New submitter Temporal writes "Yesterday, Slashdot reported on my LAN-party optimized house. But, lacking from the internet at that time were key technical details: How do I boot 12 machines off a single shared disk? What software do I use? What does my network infrastructure look like? Why do I have such terrible furniture? Is that Gabe Newell on the couch? The answer is a combination of Linux, PXE boot, gPXE, NBD/iSCSI, and LVM snapshots running on generic hardware over generic gigabit ethernet. I have even had several successful LAN parties with a pure-Linux setup, using WINE."
wiredmikey writes "In light of the many security breaches and incidents that have undermined the faith the IT industry has in Certificate Authorities (CAs) and their wares, the CA/Browser Forum, an organization of leading CAs and other software vendors, has released the 'Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly-Trusted Certificates,' an industry-wide baseline standard for the operation of CAs issuing SSL/TLS digital certificates natively trusted by the browser. The CA/Browser Forum is requesting Web browser and operating system vendors adopt the requirements (PDF) as part of their conditions to distribute CA root certificates in their software. According to the forum, the Baseline Requirements are based on best practices from across the SSL/TLS sector and touch on a number of subjects, such as the verification of identity, certificate content and profiles, CA security and revocation mechanisms. The requirements become effective July 1, 2012, and will continue to evolve to address new risks and threats."
MojoKid writes "Microsoft's Xbox 360 console is six years old. The Nintendo Wii is five years old, and so is the Sony PlayStation 3. All three are due for an overhaul (can you imagine gaming on a PC that's half a decade old, or more?), and while they're still popular gaming platforms, consoles are really starting to shine as streaming media centers. According to market research firm Nielsen, streaming video on game consoles is up over last year. Xbox 360 owners now use their consoles to stream video 14 percent of the time, which is almost as much as PS3 users (15 percent). But it's the Wii that sees the most time as a streaming device, with Wii owners using their consoles to stream video a third of the time."
An anonymous reader writes with a report that Sprint, in an attempt to extricate itself from the Carrier IQ drama, has "ordered that all of their hardware partners remove the Carrier IQ software from Sprint devices as soon as possible." Sprint confirmed that they've disabled the use of Carrier IQ on their end, saying, "diagnostic information and data is no longer being collected." The software is currently installed on roughly 26 million Sprint phones, though the company has only been collecting data from 1.3 million of them.
pigrabbitbear writes "Since its introduction, the Stop Online Piracy Act (and its Senate twin PROTECT-IP) has been staunchly condemned by countless engineers, technologists and lawyers intimately familiar with the inner functioning of the internet. Completely beside the fact that these bills, as they currently stand, would stifle free speech and potentially cripple legitimate businesses by giving corporations extrajudicial censorial powers, there's an even more insidious threat: the method of DNS filtering proposed to block supposed infringing sites opens up enormous security holes that threaten the stability of the internet itself. The problem: key members of the House Judiciary Committee still don't understand how the internet works, and worse yet, it's not clear whether they even want to."
adeelarshad82 writes "Earlier this year many Android phone vendors and U.S. wireless carriers made a long-awaited promise, which was to push timely OS updates to all new Android phones. Seven months in and especially with the release of Google Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), PCMag decided to reach out to all those vendors and wireless carriers to see how things were coming along. Brace yourselves Android fans, you're not going to like the responses."
PolygamousRanchKid tips a story about research into futuristic military technology currently being funded by DARPA. The Disc-Rotor Compound Helicopter 'is propelled by rotor blades that extend from a central disc, letting it take off and land like a helicopter. But those blades can also retract into the disc, minimizing drag and letting the Disc-Rotor fly like a plane, powered by engines beneath each wing.' The Vulture program aims to keep a plane in the sky for five years or more, and 'LANdroids' are pocket-sized robots which soldiers can scatter around urban areas to seed a communications network. FastRunner is a 'two-legged robot that can cover a moderately rough terrain as fast as the best human sprinters.' The article mentions the flying humvees we've discussed in the past, as well as projects for 'smart' binoculars and a method for recycling space junk.
alphadogg writes "As the price of digital storage drops and the technology to tap electronic communication improves, authoritarian governments will soon be able to perform retroactive surveillance on anyone within their borders, according to a Brookings Institute report. These regimes will store every phone call, instant message, email, social media interaction, text message, movements of people and vehicles and public surveillance video and mine it at their leisure, according to 'Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Government,' written by John Villaseno, a senior fellow at Brookings and a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA."
