It’s the easiest way around to get the goods on your local scene.
You can even take this whole ‘what’s interesting around me’ idea one step further, by specifying which places and topics are of particular interest to you. The feature will make note of that and call special attention to stories about those topics and places as they come on to your page.
Then, once you’ve set your Radar for your specific location and the topics/places that interest you, you can create an alert, to receive instant notification of things going on around you.
Add to this the neighbor alerts feature, which allows everyone to write directly and immediately to the pages of people in their area, and Radar becomes a total readable/writeable local content solution.
AP - The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers' group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:23 am
When I was in Sweden last weekend, everyone was up in arms about the new Swedish proposal to empower the national spy agency to listen in on all phone calls and network transactions that "cross the border" (due to the way Swedish telcos manage their tariffs, this would include virtually every mobile phone call, whether or not the speakers were in Sweden at the time). The vote on this takes place tomorrow, and the Swedes are pissed. From Slashdot:
This Wednesday at 9am the Swedish Parliament is voting on a new wiretapping law which would enable the civil agency (FRA — Defense Radio Agency) to snoop on all traffic crossing the Swedish border. E-mail, fax, telephone, web, SMS, etc. 24/7 without any requirement to obtain a court order. Furthermore, by law, the sitting Government will be able to instruct the wiretapping agency on what to look for. It also nullifies anonymity for press tipsters and whistleblowers. Many agencies within Sweden have weighed in on this, with very hefty criticism, e.g. SÄPO (akin to FBI in the US), the Justice Department, ex-employees of FRA, and more. Nonetheless, the ruling party block is supposedly pressuring its members to vote 'yes' to this new proposed law with threats to unseat any dissidents. After massive activity on blogs by ordinary citizens, and street protests, the story has finally been picked up by major Swedish news sources. The result will likely be huge street protests on Wednesday. People have been completely surprised since this law has not gotten any media uptake unitl very late in the game.
340 Gbps Added on 'MAC' Undersea Cable FLORHAM PARK, N.J., June 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GLBC), a leading global IP solutions provider,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:01 am
Eco-Safe Systems USA, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: ESFS) is pleased to report excellent results from a commissioned challenge study of disinfection effectiveness of ozone vs. chlorine. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Jim Konkoly, Highlands Today, Sebring, Fla. Jun. 16--SEBRING --Two of Highlands County's early agricultural pioneers in the citrus industry will have their names names written posthumously on the outside and inside of the Agri-Civic Center on George Boulevard. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Rod Kloeckner, Belleville News-Democrat, Ill. Jun. 17--Fred Cronin wasn't surprised to see Bryan Short pull a state-record bighead carp from the waters of Horseshoe Lake. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Rusty Dennen, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va. Jun. 17--Twice in the past five years, Kyle Schick had serious flooding at his Colonial Beach marina. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Jim Woods, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio Jun. 17--Is there a problem in your neighborhood? Tell The Watch. Each Tuesday, The Dispatch features a problem from Columbus, its suburbs and surrounding counties and explains how officials are working -- or not working -- to fix it. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By David Bracken, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C. Jun. 17--RALEIGH -- Many of the city's landlords are steaming because the City Council may require them to pay an annual registration fee even though lots of other taxes, fees and daily expenses are rising. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Victoria Cherrie, The Charlotte Observer, N.C. Jun. 17--The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities Department is calling for stepped-up water conservation as crews try to repair the main water line to south Charlotte. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Michael Hewlett, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C. Jun. 17--LEXINGTON -- Yesterday, nothing but large chunks of debris were left of one of the apartment buildings that stood for years in Park Circle at historic Erlanger Mill Village. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
ATLANTA, June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- While billions of dollars are spent yearly on strollers, high chairs, car seats, and other items to help infants stay safe and comfortable -- parents often overlook the environmental health impact of the one place where their babies spend the majority of their time -- the nursery. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
BEIJING, June 17 /Xinhua-PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ATA Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAI) (''ATA'', or the ''Company''), the leading provider of... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
Cox is First Multiple System Cable Operator to Join Advanced IP Services Group LAS VEGAS, June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Cox Business ( href=" Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
Preferences Highlight Indicators of Economic Concerns as Peak Moving Season Begins NEW YORK, June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- As summer begins and peak-moving season shifts... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
Yesterday on Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at a stabby knife that lets you inflate your victim with rapidly expanding gaseous pain, considered an easily understood diagram for building a marijuana grow... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 10:19 am
