Lawmakers working on next year's federal finances have taken the ax to the James Webb Space Telescope.

That's right, NASA's next-generation space telescope, the successor to Hubble and the space agency's biggest post-shuttle project, may be killed.

To be clear, there are many more steps in the budget process before this is final -- lawmakers are working on next year's budget despite a stalemate between the White House and Republican leadership, so a lot could change in the next couple weeks. And odds are decent that at least some lawmakers will fight to preserve this enormous technological marvel (and the jobs associated with its construction). But this is not good news for astronomy, to put it mildly.

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http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/06/house-subcommittees-budget-bill-puts-most-powerful-space-telescope-on-chopping/?test=faces

Microsoft Head Announces Windows 8 Release

Microsoft leader Steve Ballmer announced that the next version of his company’s operating system – Windows 8 – will be available in 2012.

At the Microsoft Developer Forum in Tokyo on Monday, Ballmer said the software giant is hard at work producing Windows 8, which is also expected to hit tablet computers, PC Magazine reports.

Ballmer has yet to comment on rumors regarding the features of the new OS.

But he did hint that "there will be a day in the future where it will be hard to distinguish a phone from a slate, from a PC.”

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http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/23/microsoft-head-announces-windows-8-release/#ixzz1NFAm6Pxb

Millions of email addresses may have been taken in data breach

NEW YORK - With the possible theft of millions of email addresses from an advertising company, several large companies have started warning customers to expect fraudulent emails that try to coax account login information from them.

Companies behind brands such as Chase, Citi and Best Buy said over the weekend that hackers may have learned their email addresses because of a security breach at a Dallas-based company called Epsilon that manages email communications.

The email addresses could be used to target spam. It's also a standard tactic among online fraudsters to send emails to random people, purporting to be from a large bank and asking them to login in at a site that looks like the bank's site. Instead, the fraudulent site captures their login information and uses it to access the real account.

The data breach could make these so-called "phishing" attacks more efficient, by allowing the fraudsters to target people who actually have an account with the bank.

David Jevans, chairman and founder of the nonprofit Anti-Phishing Working Group, said criminals have been moving away from indiscriminate phishing toward more intelligent attacks known as "spear phishing," which rely on having more intimate knowledge of the victims.

"This data breach is going to facilitate that in a big way. Now they know which institution people bank with, they know their name and they have their email address," said Jevans, who is also the CEO of security company IronKey Inc.

"You're not going to see typical phishing where 90 percent of it ends up in spam traps and is easily detected. This is going to be highly targeted," he added.

Among the affected are financial-service companies such as Capital One Financial Corp., Barclays Bank, U.S. Bancorp, Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Ameriprise Financial Inc. and retailers including Best Buy Co., TiVo Inc., Walgreen Co. and Kroger Co.

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http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/apr/05/millions-of-emails-may-have-been-taken/

Google Glitch Disables 150,0000 Gmail Accounts

Google, we have a problem. About 150,000 Gmail account holders woke up to a nightmare this morning, with all their e-mail, attachments and Google Chat logs gone. What happened?

Google explains that “less than 0.08%” of all Gmail users were affected by the bug, which completely reset accounts, even down to the detail offering a welcome message to those users when they first logged on today. They, and especially visitors to the Gmail Help Forum, were not amused.

But there’s good news here. The way Google is explaining it on its Apps Status Dashboard, “Google engineers are working to restore full access. Affected users may be temporarily unable to sign in while we repair their accounts.”

In an earlier message, Google wrote, “For those Gmail users reporting missing messages, our engineers are working to restore them as soon as possible.” So maybe this is not so bad after all. As long as Google restores the messages, all we had was a big scare. Will Google restore all the messages? We’ve contacted a Google spokesperson, and will let you know when we hear back.

Meanwhile, I’m going to back up all of my Gmail forthwith. But wait a minute – how do you back up Gmail?


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http://mashable.com/2011/02/27/gmail-glitch/

How Nokia and Microsoft will carve up mobile services

Nokia smartphones will be running Windows Phone, but the company is hoping to hang on to some of its service-provider identity even as Microsoft grabs the choicest morsels.

Nokia tried hard to redefine itself as a provider of services, which is what everyone wants to be these days - hardware margins are tight and most software platforms are being given away for free. Over the years, Nokia has launched a plethora of services, including PIM synchronisation, cloud storage, and its very own instant messaging service – all of which eventually got lumped together under the Ovi brand but never really gelled as a coherent offering.

