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| fetched via localhost | 7 September 2010, 3:26 pm |
| christine faldo [ mail: christine.faldo[at]bongfaschist.de | homepage: christine.bongfaschist.de ] | The Gaping Holes In the UAE's Net Firewall |
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Barence writes "The United Arab Emirates has its own, Chinese-style, firewall to weed out pornography and other 'unsavoury' content. But as PC Pro's correspondent has found out, the firewall has more than a few holes in it. ISP helplines routinely suggest proxy server software that circumvents the filters. Access to Flickr is blocked, in case citizens' eyes should fall upon a naked buttock, but The Pirate Bay, which 'offers a range of bottoms to suit every need, including midget and donkey bottoms for anybody having a really slow afternoon – remains blissfully undisturbed.' 'Ultimately, I'm quite glad the UAE's authorities block websites, and thrilled that they're so inept at it,' concludes PC Pro's writer. 'Just like everybody in Dubai, all they've done is made me a master of internet chicanery.'" Guess that depends how closely they're watching the evaders.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 7 September 2010, 2:34 pm |
| ingeborg lapdoh [ mail: ingeborg.lapdoh[at]streng-katholisch.de | homepage: ingeborg.streng-katholisch.de ] | Separating Hope From Hype In Quantum Computing |
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pgptag writes "This talk by Dr. Suzanne Gilbert (video) explains why quantum computers are useful, and also dispels some of the myths about what they can and cannot do. It addresses some of the practical ways in which we can build quantum computers and gives realistic timescales for how far away commercially useful systems might be."
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| fetched via localhost | 7 September 2010, 1:51 pm |
| franziska tzfri [ mail: franziska.tzfri[at]hamgang.de | homepage: franziska.hamgang.de ] | Behind the Scenes and Inside Workings of a CERT |
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An anonymous reader writes "Ireland's Computer Emergency Response Team differs from what you can find in most other countries, since it's not government-backed and relies mainly on the good will of several security professionals. In this interview, the founder and head of the CERT, Brian Honan, talks about how the CERT was formed, what equipment they use and what challenges they face in their daily work without having a government to back them up."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 7 September 2010, 1:08 pm |
| adolf uenmailm [ mail: adolf.uenmailm[at]jasmin-wagner-fans.de | homepage: adolf.jasmin-wagner-fans.de ] | Pirate Bay Down; Police Raids Across Europe |
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Stoobalou contributes a link to this story at Thinq.co.uk, from which he excerpts: "Torrent-tracking site The Pirate Bay is currently unavailable as reports come in of co-ordinated police raids against file sharers across Europe. Police in up to 14 countries carried out raids against suspected file-sharing servers this morning. According to file-sharing news site TorrentFreak, the bulk of police action seems to have taken place in Sweden. Swedish Internet service provider ISP, which hosts both The Pirate Bay and whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, earlier denied rumours of a police raid, saying that officers had visited them to ask questions over two suspect IP addresses, and that no computers or other goods had been seized."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 7 September 2010, 12:25 pm |
| klaus idchriref [ mail: klaus.idchriref[at]hamgang.de | homepage: klaus.hamgang.de ] | Former HP CEO Selected As Oracle Co-President |
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theodp writes "Late on Monday, Oracle announced that ousted HP CEO Mark Hurd has joined the company as a co-president and a director. Hurd resigned from HP a month ago, after an investigation by the board into a personal relationship with a contractor turned up questionable expenses. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a personal friend of Hurd, criticized HP's board at the time, saying it was 'the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs.' 'Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he'll do even better at Oracle,' Ellison said in a statement Monday. 'There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark.' Stepping down to make room for Hurd was Charles E. Phillips Jr., who had some personal relationship issues of his own."
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| fetched via localhost | 7 September 2010, 9:27 am |
| jens ibonr [ mail: jens.ibonr[at]hamgang.de | homepage: jens.hamgang.de ] | Self-Assembling Photovoltaic Tech From MIT |
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telomerewhythere writes "Michael Strano and his team at MIT have made a self-assembling and indefinitely repairable photovoltaic cell based on the principle found in chloroplasts inside plant cells. 'The system Strano's team produced is made up of seven different compounds, including the carbon nanotubes, the phospholipids, and the proteins that make up the reaction centers, which under the right conditions spontaneously assemble themselves into a light-harvesting structure that produces an electric current. Strano says he believes this sets a record for the complexity of a self-assembling system. When a surfactant is added to the mix, the seven components all come apart and form a soupy solution. Then, when the researchers removed the surfactant, the compounds spontaneously assembled once again into a perfectly formed, rejuvenated photocell.'"
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| fetched via localhost | 7 September 2010, 6:33 am |
| joseph riotavki [ mail: joseph.riotavki[at]ich-blicks.net | homepage: joseph.ich-blicks.net ] | Breathing New Life Into Old DirectDraw Games |
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An anonymous reader writes "I bought a bunch of old Wing Commander games for Windows, but they use DirectDraw, which Microsoft has deprecated. They don't work too well under Windows 7, so I ended up reimplementing ddraw.dll using OpenGL to output the games' graphics. I wrote an article describing the process and all the fun workarounds I had to come up with, and released all related source code for others to hack on."
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| fetched via localhost | 7 September 2010, 3:25 am |
| frank etarlb [ mail: frank.etarlb[at]fickschlitten.com | homepage: frank.fickschlitten.com ] | Australia To Fight iPod Use By Pedestrians |
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Kilrah_il writes "In recent years the number of people killed on roads in New South Wales, Australia has dropped, but strangely enough, the number of pedestrians killed has risen. Some think it's because of the use of iPods and other music players making people not attentive to road dangers (the so-called 'iPod Zombie Trance'). Based on this (unproven) assumption, the Pedestrian Council has started a campaign in an effort to educate the people, but apparently it isn't enough. Now, some are pushing for the government to enact laws to help eradicate the problem. 'The government is quite happy to legislate that people can lose two demerit points for having music up too loud in their cars, but is apparently unconcerned that listening devices now appear to have become lethal pieces of entertainment,' [Harold Scruby of the Pedestrian Council of Australia] said. 'They should legislate appropriate penalties for people acting so carelessly towards their own welfare and that of others. ... Manufacturers should be made to [warn] consumers of the risks they run.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 7 September 2010, 12:21 am |
| susanne rimnuda [ mail: susanne.rimnuda[at]strengkatholisch.de | homepage: susanne.strengkatholisch.de ] | Google Says Microsoft Is Driving Antitrust Review |
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GovTechGuy writes "On Friday we discussed news that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott opened a probe into whether Google ranks its search listings with an eye toward nicking the competition. Google suggested the concerns have a major sponsor: Microsoft. In question is whether the world's biggest search engine could be unfairly disadvantaging some companies by giving them a low ranking in free search listings and in paid ads that appear at the top of the page. That could make it tough for users to find those sites and might violate antitrust laws. Abbott's office asked for information about three companies who have publicly complained about Google, according to blog post by Don Harrison, the company's deputy general counsel. Harrison linked each of the companies to Microsoft."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 11:34 pm |
| christine aemitlhd [ mail: christine.aemitlhd[at]creation-asociale.com | homepage: christine.creation-asociale.com ] | Aging Star System Leaves Strange Death Spiral |
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jamie tips a post at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog about an extremely unusual astronomical phenomenon originating from a binary system about 3000 light years away. Quoting: "The name of this thing is AFGL 3068. It's been known as a bright infrared source for some time, but images just showed it as a dot. This Hubble image using the Advanced Camera for Surveys reveals an intricate, delicate and exceedingly faint spiral pattern. ... Red giants tend to blow a lot of their outer layers into space in an expanding spherical wind; think of it as a super-solar wind. The star surrounds itself with a cloud of this material, essentially enclosing it in a cocoon. In general the material isn't all that thick, but in some of these stars there is an overabundance of carbon in the outer layers which gets carried along in these winds. ... AFGL 3068 is a carbon star and most likely evolved just like this, but with a difference: it's a binary. As the two stars swing around each other, the wind from the carbon star doesn't expand in a sphere. Instead, we see a spiral pattern as the material expands."
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 10:41 pm |
| renate rbgtitei [ mail: renate.rbgtitei[at]ich-blicks.net | homepage: renate.ich-blicks.net ] | American Business Embraces 'Gamification' |
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Hugh Pickens writes "JP Mangalindan writes that for years psychologists have studied what makes video games so engrossing — why do players spend hours accruing virtual points working towards intangible rewards and what characteristics make some games more addictive than others? Now, companies are realizing that 'gamification' — using the same mechanics that hook gamers — is an effective way to generate business. For example, when Nike released Nike + in 2008, it 'gamified' exercise. 'Place the pedometer in a pair of (Nike) sneaks and it monitors distance, pace and calories burned, transmitting that data to the user's iPod. The Nike software loaded on the iPod will then "reward" users if they reach a milestone,' writes Mangalindan. 'If a runner beats his 5-mile distance record, an audio clip from Tour de France cycling champ Lance Armstrong congratulates him.' In addition, users can upload their information, discuss achievements online with other users, and challenge them to distance or speed competitions. The result: to date, Nike has moved well over 1.3 million Nike + units."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 9:46 pm |
| gotthelf emlthu [ mail: gotthelf.emlthu[at]bongfaschist.com | homepage: gotthelf.bongfaschist.com ] | Plagiarizing a Takedown Notice |
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ChipMonk writes "Over at hobbyist site OS News, editor-in-chief Thom Holwerda published a highly skeptical opinion of the announcement of Commodore USA's own Amiga line. Within hours, Commodore USA sent a takedown notice to OS News, demanding a retraction of the piece and accusing the site of libel and defamation. What's funny is that the takedown notice was mostly copied, with minor edits, from Chilling Effects, a site dedicated to publicizing attempts at squelching free speech. The formatting, line breaks, obtuse references to 'OCGA,' and even the highlighted search terms were left largely intact."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 9:06 pm |
| rüdiger dnoarl [ mail: rüdiger.dnoarl[at]fickschlitten.com | homepage: rüdiger.fickschlitten.com ] | Sony Has Lost the PS3 Hacking War |
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YokimaSun writes "Sony may have dealt a major blow to the PSjailbreak sellers, but the release last week of PSGroove, an open source version of the hack, has now opened the floodgates of ports to mobile phones such as the Nokia N900 and Palm Pre. The final kick in the teeth is that a port of the exploit has been released by Waninkoko of Wii custom firmware fame for the Dingoo Handheld, which is a homebrew console that is very popular amongst emulation fans. It makes you smile that you can use one homebrew console to hack another to get homebrew on that console. Awesome." pudge notes that you can apparently do the same with a TI-84 Plus graphing calculator (YouTube video).
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 8:11 pm |
| brigitte nurtbeki [ mail: brigitte.nurtbeki[at]ich-blicks.net | homepage: brigitte.ich-blicks.net ] | UK's Royal Mail Launches First Intelligent Stamps |
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An anonymous reader writes "The Royal Mail on Friday issued what it called the world's first 'intelligent stamps,' designed to interact with smartphones using image-recognition technology. The Royal Mail's latest special-issue stamps, devoted to historic British railways, are designed to launch specially developed online content when a user snaps them using an image-recognition application available on iPhone or Android handsets. 'This is the first time a national postal service has used this kind of technology on their stamps and we're very excited to be bringing intelligent stamps to the nation's post,' a Royal Mail spokesman said in a statement. 'Intelligent stamps mark the next step in the evolution of our stamps, bringing them firmly into the 21st century.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 7:13 pm |
| franziska wlili [ mail: franziska.wlili[at]jasmin-wagner-fans.de | homepage: franziska.jasmin-wagner-fans.de ] | WikiLeaks Calls For Assange To Step Down |
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Stoobalou writes "A member of Iceland's parliament and prominent organizer for whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has turned on the site's spokesman, Julian Assange, urging him to step down over rape allegations made against him in Sweden. Birgitta Jonsdottir told news site The Daily Beast that she did not believe Assange's repeated assertion that the allegations of rape and molestation made against him were part of a US-backed smear campaign to distract attention from documents posted on the site laying bare US involvement in the war in Afghanistan and further promised revelations."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 6:25 pm |
| petra osinm [ mail: petra.osinm[at]mudjaheddin.de | homepage: petra.mudjaheddin.de ] | Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier |
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theodp writes "Raw intellect ain't always all it's cracked up to be, advises Ted Dziuba in his introduction to Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier, so don't be too stubborn to learn the things that can save you from the headaches of over-engineering. Here's some sample how-to-avoid-over-complicating-things advice: 'If Linux can do it, you shouldn't. Don't use Hadoop MapReduce until you have a solid reason why xargs won't solve your problem. Don't implement your own lockservice when Linux's advisory file locking works just fine. Don't do image processing work with PIL unless you have proven that command-line ImageMagick won't do the job. Modern Linux distributions are capable of a lot, and most hard problems are already solved for you. You just need to know where to look.' Any cautionary tips you'd like to share from your own experience?"
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 5:37 pm |
| franziskus hliacem [ mail: franziskus.hliacem[at]mudjaheddin.de | homepage: franziskus.mudjaheddin.de ] | Ryanair's CEO Suggests Eliminating Co-Pilots |
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postbigbang writes "Ryanair's miser-in-chief Michael O'Leary now suggests eliminating co-pilots as a way to save money. Will airliners be powered by drones, or is it actually viable to have just a single pilot on passenger planes?"
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 4:40 pm |
| stefan aliuj [ mail: stefan.aliuj[at]bongfaschist.de | homepage: stefan.bongfaschist.de ] | Self-Powered Parts Are the Future |
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bossanovalithium writes that an umbrella group including Japanese heavyweights like Panasonic and Toyota is working on bringing the price of self powered parts down to levels where they can be mass produced: "The idea is that the parts will make external power sources redundant — because they can convert energy from body heat, light and vibrations straight into electricity. Self powered electronics have already sporadically been used in technology like wall-mount remote control units for air conditioners, says Nikkei, but existing parts are bulky and cost a couple thousand yen a piece. 3,000 yen is about $35 — which means they're not the best bet, financially, yet."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 4:32 pm |
| lothar nrhaerbd [ mail: lothar.nrhaerbd[at]jasmin-wagner-fans.de | homepage: lothar.jasmin-wagner-fans.de ] | M2Z's Free, Wireless Broadband Killed In Advance |
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mspohr writes with a sad excerpt from Fast Company: "Despite a seemingly stout business plan, and all the financial, social, and educational benefits it would bring, the FCC's just turned down M2Z's application for a coast-to-coast free wireless broadband system. ... The FCC is known to have heard complaints about M2Z's plan from existing wireless carriers. Though M2Z's network would've operated at under 1 Mbps peak speeds — meaning it was very slow by today's standards, and probably snail-like by tomorrow's — its free pricing may well have tempted many folks away from spending cash with an established ISP. Those carriers are now reported to be pleased with the FCC's decision, though they argue it's in line with the greater National Broadband Plan. Whenever that actually gets off the ground."
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 4:32 pm |
| christian ocars [ mail: christian.ocars[at]jasmin-wagner-fans.de | homepage: christian.jasmin-wagner-fans.de ] | Parrot iPod-Controlled Quadricopter Launches This Week |
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MojoKid writes "Remote-controlled helicopters are not new, but Parrot's AR.Drone Quadricopter is set to make a splash when it goes on sale on Sept. 9th. It will use an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad as a controller, and give a live video feed from two different cameras to the pilot. Each model comes with two hulls, one of them for indoor use, with protective loops around the rotors. The device creates its own Wi-Fi network, which the iOS device connects to in order to control the Quadricopter."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 4:32 pm |
| jean isiachrnt [ mail: jean.isiachrnt[at]jasmin-wagner-fans.com | homepage: jean.jasmin-wagner-fans.com ] | Best Way To Archive Emails For Later Searching? |
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An anonymous reader writes "I have kept every email I have ever sent or received since 1990, with the exception of junk mail (though I kept a lot of that as well). I have migrated my emails faithfully from Unix mail, to Eudora, to Outlook, to Thunderbird and Entourage, though I have left much of the older stuff in Outlook PST files. To make my life easier I would now like to merge all the emails back into a single searchable archive — just because I can. But there are a few problems: a) Moving them between email systems is SLOW; while the data is only a few GB, it is hundred of thousands of emails and all of the email systems I have tried take forever to process the data. b) Some email systems (i.e. Outlook) become very sluggish when their database goes over a certain size. c) I don't want to leave them in a proprietary database, as within a few years the format becomes unsupported by the current generation of the software. d) I would like to be able to search the full text, keep the attachments, view HTML emails correctly and follow email chains. e) Because I use multiple operating systems, I would prefer platform independence. f) Since I hope to maintain and add emails for the foreseeable future, I would like to use some form of open standard. So, what would you recommend?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 4:24 pm |