DivShare, an online service for storing and sharing video, photos, music and documents, has had a security breach. The company announced on its blog tonight that "a malicious user" had accessed its database,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 10:02 am
InfoWorld - Avocent brought its industry-leading out-of-band management systems to our project, providing IP KVM for PC and Sun servers, service processor aggregation, serial terminal services, and the DSView management server. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 17 Jun 2008 | 10:00 am
Ponca City, We Love You sends news of a study by Colorado State University psychologist William Szlemko that recorded whether people had added seat covers, bumper stickers, special paint jobs, stereos, or plastic dashboard toys to their cars. Szlemko found a link between road rage and the number of personalized items on or in people's vehicles. "The number of territory markers predicted road rage better than vehicle value, condition, or any of the things that we normally associate with aggressive driving,' says Szlemko. What's more, only the number of bumper stickers, and not their content, predicted road rage... Szlemko suggests that this territoriality may encourage road rage because drivers are simultaneously in a private space (their car) and a public one (the road). 'We think they are forgetting that the public road is not theirs, and are exhibiting territorial behavior that normally would only be acceptable in personal space,' the researcher says.
[ Direct Link to Video ] Personally, I can’t imagine that anybody would be interested enough in the minutiae of my day-to-day existence to justify a Twitter account. But if I did use one, I’d... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 9:02 am
Blog-focused advertising networks are all the rage right now, with both Federated Media and Glam pulling down big valuation financing rounds in the last few months based very early growth metrics. Other... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 9:00 am
According to data from Nielsen Mobile, Google managed to capture 61 percent of the mobile search market in the first four months of the year, with Yahoo! taking a very distant second at 18 percent. MSN... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:38 am
For more discussion and analysis, download or subscribe to "Guardian Daily". The Guardian's news podcast is available for free first thing every weekday morning. For more information on all our podcasts... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:32 am
Press kit materials are available online at http:// virtualpressoffice.com/kit/huaweinxtcomm for Huawei North American: Manning Selvage & Lee Susan MacLaughlin, Senior Account Executive 972-628-7851 susan.maclaughlin@mslpr.com www.mslpr.com or Huawei Technologies Co., NA 214-545-3700 Huawei Technologies is a global organization and a leader in innovative telecommunications technology, providing next generation networks for 70% of the world's top 50 operators and enabling well over 1 billion subscribers. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
ClearSpeed Technology (LSE:CSD), the world leader in high-performance, high-reliability parallel processing solutions, today announced the launch of its new Advance e720 accelerator board using the company's new CSX700(TM) processor. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager Fax from USA: 646-607-1907 Fax from rest of the world: 01-481-1716 press@researchandmarkets.com Logo: http://www.researchandmarkets.com Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/ de34b5/us_construction_bu) has announced the addition of the "US Construction Business Computer Hardware Expenditures, 2007-2012" report to their offering. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Jay Ermis, The Huntsville Item, Texas Jun. 17--New Waverly school district trustees approved a technology plan, an early release waiver and the hiring of three teachers during their June meeting Monday night. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
Get organized Remember the Milk can help you arrange to-do lists, create tasks, assign color-coded priorities, get reminders, share tasks with others and more. Use the free service with mobile devices, instant messaging services, e-mail and more. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Rob Johnson rob.johnson@roanoke.com 981-3234 The Christian custom of foot-washing is well known as an annual event at some churches the week before Easter. Another ritual, anointing with oil, is practiced four times a year at Trinity Ecumenical Parish in Moneta. The Rev. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Andrew D. Smith, The Dallas Morning News Jun. 17--The ER doctor stares at the unconscious stranger on his table. He has never seen this patient. He has never seen this patient's records. He cannot know the patient is allergic to the medicine he's about to inject. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp.'s abandoned takeover bid for Yahoo Inc. appears to have culminated with a disheartening thud for those two companies but amounted to yet another coup for online search leader Google Inc. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
LAS VEGAS, June 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Changing network environments and new sophisticated applications such as IPTV have brought the DSL Forum to transform its work across the broadband space and leads today to the unveiling of its new name and identity - The Broadband Forum. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 17 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
An anonymous reader writes "The small travel agent that I work for recently received an email from one of our competitors with several thousand of their potential customers in the 'To:' and 'Cc:' fields. My boss now wants to use these addresses to send unsolicited advertisements. I would like to convince him not to do this, as I believe that this practice is morally wrong and legally dubious. However, morals don't go very far in the business world, so I'm asking Slashdot: what business-oriented arguments can I use to dissuade my boss from spamming?"