Recently, the Finns started killing off some of the more esoteric offerings, such as the cloud storage service, and they farmed others out to better-equipped companies, which included dumping Ovi e-mail and messaging with Yahoo. Ovi will no-doubt continue to provide services for non-smart phones, and the 150 million Symbian handsets Nokia expects to ship during the transition, but much of the service offering will now be handed over to Redmond.

Nokia gets to keep mobile mapping, while Microsoft gets handset advertising, an area in which Nokia has never showed much interest. Nokia also gets free rein to take Google and Apple to the cleaners over mobile patents, while Microsoft gets to poke Intel in the eye one last time.

These days, it's almost possible to feel sorry for Intel, which must really hate the mobile industry. First, the company pissed money into WiMAX, which got killed off by the network operators in collusion with Qualcomm. Then Microsoft announces that desktop Windows will be ported to the ARM architecture used by every other chip manufacturer, and now, Intel's attempt to undermine Microsoft with its own mobile platform is in tatters with MeeGo redefined as a "project" by Nokia and kicked into the "longer term".

Not that Nokia has much to celebrate, with Microsoft taking some of the best services for itself as well as collecting OS royalties. Contact and calender synchronisation will inevitably end up with Redmond, on smartphones at least, as will e-mail. The Ovi store gets integrated into the Windows Marketplace. We're not sure that that means. Perhaps developers will be able to submit applications to either company, but more likely, Microsoft's store will take advantage of the operator billing that Nokia has been able to put into place.

Ovi Music could survive. Microsoft has no problem with alternative content providers as long as they integrate with the appropriate Windows Phone 7 hubs, but we've yet to hear any details on that.

Ovi Maps will be the location technology of choice, on Nokia's handsets at least. It's not clear what happens to other Windows Phone 7 manufacturers which is where things get interesting. Bing Maps is currently well integrated into the Windows Phone 7 experience, automatically linking to contact addresses and calender appointments. Bing Maps can also be utilised by third-party developers through a Silverlight control, and we have to assume the same functionality will be available on Nokia handsets using Ovi Maps instead. With a consistent interface, and Microsoft getting the advertising revenue, one has to wonder why Nokia would be so keen on providing maps anyway, other than to justify the $8bn or so the Finns spent on Navteq in 2007.

Nokia has never shown much interest in mobile advertising, which is surprising when Google spent $750 on AdMob, and Apple shelled out $275 on Quattro for its iAd platform. Even Opera managed to find $8m to buy up Ad Marvel. Nokia owns Novarra, which already optimises – and inserts advertising into – mobile browsing sessions for Vodafone UK and Yahoo, but Nokia seems happy to hand over the whole smartphone advertising business to Microsoft's adCenter.

In return Nokia gets "significant" and "substantial" amounts of marketing dollars, and a doorway into America. Like all European stars Nokia has always been desperate to make it big in America, sometimes embarrassingly so, and this deal will likely put it there, but America changes people, and the Nokia that succeeds there will not be the Nokia we remember.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/14/nokia_microsoft/

Google gives uprising a voice

SAN FRANCISCO - Even before his first day on the job at Google, Ujjwal Singh was trying to figure out how to combine his passion for the spoken word with the company's technological prowess to help Egyptians bypass government efforts to muzzle the massive protests there.

Singh, 38, helped start an online service that lets fans share voice messages with the likes of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.

Google bought the startup Jan. 25, and a team leader trying to figure a way around Egypt's recent Internet blackout asked Singh for help before he reported to work.

A weekend of brainstorming and programming later, Speak2Tweet was born — a service that lets people call a phone number and leave a message, then posts a link to the message to Twitter.

It allowed Egyptians to communicate even as the regime of President Hosni Mubarak cut Internet and cellphone services for days, trying to squelch protests in the streets of Cairo demanding an end to his three decades of authoritarian rule.

By the time Singh started his job Monday, his service already was part of the uprising.

"He designed, built and launched his first product before he started at Google, which is now our all-time record," said Steve Crossan, a Google product manager.

Almost 2,900 spoken tweets had been posted as of Friday afternoon on the Twitter account@speak2tweet.

The alternative method of tweeting has turned into a forum for longer-form expression because the voice recordings aren't confined to Twitter's 140-character limit.

The service has been used to express outrage, indignation, fear, exhilaration and pleas for help in the fight to oust Mubarak.

"This corrupt regime must be eliminated," said one of the translated tweets on AliveInEgypt. Another said: "For all our Arab brothers, for all the men in Tahrir Square. Please help us, stand with us, if you abandon us we will die."