| claudia ugtaus [ mail: claudia.ugtaus[at]jasmin-wagner-fans.de | homepage: claudia.jasmin-wagner-fans.de ] | The New Difficulties In Making a 3D Game |
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eldavojohn writes "MSNBC spoke with the senior producer of a new stereoscopic 3D game called Killzone 3 and highlighted problems they are trying to solve with being one of the first FPS 3D games for the PS3. The team ran into serious design problems, like where to put the crosshairs for the players (do they constantly hover in front of your vision?) and what to do with any of the heads-up display components. Aside from the obvious marketing thrown in at the end of the article (in a very familiar way), there is an interesting point raised concerning normalized conventions in all video games and how one ports that to the new stereoscopic 3D model — the same way directors continue to grapple with getting 3D right. Will 3D games be just as gimmicky as most 3D movies? If they are, at least Guerrilla Games is at least making it possible for the player to easily and quickly switch in and out of stereoscopic 3D while playing."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 4:24 pm |
| fritz smosan [ mail: fritz.smosan[at]spermageile-schlampe.de | homepage: fritz.spermageile-schlampe.de ] | Transition Metal Catalysts Could Be Key To Origin of Life |
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An anonymous reader writes "One of the big, unsolved problems in explaining how life arose on Earth is a chicken-and-egg paradox: How could the basic biochemicals — such as amino acids and nucleotides — have arisen before the biological catalysts (proteins or ribozymes) existed to carry out their formation? In a paper appearing in the current issue of The Biological Bulletin, scientists propose that a third type of catalyst could have jumpstarted metabolism and life itself, deep in hydrothermal ocean vents."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 2:24 pm |
| hanne brlaet [ mail: hanne.brlaet[at]jasmin-wagner-fans.de | homepage: hanne.jasmin-wagner-fans.de ] | ACTA Text Leaks; US Caves On ISPs, Seeks Super-DMCA |
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An anonymous reader writes "Given the history of ACTA leaks, to no one's surprise, the latest version of the draft agreement (PDF) was leaked last night on KEI's website. The new version — which reflects changes made during an intense week of negotiations last month in Washington — shows a draft agreement that is much closer to becoming reality. Perhaps the most important story of the latest draft is how the countries are close to agreement on the Internet enforcement chapter. In the face of opposition, the US has dropped its demands on secondary liability for ISPs but is still holding out hope of establishing a super-DMCA with digital lock rules that go beyond the WIPO Internet treaties and were even rejected by US courts."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| fetched via localhost | 6 September 2010, 1:42 pm |
| olga toot [ mail: olga.toot[at]streng-katholisch.de | homepage: olga.streng-katholisch.de ] | Hands-on With the iPad Alternatives On Display at IFA |
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Barence writes "This week's IFA show has seen a flurry of Android-based alternatives to the iPad emerge from leading manufacturers. The Samsung Galaxy Tab made a strong first impression on PC Pro's reviewer. The 7-inch tablet's TFT screen 'beams forth with rich, saturated colours and wide, wide viewing angles,' the device is capable of Full HD playback and the TouchWiz UI is 'clearly intended to draw customers away from the iFamily.' Elsewhere, ViewSonic has launched a pair of 7-inch and 10-inch tablets, the larger of which dual boots into either Android or Windows 7. 'Our first moments with Windows 7 were surprisingly painless, too: we expected the Atom processor and 1GB of memory to be horrendously sluggish, but it wasn't the case,' PC Pro reports. Finally, Toshiba's 10.1in Folio 100 marries Android 2.2 with Nvidia's Tegra 2 platform to deliver 'mighty graphics crunching power.' The build quality left a little to desire, though. 'The 14mm thick chassis feels lightweight, and even relatively gentle twisting motions left the Folio's plastic body creaking under the stress.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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