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Wii Fit, IPhone 3G Among Japan's Top Impulse Buys in 2008 (PC World)PC World - Nintendo's Wii Fit game and Apple's iPhone 3G are among the top 20 products Japanese consumers confessed to buying on impulse in 2008.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:23 pm Network Solutions Phishing Came Before Web Attack (PC World)PC World - A late October phishing campaign may have given online criminals the information they needed to seize control of payment processor CheckFree's Internet domain this week.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:23 pm First Look: Why Facebook Connect Is Bound For Success (PC World)PC World - Facebook launched its Web-wide sign-on system, Facebook Connect, on Thursday -- and let me tell you, this thing has the potential to simplify and enrich social networking in a revolutionary way.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:23 pm Intel Hopes to Bring Free Energy to Mobile Devices (PC World)PC World - Intel on Friday said it is researching technology to harvest free energy from the environment, which could lead to devices such as mobile phones running for indefinite periods without recharging.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:22 pm Symbian Foundation Says It's on Track (PC World)PC World - The Symbian Foundation is on track to take over Symbian as an open-source operating system in 2010 and will put out its first distribution of software for developers in the first half of next year, its executive director said Thursday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:22 pm Macs and Malware: The Straight Dope (PC World)PC World - Earlier this week, Washington Post blogger Brian Krebs stunned the computing world with the revelation that Apple had quietly been recommending anti-virus software for users of Mac OS X.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:17 pm Obama's "ZuneGate"theodp writes "Barack Obama supporters were left shaking their heads after a report surfaced that the president-elect was using a Zune at the gym instead of an iPod. So why would Mac-user Obama be Zune-ing out? Could be one of those special-edition preloaded Zunes that Microsoft bestowed on Democratic National Convention attendees, suggests TechFlash, nixing the idea that the soon-to-be Leader of the Free World would waste time loading Parallels or Boot Camp in OS X just to use a Zune."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 7 Dec 2008 | 10:17 am Next Metal Gear is Coming to "Universal Power Symbol"? (PC World)PC World - Rumor has it Metal Gear Solid 4 is soon to grace the Xbox 360 and reward the platform faithful. The rumor itself is nothing new, but the picture above, just unveiled by Konami at this website, has speculators salivating. Since the colors are electric green on black, and since the symbol to the right looks an awful lot like the symbol in the middle of the power button on the face of the 360, it's not hard to see why.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:40 am Hierarchy of Beards: the evolutionary history of face-fur Wondermark's latest print, the "Hierarchy of Beards," depicts the evolutionary history of luxuriant face-fur.
Hierarchy of Beards Print,
Hierarchy of Beards -- large image
(Thanks, Dave!) Source: Boing Boing | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:31 am Hierarchy of Beards: the evolutionary history of face-furWondermark's latest print, the "Hierarchy of Beards," depicts the evolutionary history of luxuriant face-fur. Hierarchy of Beards Print, Hierarchy of Beards -- large image (Thanks, Dave!)Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:31 am Young Mad Scientist's Illustrated Alphabet Blocks: 26 engraved chunks o' wonderXylocopa's Young Mad Scientist's First Alphabet Blocks come in packs of 26, each engraved with an illustration depicting a different mad scientific discipline. This is how to get your kids started right:...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:28 am Young Mad Scientist's Illustrated Alphabet Blocks: 26 engraved chunks o' wonder Xylocopa's Young Mad Scientist's First Alphabet Blocks come in packs of 26, each engraved with an illustration depicting a different mad scientific discipline. This is how to get your kids started right: A - Appendages | B - Bioengineering | C - Caffeine | D - Dirigible | E - Experiment | F - Freeze ray | G - Goggles | H - Henchmen | I - Invention | J - Jargon | K - Potassium | L - Laser | M - Maniacal | N - Nanotechnology | O - Organs | P - Peasants (with Pitchforks) | Q - Quantum physics | R - Robot | S - Self-experimentation | T - Tentacles | U - Underground Lair | V - Virus | W - Wrench | X - X-Ray | Y - You, the Mad Scientist of Tomorrow | Z - ZombiesA Young Mad Scientist's First Alphabet Blocks (via JWZ) Source: Boing Boing | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:28 am Trotsky meets DisneyHere's a little ditty about Leon Trotsky from The Duhks (cut from their latest CD), set to a perfect-fitting clip from Fantasia. Trotsky's broom army (Thanks, Dad!)Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:25 am Trotsky meets DisneyHere's a little ditty about Leon Trotsky from The Duhks (cut from their latest CD), set to a perfect-fitting clip from Fantasia.
