Technology News Feeds

Recent job listings on the Ars job board  

Ars Technica has 18 awesome new job listings to get your creative juices flowing.

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MySpace "cyber bully mom" will stand trial in LA  

Lori Drew will soon go on trial, accused of fatally "cyber bullying" a young teen. But research shows that her high profile case isn't typical of adult/teen Internet encounters.

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VIA talks up Isaiah dual-cores, 45nm transition  

2008 isn't even halfway over, but VIA is making long-term plans around its new Isaiah architecture. By 2009, the company plans to transition Isaiah to a dual-core design on a 45nm process.

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Orphan works bill clears Senate committee, may soon find home  

Orphan works legislation is moving full steam ahead in both the House and Senate, but some copyright owners are convinced the bill will make it too easy for others to rip off their work.

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Debunking Microsoft Search Rumors  Spencer shows scorn for Powerset speculation and hears talk about the old & snorage& days....
TAKE CONTROL OF REMOTE COMPUTERS Support, configure and install applications and updates remotely for greater efficiency.

Flaw Endangers Debian-Based Encryption Keys  Officials with the Debian Project recommend that users re-create all cryptographic key material generated by OpenSSL versions starting with 0.9.8c-1....
Attend WINDOWS EMBEDDED ACCELERATION WORKSHOPS Are you ready to learn how you can bring your next-generation embedded device to market faster?

Old User Accounts Pose Current Security Risks for Enterprises  A recent study and last month's LendingTree data breach underscore the importance of managing orphaned accounts....
We Love Virtual Appliances SpamTitan for VMware 99% Spam Detection, Kaspersky AV, Anti Phishing,30 Free Evaluation,Download Now

Geography as IT Job Destiny  IT pros have a better chance of landing certain jobs in some cities than in others....
IMPROVE YOUR SUPPORT EFFICIENCY WebEx lets you remotely control, configure and install applications and updates more efficiently.

Reader Submitted Tips for Aperture   One of the fun things about running the "Inside Aperture" site is receiving reader contributions. Every now and then a clever new technique shows up in our aperture@oreilly.com mailbox, many of which I try. But why should I get to have all the fun? So, this week I'm sharing a handful of reader-submitted techniques. My guess is that you'll find one or two particularly useful.

Creating Applications with Amazon EC2 and S3   Cloud computing has become the new hot thing (Web 3.0?) Amazon was one of the first vendors to offer a cloud development environment, the Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2. They followed it up with a storage capability called S3. This tutorial will show you how to set up and get started developing applications on EC2 and S3.

Review: Marantz PMD620 Handheld WAV Recorder   With an exotic OLED display, baby-simple controls, good sound, and an attractive price, the Marantz PMD620 aims to stand out in the crowded world of portable digital audio recorders. How well does it perform? Mark Nelson frails a gourd banjo to find out.

Does Enterprise Development Have to Be Painful? (Part Two)   After several years away from anything resembling enterprise software, chromatic accepted a challenge from SAP Labs to try their new software development platform. What lessons have they learned from dynamic languages and frameworks? Has developing big serious software truly become more agile? In this second of three articles, chromatic uses SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment to build a bare-bones application from the data model to the UI.

Wii Fit  Thin is in. Our review of Nintendo's Wii workout title.

Nikon Coolpix P60  The Nikon Coolpix P60 will hold your hand if that's what you want, but this entry-level digital camera is also ready to grow with you.

Kodak EasyShare M1033  With an easy-to-use interface, great images, and a generous feature set, this moderately priced camera packs a lot of value.

ASUS EeePC 900  For the EeePC 900, ASUS added a few enhancements to the original model, and it's still a tremendous bargain.

A Baseball Hat That Reads Your Mind  esocid writes to tell us that researchers from Taiwan have created a new baseball cap complete with embedded -bio-signal monitoring system. The purpose was to give a neural interface that could be useful in everyday life. "The cap contains five embedded dry electrodes on the wearer's forehead, and one electrode behind the left ear, that acquire EEG signals. Then, the EEG signals are wirelessly transmitted to a data receiver, where they are processed in real-time by a dual-core processor. The BCI system includes Bluetooth transmission for distances of 10m or less (e.g., for driving applications), as well as RF transmission for distances up to 600m (e.g., for potential sports applications). Next, the processed signals are transmitted back to the cap, where the data can be stored, displayed in real-time on a screen, or be used to trigger an audio warning, if necessary."

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Amputee Sprinter Wins Olympic Appeal to Compete  Dr. Eggman writes "Oscar Pistorius, a 21-year-old South African double-amputee sprinter, has won his appeal filed with the Court of Arbitration for Sport. This overturns a ban imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations, and allows Mr. Pistorius the chance to compete against other able-bodied athletes for a chance at a place on the South African team for the Beijing Olympics. He currently holds the 400-meter Paralympic world sprinting record, but must improve on his time by 1.01 seconds to meet the Olympic qualification standard. However, even if Pistorius fails to get the qualifying time, South African selectors could add Oscar to the Olympic 1,600-meter relay squad."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

$100 Laptop Platform Moves On  The BBC is reporting that Sugar Labs is planning on taking "Sugar", the XO laptop's innovative interface, to the next level and distribute to a broader audience. "Sugar is a user interface that allows children to collaborate even when working on different machines. For example, they can write documents or make music together. The open source software also contains a journal and automatically saves and backs up all data. [...] Sugar Labs will work closely with developers from the open source community to develop the user interface for other computers and operating systems. It has already been bundled with the most recent releases of the Ubuntu and Fedora Linux operating systems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lockheed Martin Awarded GPSIII  D Ninja writes "Yesterday, Lockheed Martin was awarded the $1.4 billion Air Force contract to build the next-generation global positioning satellite system. This occurred after a series of delays as the Air Force decided between Lockheed and the competing bidding contractor, Boeing Co. 'GPS III, will give new navigation warfare (NAVWAR) capabilities to shut off GPS service to a limited geographical location while providing GPS to US and allied forces. GPS III will offer significant improvements in navigation capabilities by improving interoperability and jam resistance. The procurement of the GPS III system is planned for multiple blocks, with the GPS IIIA portion currently underway. GPS IIIA includes all of the GPS IIF capability plus up to a ten-fold increase in signal power, a new civil signal compatible with the European Union's Galileo system, and a new spacecraft bus that will allow a growth path to future blocks.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'Secure' PayPal page is... you guessed it  

Extended SSL no match for the power of XSS

A serious scripting error has been discovered on PayPal that could enable attackers to create convincing spoof pages that steal users' authentication credentials..…

US Congress questions legality of Phorm and the Phormettes  

'Talk to us first'

After telling the world it will soon pimp customer data to NebuAd - a behavioral ad targeting firm along the lines of Phorm and Front Porch - Charter Communications has received a letter from Congress questioning the legality of such pimping.…

W3C 'clarifies' HTML 5 v XHTML  

Vendors moving too fast on RIA

Potential conflicts and overlap between the first update to HTML in a decade by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and XHTML has been addressed by the standards body.…

SANS sounds alarm on Debian OpenSSL flaw  

Lockpicking script prompts alarm

The SANS Institute yesterday took the highly unusual step of issuing a yellow alert over a vulnerability in the cryptographic functions of Debian, the Linux distro that underpins Ubuntu.…

Lawmakers concerned over Charter's Web tracking (AP)  AP - Cable TV, phone and Internet service provider Charter Communications drew concern Friday from two congressmen and a privacy advocate over its plan to experiment with tracking its customers' Web use in collaboration with an online advertising firm.

Cable companies to ramp up Web, HD, mobile service (AP)  AP - Cable operators are riding high heading into this year's industry trade show, which kicks off this weekend.

EchoStar to showcase first product for cable (AP)  

AP - Former satellite TV provider EchoStar Corp. on Sunday will demonstrate its first product for cable companies at the industry's trade show: a unit that can tune in television and act as a cable modem.

Yahoo seeks to conceal parts of shareholder suit (AP)  AP - Yahoo Inc. is seeking to conceal large portions of a shareholder lawsuit alleging the Internet company's board improperly thwarted Microsoft Corp.'s $47.5 billion takeover offer, raising shareholder questions over the motives for the secrecy.