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Pentagon bans Google from taking images and video of military installations. Services like Google Earth are viewed by many to be nothing more than an interesting curiosity. However, for the U.S. military and other world governments the satellite images and other footage Google offers on its Earth service represents a big security risk. BBC News reports that the Pentagon has banned Google from filming inside and making detailed studies of U.S. military bases. The ban comes after detailed footage from inside and outside of the U.S. military base at Fort Sam Houston in Texas turned on up Google Earth’s Street View service. Street View is a service of Google Earth that allows users of the application to travel down streets from the perspective of a car driver.

The problem the Pentagon had with these images was that they were shot with great detail and were found to represent a significant security risk. The defense department said in a statement quoted by BBC News, “Images include 360-degree views of the covered area to include access control points, barriers, headquarters, facilities and community areas.” The fear is that terrorists could use the detailed images to develop plans to attack the base. The U.S. military isn’t the only military force that has had problem with images shown on Google Earth. In July of 2007 that satellite imagery form Google Earth had shown a new Chinese ballistic missile sub in dock. Indian officials became irate when images of its new Sukhoi 30 MK1 aircraft turned up on Google Earth as well.

Source: Dailytech, BBC

Following its brief campaign to support the doomed HD DVD format, Microsoft has now apparently entered into talks with Sony to bring Blu-ray disc technology to the Xbox 360. That once-unthinkable scenario was outlined today in a report in the British economic daily the Financial Times, two months after Xbox group marketing manager Albert Penello reopened the door to the possibility.  Citing an unnamed “senior executive,” the Financial Times said that Sony and Microsoft are not simply discussing a successor to the Xbox 360’s now discontinued, dirt-cheap external HD DVD drive. The newspaper said that there is also the possibility of an internal Blu-ray drive being incorporated into a new, more expensive “premium” 360 model, as it is already in the PlayStation 3.

Thusly, Sony would earn royalties from sales of a rival console–a first for the game industry. For its part, Microsoft quickly denied any move toward Blu-ray had been officially made. “We have made no such announcement,” a rep told GameSpot. “Games are what are driving consumers to purchase game consoles, and we remain focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster games available.” For its part, Sony welcomes the possibility of a Blu-ray-equipped Xbox 360. “If Microsoft wants to release Gears of War 3 on a Blu-ray Disc, I think we can make that happen,” Sony Computer Entertainment America’s vice president of product marketing Scott A. Steinberg said.

Source: Gamespot

It's bad enough when exams have to cater to horrific spellers due to their SMS-based vocabulary, but we're doing everything we can to make ourselves believe this latest report simply isn't true. Reportedly, a social analyst in Australia somehow believes that the wide range in spellings in a few popular names is due in large part to the fact that we spend way too much time as a whole conjugating and hyphenating in order to get text-based messages across. Said analyst was even quoted as saying that "the use of a 'y' instead of an 'i' has hit epidemic proportions, as has the use of 'k' over 'c'." Realistically, we're not about to believe the SMS craze is actually affecting children's names en masse, but please, do your next born a favor and give him / her the vowels they deserve.

Texting generation carrying spelling habits to birth certificates? - Engadget

Posted Mar 6th 2008 12:50PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Cellphones

You knew it was going to happen eventually, right? According to Apple, devs are going to be able to grab the much-anticipated iPhone / iPod touch SDK today, thus ushering in this exciting new era of third-party development for those devices. Developers will have access to the same "Cocoa Touch" framework and all other APIs used by Apple for iPhone software development. Features include hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, location-enabled apps and full access to all the media capabilities of the iPhone. The 3-axis accelerometer is also up for grabs. Just like normal Mac applications, developers can use Xcode for their project -- a coding environment bundled with every copy of OS X. In addition to traditional Xcode tools there's a new feature called iPhone Simulator which acts as a full-on iPhone emulator for testing out apps without destroying your device. If you're feel like living on the edge, however, Apple claims it's just as easy to shoot an app on over to the iPhone for live testing.