Tara of UgoTrade has an enlightening interview with Zain Naboulsi, a Microsoft staffer informally known at Bill's company as the guy for Virtual World Evangelism (he's one of 4-5 folks at Microsoft with... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 7:24 am
(TrendHunter.com) This month, our most active new Trend Hunter was Pearl, who added over a hundred trends in her first 30 days. Pearl is a Canadian with a science background. She loves to read and collect... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 6:20 am
By Evan Ackerman Were you up at 12:01 AM checking the MSI website with an itchy credit card like I was? No? Well, good. You saved yourself some beauty sleep. Although you can pre-order an MSI Wind subnotebook... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 6:08 am
(TrendHunter.com) We've all been told to not play with our food. However, the producer of these creations obviously didn't listen. The collection of images includes everything from a hungry bread monster... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 6:00 am
Recently I had a fun and fruitful interview about my book on Dr. Dave's Shrink Rap Radio, billed as the Net's top psychology-related podcast. In the process, Dr. Dave became an SL Resident himself, so... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2008 | 5:47 am
AFP - Finnish telecom giant Nokia has launched two new email-capable handsets for business users and vowed to defend its position as the world's leading mobile phone maker.
castrox writes "This Wednesday at 9am the Swedish Parliament is voting on a new wiretapping law which would enable the civil agency (FRA — Defense Radio Agency) to snoop on all traffic crossing the Swedish border. E-mail, fax, telephone, web, SMS, etc. 24/7 without any requirement to obtain a court order. Furthermore, by law, the sitting Government will be able to instruct the wiretapping agency on what to look for. It also nullifies anonymity for press tipsters and whistleblowers. Many agencies within Sweden have weighed in on this, with very hefty criticism, e.g. SÄPO (akin to FBI in the US), the Justice Department, ex-employees of FRA, and more. Nonetheless, the ruling party block is supposedly pressuring its members to vote 'yes' to this new proposed law with threats to unseat any dissidents. After massive activity on blogs by ordinary citizens, and street protests, the story has finally been picked up by major Swedish news sources. The result will likely be huge street protests on Wednesday. People have been completely surprised since this law has not gotten any media uptake unitl very late in the game."
PC World - Thirty years ago, Intel released the 8086 processor, introducing the x86 architecture that underlies every PC--Windows, Mac, or Linux--produced today. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 17 Jun 2008 | 5:00 am
Reuters - New Line is putting
"Gears of War" in motion, setting Len Wiseman ("Live Free or
Die Hard") to direct the video-game adaptation. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 17 Jun 2008 | 4:06 am
mytrip points out a blog posting by Rogers Cadenhead, author of the Drudge Retort blog, who says: "I'm currently engaged in a legal disagreement with the Associated Press, which claims that Drudge Retort users linking to its stories are violating its copyright and committing 'hot news' misappropriation under New York state law." An AP attorney filed six Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment. The AP material they object to consists of snippets of from 33 to 79 words. Cadenhead claims his lawyer believes that all fall squarely within the province of fair use.
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes "AppleInsider is running an article about Apple's new SproutCore Web application development framework, utilizing Javascript and some nifty HTML 5 to offer a 'Cocoa-inspired' way to create powerful Web applications. Apple built on the OSS SproutIt framework developed for an online e-mail manager called 'Mailroom.' Apple used this framework to build their new Web application suite (replacing .Mac) called MobileMe. Since SproutCore applications rely on JavaScript, it seems Apple had good reason to focus on Squirrelfish for faster JavaScript interpretation in Webkit. Apple hosted a session last Friday at WWDC introducing SproutCore to developers, but obviously NDAs prevent developers from revealing the details of that presentation. Apple has a chance here to keep the Web becoming even more proprietary as Silverlight and Flash battle it out to lock the Web application market into one proprietary format or another. Either way, this is a potential alternative, which should make the OSS crowd happy." TechDIrt's writeup on the browser evolving towards acting as an OS expands on the theme AppleInsider raises.
