Internet News feeds

Sometimes It's OK To Steal My Games.

spidweb writes "One Indie developer has written a nuanced article on a how software piracy affects him, approaching the issue from the opposite direction. He lists the ways in which the widespread piracy of PC games helps him. From the article: 'You don't get everything you want in this world. You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both. Most of the time. Because, when I'm being honest with myself, which happens sometimes, I have to admit that piracy is not an absolute evil. That I do get things out of it, even when I'm the one being ripped off.' The article also tries to find a middle ground between the Piracy-Is-Always-Bad and Piracy-Is-Just-Fine sides of the argument that might enable single-player PC games to continue to exist."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 5:54 pm

Microsoft talks up tablets, shows off new phones

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp set out its ambitions to dominate the consumer electronics market on Thursday with Windows-powered tablet computers and smartphones designed to beat back advances by Apple Inc and Google Inc.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 5:47 pm

Google says China Web search blocked

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc's Web search and mobile services in China were blocked on Thursday, according to a message on the company's website.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 5:43 pm

Thermoelectrics Could Let You Feel the Heat In Games

myshadows writes "Tech Review has an interesting article on how Tokyo Metropolitan University researchers have been able to give a sensory addition to gaming peripherals — namely, temperature. 'As the range of interactions with digital environments expands, it's logical to ask what's next: Smell-o-vision has been on the horizon for something like 50 years, but there's a dark horse stalking this race: thermoelectrics. Based on the Peltier effect, these solid-state devices are easy to incorporate into objects of reasonable size, i.e. video game controllers. In this configuration, just announced at the 2010 SIGGRAPH conference, a pair of thermoelectric surfaces on either side of a controller rapidly heat up or cool down in order to simulate appropriate conditions in a virtual environment.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 5:03 pm

KDE SC 4.7 May Use OpenGL 3 For Compositing

An anonymous reader writes "KDE SC 4.5 is about to be released and KDE SC 4.6 is being discussed. However, Martin Graesslin has revealed some details about what they are planning for KDE 4.7. According to Martin's blog post, they are looking at OpenGL 3.0 to provide the compositing effects in KDE SC 4.7. OpenGL 3.0 provides support for frame buffer objects, hardware instancing, vertex array objects, and sRGB framebuffers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 4:40 pm

Expedia posts higher profit as bookings rise

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Online travel agency Expedia Inc on Thursday reported a higher-than-expected profit as travel bookings rose, boosting its shares 2 percent.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 4:28 pm

Perl 6, Early, With Rakudo Star

Perl 6 may have been "finally coming within reach" in 2004, but now it's even closer. Reader rnddim writes "The Perl 6 implementation Rakudo Star has been released today for 'early adopters.' This release of Rakudo is different from the normal monthly compiler releases in that is it bundled with a draft of a Perl 6 book, and several modules. It's not complete, and it's not as fast as it should be, but Rakudo in its current state is proving to be usable and useful. Rakudo Star releases will come monthly or as major features or bugfixes are made. It is available for download at github.com."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 4:22 pm

Quest Software Q2 beats estimates, shares jump

BANGALORE (Reuters) - Quest Software Inc posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit, helped by a 25 percent jump in license revenue, sending its shares up 6 percent in extended trade.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 4:15 pm

U.S. sues Oracle, alleges software contract fraud

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Justice Department said on Thursday it sued Oracle Corp, alleging it defrauded the federal government on a software contract in effect from 1998 to 2006 that involved hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 3:31 pm

Internal Costs Per Gigabyte — What Do You Pay?

