theodp writes "If you're a PC, you may be unfamiliar with The Dock, the bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of a Mac and provides easy access to Apple applications. But don't count on it becoming a standard on the PC. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Apple and inventor Steve Jobs a patent for their User Interface for Providing Consolidation and Access, aka 'The Dock', after a rather lengthy nine-year wait." Read more of this story ...

50 comments  •  24 conversations  •  3 diggs  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 tweets

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times runs an article about the spammers' choice of presidential candidate. From the article: "According to Secure Computing Corp., spammers were nearly seven times more likely to slap Obama's name in the subject line than McCain's during September. The bulk of Obama's lead in the spam wars came from a massive blitz early in the month." Secure Computing released additonal numbers for the past weeks, and McCain was able to close the gap ...

50 comments  •  13 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

Lorien_the_first_one writes "After years of wrangling, TiVo has won its day in court against Dish Network, formerly known as the EchoStar, when the Supreme Court declined to take up Dish Network's appeal, forcing the satellite television company to pay $104 million in damages. According to the article, 'TiVo originally won a patent infringement case in 2004 against Dish, which was then named EchoStar Communications. It charged that Dish illegally copied its technology, which allows people to pause, rewind, and record ...

50 comments  •  9 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

jvillain writes "Contentagenda notes that the Copyright Office is taking submissions for exemptions to the DMCA. They do this every three years. There's a description of the six exemptions made last time to give you some ideas. So fire up the keyboard and let the Copyright Office know what needs to be changed. If you don't get in now, it'll be another three years before you can try again." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

50 comments  •  9 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

pondlife writes "A friend asked me today about using some Microsoft server components from Perl. Over the years he's built up a large collection of Perl/COM code using Win32::OLE and he had planned on doing the same thing here. The big problem is that as with many current MS APIs, they're available for .NET only because COM is effectively deprecated at this point. I did some Googling, expecting to find quickly the Perl equivalent of IronPython or IronRuby. But to ...

50 comments  •  14 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

mikesd81 writes "Google has developed 'Mail Goggles,' a Gmail add-on that makes sending email from Gmail more difficult during certain times (which you can set). If you have Mail Goggles installed, it will force you to answer a series of math questions before sending out any new messages. You can adjust the math difficulty and times this option is in effect. If you get any of the questions wrong, Mail Goggles will say, 'Water and bed for you. Or try ...

50 comments  •  9 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

twigles writes with news of a new proposed bill that seeks to curtail DHS's power to search and seize laptops at the border without suspicion of wrongdoing. Here is Sen. Feingold's press release on the bill. The new bill has more privacy-protecting safeguards than the previous one, which we discussed last month. "The Travelers Privacy Protection Act, a bill written by US Senators Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., would allow border agents to ...

50 comments  •  9 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

agl42 writes "Obfuscated TCP attempts to provide a cheap opportunistic encryption scheme for HTTP. Though SSL has been around for years, most sites still don't use it by default. By providing a less secure, but computationally and administratively cheaper, method of encryption, we might be able to increase the depressingly small fraction of encrypted traffic on the Internet. There's an introduction video explaining it." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

50 comments  •  4 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

Gamasutra has an opinion piece by the 'father of music games,' Masaya Matsuura, who questions the evolution of video game music (or the lack thereof) as the industry's technological advancements give rise to the capability for greater complexity. "Most games these days seem to use gorgeous orchestral soundtracks. While these large-scale soundtracks may generally be lovely to listen to, if we really think about it, isn't it all a bit lacking in imagination? Thinking about it from a simplistic visual ...

50 comments  •  9 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

GovTechGuy writes "Top Air Force leadership has decided to pursue forming a Cyber Command to defend Defense Department networks and to launch cyberattacks against foes, after putting the project on hold in August." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

50 comments  •  6 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

KlaymenDK writes "Over the last decade or so, I have strived to maintain my privacy. I have uninstalled Windows, told my friends 'sorry' when they wanted me to join Facebook, had a fight with my brother when he wanted to move the family email hosting to Gmail, and generally held back on my personal information online. But since, amongst all of my friends, I am the only one doing this, it may well be that my battle is lost already. ...