Trotsky's broom army
(Thanks, Dad!) Source: Boing Boing | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:25 am Santa comes early for G1 hackers: dev-only bootloader ripped for all to enjoy
So what does all this mean, exactly? For the time being, not a whole lot. This allows G1 owners to flash their devices with unauthorized (or “unsigned”) firmware builds, which is something that is still at a fairly early stage. That said, it shouldn’t be too long before we start to see some awesome alternative firmware builds (even non-Android - think Linux, or if you’re looking to commit an act of heresy, Windows Mobile.) start to stem from this.
A word of caution from the source:
Heed those words. Installing this could completely brick your phone, so proceed with a big bag of caution. We’ve tested it on our own devices, but your mileage may vary. Big ups to dream_kill, cmonex, and JesusFreke for their amazing work on hacking up the G1 and Android. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: MobileCrunch | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:24 am Britain's "Great Firewall" set to restrict access to WikipediaSeth Finkelstein sez, "Wikinews has learned that six of the United Kingdom's main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have implemented monitoring and filtering mechanisms that are causing major problems...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:23 am Britain's "Great Firewall" set to restrict access to WikipediaSeth Finkelstein sez, "Wikinews has learned that six of the United Kingdom's main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have implemented monitoring and filtering mechanisms that are causing major problems for UK contributors of the popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation sites. The filters appear to stem from accusations that Wikimedia sites are hosting what some would call child pornography. UK people might be interested in joining the article's discussion - this is a golden opportunity to reverse-engineer how the Great Firewall Of Britain works in practice."This is the "voluntary" child-porn filter that we hear very little about. The process by which pages are added to the repository of child porn sites is secret, the list of child porn sites is secret, and the process for correcting errors is secret. At issue are images such as a Scorpions cover that shows the naked chest of a little girl, and a still from a 1938 documentary on the struggle to end child marriages.
British ISPs restrict access to Wikipedia amid child pornography allegations
(Thanks, Seth Source: Boing Boing | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:23 am Rwanda bids to be an Internet hubMitch Wagner sez, "Remarkable video by our sister publication, Internet Evolution, about Rwanda's attempts to bootstrap its economy by becoming an Internet hub for Africa. Rwanda was the site of horrible inter-tribal genocide in 1994, as the Tutsis were massacred by Hutu militia. One of the people interviewed in this video -- a former officer of the Hutu military, who now leads one of the nation's leading telecoms -- says that he doesn't believe the genocide could have happened today, because the Internet would have gotten the world out. I wish I could be so sure. The video shows Rwanda to be a gorgeous, green country. "
Rwanda's Internet Revolution
(Thanks, Mitch!) Source: Boing Boing | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:20 am Rwanda bids to be an Internet hubMitch Wagner sez, "Remarkable video by our sister publication, Internet Evolution, about Rwanda's attempts to bootstrap its economy by becoming an Internet hub for Africa. Rwanda was the site of horrible...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:20 am Workers in Argentina taking over dead factories and running them democraticallyAs Argentine factories go bankrupt and shut their doors, workers are breaking in, starting the machines up again, electing their own leaders, and running the businesses themselves, putting up fierce resistance...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:16 am Workers in Argentina taking over dead factories and running them democraticallyAs Argentine factories go bankrupt and shut their doors, workers are breaking in, starting the machines up again, electing their own leaders, and running the businesses themselves, putting up fierce resistance when the police try to evict them.On 19 March 2003, we were on the roof of the Zanón ceramic tile factory, filming an interview with Cepillo. He was showing us how the workers fended off eviction by armed police, defending their democratic workplace with slingshots and the little ceramic balls normally used to pound the Patagonian clay into raw material for tiles. His aim was impressive. It was the day the bombs started falling on Baghdad..."Occupy, resist, produce" (Thanks, Malgas!) Source: Boing Boing | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:16 am Vincent Patrick and ILS Announce Partnership with VoIP ProviderALISO VIEJO, Calif., Dec. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- href="http://vincentpatrick.sampa.com">Vincent Patrick , vice president and co-founder of International Lead Service (ILS)Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 7:50 am Obama Says Internet Key to Economic RecoveryThis morning, after President-Elect Obama laid out the key parts of his economic recovery plan during his weekly address, he turned to the Internet and told the country that he intends to "renew our information...