Intel Corp. is launching a branding campaign for a forthcoming family of ultra-small chips, hoping to drive demand for two emerging categories of computing devices. The company will use the name Atom in marketing a new microprocessor line that has two variants. One chip, previously known by the code name Silverthorne, is designed to be the calculating engine for pocket-sized gadgets that Intel calls MIDs, for mobile Internet devices. The other chip to carry the Atom brand, code-named Diamondville, is designed for low-end laptop and desktop computers expected to cost around $250.Intel, of Santa Clara, Calif., also plans to introduce the brand Centrino Atom for a “platform” of technologies for mobile Internet devices, including a Silverthorne chip and a companion Intel chip that includes graphics functions.

The phrase extends the Centrino brand that Intel introduced in 2003 for technology used in laptop computers. The chip measures less than 25mm square and is packed with 47 million transistors. “This is our smallest processor built with the world’s smallest transistors,” said Intel Executive Vice President and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Sean Maloney. “This small wonder is a fundamental new shift in design, small yet powerful enough to enable a big Internet experience on these new devices. We believe it will unleash new innovation across the industry.”

Source: Intel, WSJ

A divided Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the nation’s first felony conviction for illegal spamming on Friday, ruling that Virginia’s anti-spamming law does not violate free-speech rights. Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the world’s top 10 spammers in 2003, was convicted of massive distribution of junk e-mail and sentenced to nine years in prison. Justice Elizabeth Lacy wrote in a dissent that the law is “unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mail including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

“Jaynes allegedly used aliases and false Internet addresses to bombard Web users with junk e-mails peddling sham products and services. The court’s majority said misleading commercial speech is not entitled to First Amendment protection. Prosecutors presented evidence of 53,000 illegal e-mails Jaynes sent over three days in July 2003. But authorities believe he was responsible for spewing 10 million e-mails a day in an enterprise that grossed up to $750,000 per month. Jaynes was charged in Virginia because the e-mails went through an AOL server in Loudoun County, where America Online is based. Too bad the market with spam is controlled mostly by Russian and Ukrainian citizens, who don’t have to fear about being punished as their countries don’t consider spam as a serious problem.

Source: AP

As it promised, Microsoft Corp. yesterday started sending Windows Vista users an update that identifies illegal copies of the operating system installed with cracks that the company will disable when it distributes Service Pack 1 (SP1) in two weeks. Last Thursday, Microsoft announced the update, which detects two common cracks used to activate pirated copies of Vista, and said it would hit Windows Update (WU) within a week. Users who have left Vista’s recommended WU settings alone will receive the update automatically. Others, said Microsoft, must enable Automatic Update within Vista or manually call up WU from the Start menu.

A document posted to the company’s support site spelled out the details. Among other things, it promised that the 3MB update “does not affect the functionality of your operating system.” That jibes with what Alex Kochis, senior product manager for Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage program, said last week when he announced the update. If the update finds one of the cracks, a notice pops up alerting the user, but it doesn’t disable either crack. The first, dubbed “Grace Timer,” extends Vista’s activation grace period, while the other, “OEM BIOS,” mimics factory-floor activation. Users whose PCs don’t have the cracks will not see the pop-up. Ouch, dark times for all Vista pirates! I’m sure there will be workaround pretty soon though…

Source: Computerworld

One of the world’s top experts in the science of P2P file sharing has offered his harsh evaluation of the RIAA’s so-called expert witness report. With what can only be described as a good dose of Dutch courage, Delft University’s Assistant Professor Johan Pouwelse, dealt a devastating thump on the head to the music industry when he labeled the RIAA’s super expert, Dr Doug Jacobson’s report as ‘borderline incompetent’. Prof. Pouwelse is the same bloke who stopped the Dutch equivalent of the RIAA dead in their tracks back in 2005. In the UMG v Lindor trial, the RIAA claimed it had carried out its analysis with sophisticatedly advanced equipment and software which, it assured everyone, was never, ever mistaken. But now, Ms Marie Lindor has decided to fight back with a report drafted by her very own internationally renowned expert witness.