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http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/feb/05/PT2NEWSO5-google-gives-uprising-a-voice/

Google Unveils Chrome 9 And Credits Reddit For Their Help Fixing It

Google has made a big deal recently about not making a big deal about the version numbers of Chrome. “It’s just a number” is the basic take these days. In fact, they can barely be even bothered to announce them at all sometimes. But today, they did actually take some time to acknowledge the latest version — and a funny partner who made it all possible.

Google has officially rolled out Chrome 9, meaning the stable version of the browser has been updated to that iteration. They don’t make any mention of the number in the blog post about the update, but trust me, it’s version 9. Instead, Google focuses on the three new major features available to all in this build: WebGL, Chrome Instant, and the Chrome Web Store.

Many users will already be familiar with all of those as they’ve been on the beta builds of Chrome for a while, and the dev builds longer before that. But still, each is worth noting as all three are now a pretty integral part of the Chrome experience. WebGL brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics support. Chrome Instant brings Google Instant support to the Omnibox. And the Chrome Web Store is part of Google plans to push web apps farther.

But the more humorous part of the release comes from the Google Chrome Releases blog post. This post details the bug fixes that have come in Chrome 9. And in it, Google gives a special shout-out to the Reddit community for pointing out one critical bug. As Google notes:

Special thanks to the Reddit community, for playing so much of the game “Z-Type” that they uncovered a Chromium audio bug — see below!

Below, they detail the bug:

[69195] Critical Race condition in audio handling. Credit to the gamers of Reddit!

So there you go, while it wasn’t an “elite” bug or even a “l33t” one, it’s fun to see Google given credit to another service for pointing out their flaws.

Read More

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/03/google-chrome-9/

Google claims Microsoft is copying its search results

Google accused Microsoft on Tuesday of copying its search results for use in Microsoft's Bing, then the two companies bickered about it on stage at a San Francisco search conference.

Google, the dominant search engine, said Microsoft is using Internet Explorer 8 features to track what Google users are searching for, then copying those search results on its own search engine.

The Mountain View, Calif., company went so far as to conduct a "sting" operation, manually planting search results for gibberish terms. Those same results later showed up in Bing search results for the same gibberish.

On a company blog, Google said it wants Microsoft to stop the practice.

Microsoft acknowledged it uses IE8 and a Bing toolbar to track user information but said it's just one factor in determining Bing search results. Harry Shum, a corporate vice president for search at Microsoft, referred to Google's sting as a "spy-novelesque stunt."

The allegations were first reported Tuesday by the site SearchEngineLand.com. Later, Shum and Google principal engineer Matt Cutts argued over them on stage Tuesday at the Farsight 2011 conference in San Francisco. Their appearance, for a scheduled discussion on the future of search, was webcast.

The tiff underscores how competitive juices still run strong in search, which Google dominates with a 66.6 percent share of the U.S. market in December, according to comScore. By contrast, Microsoft had 12 percent and Yahoo, whose search engine Microsoft now runs, had 16 percent.

In the Farsight discussion, Cutts explained how Google determined Microsoft used the Bing toolbar and an IE8 "suggested sites" feature to track searches done on Google, then copy those results in Bing.

He confirmed that Google inserted fake search results on certain terms only to find them later on Bing.

"It's almost like a mapmaker that inserts a fake street and sees if that street gets copied or if a Yellow Pages inserts a fake number," Cutts said.

Shum did not deny that the Bing toolbar or IE8 features track data, adding that all search operations track customer behavior.

"We learn from our customers," Shum said.

"We have been very clear we use customer data. My understanding is other search engines also use a similar thing."

Cutts countered, "I'm not sure users realize that by installing the Bing bar or installing suggested sites on IE8 that those results are encrypted and sent to Microsoft."

Shum then criticized Google about online spam, saying, "I think Google, as an industry leader, would be responsible for a lot of spam we receive."

Google has been hit with privacy complaints that it tracks what people search for. By saying Microsoft is using its browser tools to track users, Google appeared to be trying to paint Microsoft and Bing with the same brush.

On Tuesday, Google issued a statement from Amit Singhal, a Google fellow:

"At Google we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality. We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there, from Bing and others — algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results copied from a competitor."

Microsoft also posted a blog item, from Shum, that said: "To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today's story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we'll take it as a backhanded compliment. But it doesn't accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience."

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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014102094_binggoogle02.html

Media-Tech Meet-Ups in Vegas

Media and technology companies cozied up to each other at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, touting their collaborations on stage and flaunting their friendships at private parties all along the Las Vegas Strip.

Talks progressed on a number of potential deals. News Corp 's 20th Century Fox continued talks with hardware makers, including Samsung Electronics Co., to license a slate of Fox TV shows to tablet computers and the application stores on Internet-connected TVs, said people familiar with the situation.

The deals would allow consumers to either download or stream some Fox shows, which include the "Family Guy" and "The Cleveland Show." Samsung declined to comment.

But media and technology executives who met behind closed doors this week encountered a range of issues that are still keeping both camps apart. They suggest that even as media companies experiment with more distribution models, they are going to continue to be cautious about striking deals with technology companies as they sort out the impact of rapid technology changes on their businesses.

In the red-hot tablet world, media companies say that talks with technology companies have grown more complicated because of the range of partners involved in launching new products, including telecom providers, hardware makers and software makers like Google Inc.

In some instances, media companies say it is difficult to work out each company's agenda and who is ultimately responsible for making sure the content gets to consumers.

Both sides also still disagree on whether certain technologies, such as televisions that display content from the Web, are ready for prime time. One media executive whose company has been talking to hardware makers about providing content for their Internet-connected television services says the company hasn't struck a deal with players like Samsung and Vizio Inc. because it believes their software isn't sufficiently sophisticated.

Kevin Lee, vice president of Smart TV partnerships at Samsung, said in a briefing with reporters that content partners are eager to partner with Samsung. "There is no big issue."

Vizio CEO William Wang declined to comment in an interview Friday.

Most of all, media companies say they still want more money.

"The media is worried about business models," said Marni Walden, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. The company was at the conference seeking video and other content to distribute on tablets and phones.

Ms. Walden said Verizon is seeking deals for tablets, such as the Motorola Xoom, that in some cases resemble the four-year $720 million deal it recently struck for exclusive rights to NFL video content on smartphones.

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said in an interview Friday that media companies, upbeat about the fact that the ad market is strong, aren't embracing new ad opportunities created by devices that port the Internet to television. "Media companies are not really getting ahead of it," he said.

But the partnerships between content and tech companies have come a long way as the lines between the industries have blurred. Years ago, the big media CEOs who occasionally walked the floor of CES were misfits. This week, they were part of the action.

In a Thursday morning keynote, Time Warner Inc. CEO Jeffrey Bewkes appeared on stage with Verizon Communications Inc. CEO Ivan Seidenberg, sketching out a vision of "TV Everywhere" in which video content would be freed from the TV and distributed to smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices over speedy and protected wireless iInternet connections.

Behind the scenes, potential partners had a lot to work through. Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s chief digital officer, said one challenge is deciding which of the numerous device makers—and which of the different aggregators that build apps for lots of different devices—to strike deals with.

The problem is particularly acute across the Android ecosystem, he said, citing the variety of manufacturers, carriers and Google itself. "Who am I to deal with for different aspects of what we create?" Mr. Miller asked. "A big thing for us is to really get that map in place."

While a lot of the action this week involved tech companies courting media companies, the wooing is going both ways. In meetings in his hotel suite, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch demonstrated the company's soon-to-be-launched newspaper for tablets, called the Daily, for a variety of executives, including Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, according to people familiar with the matter.

Read more:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703419104576068192735088396.html#ixzz1APiGpfnW

Google explores the human body with HTML5

Google has just soft-launched its latest browser experiment, the Google Body Browser, which is basically Google Earth for the human body.

Think of it as a three-dimensional, multi-layered browser version of those Visible Man/Woman model kits. Or a virtualized version of Slim Goodbody, if you will.

Google showed off the app at the WebGL Camp. WebGL is a cross-platform low-level 3D graphics API that is designed to bring plugin-free 3D to the web. It uses the HTML5 Canvas element and does not require Flash, Java or other graphical plugins to run.




If you visit bodybrowser.googlelabs.com in a supported web browser, you'll get a three-dimensional layered model of the human anatomy that you can zoom in on, rotate and search. WebGL support hasn't hit mainstream browsers, but the beta versions of Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox all support it.



Once you've got a compatible browser, visiting the Body Browser home page shows off the human body. You can adjust the various layers of skin, muscles, tissues and the skeletal system. What's really cool is that if you type in an organ or bone or ventricle system, you are taken directly to that area in the anatomy, zoomed in. You can turn labels on or off and the app supports multitouch so users of trackpads (Magic or otherwise) or multi-touch mice can zoom in with ease.

This is a pretty cool display of new web technologies. Presumably the use case is for the healthcare industry, but educators and students can benefit from this kind of demonstration too.

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http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2010/12/google-explores-the-human-body-with-html5/1

Android Sees 300,000 Daily Activations, Rubin Says

More than 300,000 Google Android phones are being switched on each day, according to a Twitter tweet from Android creator Andy Rubin. Let's see what Steve Jobs has to say about that.

Google Android creator Andy Rubin said Dec. 8 that there are now 300,000 Android phones being activated each day.

The stat, which Rubin delivered during this rare Twitter tweet late Wednesday, came two days after Rubin reiterated at D: Dive into Mobile that Google was seeing more than 200,000 activations of Android smartphones each day. Rubin's tweet was seconded by Android developer Dan Morrill.

Google's count of Android activations has been vociferously by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who skewered Google's claims of Android being open and sporting 200,000 daily activations in October.

Jobs countered that Apple is seeing 275,000 daily activations of devices based on iOS, including the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Apple sold more than 14 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, but Android handsets are also flying off shelves at a more modest clip of 9 or 10 million per month.

ComScore said Android market share comprises 23.5 percent of U.S. smartphone sales, trailing Apple at 24.6 percent and RIM at 35. 8 percent.

Strong sales of Samsung's Galaxy S devices and Motorola Droid X and Droid 2 have carried Android, with Samsung recently taking the crown of top Android handset seller in the U.S. from Motorola.

Samsung has shipped more than 3 million Galaxy S devices since the Vibrant, Captivate, Epic 4G, Fascinate and Mesmerize launched this past summer.

Samsung is set to roll out the Nexus S Android 2.3 device Dec. 16 from T-Mobile and Best Buy. The device is equipped with a NFC (near field communications) chip that could facilitate sensor-based mobile payments.

Moreover, Android phone users are proving super hungry for data, downloading applications and doing other things with their gadgets besides making calls, according to Arieso.

At Dive into Mobile, Rubin also hinted that he had discussions with Nokia, prompting speculation that a deal is in the works to get Android on smartphones from the world's top handset maker.

"The company has new leadership [referring to CEO Stephen Elop]. They are evaluating lots of alternatives. I'm open-minded and a big proponent of Android.

Rubin also unveiled a prototype Motorola tablet based on the Android 3.0, or Honeycomb build. Both the tablet and OS build will appear in 2011.

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http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Android-Sees-300000-Daily-Activations-Rubin-Says-523932

'Nude' scanner images published on web

Privacy concerns over so-called "nude" airport security scanners have again been raised after a website published 100 scans of passengers. Technology blog Gizmodo published the scans last week after removing identifying features.

The scans were sourced from a courthouse in Orlando, Florida, where, Gizmodo reported, US marshals had improperly stored the images. US authorities have repeatedly assured the passengers that body scans could not be stored and would therefore never be made public.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has stated that the technology "cannot store, print, transmit or save the image. In fact, all machines are delivered to airports with these functions disabled." The TSA began rolling out full-body scanners at US airports in 2007, but stepped up deployment of the devices this year when stimulus funding made it possible to buy another 450 of the advanced imaging technology scanners.

About 315 "naked" scanners are in use at 65 US airports, the TSA said. Gizmodo said the leaking of the scans is evidence that the privacy concerns are well founded. "That we can see these images today almost guarantees that others will be seeing similar images in the future," Joel Johnson wrote on the website.

The leak coincides with the introduction of new security procedures at US airports, including a more extensive pat-down for passengers who refuse to go through an electronic body scanner.

The changes have met with protests from passengers, with some likening the pat-downs to sexual assault. An internet campaign has urged Thanksgiving travellers to boycott the scans.

America's airport security chief has urged take part in the protest on Wednesday - one of the busiest flying days of the year - as the government tightens security during the holiday season.

"We all wish we lived in a world where security procedures at airports weren't necessary," TSA chief John Pistole said on Monday, "but that just isn't the case." A loosely organised internet campaign is urging people to refuse the scans on Wednesday in what is being called National Opt-Out Day.

The extra time needed to pat down people could cause a cascade of delays at dozens of major airports, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta.

Despite tough talk on the internet, there was little if any indication of a passenger revolt on Monday at many major US airports, with very few people declining the X-ray scan that can peer through their clothes Those who refuse are subjected to a pat-down search that includes the crotch and chest.

Many travellers said that the scans and the pat-down were not much of an inconvenience, and that the stepped-up measures made them feel safer. "Whatever keeps the country safe, I just don't have a problem with," Leah Martin, 50, of Houston, said as she waited to go through security at Atlanta airport.

At Chicago's O'Hare Airport, Gehno Sanchez, 38, from San Francisco, said he didn't mind the full-body scans. "I mean, they may make you feel like a criminal for a minute, but I'd rather do that than someone touching me," he said.

More than 400 imaging units are being used at about 70 airports. Since the new procedures began on November 1, 34 million travellers have gone through checkpoints and fewer than 3 per cent are patted down, the TSA said. The American Civil Liberties Union has received more than 600 complaints over three weeks from passengers who say they were subjected to humiliating pat-downs at US airports, and the pace is accelerating, according to ACLU legislative counsel's Christopher Calabrese.

At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs said the government was "desperately" trying to balance security and privacy and would take the public's concerns and complaints into account as it evaluated the new security checks. Stories of alleged heavy-handed treatment by TSA agents captured people's imagination.

A bladder cancer survivor from Michigan who wears a bag that collects his urine said its contents spilled on his clothing after a security agent at a Detroit airport patted him down roughly. Tom Sawyer, 61, a retired special education teacher, said the experience on November 7 left him in tears. "I was absolutely humiliated. I couldn't even speak," he told MSNBC.com.

During an appearance on CBS, Pistole expressed "great concern over anybody who feels like they have not been treated properly or had something embarrassing" happen. A video showing a shirtless young boy resisting a pat-down at Salt Lake City's airport has become a YouTube sensation and led to demands for an investigation from Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz, an outspoken critic of TSA screening methods. The video of the unidentified boy was shot on Friday by a bystander with a mobile phone.

The TSA said in a blog posting that nobody has to disrobe at an airport checkpoint apart from removing shoes and jackets. According to the TSA, the boy was being searched because he triggered an alarm inside a metal detector, and his father removed the youngster's shirt to speed up the screening. The boycott campaign was launched on November 8 by Brian Sodergren of Virginia, who works in the healthcare industry.

"I just don't think the government has the right to look under people's clothes with no reasonable cause, no suspicion other than purchasing a plane ticket," Sodergren said. He said he had no idea how many passengers plan to opt out on Wednesday, but added: "I am absolutely amazed at the response and how people have taken to it. I never would have predicted it. I think it hit a nerve."

Read More

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/nude-scanner-images-published-on-web-20101123-184t4.html?from=smh_sb

Teen game addict kills mother and himself

A 15-year-old South Korean boy committed suicide after killing his mother for scolding him over excessive computer game playing, a report said on Tuesday.

The boy's sister found their 43-year-old mother dead in her bedroom and her brother hanging from a gas pipe at their home in the southern
port of Busan, Yonhap news agency said.

The 12-year-old daughter reported to police that her mother and brother often had fights about his game addiction, Yonhap reported.

It quoted investigators saying the boy apparently committed suicide out of guilt at killing his mother.

South Korea is one of the world's most wired societies, but there have been sporadic reports of deaths related to Internet game addiction in the country.

In February a 32-year-old man died after reportedly playing for five days with few breaks.

A month later police arrested a couple accused of leaving their baby daughter to starve to death while they raised a "virtual" child on the Internet.

A post mortem examination showed the baby suffered a long period of malnutrition.

The government, which estimates South Korea has about two million web addicts, has announced a campaign to combat the affliction.

From next year it will offer free software to people at risk, to limit the time they spend on the web.

A consensual shutdown programme restricts usage to a time set by a guardian or user. Another called Internet Fatigue tries to make players become bored over time.

Read More

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Teen-game-addict-kills-mother-and-himself/H1-Article1-627027.aspx

Zuckerberg: We don't have the answers yet

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answers questions at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO--Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg painted a benign portrait of his company in a talk this afternoon at the Web 2.0 Summit, countering both the concerns about how it handles users' personal information as well as its increasing power to muscle out other companies in an apparent quest to dominate the Web.

"I'm not sure we're 100 percent right on this," Zuckerberg said of Facebook's recent spat with Google in which the latter forbade Facebook users from importing their Gmail contact information because Facebook doesn't let them do the reverse. "The correct answer isn't completely obvious. I'm not sure that we're completely right, but I think it's not completely black and white."

He also returned to a common Zuckerberg talking point: that no matter how much Facebook shows up in the press and how many hundreds of millions of people are using the social network, that business-wise it is still extremely young. When interviewer John Battelle said that at six years old, Facebook is about the same age that Google was when it built its groundbreaking AdSense product, and he wondered if Facebook might do the same with a sweeping, Internet-wide social advertising system, Zuckerberg replied, "I think it's earlier-stage than Google (was)...We're getting started with ads and I think that's ramping up well."

He also obliquely defended Facebook's strategy of expanding through the acquisition small start-ups, like Hot Potato and Drop.io, and potentially snuffing out others by building products that immediately compete with smaller companies through the infusion of Facebook's massive scale--like rehashes of the News Feed that looked quite a bit like Twitter, and more recently Facebook Places, which replicates much of the functionality of Foursquare. On Tuesday alone, news broke that Facebook had made strategic "hires" through the acquisition of some intellectual property from Zenbe (first reported by CNET) and Walletin, which brought former Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka on board.

(Facebook made failed attempts to acquire both Twitter and Foursquare.)

Zuckerberg said that the development of products like Places fits into its strategy of providing a platform on which other companies can build, and not an attempt to snuff out start-ups. "Groups, location, (and) messages are really core parts and either distribution channels, or what we view as foundational building blocks of the social graph," he explained.

Imperfection and a willingness to change and evolve are two things that Zuckerberg frequently brings up in public appearances, applied both to Facebook as a company and to himself as a CEO.

"I've made so many mistakes in running the company so far. Basically, any mistake that you can think of I've made or will make in the next few years," Zuckerberg said. "If you're building a product that people love you can make a lot of mistakes."

Zuckerberg is still only 26. The rhetoric of being young, fallible, and subject to constant change won't always work for Facebook--or for the CEO himself.


Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20023027-36.html#ixzz15Vbz7Qp9

RockMelt Browser Shows Promise Even in Crowded Market: 10 Reasons Why

A new browser has launched, called RockMelt. The idea behind the new browser is to combine all the elements that people are accustomed to when using a typical browser, surfing the Web, for example, with the things they actually do while they’re browsing pages, like talking with friends on Facebook or catching up on the updates from their favorite blogs.

 

But RockMelt is entering a crowded and hostile browser market. Currently, Internet Explorer still stands atop the space with Firefox trailing behind. Google’s Chrome browser is making strides in the market with its share continuing to gain.

 

The browser market is hotly contested and extremely volatile. trying to break into that space at this point in the game is bound to be difficult. But RockMelt has the ability to capture some market share. It’s unique if nothing else, and it delivers the kind of functionality that power Web users might really like. Read on to find out why RockMelt, against all odds, might have some promise in the browser space.

 

 1. It has the right backing

One of the most important aspects of RockMelt’s chances of succeeding is that the company has famed venture capitalist and Netscape co-founder, Marc Andreessen behind it. To those outside Silicon Valley, it might not mean much. But Andreessen is a powerhouse on the Web, and he has a tendency to back the right companies with the right ideas. Now RockMelt has become one of his crown jewels. With Andreessen’s help, RockMelt could be more successful than some might otherwise believe possible.

 

2. It’s more than just Web browsing

The beauty of RockMelt is that it delivers more than just Web browsing. Those that want to just check out a few Web pages can obviously do so, but it also has access to Facebook and Twitter built right in. It also includes the ability to see the user’s Web feeds, top services, and much, much more. The browser provides a full, end-to-end experience that’s designed to give people everything they typically want without requiring them to go elsewhere to get it.

 

3. RockMelt is everywhere you go

RockMelt’s services are cloud-based. What that means is regardless of where the person is using the browser, they can access their bookmarks, preferences, and everything else from the software. It’s able to achieve that functionality by being a browser that users log in to. Upon doing so, all the information found on the home PC is available at the office PC or anywhere else. It’s a neat idea, and it’s one that could appeal to quite a few users.

 

4. The best idea for search

Rather than be forced to open a new tab, open Google Search, and look for pages, RockMelt integrates search into the browser. So, while staying on the same page, users can type a query into the search box and view all the results as an overlay on the current page they’re on. Then they can simply click the page they want and there they go. It’s a unique idea that many folks will really like.


5. It limits the need for extensions

Much of RockMelt’s functionality can be done with extensions on several browsers, including Firefox. But having to manage those extensions can be a pain. The average novice user likely won’t do it. RockMelt has all that functionality built right in, making it ideal for the power user that wants everything. It’s also easy enough to use for the novice that likes having the ability to see Facebook updates without necessarily going to the page.

 

6. The design is just right

RockMelt’s design is quite impressive. And for most users, they will feel right at home with the browser. The software is still quite young, which means it has some bugs, but for the most part, it’s designed well for the average user who typically downloads beta products as soon as they’re made available.