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 7:23 am NSA Is Building a New Datacenter In San AntonioAn anonymous reader writes in with an article from a Texas paper on the NSA's new facility in San Antonio. "America's top spy agency has taken over the former Sony microchip plant and is transforming it into a new data-mining headquarters... where billions of electronic communications will be sifted in the agency's mission to identify terrorist threats. ... [Author James] Bamford writes about how NSA and Microsoft had both been eyeing San Antonio for years because it has the cheapest electricity in Texas, and the state has its own power grid, making it less vulnerable to power outages on the national grid. He notes that it seemed the NSA wanted assurance Microsoft would be here, too, before making a final commitment, due to the advantages of 'having their miners virtually next door to the mother lode of data centers.' The new NSA facility is just a few miles from Microsoft's data center of the same size. Bamford says that under current law, NSA could gain access to Microsoft's stored data without even a warrant, but merely a fiber-optic cable." The article mentions the NRC report concluding that data mining is ineffective as a tactic against terrorism, which we discussed a couple of months back.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 7 Dec 2008 | 7:17 am The End Of Venture Capital As We Know It?Last week, something turned. We found out that not only are we in a recession, but it started a year ago. Tech layoffs went into overdrive (12,000 at AT&T, 600 at Adobe, 130 at Real Networks),...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 7:08 am The End Of Venture Capital As We Know It?
Last week, something turned. We found out that not only are we in a recession, but it started a year ago. Tech layoffs went into overdrive (12,000 at AT&T, 600 at Adobe, 130 at Real Networks), bringing the total unemployed tech workforce to at least 90,000, by our count. Even Facebook decided to indefinitely postpone an earlier plan to allow employees to sell some stock privately. One likely consideration in Facebook’s about-face is that outside investors may no longer be willing to buy Facebook stock at the already-lowered $4 billion internal valuation the plan called for, never mind the over-inflated $15 billion that Microsoft got in at last year. Capital is drying up, and things may still get worse before they get better. So far in this downturn, we’ve seen startups batten down the hatches (as they should) and hope to survive long enough to make it out the other end. But what about venture capital firms? When will we start to see the VC layoffs and fund closures? It is already happening to some extent. The number of partners listed on some VC Websites is already quietly shrinking. Some new VC funds are having difficulty raising money and even existing funds are running into problems collecting commitments from strapped limited partners. The carnage on Wall Street is having a trickle-down effect on venture capital firms. The limited partners who typically invest in VC funds—university endowments, pension funds, investment banks, other institutions, and wealthy individuals—are short of cash right now. Harvard’s endowment lost $8 billion in the past four months alone. Many limited partners simply cannot honor capital calls from VCs. (When a VC firm creates a new fund, it does not collect all the money at once. Instead, it receives promises from limited partners that they will invest when the capital is needed). Rather than face the penalty of default, limited partners increasingly are trying to sell their commitments at deep discounts on secondary markets. Conversely—knowing that they may not be able to call in their chits—VC’s are motivated to slow down their investment activity. All of this is to be expected during a recession. Entrepreneurs wait for a rebound, and then their startups get funded once again. But what if this recession (and bear market) lasts longer than a year or two? And what if startup founders don’t feel like waiting around for VCs and their limited partners to get back on their feet? Startups can be run so cheaply now (with open-source software, cloud computing, and virtual teams spread across the Web) that many more can achieve profitability without any VC cash. Up until recently, they still happily took that cash when it was handed to them. But certain classes of startups, especially Web startups, may now find they don’t even need that money. Y Combinator’s Paul Graham argues:
The less venture capital there is for new startups, the faster the decoupling will begin.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: TechCrunch | 7 Dec 2008 | 7:08 am Five easy steps to plug online music leaksDENVER (Billboard) - When an album leaks online before it arrives in stores, it can be a real punch in the gut.Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 6:57 am Endeavour to begin return trip to Fla. on MondayNASA says space shuttle Endeavour will begin its cross-country return trip to Florida on Monday, one day later than expected. The shuttle's return atop a modified jumbo jet had been...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 6:28 am Santa Claus Conquers the Martians gets the Mystery Science 3000 treatment from Cinematic TitanicCinematic Titanic -- the creator-driven successor to the fantastic Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- has a new installment just in time for the holidays: this month, the guys kick the crap out of "Santa...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 6:22 am Santa Claus Conquers the Martians gets the Mystery Science 3000 treatment from Cinematic TitanicCinematic Titanic -- the creator-driven successor to the fantastic Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- has a new installment just in time for the holidays: this month, the guys kick the crap out of "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" (which has plenty of crap to kick!). For those of you who haven't been following this excellent series, the premise is simple: the five Cinematic Titanic comics are present in silhouette, superimposed over the picture, coming up with snappy jokes every second or so. I average about two belly laughs a minute, and about ten times more chuckles. The Cinematic Titanic guys are basically an artist-owned co-op who record and release this stuff off their own bat, direct to you at $15 a pop. Screw "It's a Wonderful Life," and to hell with the merely kitschy experience of watching "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" without commentary. It is only through the auspices of Cinematic Titanic that the holidays can truly be realized.
Cinematic Titanic: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians) Source: Boing Boing | 7 Dec 2008 | 6:22 am Walmart.com offers "thousands" of Wiis from MondayNEW YORK (Reuters) - Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii has emerged as one of the few hot products this holiday season, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc will offer "tens of thousands" of the hard-to-get video...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 5:21 am Chicago band uses digital savvy to promote albumDENVER (Billboard) - Progressive jam band Umphrey's McGee is capturing the attention of the music industry with the pre-order campaign for its upcoming album.Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 5:10 am 24 Surfing Innovations (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) In her Lifetime television movie called Flirting with Forty, actress Heather Locklear plays Jackie, a woman who falls for a much younger surf instructor. These surfing innovations...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Dec 2008 | 5:09 am The Unforgettable Amnesiacjamie found an account in the NYTimes of the life and death of one of the most important figures in modern neuroscience, Henry Gustav Molaison — a man who could not form memories. Molaison became an amnesiac after a brain operation in 1953. Known worldwide as H.M., Molaison was studied intensively for 55 years. Dr. Brenda Milner, a psychologist from Montreal, was the first researcher to visit Molaison. In 1962 she authored a landmark study demonstrating that a part of Molaison's memory was fully intact. "The implications were enormous. Scientists saw that there were at least two systems in the brain for creating new memories. One, known as declarative memory, records names, faces and new experiences and stores them until they are consciously retrieved. ... Another system, commonly known as motor learning, is subconscious and depends on other brain systems. This explains why people can jump on a bike after years away from one and take the thing for a ride, or why they can pick up a guitar that they have not played in years and still remember how to strum it. Soon 'everyone wanted an amnesic to study,' Dr. Milner said..."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 7 Dec 2008 | 4:14 am Escape from the browser?
Sun's difficult position has been covered here, in business circles, and even in the land of puppets. So when Jonathan Schwartz surfaces with the launch of JavaFX 1.0, naturally the question in everyone's mind is how exactly a client technology is going to advance Sun's position in the marketplace as it downsizes to avoid a possible collapse.
Schwartz comes out swinging in the video embedded below, talking of Java's strong position on desktops and what he calls the majority of mobile devices. He frames the discussion around the desire of companies to escape from the lock-in of the browser, dividing the world conceptually between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Google Chrome (presumably including Firefox and its growing share.) As he details a range of screens through which to project Java power, you can even see an iPhone on the far right though Java, like Flash, is shut out of the Apple smartphone.
Source: TechCrunch | 7 Dec 2008 | 4:11 am Flickr adds mobile video-sharing features - Afterdawn.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 7 Dec 2008 | 4:00 am Facebook and the Social Dynamics of PrivacyEd. Note: Boing Boing's current guestblogger Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where he works on the overlap of social and technological networks. James Grimmelmann of New York Law School has written a terrific essay on privacy issues and social networks services entitled Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy. Grimmelmann is trying to do nothing less than re-shape our attitude towards privacy on social networks, building an erudite and extensively documented argument that our framing of privacy problems, and most of the solutions we have in mind, are bad fits for social networking services.