The Associated Press has sent copyright violation take-down notices to the operator of the Drudge Retort, claiming that lifting a few sentences and the headline of the newswire's material is unlawful. The move underscores the legal uncertainties over what is copyright infringement in the blogosphere. The AP said it is formulating guidelines, but is steering clear of defining fair use under the Copyright Act.
One of the best features about Firefox is its seemingly infinite potential for customization. Webmonkey digs into the community's best third-party enhancements to the brand new browser.
A square isn't just four right angles, it's a frame of mind (pun intended). We want you to run with this subject and show us the most interesting squares in your world.
Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best squares photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The 10 highest-ranked photos will appear in a gallery on the Wired.com homepage. Show us city blocks littered with picture frames -- barn doors and window panes. Wrap us in a quilt and push us across a checkerboard into the heart of New York City. Think outside the box, but show us the box too. Get it? We don't. Show us the way.
The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, which may include exposure information, equipment used, etc.
We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).
Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!
A new cancer treatment promises permanent cancer remission by targeting a small percentage of tumor cells that some scientists are calling cancer stem cells for their purported role in malignancy.
The Firefox 3 web browser will be released at 10am on Tuesday, and we can't recommend it enough. Here's Webmonkey's list of reasons why you should make upgrading to the latest edition of Firefox your highest priority.
InfoWorld's Gripelog airs a subject that should interest this community — involved as we were with efforts against UCITA back in the day. One main aim of the derailed UCITA initiative was to give software manufacturers and content owners a degree of control over users' computers. Gripelog's Ed Foster informs us that UCITA is sneaking back in, under the cover of an an anti-spyware bill, S. 1625, now making its way through the US Senate. One clause in this draft bill would legalize what the BSA calls "electronic self help" — i.e., the ability for commercial entities to cripple or disable software or networks on your computer if they believe you are violating their property rights.
Africa has become extremely attractive to mobile phone companies because of its sheer potential for growth. As markets in Europe and the US reach saturation point, competition and regulatory pressure has... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 16 Jun 2008 | 11:03 pm
Creative Review and Sony commissioned photographer Jason Tozer to demonstrate Sony's new Alpha 350 D-SLR camera. For his test, Tozer took a magical series of bubble photographs. The images were created entirely in-camera. The CR Blog has now posted a fascinating behind-the-scenes photo essay showing how Tozer made the photos. Link
CWmike writes "June 30 is Microsoft's deadline for mainstream computer makers to stop selling new PCs with the old operating system, and the date that it will stop shipping boxed copies to retailers. That's just two weeks away. Computerworld offers a FAQ about XP's approaching retirement after Microsoft's most recent relaxation of the retirement rules, with some details about which machines big-brand computer makers will be selling with XP after June 30. First FAQ: Any sign that Microsoft will reprieve Windows XP's retirement? Sort of."
The South China Mall is the largest mall in the world, and it's a ghost town, with only a handful of shops in its peeling, spooky, sprawling guts.
The employees of this giant mall could, if they wanted, spend their breaks driving bumper cars, browsing for house-wares, strolling along a Venetian canal, petting fake herons in an indoor rain forest, or gazing at an eighty-five-foot replica of the Arc de Triomphe – all, of course, without leaving the premises. They could also picnic next to the bell tower of St Mark’s Square in Venice, soak up the ambience of San Francisco, or take a ride on the mall’s indoor-outdoor roller coaster, a 553-meter flying railway known as Kuayue Shi Kong, or “Moving Through Time and Space”.
As it happens, it’s just those things – time and space – that give so much trouble to the workers here. They have too much of both. On a recent Friday afternoon, an amusement-park employee, slouched in a forsaken ticket booth, tried to kill time by making origami. Another worker slept, with perfect impunity, on a table. In front of the haunted house attraction, one attendant was doing hand-stands while two others looked blankly on.