Sockatume writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Google has given music conglomerate UMG the right to arbitrarily eliminate YouTube videos. When UMG had Megaupload's 'Mega Song' removed from the site, it was assumed that they had made a DMCA claim, and that YouTube was responding under its 'safe harbor' obligations. Megaupload's legal response argues that UMG has no grounds to request a DMCA takedown. However in court filings (PDF), UMG claims that its licensing agreement with Google gives it the power and authority to unilaterally wipe videos from the site, bypassing the DMCA entirely. If true, that means that your activities on YouTube are not just curtailed by the law, but by the terms of their secret agreements with media conglomerates."
MrSeb writes "In an interesting move that should finally bring the United States' fast-and-loose advertising rules and regulations into line with the UK and EU, the National Advertising Division (NAD) — the advertising industry's self-regulating watchdog — has moved to ban the misleading use of photoshopping and enhanced post-production in cosmetics adverts. The ban stems from a Procter & Gamble (P&G) CoverGirl ad that photoshopped a model's eyelashes to exaggerate the effects of a mascara. There was a footnote in the ad's spiel about the photo being manipulated, but according to the director of the NAD, that simply isn't enough: 'You can't use a photograph to demonstrate how a cosmetic will look after it is applied to a woman's face and then — in the mice type — have a disclosure that says "okay, not really."' The NAD ruled that the ad was unacceptable, and P&G has since discontinued it. The ruling goes one step further, though, and points out that 'professional styling, make-up, photography and the product's inherent covering and smoothing nature' should be enough, without adding Photoshop to the mix. The cosmetics industry is obviously a good starting point — but what if the ban leaks over to product photography (I'm looking at you, Burger King), video gameplay demos, or a photographer's own works?"
itwbennett writes "Saying that Twitter and blogs are today's equivalent of a bulletin board that one is free to disregard (as compared to e-mails or phone calls directed to a victim), Maryland Judge Roger Titus on Thursday dismissed a criminal case against a person who was charged with stalking a religious leader on Twitter."
mvdwege writes "The BBC reports that the reactors at Fukushima have reached cold shutdown, meaning they no longer need active cooling to stay at safe temperatures. Plans can now be made to start the cleanup of the site. Unfortunately, TEPCO has also admitted not all problems were out in the open until now; an estimated 45 cubic meters of contaminated water have leaked out of cracks in the foundation of a treatment plant."
vikingpower writes "The U.S. National Institutes of Health on Thursday suspended all new grants for biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees and accepted the first uniform criteria for assessing the necessity of such research (full report here). Those guidelines require that the research be necessary for human health, and that there be no other way to accomplish it. A San Francisco Chronicle article points out why chimpanzees are so often used for medical research, as they are evolutionarily the closest to human beings. One may wonder if Europe and Asia are to follow the U.S.?"
snydeq writes "If HP wants a future for struggling WebOS, it must invest in the platform, not abandon it, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. 'It seems HP may only be truly committed to the platform if it can offload the cost of developing and maintaining it. Yet if that's what HP hopes to achieve by opening the WebOS source, it's bound to be disappointed.' Instead, HP should dedicate its own developer resources and 'release as much code as possible under an Apache, BSD, or similarly permissive license. Dual licensing under the GPL might leave HP with more opportunities to monetize the platform, but it won't garner as much interest from hardware makers, who are what WebOS needs most.'"
Here's a scenario I never expected to experience: For the past month, I've been wearing a brainwave-sensing headband to bed every night.
Wendell is more than just a pretty face; it's an open-source robot for all!
You get the feeling that executives in Research in Motion will especially relish singing "Should old acquaintance be forgot" this year.
You've probably read that SOPA is a controversial anti-piracy bill. Here's another view.
Seagate and Western Digital are cutting back on hard drive warranties, in some instances from five years to one.
Verizon may not (yet) support Google Wallet on its Galaxy Nexus, but that doesn't mean you can't hack it.
Cox Communications plans to sell wireless spectrum licenses covering 28 million U.S. residents to Verizon Wireless for US$315 million, becoming the latest cable...
Neon-lit clothing and water sports aren't two things that generally mix, but these surfers look right at home in their Tron-like gear.
In this series, we look at the mobile gear that small-business leaders lean on. