General Technology

An anonymous reader writes "Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides 'Guilt Upon Accusation,' which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement he/she will be punished with summary Internet disconnection. Unlike most laws, this one has no appeal process and no punishment for false accusation, because they were removed after public consultation. The ISPs are up in arms and now artists are taking a stand for fair copyright."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China is launching a porn crackdown and it wants search leaders Google and Baidu to make sure porn is filtered from search results.

One of my techs is a really outstanding guy. He always smiles, he makes movies for the teachers he directly supports with instructions on everyday tasks, and he does everything he can to make their computers easy to use. The group of teachers he supports also happens to be more technophobic in general than any other group in our district, so his ministrations are utterly appreciated by the users. How many overachieving, highly competent, friendly techies do you really find out there? I think that he may, in fact, be the only one, and certainly the only one who is willing to be woefully underpaid because he actually likes his job. So what's the problem, you ask? The problem is...

Fellow bloggers Jason Perlow and Ed Bott have been wrangling recently over the Windows 7/Vista/XP user interfaces. While Jason takes a more traditional view (yes, I'm being diplomatic here), Ed welcomes the evolution of the GUI in Windows 7. At first blush, I reacted the same way that Jason has to both Vista and Windows 7. I still don't consider Vista much of an upgrade, although I certainly acknowledge that it contains security improvements and, with SP1, is quite stable. However, these aren't discussions that our students are having. A new interface is meaningless to them. They simply adapt, just like the mammals did as the dinosaurs went extinct. I'm not saying that I'd like Jason Perlow to go extinct,...

marciot writes "It's interesting to look back at Ray Kurzweil's predictions for 2009 from a decade ago. He was dead on in predicting the ubiquity of portable computers, wireless, the emergency of digital objects, and the rise of privacy concerns. He was a little optimistic in certain areas, predicting the demise of rotating storage and the ubiquity of digital paper a bit earlier than it appears it will actually happen. On the topic of human-computer speech interfaces, though, he seems to be way off." And of course Kurzweil missed 9/11 and the fallout from that. His predictions might have been nearer the mark absent the war on terror.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While HP is taking the high (price) road in the NAS market with its new MediaSmart Servers, Iomega is going the other direction with its new Home Media Network Hard Drive line. Considering how cheap hard drive prices are getting, it's a reasonable tactic. How reasonable? Iomega is selling the 500GB model for just $159.99, while a 1TB version is $229.99. The devices are also well-featured, with iTunes and UPnP server capabilities, DLNA device support, and a USB port to attach more storage or a printer to the unit. It comes with EMC Retrospect software for backup duties, and you also get 2GB of online storage courtesy of MozyHome Online Backup service. (Unlimited online storage is available for $4.95 per...

On Wednesday night, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is going to step on stage at the Venetian Hotel’s Palazzo Ballroom to give the keynote address that kicks off the Consumer Electronics Show. It’s the first time for Ballmer, who’s taking the slot that his predecessor Bill Gates has had for years. It’s widely expected that Ballmer and an entourage of product managers will publicly unveil Windows 7 Beta 1. But I’m going to be listening for the things that Microsoft chooses not to talk about. In the spirit of the occasion, I offer these predictions of five things that Ballmer will take great pains to avoid saying.

An anonymous reader writes "The Milky Way is spinning much faster and has 50 per cent more mass than previously believed. This means the Milky Way is equivalent in size to our neighbor Andromeda — instead of being the little sister in the local galaxy group, as had been believed. One implication of this new finding is that we may collide with Andromeda sooner than we had thought, in 2 or 3 billion years instead of 5."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A year ago, I wondered when and whether Microsoft would make Bob Muglia, head of the company's Server and Tools business, one of the company's presidents. On January 5, 2009, that happened.

My home state of Oregon has joined many other states with electronics recycling centers. If you are one of the six other people who live in this seemingly empty state, here's where you can find the "ecycling" centers. Many other states had electronic recycling before us. Illinois. Maryland. Kentucky, which privatized ecycling. Ecycling may not be too profitable right now. It appears the recession is playing havoc with private recycling business models. Here's a link to the clever private company that managed to glom onto the URL: ecycling.com. Sadly Oregon only collects monitors and TV sets and computers. They don't accept the two most trashed and trashable pieces of electronics: keyboards and cell phone. Best of all: mighty New Hampshire...

Behind the scenes at Macworld Expo, developers have mostly good things to say about OS X 10.6, called "Snow Leopard." While details may emerge during Tuesday's keynote presentation, the biggest question mark is the cost of the update. One developer wondered about Snow Leopard's marketing: "From a marketing point of view, if you call something 'Leopard' and the next version is 'Snow Leopard,' then that [latter version] has to be free. Maybe [Apple can charge] a slight bump, but not a $99 upgrade." (All of the developers requested their discussion be without attribution.) Another developer agreed that Snow Leopard would be a "tough sell" as an update. However, the cost question was important to developers' plans and for customer...

