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The Courts

Wife of Harried Pirate Bay Witness Gets Buried in Internet Love 470

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the thanks-for-lending-us-your-hubby dept.
treqie writes "During the trial of pirate bay yesterday, a professor (Roger Wallis) took the witness stand. He told the court things that the prosecutors did not want to hear. The prosecutors then tried to discredit both him and his team's work in the area, as well as his title, it was a real spectacle. In the end, the judge asked if he wanted compensation for being there — he replied that he did not want anything, but they could send flowers to his wife. Many listening online heard, and began sending her flowers, from all over the world. As of this submission, the sum is over 40,000 SEK worth of flowers. There's even a Facebook group for it."
The Internet

Semantic Web Getting Real 135

Posted by kdawson from the open-it-up-and-give-it-away dept.
BlueSalamander writes "Tim O'Reilly just did an interview with Devin Wenig, the CEO-designate of Reuters. With no great enthusiasm I started to read yet another interview on how the semantic web was going to make everything great for everybody. Wenig made some good points about the end of the latency wars in news and the beginning of the battle for automatically detecting linkages and connections in the news. Smart news, not just fast news. Great stuff — but just more words? Nope — a little searching revealed that Reuters just opened access to their corporate semantic technology crown jewels. For free. For anyone. Their Calais API lets you turn unstructured text into a formal RDF graph in about one second. I ran about 5,000 documents through it and played with a subset of them in RDF-Gravity. The results were impressive overall. Is this the start of the semantic web getting real? When big names and big money start to act, not just talk, it may be time to pay attention. Semantic applications anyone? The foundation appears to be here."
Security

Exploit Found to Brick Most HP and Compaq Laptops 294

Posted by Soulskill from the cool-looking-paperweight dept.
Ian Lamont writes "A security researcher calling himself porkythepig has published attack code that can supposedly brick most HP and Compaq laptops. The exploit uses an ActiveX control in HP's Software Update. It would 'let an attacker corrupt Windows' kernel files, making the laptop unbootable, or with a little more effort, allow hacks that would result in a PC hijack or malware infection.' The same researcher last week outlined a batch of additional vulnerabilities in HP and Compaq laptops, for which HP later issued patches."
Businesses

Submission + - Blizzard and Activision Announce $18.8bn Merger (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by
Ebon Praetor
Ebon Praetor writes: "The BBC reports that Blizzard and Activision have announced an $18.8bn merger. Activision's CEO, Bobby Kotick, will become the head of the joint company, while Vivendi, Blizzard's current parent company, will become the largest single investor in the new group. Even with the size of the merger, the combined company will still be smaller than the industry giant EA."

Feed Engadget: NASA develops extreme-heat-resistant CPUs (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Finally, you can wave goodbye to your heat-sinks, mods, and water-cooled contraptions, because NASA is on the scene with a new CPU that can rock 1,700 hours of uninterrupted processing at the low, low temperature of 500 degrees... Celsius. According to reports, scientists at the space agency have developed a chip which they call the "silicon carbide differential amplifier integrated circuit," taking the approach of using more heat-resistant materials, rather than external and extraneous cooling technology. "This new capability can eliminate the additional plumbing, wires, weight and other performance penalties required to liquid-cool traditional sensors and electronics," says Phil Neudeck, a NASA electrical engineer, adding, "It's really a significant step toward mission-enabling harsh environment electronics." The agency believes that the new technology will lead to improvements in safety and fuel efficiency, as well as reduced jet engine emissions, though team leaders say they're mainly hoping to, "...seriously jack up our WoW rigs."

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

GNU Coughs Up Emacs 22 After Six Year Wait 500

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hopefully-worth-waiting-for dept.
lisah writes "After keeping users waiting for nearly six years, Emacs 22 has been released and includes a bunch of updates and some new modes as well. In addition to support for GTK+ and a graphical interface to the GNU Debugger, 'this release includes build support for Linux on AMD64, S/390, and Tensilica Xtensa machines, FreeBSD/Alpha, Cygwin, Mac OS X, and Mac OS 9 with Carbon support. The Leim package is now part of GNU Emacs, so users will be able to get input support for Chinese, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and other languages without downloading a separate package. New translations of the Emacs tutorial are also available in Brasilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Italian, French, and Russian.'"
Movies

Jack Valenti, Dead at 85 650

Posted by CowboyNeal from the man-behind-the-ratings dept.
saforrest writes "Jack Valenti, a man whose influence in both Washington and Hollywood was profound, died today at age 85. He first became famous as special assistant to Lyndon Johnson: he can even be seen in the famous photo aboard Air Force One. In 1966, he quit this job to become president of the MPAA, from 1966 to 2004."