CodePwned writes "I recently took over a position at a rather large company where I discovered my group was paying $30 per gigabyte per month! That's $360 per year per gigabyte to our own IT department. While I understand costs are different depending on the scale, redundancy, backup and support methods, there doesn't seem to be any good papers on what range you should expect your costs to be. So far, my research shows an average of $1 per gigabyte or less for internally hosted space. What do you pay?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 3:29 pm

Stieg Larsson Is First Author To Sell 1M E-Books

Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that the late Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, has become the first author to sell more than one million e-books on Amazon. The Swedish noir thrillers features Lisbeth Salander, an asocial and extremely intelligent hacker and researcher, specialized in investigations of persons, and investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist. Quercus has sold 3.3M copies of Larsson's books in the UK, and estimates that worldwide sales of the three novels are somewhere between 35-40M copies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 2:46 pm

A $20 8-Bit Wikipedia Reader For Your TV

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired about another entry in the ongoing quest for low-tech-high-tech educational tools to take advantage of distributed knowledge: "The Humane Reader, a device designed by computer consultant Braddock Gaskill, takes two 8-bit microcontrollers and packages them in a 'classic style console' that connects to a TV. The device includes an optional keyboard, a micro-SD Card reader and a composite video output. It uses a standard micro-USB cellphone charger for power. In all, it can hold the equivalent of 5,000 books, including an offline version of Wikipedia, and requires no internet connection. The Reader will cost $20 when 10,000 or more of it are manufactured. Without that kind of volume, the each Reader will cost about $35."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 2:00 pm

HDMI Labeling Requirements Promise a Stew of Confusion

An anonymous reader writes "In many ways HDMI has revolutionized the way we connect devices. By unifying video and audio into a single cable manufacturers have been able to make their products easier to set up than ever before. Until recently there hasn't actually been much difference in HDMI cables. But things are about to get confusing with the introduction of HDMI 1.4. By the 1st of January 2012 manufacturers of products with HDMI ports won't actually be able to call HDMI 1.4 by its real name. In fact, come November 18 this year those selling cables won't be able to use HDMI 1.4 or HDMI 1.3 to delineate between different products. Instead cables that support version 1.4 of the HDMI standard will have to use one of five different labels. The new labels? Well, as this story explains, they're going to cause a new level of confusion for anyone hooking up a home cinema. Add to this the fact that the HDMI organisation keeps the details of its specifications secret, and translation between version numbering and marketing-speak will be well nigh impossible."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 1:14 pm

Russia clamps down on Internet, Google frowns

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A court in Russia's far east has ordered an Internet provider to block five sites which it said disseminated extreme views, prompting U.S. Internet giant Google to say on Thursday the move restricted access to information.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 1:13 pm

LCD 'Engine' For Spacecraft Attitude Control

Bruce Perens writes "Japan's IKAROS satellite, which earlier performed the first successful demonstration of a solar sail, has broken more new ground. Liquid-crystal displays — yes, like in your video monitor — were fabricated into strips on the edges of the solar sail. By energizing some of the LCDs and changing the reflective characteristics of parts of the sail from specular to diffuse, JAXA scientists successfully generated attitude control torque in the sail, changing the spacecraft's orientation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 12:29 pm

Global Warming 'Undeniable,' Report Says

BergZ writes "Scientists from around the world are providing even more evidence of global warming. 'A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record,' the annual State of the Climate report declares. Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, including Canada, the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its analysis of 10 indicators that are 'clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 11:46 am

Android Data Stealing App Downloaded By Millions

wisebabo writes "A wallpaper utility (that presents purloined copyrighted material) 'quietly collects personal information such as SIM card numbers, text messages, subscriber identification, and voicemail passwords. The data is then sent to www.imnet.us, a site that hails from Shenzen, China.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 11:04 am

Man Wants to Donate His Heart Before He Dies

Gary Phebus wants to donate his heart, lungs, and liver. The problem is he wants to donate them before he dies. Gary was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in 2008. Phebus says he'd like to be able to donate his organs before they deteriorate, and doesn't consider his request suicide because he's "dead anyway."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 10:36 am

Suspected Mariposa Botnet Creator Arrested

mehemiah writes "The writer of the Mariposa Botnet has been arrested through international effort. The FBI said this arrest and the arrests of three alleged operators in February were the result of a two-year joint investigation into the Mariposa Botnet, which may have infected as many as eight million to 12 million computers around the world."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 10:26 am

NASA's Top 10 Space Junk Missions

Ant writes "NASA has identified the top ten space junk missions and said over 19,000 pieces of space junk are known to exist..." That's nothing: You should see my living room.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 9:45 am

Government's £6m web search bill

Four government departments spent almost £6m ensuring their websites appeared on search engine results pages, new figures show.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 9:29 am

FBI May Get Easier Access To Internet Activity

olsmeister writes "It appears the White House would like to make it easier for the FBI to obtain records of a person's internet activities without a court order to do so, via the use of an NSL. While they have been able to this this for a long time, this may expand the type of information able to be gathered without a court order to include things like web browsing histories."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 9:00 am

Google cleared of wi-fi snooping

No "significant" personal data was grabbed by Google when it snooped on wi-fi networks, says the UK data protection office.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 7:48 am

Low-tech Shatner eyes Twitter, says what the "$#*!"

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - William Shatner confesses he has problems with the digital age. At 79 years old, he doesn't use Twitter and can't remember computer passwords.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 7:22 am

Facebook data hoarder speaks out

Security researcher Ron Bowes tells BBC News why he collected and published the personal details of 100m Facebook users.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 6:40 am

Facebook makes move into search

Facebook has made its first steps into the search market with the launch a servcie that allows users to quiz the site's 500m members.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 5:42 am

Who will win the 3D TV war?

Some of the biggest names in Japan's technology industry report earnings later today and the likes of Panasonic and Sony are betting on 3D to drive sales of new TVs, DVD players and camcorders.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 3:35 am

India raises security concerns over BlackBerry services

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has raised security concerns with Research In Motion over the Canadian company's popular BlackBerry services, but is not planning a ban in the world's fastest growing mobile phone market.

Posted on 29 July 2010 | 1:54 am

Amazon offers new look UK Kindle

Online retailer Amazon launches its popular Kindle e-reader into the UK market for the first time, with a new look and more books.

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 11:00 pm

Facebook beats back patent infringement claim

WILMINGTON, Del (Reuters) - Facebook Inc won a legal fight on Wednesday over claims its hugely popular social networking website infringed a patent owned by Leader Technologies, but the little-known company said it would ask the judge to set aside the verdict.

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 3:31 pm

Legal action on 'zombie cookies'

Lawsuit filed in San Francisco district court after firms resurrected deleted browser cookies.

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 1:39 pm

Green light for mobile auctions

The government has finally set a date for the auction of airwaves crucial to next-generation mobile services.

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 11:21 am

Nintendo game copiers 'illegal'

A High Court has ruled that devices that allow gamers to play pirated video games on the Nintendo DS console are illegal in the UK.

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 9:10 am

Gamers try out Nintendo 3DS

Two Newsbeat listeners, Neil and Melanie, have been given a sneak preview of Nintendo's new hand-held console the 3DS.

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 7:06 am

State of global internet revealed

Asian countries top the charts when it comes to internet speeds, according to a global survey by network giant Akamai.

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 6:27 am

Britain's oldest Tweeter dies at the age of 104

104-year-old Ivy Bean, who is said to be the oldest user of social media site Twitter, has passed away in her sleep.

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 6:05 am

Speed limit

What makes your broadband connection slow?

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 4:15 am

Botnet hacker caught in Slovenia

One of the hackers behind a computer virus that infected nearly 13m computers has been tracked down by international authorities.

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 4:14 am

Sneak preview

The world's first 3D handheld console on test

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 3:50 am

Google in talks to build Facebook competitor: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Google Inc has held talks with gaming companies as it looks to develop a new service to compete with social networking website Facebook, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Posted on 28 July 2010 | 1:30 am

The man with the keys to the web

A British computer expert has been entrusted with part of a digital key, to help restart the internet in the event of a major catastrophe. Paul Kane talked to Eddie Mair on Radio 4's PM programme about what he might be called upon to do in an international online emergency.

Posted on 27 July 2010 | 12:11 pm