Ponca City, We love you writes "For thousands of years, losing teeth has been a routine part of human aging. Now the Washington Post reports that researchers are close to growing important parts of teeth from stem cells, including creating a living root from scratch, perhaps within one year. According to Pamela Robey of the NIH. 'Dentists say, "Give me a root and I can put a crown on it."' In a few years dentists will treat periodontal disease with regeneration by using stem cells to create hard and soft tissue; they will take out a tooth that is about to fall, and reconnect it firmly to the regenerated tissue. Although nobody is predicting when it will be possible to grow teeth on demand, in adults, to replace missing ones, a common guess is five to ten years. Baby and wisdom teeth are sources of stem cells that could be 'banked' for future health needs, says Robey. 'When you think about it, the teeth children put under their pillows may end up being worth much more than the tooth fairy's going rate. Plus, if you still have your wisdom teeth, it's nice to know you're walking around with your own source of stem cells.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CWmike writes "Amazon.com has rolled out a new option for its Simple Storage Service (S3) that lets data owners shift the cost of accessing their information to users. Until now, individuals or businesses with information stored on S3 had to pay data-transfer costs to Amazon when others made use of the information. Amazon said the new Requester Pays option relieves data providers of that burden, leaving them to pay only the basic storage fees for the cloud computing service. The bigger question with the cloud is, who really pays? Mark Everett Hall argues that IT workers do."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC has an interesting article on the long-standing issue of how to power the 'climber' that would ascend a space elevator into space. Previous ideas have included delivering microwave or laser power to the climber beamed from the Earth's surface, but now European Space Agency ground station engineer Age-Raymond Riise has demonstrated a device that could provide a "lift into space" for cheaper space missions along a 100,000-km long tether anchored to the Earth. Riise demonstrated sending power mechanically by providing carefully timed jerks of the cable at its base with a broomstick to represent the cable held in tension, an electric sander to provide a rhythmic vibration to the bottom of the stick, and three brushes representing the climber with their bristles pointing downwards allowing the climber assembly to slide upward along the broomstick as it moved slightly downward, but grip it as it moved slightly upward. 'It would be possible to make a suspension system that completely decouples the cabin where the passengers are,' says Riise. 'For them it would be a linear movement with very little disturbance.' Riise says that he has been approached by commercial elevator companies, who are researching new ideas for elevators in superscrapers where the simplicity of the approach makes it attractive when compared to other ideas for powering lifts, such as compressed air."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In Washington D.C. the stakes are high. The stakes are huge. The stakes are for a major porton of the cash that will go into the United States' mounting federal debt. That means big money. How much will Obama's version of the federal government put into greentech? That is the multi-billion dollar question. The line forms in front of Uncle Sam's seemingly bottomess ATM. Bottomless as long as China and Japan and Saudi Arabia are willing to lend the U.S.ever more money. Who wants what? The Union of Concerned Scientists are asking for more facts, less faith, in making regulatory decisions. Here you can find their list of ten things they want to see from the Obama Admin. To save...

The core problem we've solved is the ability for our engine to redistribute the data and the computation on the fly, as these queries and analysis are being performed. ... The combination of the software-switch interconnect, which Greenplum built into the Greenplum product, and the underlying use of commodity parallel computers, is brought together in this database system that makes it possible to do SQL query and languages like MapReduce with automatic parallelism.

A Relevant and Robust Offering for today's IT organizations I had a chance to speak with Marc Olesen – VP SaaS for HP Software and Solutions recently. We discussed HP’s offerings in the Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and IT Management spaces. Background: HP’s software organization is a large entity although that may get overshadowed by HP's hardware or services product/service lines. The firm has expanded its PPM software offerings in recent years via acquisitions and the most relevant to this discussion include: Peregrine (2005), Mercury Interactive (2006) and Kintana (2003). The company now possesses a relatively complete and formidable line-up of solutions to help internal IT groups manage complex projects and project portfolios. So who is HP’s target customer for...

Last week I blogged about a piece of information that was handed to me: "... A Mac version of Picasa will be launched this year at Macworld ..." It turns out that Google did indeed launch Picasa at this year's Macworld Expo, and it looks great. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but I will surely be installing it on my Macbook tonight. today, we're releasing Picasa for Mac. While we've previously offered both a standalone Picasa Web Albums uploader and an iPhoto plugin for Mac users, Picasa for Mac finally brings all of the advanced sharing and sync features of Picasa to the millions of Mac OS X users who use Picasa Web Albums. Not...

Seagate has announced that it is shipping the densest 3.5 inch desktop hard drive available - cramming an incredible 329 gigabits per square inch.

surely_you_cant_be_serious writes "A nationwide survey finds that most companies consider their systems vulnerable to attack. Historically, crime rates increase during recessions — and some believe that cybercrime may well follow suit, especially given massive layoffs and the dim prospects many laid-off employees face in finding a new job. 'One thing companies can start doing is monitoring their networks on an ongoing basis so that they understand the normal pattern of data flow and usage, Brill said. In many cases, companies may not have the internal capability to do this, but outsourcing options are available. Kroll Ontrack, for instance, will be rolling out a 24/7 monitoring service for its global clients manned from a US location by professionals in early 2009.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.