50 comments  •  9 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

arcticstoat writes "Overclockers looking to bolster their new Nehalem CPUs with overclocked memory may be disappointed. Intel is telling motherboard manufacturers not to encourage people to push the voltage of their DIMMs beyond 1.65V, as anything higher could damage the CPU. This will come as a blow to owners of enthusiast memory, such as Corsair's 2.133MHz DDR3 Dominator RAM, which needs 2V to run at its full speed with 9-9-9-24 timings." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

50 comments  •  8 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

MrLint writes "It's been a long, nearly two years of silence since CSIRO won a patent battle against Buffalo Tech, causing an injunction preventing the Austin company from selling wireless routers. On September 19, 2008, a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that CSIRO patent claims are invalid and Buffalo is getting a new trial. With any luck, we will be able to get our grubby hands on low-cost Wi-Fi routers again!" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

50 comments  •  13 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

Presto Vivace and others sent us this CNet report on a just-released NRC report coming to the conclusion, which will surprise no one here, that data mining doesn't work very well. It's all those darn false positives. The submitter adds, "Any chance we could go back to probable cause?" "A report scheduled to be released on Tuesday by the National Research Council, which has been years in the making, concludes that automated identification of terrorists through data mining or any ...

50 comments  •  11 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

An anonymous reader sends in an article by Andrew Keen (author of "The Cult of the Amateur") about TiVo's new TiVo PC, which he believes could seal the fate of advertising on online videos. Just as TiVo let viewers zap commercials on broadcast TV, TiVo PC a TV tuner that can be plugged into a PC will let Net viewers of the likes of Hulu.com and ABC.com skip commercials in the nascent medium of online video. Keen believes that TiVo's ...

50 comments  •  7 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

adamengst writes "We seldom think about how our mobile phones actually work, but in this TidBITS article, Rich Mogull pulls back the covers and peels away the jargon to explain why text messages work when voice calls are dropped, why your battery lasts longer in some places than in others, why you're not allowed to use phones on airplanes, why you can be notified of a voicemail message when your phone never rang, and more." Read more of this story ...

50 comments  •  10 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

narramissic writes "In a continuation of the first successful U.S. investigation ever into DDOS attacks, Axel Gembe, 25, of Germany and Lee Graham Walker, 24, of England were indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Los Angeles, California, on one count of conspiracy and one count of intentionally damaging a computer system. The two men were allegedly hired by Jay R. Echouafni, owner of Orbit Communication, a Massachusetts-based company that sold home satellite systems, to carry out DDOS attacks against ...

50 comments  •  9 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

OriginalArlen writes "NASA's next-generation rover, the nuclear-powered, laser-equipped Mars Science Laboratory is reported to be at a serious risk of cancellation due to budget and schedule overruns, including non-delivery of vital parts by a subcontractor. Costs are running over $2B so far, and the already thin schedule of Mars missions planned for the next decade with budget ring-fenced for an outer-planets flagship mission is in danger of further cuts." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

50 comments  •  9 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

snydeq writes "InfoWorld examines 10 power-saving assumptions IT has been operating under in its quest to rein in energy costs vs. the permanent energy crisis. Under scrutiny, most such assumptions wither. From true CPU efficiency, to the life span effect of power-down frequency on servers, to SSD power consumption, to switching to DC in the datacenter, get the facts before setting your IT energy strategy." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

50 comments  •  14 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets

eldavojohn writes "RealNetwork's product that allows one to copy a DVD containing a movie has been pulled. You may recall us discussing RealDVD and its legal implications." According to the linked BBC report, "RealNetworks the firm behind the software has responded to restraining order issued by a US court stopped selling the RealDVD software [sic]. Six major movie studios jointly sued the company on 30 September the day the software was launched." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

50 comments  •  11 conversations  •  0 bookmarks  •  0 diggs  •  0 tweets