For me, the essential pair of insights in this paper are that a) our attitudes towards privacy are shaped by industrial norms -- the individual vs. the corporation or the state -- while on social networks, the most important class of privacy violations are in fact peer-to-peer and b) that these violations, when they happen, are a side-effect of the system doing what it is designed to do, which is to facilitate the spread of personal information. The first challenge is re-shaping our sense of what a privacy violation means in the context of social network services, and the second is to accept that, since a full stemming of these violations is prima facie impossible, we need a new set of practices around minimizing them where possible and improving recovery from them where possible. Because of the enormity of the head-shift required to think through peer-to-peer privacy risks, and because Grimmelmann has worked through the issues so carefully and thoroughly, I think this should be required reading for anyone thinking about privacy as it is actually lived. Facebook and the Social Dynamics of PrivacySource: Boing Boing | 7 Dec 2008 | 3:49 am IT Factory’s Bagger Arrested In California After Worldwide Search
A translated version of one of the articles is here. A Danish reader named Mark Jensen writes to us:
Stein Bagger is wanted by the Danish police for financial fraud and a possible link to an assault on a business man (alledgedly executed by members of the Hell’s Angels, a group he is possibly connected to). Bagger first disappeared a little over a week ago in Dubai, where he was attending a business conference with his family. A lot of facts are still missing. We’ll update as this develops. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 7 Dec 2008 | 3:08 am Botta Uno Automatic: Dude, I think you lost something
Source: CrunchGear | 7 Dec 2008 | 2:57 am Incipio’s Lloyd adds a microphone to your 4G iPod Nano
Source: CrunchGear | 7 Dec 2008 | 2:18 am Shuttle's Calif. departure delayedThe space shuttle Endeavour's departure from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., for Florida was delayed Saturday due to technical problems, NASA said. Technicians found that three of eight pins used to secure an aerodynamic cone to the shuttle's tail were not the right size, the Los Angeles Times reported.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 7 Dec 2008 | 2:09 am Free Resources for Windows Perl Developmentjamie pointed out an important announcement in the Perl community. Adam Kennedy, known as Alias, developed Strawberry Perl to "make Win32 a truly first class citizen of the Perl platform world." Over the last year, major CPAN modules have used Strawberry Perl to get to releases that work trouble-free on Windows. But the tens of thousands of smaller modules on CPAN are lagging, in many cases because of lack of access to a Windows environment for development and testing. Now Alias has worked with Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab to provide for every CPAN author free access to a centrally-hosted virtual machine environment containing every major version of Windows. "More information (and press releases) will follow, the entire program under which this partnership will be run is so new it's only just been given a name, so some of the organisational details will ironed out as we go. But for now, to all the CPAN authors, all I have to add is... Merry Christmas. P.S. Or your appropriate equivalent religious or non-religious event, if any, occuring during the month of December, etc., etc."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:00 am What Programming Language For Linux Development?k33l0r writes "Recently I've been thinking about developing (or learning to develop) for Linux. I'm a IT university student but my degree program focuses almost exclusively on Microsoft tools (Visual Studio, C#, ASP.NET, etc.) which is why I would like to expand my repertoire on my own. Personally I'm quite comfortable in a Linux environment, but have never programmed for it. Over the years I've developed a healthy fear of everything Java and I'm not too sure of what I think of Python's use of indentation to delimit blocks. The question that remains is, what language and tools should I be using?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2008 | 11:15 pm Why Auto-Scaling In the Cloud Is a Bad IdeaGeorge Reese writes "It seems a lot of people are mistaking the very valuable benefit that cloud computing enables — dynamically scaling your infrastructure — with the potentially dangerous ability to scale your infrastructure automatically in real-time based on actual demand. An O'Reilly blog entry discusses why auto-scaling is not as cool a feature as you might think."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2008 | 10:30 pm Agora: the other Android phoneSection: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Web, Google
Named the “Agora,“ there will be two versions. The “Agora” is priced at $299. The “Agora Pro” is priced at $399. The big difference between the two seems to be GPS which is available only on the Pro. The device features more of a BlackBerry-like form factor with a QWERTY keyboard below the 2.5-inch touch screen. We’ve covered the Android software extensively, so we know what to expect from the OS. The Agora comes with a headphone jack built-in (no screwy adapters necessary). It also packs a 624 MHz processor compared to the G1’s 528 MHz processor in a form factor that just seems sleeker than the bulky G1. I still expect a slew of Android-based phones in the next year since the OS is free and can be tinkered with by any carrier. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a Palm running Android in 2009.