There was nothing else to do, because the South China Mall, which opened with great fanfare in 2005, is not just the world’s largest. With fewer than a dozen stores scattered through a space designed to house 1,500, it is also the world’s emptiest – a dusty, decrepit complex of buildings marked by peeling paint, dead light bulbs, and dismembered mannequins.
Brady Brim-DeForest says: "Found Gallery in Los Angeles is hosting a series of 16 images, crafted by artist Irene Kai in the 1970s. These images created a stink of royal proportions in 1976 when Princess Margaret was forbidden to see them. The artist later slipped a peep book full of the images to the princess. The images are too good to miss." Link
The Oscar-winning special-effects master who designed animatronics and prosthetics from films such as Aliens, Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park died Sunday.
"Order your Talking Jesus Doll now for only $19.99. Don't miss this opportunity for your child to experience a direct connection with Jesus and the scriptures."
The Talking Jesus Doll is a religious treasure that recites key verses from the Bible aloud. Just press the button and the Talking Jesus Doll speaks to your child. It’s a great way to create a personal connection between God’s word and your child.
1sockchuck writes "What happens when you hire Star Wars enthusiasts as the system admins for your data center? You end up with the R2-D2 server monitoring system. The staff at Japan's Syun (Only if you read Japanese) have converted an R2-D2 DVD Projector into a Nagios-based server monitoring system that alerts them whenever a server goes offline." Say what you will, but that's a lot harder to ignore than a beeper.
European scientists discover three Earth-like planets revolving around a star 42 light-years away. However, the planets are much too hot to support the type of life found on our planet.
An alleged MySpace spammer must pay the company $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in attorney's fees for bombing MySpace users with unwanted ads.
philgross writes "My university's Computer Science Department has just renovated its main office, and is looking for artwork for the walls. Do you have any recommendations about their favorite posters or images that address the algorithms, the history, and/or the aesthetics of Computer Science?"
An anonymous reader writes "The White House Office of Administration is not required to turn over records about a trove of possibly missing e-mails, a federal judge ruled Monday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found the agency does not have "substantial independent authority" so it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act."
AP - MySpace can collect $6 million from a notorious Internet marketer accused by the popular online hangout of spamming its users. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Jun 2008 | 8:20 pm
The New York Times, an AP member organization, refers to this as an “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt.” I suggest it’s better described as yet another attempt by a big media company to replace the established legal and social order with with a system of private law (the very definition of the word “privilege”) in which a few private organizations get to dictate to the rest of society what the rules will be. See also Virgin Media claiming the right to dictate to private citizens in Britain how they’re allowed to configure their home routers, or the new copyright bill being introduced in Canada, under which the international entertainment industry, rather than democratically-accountable representatives of the Canadian people, will get to define what does and doesn’t amount to proscribed “circumvention.” Hey, why have laws? Let’s just ask established businesses what kinds of behaviors they find inconvenient, and then send the police around to shut those behaviors down. Imagine the effort we’ll save.
Yesterday on Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at a stabby knife that lets you inflate your victim with rapidly expanding gaseous pain, considered an easily understood diagram for building a marijuana grow room and lusted after a solar-powered theremin in an Altoids tin. There was also a mind-reading chair bristling with solenoids, some justification for Apple turning .mac into MobileMe and Shannonia, LEGO city in microscale, as well as the world's most luxurious cubicle. Beschizza pointed out a leather keyboard with a surprising dual-use function. Brownlee liked a binaural mic with human ears attached and also a tagged AT-AT. Joel wondered if Spore's creature creator (and specifically, the way it hid creature information in PNG images) could be used to email cute monsters that turned into Goatse.cx when clicked. And we all bummed when Hollywood monster maker Stan Winston died.
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Reuters - Internet media firm Yahoo Inc said on
Tuesday that its mobile search service will be offered by six
more telecom companies in Asia.
AFP - Finnish telecom giant Nokia has launched two new email-capable handsets for business users and vowed to defend its position as the world's leading mobile phone maker.
Brady Brim-DeForest says: "Found Gallery in Los Angeles is hosting a series of 16 images, crafted by artist Irene Kai in the 1970s. These images created a stink of royal proportions in 1976 when Princess Margaret was forbidden to see them. The artist later slipped a peep book full of the images to the princess. The images are too good to miss." Link