In his report, Pouwelse writes that certain procedures that should have been taken to ascertain that a particular computer had been uploading copyrighted works illegally, weren’t taken. And, taking no prisoners, Professor Pouwelse goes on to say that Jacobson, a director at the Iowa State University Information Assurance Center, lacked ‘in-depth analysis’, ‘proper scientific scrutiny’ and that his reports were ‘factually erroneous’ and frequently contradicted his own deposition testimony. Going for the jugular, Powelse describes the systems and techniques used in the indictment of Ms Lindor as ‘overly simplistic’, Jacobson’s investigative process as ‘unprofessional’ and his methods ’self-developed’, ‘unpublished’ and unaccepted by the scientific community. He concludes by giving his expert opinion that Jacobson has shown ‘borderline incompetence’.

Source: The Inquirer

A group of six international companies, including Google Inc. of the U.S., is building a $300 million underwater fiber-optic cable linking the United States and Japan. The 6,200-mile trans-Pacific broadband cable system called Unity will respond to the expected growth in data and Internet traffic between Asia and the U.S., the companies said in a statement Monday. A signing ceremony was held Feb. 23, they said. Besides U.S. Internet search company Google Inc., the Unity consortium includes Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s leading integrated telecom services provider, and Japanese telecommunications company KDDI Corp.

The others are Malaysian Internet company Global Transit; Pacnet, a telecom company headquartered in Hong Kong and Singapore; and SingTel, a leading Asian communications and mobile company. NEC Corp. and Tyco Telecommunications are suppliers for the project, set to be up and running in the first quarter of 2010. Construction begins immediately, according to the consortium. The cable is expected to initially increase trans-Pacific fiber-optic capacity by about 20 percent, with the potential to add additional bandwidth, the companies said. It will connect Chikura, near Tokyo, with Los Angeles and other U.S. West Coast points, and the system will connect to other Asian cable systems via Chikura, they said. I guess they simply had to do something like this as YouTube continues to grow and consume more and more bandwith…

Imagine tapping out text messages on a device the size of an index card and as flat as a piece of paper, then folding it in thirds to hold it to your ear and make a phone call. Refold it in a slightly different shape and wrap it around your wrist, where it becomes a watch and also communicates with an ear bud that lets you talk hands free. Nokia researchers, along with researchers at the University of Cambridge in England, have created an animated video describing such a vision for mobile devices, which could come in the future through nanotechnology developments.

 

The animation shows practical applications for several specific types of work that the scientists are developing based on their nanotechnology research, said Tapani Ryhanen, the head of multimedia devices research at Nokia Research Center. The concept video was created at the prodding of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which opened an exhibit February 24 called”Design and the Elastic Mind,”he said. Currently, the researchers have developed “bits and pieces” of the technologies envisioned in the concept “but we are not yet at the level that we could integrate those things together into a device that we’re showing in this animation,” Ryhanen said. Some features of the device could start appearing in commercial products as soon as seven years from now, Nokia said.

Not only World of Warcraft rules the MMORPG world. Korean MMO giant NCsoft has this week revealed that its best-selling Guild Wars free-to-play online game has now passed 5 million sales. This covers the original Guild Wars, plus the Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North expansions. The MMO kicked-off in spring 2005, and given its fantasy theme, it has done rather well to rack-up 5 million sales in the face of competition from you know who. No monthly subscriptions are required for Guild Wars, and the game offers an appealing alternative to the usual grind of persistent world titles.

“Reaching the five million mark is extremely gratifying for us at ArenaNet because it shows the hard work and dedication we put into our games has resonated with the fans,” beamed Mike O’Brien, co-founders of developer ArenaNet. “We are committed to supporting all of our Guild Wars players, and at the same time, we’re extremely excited to work on the game’s evolution. Certainly the future of Guild Wars is as bright as its past and present.” Guild Wars 2 is on the way also, having been unveiled last year. 5 million is still far cry from Blizzard’s 10 million monthly-paying players of WoW, but it’s an impressive number as well.