Read: [Kogan] Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2008 | 9:45 pm RIAA's Oppenheim Tries To Protect MediaSentryNewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's 'Prince of Darkness,' Washington DC lawyer Matthew Jan Oppenheim of The Oppenheim Group, who controls and supervises all of the RIAA litigations against ordinary folks, has requested permission to intervene in the 'probable cause' hearing scheduled next week in Raleigh, North Carolina, against MediaSentry. The hearing was convened by North Carolina's Private Protective Services Board, after complaints were filed by a law firm representing a number of North Carolina State University students who had been targeted by the RIAA based on the unlicensed 'investigation' conducted by SafeNet (the new name for MediaSentry). I guess the RIAA is worried. They should be."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 6 Dec 2008 | 9:38 pm EDS chief executive Rittenmeyer to retire
The Internet’s wunderkind released what he feels are the top 10 gifts for geeks this year. It’s worth while, to be honest. I didn’t even knew that there was a washer/dryer-safe USB drive but that’s #2. I can vouch for #9; great tool. Check it out. Source: CrunchGear | 6 Dec 2008 | 8:35 pm FBI Vaguely Warns of Asterisk Vishing Vulnerabilitycoondoggie writes in to let us know about a fraud alert issued by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, warning that an unspecified bug in unspecified versions of Asterisk IP PBX software could allow criminals to generate "thousands of vishing telephone calls to consumers within one hour." PC World checked with Digium, developer of Asterisk, and found some puzzlement as to what bug the FBI had in mind. "In March, researchers at Mu Security reported a bug that could allow an attacker to take control of an Asterisk system. Digium wasn't certain what vulnerability the FBI was referencing in its advisory. However John Todd, the company's Asterisk open-source community director, believes that it was probably this March bug. That vulnerability 'basically allowed you to take over the account of one individual,' he said. ... However, the attack described by the FBI would be extremely hard to pull off, Todd said."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 6 Dec 2008 | 8:32 pm Appletell review - Mimobot designer USB flash drivesFROM APPLETELL - The Mimobots look like weird little people, or, indeed, robots. Some, in fact, are designed to look like specific people or robots; Mimoco has released lines licensed from Star Wars, Halo, and others. MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2008 | 8:00 pm Careful. These USB dinos might not be as cuddly as they look.
Novelty USB flash drives drives are a dime a dozen these days, but there is something about these fire-breathing dragons that are just so damn cute. Look at ‘em! They are available in a verity of colors and all have a flexible silicone lid that flips open to reveal the USB port. Could be a great stocking stuffing at only $21.95 for a 4GB dino. Source: CrunchGear | 6 Dec 2008 | 7:50 pm As Oil Price Plummets, U.S. Ethanol Profits are DownAnalysts said that weekly profit margins for U.S. ethanol distillers fell a few cents a gallon to even grimmer levels as gasoline prices plummeted."It's all a function of demand.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 Dec 2008 | 7:50 pm Forry Ackerman Dead At 92rrohbeck was one of several readers to note the passing of Forrest J. Ackerman at the age of 92. Ackerman, who coined the term sci-fi in 1954, has been called the 'world's biggest fan.' Over a long career he acted as literary agent for Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, Hugo Gernsback, and L. Ron Hubbard; he published Ray Bradbury's first short story in a fan magazine in 1938. Ackerman wrote over 2,000 articles and short stories, including, oddly enough, lesbian fiction in the 1940s. In recent years mounting health bills forced him to sell his home, the 'Ackermansion,' and most of the 300,000 items of memorabilia it stored.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2008 | 7:15 pm True gamer T-Shirts that everyone will love
These certainly will not get you laid but boy are they clever. $18-$20.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 Dec 2008 | 7:10 pm The price of oil in perspectiveEd. Note: Boing Boing's current guestblogger Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where he works on the overlap of social and technological networks. As the price of oil has fallen from its dramatic highs of just a few months, ago, I often find myself thinking back to an essay by Yegor Gaidar, an economist and acting prime minister of Russia from 1991 to 1994. The essay, The Soviet Collapse, is subtitled "Grain and Oil" and tells the story of the end of the Soviet Union as the interaction of the price of those two goods. The Soviet Collapse starts with the history of centrally-managed grain production, an unmitigated but slow-motion disaster, which they then proceeded to patch by importing grain with the budget surplus from rising oil prices, starting in the 1970s. That worked for a while, and then it stopped working.
For an economics essay filled with price and output charts, it's a surprisingly gripping read. It's also a reminder of what's at stake now. Because oil consumption matters more than production to English-speaking countries, our press often covers the price of oil as a question of how often people drive to the mall. For countries like Russia, however, now as much as then, the price of oil has profound existential ramifications. Re-reading this, I got a picture of how geo-politically dramatic 2009 could turn out to be. The Soviet Collapse: Grain and OilSource: Boing Boing | 6 Dec 2008 | 6:56 pm AskMarkets Launches Prediction Market For Crunchbase. Who’s Going To The DeadPool?
The application lets users bet on the chances any particular startup will be acquired, get additional funding or head to the deadpool in the next year. An example: users say Animoto has a 51.5% chance of being acquired, a 25% chance of being funded and a 23.4% chance of deadpooling. I bought some shares of “get acquired” because I love this startup’s focus on on making one product perfectly while competitors wander. I also created my own market for TechCrunch as a startup. Yep, I’m trading on inside information. Information provided by CrunchBase
Information provided by CrunchBase
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 6 Dec 2008 | 6:54 pm BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 11-30-2008Section:  We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does! Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gizmodo | 6 Dec 2008 | 6:30 pm The Beginnings of Apple ComputerJohn Burek points out an article written by Stan Veit, former editor-in-chief of Computer Shopper magazine, and one of the first retailers to deal with the fledgling Apple Computer in the late 1970s. Veit describes his introduction to the Apple I and his early interactions with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as they developed their early models. Quoting: "After Woz hooked his haywire rig up to the living-room TV, he turned it on, and there on the screen I saw a crude Breakout game in full color! Now I was really amazed. This was much better than the crude color graphics from the Cromemco Dazzler. ... 'How do you like that?' said Jobs, smiling. 'We're going to dump the Apple I and only work on the Apple II.' 'Steve,' I said, 'if you do that you will never sell another computer. You promised BASIC for the Apple I, and most dealers haven't sold the boards they bought from you. If you come out with an improved Model II they will be stuck. Put it on the back burner until you deliver on your promises.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 6 Dec 2008 | 6:25 pm US-bound Denon DVD-A1UDCI universal Blu-ray player priced
Denon outed the amazing DVD-A1UDCI Blu-ray player - which we predicted back at CEDIA - just the other day and thankfully, us here in the States will not have to deal with the exchange rate. You see, the European model carries a MSRP of 4,000 Euros which works out to be a whopping $5,800 in US dollars. The US-bound model, however, will sell for only (LOL) $3,800 which works out to be 1,000 Euro less. Ouch. All the universal goodies remain so chances are this player will become the de-facto reference player when it drops in February ‘09. Source: CrunchGear | 6 Dec 2008 | 6:11 pm Application Uses Wi-Fi To Turn Regular iPod Into A PhoneOwners of an iPod Touch can now download a freeware application that can turn the music player into a virtual mobile phone.The application, called Truphone, allows users to make calls to other iPod Touch owners as well as Google Talk's messaging service using the Touch’s wi-fi feature.The new app springs from the technology Truphone developed for smartphones and iPhones.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Dec 2008 | 6:10 pm Cold-sore virus linked to Alzheimer'sBritish researchers say drugs used to treat cold sores could prove effective against Alzheimer's disease. Studies at the University of Manchester suggest the virus that causes cold sores -- herpes simplex virus -- may be one of the main causes of Alzheimer's, The Times of London reported Saturday. TheSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 Dec 2008 | 6:00 pm Study Suggests Intelligent Men Produce Better SpermNew research from the UK suggests that men of higher intelligence tend to produce better quality sperm.The Institute of Psychiatry headed up a study where they analyzed data from former US soldiers who served during the Vietnam war era and found that those who performed better on intelligence tests tended to have more - and more mobile - sperm.The results appear to support the idea that genes underlying intelligence may have other biological effects too, suggesting that if tiny mutations impair intelligence, they might also harm other characteristics, such as sperm quality.Researchers believe it is likely that people with robust genes might be blessed with a biological "fitness factor" making them fit, healthy and smart.Scientists in the past tended to assume that lifestyle factors were more likely to underlie any relationship between intelligence and health.Smarter and brighter people, for instance, may be less likely to smoke, and more likely to take exercise, both of which are known to impact on mental performance.The UK study tested the gene theory by taking two characteristics that seemed unlikely to be associated with each other - intelligence and sperm quality.The team found a small but statistically significant link and was able to show that this could not be explained by unhealthy habits, such as smoking or drinking alcohol.The researchers studied 425 men who undertook several intelligence tests and provided semen samples.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 Dec 2008 | 5:55 pm What to Do When Your Gadget Is Sold Out - PC Magazine