Here Come the Leonids 2006 80

Posted by CowboyNeal from the eye-in-the-sky dept.
yukk writes "The nights and early morning hours of November 17-19 mark the return of the Leonid meteor shower to the skies of Earth. Viewers along the northeastern coast of the United States and Canada, as well as people in Europe and western Africa might get to see a possible 'outburst' of as many as 100-600 meteors per hour. This spike in activity is predicted for 11:45 p.m. — 1:33 a.m. EST on November 18-19 (4:45 — 6:33 UT on November 19)."

Diebold Disks May Have Been For Testers 182

Posted by Zonk from the concientious-tester dept.
opencity writes "The Washington Post reports on the two Diebold source disks that were anonymously sent to a Maryland election official this past week. Further investigation has lead individuals involved to believe the disks came from a security check demanded by the Maryland legislature sometime in 2003." From the article: "Critics of electronic voting said the most recent incident in Maryland casts doubt on Lamone's claim that Maryland has the nation's most secure voting system. "There now may be numerous copies of the Diebold software floating around in unauthorized hands," said Linda Schade, co-founder of TrueVoteMD, which has pressed for a system that provides a verifiable paper record of each vote."

Pepper Pad, an Open Alternative to MS Origami 188

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the fun-toys dept.
SilentBob4 writes to tell us that MadPenguin has a look at an open alternative to Microsoft's Origami, the Pepper Pad. From the article: "The Pepper Pad, like Origami, is a mid-point form factor PC that is bigger and more powerful than a PDA, but smaller and less optimized for traditional desktop PC tasks than a notebook computer or a desktop PC. The Pepper Pad is a good buy for people who would like to have a light-weight, dirt-simple, point-and-click open source device for watching videos, listening to music, reading e-books, and doing simple web surfing with a view screen that is actually easy to read. If you want do more than that, you are really better off getting a small Linux notebook, unless you are willing to get under the hood (which you can do with the Pepper Pad!) and start compiling for yourself."

Big Three Confirm Pre-E3 Events 40

Posted by Zonk from the who's-shocked-raise-your-hand dept.
In unsurprising news, Gamasutra reports that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all have pre-E3 events planned. From the article: "These conferences, which taken place during the two days preceding the three-day expo, have historically laid the groundwork for the entire week's events, revealing key information about the company's plans for the next year. 2005's press conferences revealed many initial details about the upcoming Revolution and PlayStation 3 consoles, as well as the Xbox 360 which launched later that year."

Google in China - The Big Disconnect 148

Posted by Zonk from the quite-a-disconnect dept.
wile_e_wonka writes "The NY Times (registration required) has an article about Google's history in China (beginning way before this whole censorship thing). The article, among other things, talks about of Google's head of operations in China, and his goals for the company there. From the article: 'Lee can sound almost evangelical when he talks about the liberating power of technology. The Internet, he says, will level the playing field for China's enormous rural underclass; once the country's small villages are connected, he says, students thousands of miles from Shanghai or Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate themselves.'"

Throwing Himself On the Innovation Grenade 78

Posted by Zonk from the kaboom dept.
spidweb writes "A long-time Indie game developer writes on IGN.com about trying to make innovative games, and the occasionally painful consequences. From the article: 'Like all (or many, or some, or none at all) other game developers, I spend a lot of time staring into the void of my own uselessness. So, to try to give my life a sense of meaning and accomplishment, I occasionally try to innovate. I really hate trying to do something new. Sure, it gives personal satisfaction. But you know what else is fulfilling? Staying in business. Not losing your house. And you can't pay for food with Creativity checks. But, every five years or so, I try to do something that isn't the standard material.'"

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