The European Commission (EC) fined Microsoft 899 million Euros or $1.35 billion for non-compliance with the Commission’s March 2004 decision. According to the EC, Microsoft has become the first company in fifty years of EU competition policy that receives a penalty for failure to comply with an antitrust decision. The organization found that Microsoft did not follow the obligations imposed under a decision dating back to March 2004 prior to October 22, 2007. Back then, The EC fined Microsoft 497 million Euros or almost $700 million for charging “unreasonable prices” for access to interface documentation for work group servers and had abused its dominant position under Article 82 of the EC Treaty. According to the decision, Microsoft was required to disclose interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve ”full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers at a reasonable price.” This ruling was upheld in September of last year.

The $1.35 billion fine is imposed in addition to the original $700 million. “I hope that today’s Decision closes a dark chapter in Microsoft’s record of non-compliance with the Commission’s March 2004 Decision and that the principles confirmed by the Court of First Instance ruling of September 2007 will govern Microsoft’s future conduct,” said European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes in a statement. The EC said that Microsoft initially demanded a royalty rate of 3.87% of a licensee’s product revenues for a patent license and 2.98% for a license giving access to the secret interoperability information (information license). In May of last year, the company reduced its royalty rates to 0.7% for a patent license and 0.5% for an information license for sales within Europe, while leaving worldwide rates unchanged. I guess Microsoft will not hesitate with sharing the source codes after this experience…

A coach passenger who refused to leave a first-class seat aboard a Jamaica-bound flight Tuesday night forced the pilots to return the plane to Miami International Airport.

American Airlines Flt. 838 departed Miami at 6:38 pm for Montego Bay, but the pilot quickly returned to MIA, according to airport officials.

The incident happened when a flight attendant asked to see the boarding pass of a passenger seated in first class, an airline spokeswoman told CBS4 news partners The Miami Herald. The passenger, who was supposed to be in coach, refused to take his actual seat.

The plane, an Airbus A300-600 with 127 passengers and nine crew members, returned to the gate, where police boarded the plane and interviewed the passenger.

No charges have yet been filed, and passengers reboarded the flight, which took off again for Montego Bay more than an hour later.

cbs4.com - Passenger's Conflict With Attendant Forces Landing

US talk show host David Letterman has reached a deal with striking writers that will allow his show to return with a full writing staff. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) said the agreement meant its members would be paid for work distributed online - a major sticking point in their dispute. Letterman said he was “happy to be going back to work” on 3 January after eight weeks off air. Many of his rivals also return next week - without their writing teams. The interim agreement between the Letterman’s Worldwide Pants production company and the WGA also allows the return of spin-off programme The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. “This is not a solution to the strike, which unfortunately continues to disrupt the lives of thousands,” said Letterman. “But I hope it will be seen as a step in the right direction.”

Letterman’s deal gives his show a distinct advantage over the likes of Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel, who face the prospect of presenting an hour-long nightly television show without scribes to pen their monologues, sketches and other written material. Presenters such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will not even be allowed to write their own scripts, as they are members of the WGA. There is also a question over whether celebrity guests will be prepared to cross picket lines to appear on the shows. The strike, which began on 5 November, was called because of a dispute over the fees writers get paid when their work is released on DVD or the internet. I really hope this will be a beginning of the end of this strike, as it hurts mostly us, fans of all those shows…

Source: AP, BBC

When they were in stock — during a brief, miraculous moment in time — the Nintendo Wii flew off Amazon.com’s virtual shelves at 17 units per second. Amazon released a bunch of random statistics on the day after Christmas to show how its 13th holiday shopping season was the best ever. This also included the fact that Amazon sold enough high-definition DVD players to cover seven football fields and that if you lined up all the GPS units sold, it would make a trail from New York to Philadelphia (By my math, that would be about 1.7 million GPS machines, assuming that they’re 3.5 inches each and that the distance between New York and Philadelphia is about 94 miles).

The top sellers in consumer electronics were the Garmin GPS machines, Canon PowerShot digital Elph cameras and Samsung LCD HDTVs. And among computers, the top sellers were the Apple MacBook, Nokia Internet Tablet PC and HP Pavilion Entertainment Notebook PC, Amazon said. Amazon also provided some fun statistics. It says it sold one Wii every 17 seconds during the holiday selling season, but only when they were in stock. It sold enough high definition DVD players (i.e. Blu-Ray and HD DVD) to cover 7 football fields. I guess every family will own a Wii soon…