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 6 Dec 2008 | 5:07 pm Konami’s teaser site launched, questions emerge
Konami has launched a new teaser site for the next Metal Gear Solid. See for yourself and decide what the green characters mean. I’m not sure any more because I tend to get excited about the series coming to the Xbox 360. But hey, why not? [Via gamepod.hu [HR]] Source: CrunchGear | 6 Dec 2008 | 4:52 pm UPDATE 1-Manila says Ashmore buying Petron stake for $524 mlnMANILA, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Philippine Finance Secretary Margarito Teves confirmed on Saturday that a unit of UK'S Ashmore Group has agreed to buy the government's 40 percent stake in oil refiner Petron...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Dec 2008 | 4:08 pm Glaxo says oral drug raises blood platelet countsLOS ANGELES, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Patients treated with GlaxoSmithKline PLC's Promacta rather than a placebo were eight times more likely to have sustained increases in platelet counts, according to pivotal...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Dec 2008 | 4:00 pm Verizon Updates BlackBerry Storm Software To Fix Bugs (RIMM) - Silicon Alley Insider
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 6 Dec 2008 | 3:29 pm Global Warming Remains a Threat Despite Cool 2008Average global temperatures for 2008 should come close to 14.3C, the coolest since 2000 and 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07, according to preliminary estimates due for release next week by the Met Office. However, climate scientists say that doesn’t mean that global warming is on the decline."Absolutely not," said Dr Peter Stott of the Met Office's Hadley Centre.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 Dec 2008 | 2:40 pm Facebook, Google Vie for Connect Services - PC World
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 6 Dec 2008 | 2:30 pm Farmers Outraged At Proposed 'Cow Belching' TaxA new proposal to charge farmers fees for greenhouse gases emitted by their animals’ belching and flatulence is one of several plans under consideration by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).The agency began reviewing proposals after the U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 Dec 2008 | 2:05 pm Delicious Has A Brand New Audio Player For MP3 Bookmarks
Social bookmarking pioneer Delicious (they recently turned five years old) pushed out a couple of updates to its Internet Explorer and Firefox add-ons yesterday, fixing a couple of bugs and adding some features. But it looks like Delicious has also integrated a useful feature they didn’t mention in the blog post announcing the updates: a brand new audio player to play your MP3 bookmarks inside the browser. TechCrunch reader Nicola D’Agostino spotted the new media player quickly, and he subsequently got a confirmation from a community manager of the Delicious team in the comments of the company blog post, adding that they’ll talk more about it soon. I just tried it out, and while it’s not a groundbreaking feature, it’s a welcome addition for people who are used to bookmarking and tagging MP3 files with Delicious. The audio player, which pops up in a subtle horizontal bar, sports back/forward buttons, an integration with Yahoo! Search, a timer and a playlist. Update: a trackback from the blog of former GM of Yahoo! Music Ian Rogers teaches us a little more about the background of the player, which is fact the Yahoo! Mediaplayer.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 6 Dec 2008 | 12:42 pm Vista SP2 Beta Available For Public Download - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 6 Dec 2008 | 11:58 am Google's Chrome Team Mulls Local File Restrictions - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 6 Dec 2008 | 11:58 am IBM Launches Microsoft-Free Linux PCs - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 6 Dec 2008 | 11:58 am Apple Sees 300 Million App Store Downloads - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 6 Dec 2008 | 11:58 am Latest Facebook Attack Stems ... - InternetNews.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 6 Dec 2008 | 11:06 am
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An update on our 
A company I’ve never heard of, Kogan, is introducing the second Android phone on January 29th, 2009 in Australia. 
Greek startup 
