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Windows

White House Specifies And Mandates Secure Windows 242

Posted by Zonk from the on-the-up-and-up dept.
twitter writes "The Register is reporting on an effort to bring order to the wild world of Windows patching, at least in the US Federal Government. The White House has issued a directive to federal CIOs throughout the country, issuing a call for all new PCs to use a 'common secure configuration.' 'Registry settings and which services would be turned on or off by default [are specified and] the directive calls for suppliers (integrators and software vendors) to certify that the products they supply operate effectively using these more secure configurations. "No Vista application will be able to be sold to federal agencies if the application does not run on the secure version of Vista," explained Alan Paller, director of research at The SANS Institute.'"
The Courts

RIAA Admits ISPs Have Misidentified "John Does" 271

Posted by kdawson from the record-keeping dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has sent out a letter to the ISPs telling them to stop making mistakes in identifying subscribers, and offering a 'Pre-Doe settlement option' — with a discount of '$1000 or more' — to their subscribers, if and only if the ISP agrees to preserve its logs for 180 days. Other interesting points in the letter (PDF): the RIAA will be launching a web site for 'early settlements,' www.p2plawsuits.com; the letter asks the ISPs to notify the RIAA if they have previously 'misidentified a subscriber account in response to a subpoena' or become aware of 'technical information... that causes you to question the information that you provided in response to our clients' subpoena'; it notes that ISPs have identified 'John Does' who were not even subscribers of the ISP at the time of the infringement; and it requests that ISPs furnish their underlying log files, not just names and addresses, when responding to RIAA subpoenas."

Breakdown Forces New Look At Mars Mission Sexuality 528

Posted by Zonk from the acting-like-adults-at-nasa dept.
FloatsomNJetsom writes "Popular Mechanics has up an interesting story, discussing what the long-term implications of the Lisa Nowak incident could mean for Mars Mission crew decisions: With a 30-month roundtrip, that isn't the sort of thing you'd want to happen in space. Scientists have been warning about the problems of sex on long-term spaceflight, and experts are divided as to whether you want a crew of older married couples, or asexual unitard-wearing eunuchs. The point the article makes specifically is that NASA's current archetype of highly-driven, task-oriented people might be precisely the wrong type for a Mars expedition. In addition scientists may use genomics or even functional MRI in screening astronauts, in addition to facial-recognition computers to monitor mental health during the mission." Maybe observers could just deploy the brain scanner to keep track of them?
Power

California Proposes to Ban Incandescent Lightbulbs 1074

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the coming-to-your-house-to-smash-the-old-ones dept.
zhang1983 writes to tell us CNN is reporting that California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs with the "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act". The act will promote Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) to replace the inefficient incandescent lightbulbs. According to him, "Incandescent lightbulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications, meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5 percent of the energy they receive into light."
Intel

Intel, IBM Announce Chip Breakthrough 112

Posted by kdawson from the dueling-press-releases dept.
Intel announced a major breakthrough in microprocessor design Friday that will allow it to keep on the curve of Moore's Law a while longer. IBM, working with AMD, rushed out a press release announcing essentially equivalent advances. Both companies said they will be using alloys of hafnium as insulating layers, replacing the silicon dioxide that has been used for more than 40 years. The New York Times story (and coverage from the AP and others) features he-said, she-said commentary from dueling analysts. If there is a consensus, it's that Intel is 6 or more months ahead for the next generation. IBM vigorously disputes this, saying that they and AMD are simply working in a different part of the processor market — concentrating on the high-end server space, as opposed to the portable, low-power end.
Science

Scientists Find 'Altruistic' Center of the Brain 223

Posted by Zonk from the be-nice-brainy dept.
davidwr writes "A team of researchers at Duke University published a paper linking the brain's posterior superior temporal cortex to altruistic behavior. The BBC also picked up the story. If confirmed this has applications in neurology, psychology, child-rearing, and a host of other domains. From the BBC piece: 'Using brain scans, the US investigators found this region related to a person's real-life unselfish behaviour. The Duke University Medical Center study on 45 volunteers is published in Nature Neuroscience. The participants were asked to disclose how often they engaged in different helping behaviours, such as doing charity work, and were also asked to play a computer game designed to measure altruism.'"
Music

XM+MP3 Going to Trial 206

Posted by Zonk from the everyone-loves-a-court-date dept.
fistfullast33l writes "A federal judge has ruled that Music Companies can take XM Radio to trial over the XM+MP3 device that allows users to record songs off the Satellite Radio Company's network for playback later. The lawsuit, which was filed last year, asserts that XM is violating the Music publishers' sole distribution rights. From the article: 'XM has argued it is protected from infringement lawsuits by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which permits individuals to record music off the radio for private use. The judge said she did not believe the company was protected in this instance by the act.'"
Linux

Council of the EU Says "We Cannot Support Linux" 370

Posted by kdawson from the penguins-need-not-apply dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Council of the EU has a streaming service so that we can watch its meetings — but the service can only be accessed by Mac or MS Windows users. This is because they employ WMV format for the videos. In the FAQ they express a really strange opinion about this: 'The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux.' An online petition has been set up to create pressure to convince the EU council to change its service to one that is platform independent."

