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Submission+-SPAM:Out of Business, Clear May Sell Customer Data

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "Earlier this week, the Clear airport security screening service ceased operations, leaving many to wonder what would become of the personal information, including credit card numbers, fingerprints and iris scans, of Clear's customers. And now we know... The information could be sold to the provider of a similar service. Until then, Clear has erased PC hard drives at its airport screening kiosks and is wiping employee computers but the information is retained on its central databases. Clear customer David Maynor, who is CTO with Errata Security in Atlanta, wants Clear to delete his information but that isn't happening, the company said in a note posted to its Web site Thursday. 'They had your social security information, credit information, where you lived, employment history, fingerprint information,' said Maynor. 'They should be the only ones who have access to that information.'"
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Intel

Submission+-SPAM:New Chips Don't Deliver, Facebook Says

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "In an interview on stage at GigaOm's Structure conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Jonathan Heiliger, Facebook's VP of technical operations, told Om Malik that the latest generations of server processors from Intel and AMD don't deliver the performance gains that 'they're touting in the press.' 'And we're, literally in real time right now, trying to figure out why that is,' Heiliger said. He also had some harsh words for server makers: 'You guys don't get it,' Heiliger said. 'To build servers for companies like Facebook, and Amazon, and other people who are operating fairly homogeneous applications, the servers have to be cheap, and they have to be super power-efficient.' Heiliger added that Google has done a great job designing and building its own servers for this kind of use."
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Security

Submission+-SPAM:Reporters Find U.S. Gov't Data in Ghana Market

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "'Hundreds and hundreds of documents about government contracts,' were found on a hard drive purchased at a market in Ghana for the bargain basement price of $40, said Peter Klein, an associate professor with the University of British Columbia, who led an investigation into the global electronic waste business for the PBS show Frontline. The hard drive had belonged to U.S. government contractor Northrop Grumman and in a made-for-TV ironic twist, 'some of the documents talked about how to recruit airport screeners and several of them even covered data security practices,' Klein said. 'Here were these contracts being awarded based on their ability to keep the data safe.'"
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Handhelds

Submission+-SPAM:Kindle Pricing, Business Models and Source Code

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "A trifecta of Kindle-related news surfaced this week, with Jeff Bezos speaking at Wired's 'Disruptive by Design' conference on topics including Kindle pricing and business models. And yesterday, reports blogger Peter Smith, 'there was a flurry of blogging activity yesterday stating that Amazon had released the Kindle source code. Once everyone caught their breath, it became apparent that the files in question were just some open source libraries that Amazon had modified (they're being good open source citizens and releasing mods they've made to open source code — good for them!), not the complete source code.' Now, back to the Kindle pricing: According to a post at Wired, Bezos said Amazon opted to sell the Kindle for 'something akin to the actual cost for hardware,' rather than subsidizing the hardware costs and requiring a monthly subscription or requiring the buyer to purchase a certain number of books per month because 'fees and minimum purchase requirements create friction.' Smith has a different take: 'If I'm buying a Kindle from Amazon that enables me to buy books from Amazon, I'm broadcasting a desire to buy Kindle books. I would welcome some subsidization of the hardware since I'm going to be buying content anyway. No, I really think Amazon priced the Kindle the way they did because they thought they could get away with doing so (and they were right, it would seem).' Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, Bezos said 'that he sees Kindle-the-device and Kindle-the-book-format as two separate business models, and that the Kindle iPhone App won't be the last software reader to appear.'"
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Government

Submission+-SPAM:IRS Now Wants To Repeal Cell Phone Tax

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "Last week the IRS caused an uproar when it requested public comments on ways to clarify a decades-old law that would tax personal usage of business cell phones. But IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said that the request for comments did not mean that the largely ignored rule would now be enforced. 'Some have incorrectly implied that the IRS is 'cracking down' on employee use of employer-provided cell phones,' Shulman wrote. 'To the contrary, the IRS is attempting to simplify the rules and eliminate uncertainty for businesses and individuals.' And in fact, the IRS is now recommending that the law be repealed, saying that 'the passage of time, advances in technology, and the nature of communication in the modern workplace have rendered this law obsolete.'"
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Government

Submission+-SPAM:Senators To Examine Exclusive Handset Deals

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "Based on a request that a group of rural operators sent asking the FCC to examine the practice of handset exclusivity, four members of the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet sent a letter to the FCC expressing their concern. Small operators, like U.S. Cellular argue that 'exclusive handset contracts divide wireless customers into have's and have not's.' But nationwide operators, including Verizon, maintain that 'in the absence of exclusivity agreements, wireless carriers would have less incentive to develop and promote innovative handsets.' The Commerce Committee expects to hold a hearing on the issue on Wednesday."
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Databases

Submission+-SPAM:Oracle Beware: Google Tests Cloud-Based Database

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "On Tuesday, the same day Google held a press event to launch its Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, the company quietly announced in its research team blog a new online database called Fusion Tables. Under the hood of Fusion Tables is data-spaces technology, which would 'allow Google to add to the conventional two-dimensional database tables a third coordinate with elements like product reviews, blog posts, Twitter messages and the like, as well as a fourth dimension of real-time updates,' according to Stephen E. Arnold, a technology and financial analyst who is president of Arnold Information Technology. 'So now we have an n-cube, a four-dimensional space, and in that space we can now do new kinds of queries which create new kinds of products and new market opportunities,' said Arnold, whose research about this topic includes a study done for IDC last August. 'If you're IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, your worst nightmare is now visible.'"
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Programming

Submission+-How to Sponsor an Open Source Sprint

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "Does your favorite open source project need just a little extra functionality? As Esther Schindler explains in this IT World article, your company can encourage the developers to add the features you've been yearning for — for far, far less money than you imagine. She interviews companies who have sponsored "code-a-thons" for Drupal, Plone, simwiddy, and a set of applications for British Telecom, and provides specific pointers.

To ensure that the event happens and that it meets its goals, you must connect with the right members of the community and motivate them to work with you. "It's not like these people are paid to work for your interests," points out Brightcove's Whatcott. If your business already has project committers on its staff, then it's just a matter of leveraging existing relationships. But, says Stahl, "Someone less 'core' in the community might well have a harder time."

"
Google

Submission+-SPAM:DOJ Turns Up the Heat on Google's Book Deal3

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "It appears that after its initial review of a deal that would settle a lawsuit publishers and authors filed against Google over the latter's book search engine, the DOJ is leaning toward challenging the proposed settlement. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported late Tuesday that the DOJ is now sending civil investigative demands (CIDs) to organizations involved in the deals, a more formal approach than its initial information-gathering efforts. But Authors Guild Executive Director Paul Aiken said the fact that the DOJ is reviewing the proposed settlement isn't surprising, considering Google is involved: 'Any big deal that involves Google is going to get a look from the Justice Department.'"
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Portables

Submission+-SPAM:Arrington's Web Tablet Nearly Ready For Launch?

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "The 'dead simple and dirt cheap' touchscreen Web tablet that Michael Arrington of TechCrunch set out to build last July seems to be nearing completion, writes blogger Peter Smith. 'The CrunchPad is a Linux-based touchscreen tablet using a browser-based UI. When you turn the unit on, it boots right into the webkit-based browser. There's a pop-up virtual keyboard for entering URLs and such (you wouldn't want to do any significant typing on it) and scrolling is via swiping the screen. When Arrington first visualized the project he was shooting for a $200 price point, then discovered that a $299 price was more realistic.'"
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The Courts

Submission+-SPAM:'Rigged' Product Demo in SAP Suit Goes Missing

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "Waste Management sued SAP in March 2008 over a failed ERP project. Now, well into the pre-trial discovery process, a presale product demonstration software package that Waste Management says was a key element of the 'false representations' SAP made to 'induce Waste Management into entering a software licensing and implementation agreement' has gone missing. Naturally, both sides say the other has it. And SAP, for its part, says it has 'searched extensively' for the system and wants it 'as much or more' as Waste Management, since it 'will help SAP disprove WM's fraud claim.'"
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Programming

Submission+-SPAM:Why Programming Rituals Work

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "Programmers may not think that their rituals are unusual, but if you swear that your code is less buggy if you recite it aloud or you prepare for coding by listening to certain music, don't be surprised if you get a couple sideways glances. In a recent ITworld article, Issac Kelly, Lead Developer at Servee.com, explains his routine and why it works: 'To me, programming is really the 'last mile' to getting something done. When I do the planning and specifications, I go on lots of walks, take lots of time with my wife, and really do as little work in front of the computer as possible. The more I plan (in my head, on paper, on a whiteboard) the less I program; and all of my rituals are to that end.' His ritual goes like this: 'Before sitting down to a coding session, he gets a big glass of water, takes everything off of his desk, and closes out all programs and e-mail, keeping open only his code editor. The office door is shut, and some sort of music is playing ('typically an instrumental only, like my 'Explosions in the Sky' pandora station,' says Kelly).'"
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Wireless (Apple)

Submission+-SPAM:Macs with 3G: More Connectivity, More Problems

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "In a recent blog post, Josh Fruhlinger muses on the possibility of 3G radio receivers turning up in future Mac notebooks (as foretold by Apple job postings and the mention of WWAN hardware in Snow Leopard beta releases). 'At first glance,' says Fruhlinger, 'this seems like a reasonably awesome idea.' But will the target market be willing to take on the additional telecom charge? 'And, more to the point,' says Fruhlinger, 'most of us have gotten accustomed to the idea of one Internet connection per household, shared with a wireless router. The latter idea could be covered by a router that connects to the Internet over a 3G connection — something like the MiFi hotspot. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple had such a thing in the pipeline, an Airport station (Airport Mobility?) that didn't need to be plugged into the wall. That would explain the search for 3G experts, anyway.'"
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Microsoft

Submission+-SPAM:Microsoft Bans VoIP, Rival Stores at Mobile Market

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "Microsoft has identified 12 application types that won't be accepted at the MarketPlace for Mobile store. Among them: VoIP apps, programs that are larger than 10MB, and programs that change the default browser on a device. Overly restrictive? Maybe. But perhaps the clear set of rules will prevent the confusion over Apple's policy for approving or rejecting applications from the App Store."
Link to Original Source
Toys

Submission+-SPAM:Researchers Make Paper Speakers for LCD TVs

Submitted by narramissic
narramissic writes: Engineers at Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) have developed stereo speakers in paper that are are well suited for thin devices like LCD TVs and will be used in cars starting next year. According to an ITworld article, 'The special paper is made by sandwiching thin electrodes that receive audio signals and a prepolarized diaphragm into the paper structure. A special Flexpeaker adapter between the MP3 player and the speaker is used to play music through the paper.' ITRI says it hopes in the coming year to develop a chip that will do away with the adapter and allow people to plug a digital music player directly into the speaker. ITRI is also working on wireless technologies and will show off its first Bluetooth enabled paper speaker in July.
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The meat is rotten, but the booze is holding out. Computer translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

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