 

7. It’s based on Chromium

 RockMelt is based on open source Chromium code originally developed to support Google’s Chrome browser. That has given developers the leniency they need to continue improving the software, while still making it quite zippy when loading pages. Even better, it gives the software some much-needed credibility in the open-source community, which has been known to support projects until the bitter end.

 

8. It tracks the user’s favorite sites

One of the best features of RockMelt is that it tracks the user’s favorite Web sites, providing them with alerts whenever a specific page is updated. The service can also tell folks when pictures are uploaded by friends, videos are shared by others, and much more. It’s quite similar to having an RSS reader built into the browser. It’s a nice idea. And it’s one that some users will definitely like having.

 

9. The browser is the last line of defense

Part of the beauty of RockMelt is that it doesn’t force the user to go to different sites to do the things they want to do. So, for instance, if they want to share a link with their friends on Twitter, they can do it from the browser, rather than use the different links and boxes on various Web sites. That’s something that most other browsers are lacking.

 

10. It works on Mac OS X and Windows

In today’s browser market, running on both Windows and Mac OS X is an absolute necessity. Wisely for RockMelt, it does just that. As Google and Mozilla have shown, providing a browser to as many customers as possible is the best way to even come close to matching Internet Explorer’s market share.

Xbox's Kinect: hands-free gaming in large living rooms

Microsoft's Xbox 360 video-game console got a little easier to use at 12:01 this morning. That's when the Redmond, Wash., firm began selling Kinect -- a clever accessory that takes the Xbox's controller out of the hands of gamers. 

Where the Xbox's usual remote device sports 14 buttons and joysticks to direct the action onscreen, the $149.99 Kinect uses a set of video sensors to track your movements -- allowing you to act out whatever action you want to see on the screen.

It's like gaming on Nintendo's Wii, just without the risk of pitching a Wiimote into your TV screen. And with a few extra issues of its own. 

Setting up a Kinect on an Xbox 360 (both loaned by Microsoft's PR department) was not the smoothest experience. After plugging the Kinect into one of the Xbox's USB ports and a separate power outlet and downloading the first of multiple software updates, its setup routine revealed a positioning issue: When I nestled the Kinect into the space between my HDTV and a soundbar speaker, it couldn't see my feet.

A dusty VHS tape turned out to be just the right size to elevate the Kinect for unobstructed vision, as confirmed by this message on screen: "Kinect can see you. You look great!"

A second issue then materialized: Kinect needs an unobstructed "play space" six to eight feet from the TV. Even after moving the coffee table out of the way, my living room barely qualified.

But once configured -- and after downloading an additional software update for each of the four games I sampled -- Kinect got fun in a hurry. 

In Kinect Adventures, the title Microsoft includes with the Kinect itself and its $299.99 and $399.99 Xbox-with-Kinect bundles, I stepped from side to side and jumped up and down to steer a raft down a river, then waved my arms and legs to throw and kick a ball at stacked blocks in a fusion of volleyball and Breakout.

Kinect Joy Ride had me holding two hands out as if I were gripping a steering wheel to direct a car down a racetrack. (I careened off the road about as often as I do using a conventional controller in any racing game.)

In Kinect Sports, I ran in place, went through the motions of bowling and discus and javelin throwing and pantomimed table tennis and soccer.

And Dance Central ... well, I don't want to talk about that. But I will note that by nailing a mere 6 percent of the dance moves in the one song I tried, I fell below even my own woeful expectations.

Seventeen Kinect titles are available in all.

Dancing aside, learning Kinect's moves wasn't an issue, and the system didn't seem to have trouble keeping up with me in each game. It was, however, easy to step out of the play space or bump into furniture.

There's also the risk of people looking at you funny -- something to think about if your living room features street-facing windows. For a hint of what passersby could witness, check out the photos and video clips most Kinect games take, and which you can then share with friends who don't have enough blackmail material on you already.

Kinect can also log you into your Xbox profile automatically if you set up its optional Kinect ID face-recognition system. After holding various poses in different spots on the floor (what did I say about looking ridiculous?), this software had learned my face and then logged me in on its own.

Kinect doubles as an alternate user interface for some of the Xbox's own software, but it doesn't shine in that role. It's sci-fi fantastic to be able to select a function by moving a hand in the air to slide a hand cursor over an onscreen button -- or to speak a simple command like "Xbox: play disc" to the Kinect's microphone -- but it's easy to navigate to screens in which Kinect gestures no longer work and you must pick up the Xbox controller. Finally, the motion sensors' accuracy sometimes appeared to degrade when I had to select objects toward the edges of the screen.

Have you attached a Kinect to your own Xbox? What's your review of the setup so far?