Ancient Swords Made of Carbon Nanotubes 293

Posted by CowboyNeal from the built-to-last dept.
brian0918 writes "Nature reports that researchers at Dresden University believe that sabres from Damascus dating back to 900 AD were formed with help from carbon nanotubes. From the article: 'Sabres from Damascus are made from a type of steel called wootz. But the secret of the swords' manufacture was lost in the eighteenth century.' At high temperatures, impurities in the metal 'could have catalyzed the growth of nanotubes from carbon in the burning wood and leaves used to make the wootz, Paufler suggests. These tubes could then have filled with cementite to produce the wires in the patterned blades, he says.'"

Bill Gates On the Past, Future, and Google 154

Posted by Zonk from the but-google-is-microsoft's-future dept.
editingwhiz writes "eWEEK reports that Bill Gates told PBS talk show host Charlie Rose and a Stanford University audience at TechNet Wednesday that 'We're at the beginning of something important again' in the development of technology — just as in the 1980s with the advent of the PC. He also discussed the growing Microsoft-Google competition, world health issues, how to give lots of money away to the benefit of mankind, and whether he'll return to Harvard to finish his studies." From the article: "On whether there's another idea today that is as powerful as the idea of the personal computer in the 1970s: 'If I knew medicine like I do computers, I would like to be able to control the [human] immune system, to fight against the onset of disease on a world level ... but I think the idea of the PC still would have topped that.'"

Utube Sues YouTube 438

Posted by samzenpus from the koca-cola dept.
An anonymous reader writes "From The Age article: Universal Tube, which sells used machines that make tubes, has said it has lost business because customers have had trouble accessing its site." So now Utube is suing YouTube seeking a cease and desist on the youtube domain. (I wonder if they think Google's pockets might be deeper that the previous owners'.) This again raises the problems of domain names colliding across different industries and countries, and reminds me of the etoys/etoy tussle a few years back. Should domain name simply be exempt from trademark legislation in all countries or is it a legit thing to fight for?"

Groups Call For Investigation of MS Ad Service 64

Posted by samzenpus from the learning-all-about-you dept.
narramissic writes, "The Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group have filed a complaint with the FTC, asking for an investigation into Microsoft's use of customer data collection in its adCenter Web advertising service. The groups claim that 'Microsoft has embarked on a wide-ranging data collection and targeting scheme that is deceptive and unfair to millions of users.' Microsoft, for its part, says the groups 'have got it all wrong.'"

Comment Shades of Desktop.com and WebOS (Score 1) 150

by _flan (#16681861) Attached to: Blake Ross Working on Parakey Web OS
What makes Parakey different from Desktop.com and WebOS, two companies that looked like they had a decent future during the internet bubble? Desktop.com had a full operating system inside Netscape 4.5 and IE 4. You could share file, folders, etc. with your friends, use online "AJAX" applications, etc. WebOS had a very slick interface, too.

At Desktop.com, we had a couple of problems making the product fly. The first was technical: it bloated the browser up to 32Megs and made it unstable. (Nowadays, I don't bat an eye when Firefox is hungrily consuming 250M.) The second was usability: the online experience just wasn't as smooth and easy as a local application. This was partly due to the lower connection speeds that people were using back then, but also due to the inability to seamlessly interact with local files. And the really big problem was the business model: you either have to charge the users, or figure out how to put ads somewhere where people aren't used to ads -- like in the application title bar. Ick.

So, "one interface, not two" is all fine and dandy, but I'll be interested in seeing if they actually make it work and worthwhile.

How the DMCA Protects YouTube 144

Posted by Zonk from the that's-gootube dept.
bartle writes "Slate is running an article that analyzes the question of how much legal trouble Google may get in having bought YouTube. Not much, according to the author, and thanks seem to go to a provision in the DMCA that may provide more protection for YouTube than torrent services." From the article: "But what about Mark Cuban's copyright argument? Why isn't YouTube in trouble in the same way Napster and Grokster were? The first difference, as indicated, is that Napster simply wasn't covered by the 512 safe-harbor law, and YouTube is. Napster wasn't "hosting" information at the direction of its users, but rather providing a tool for users to find and download predominantly infringing content. It may sound odd that Napster gets in more trouble for helping you find illegal stuff than YouTube does for actually hosting it. But that's the law and why YouTube should really, really thank its friends at Bell."

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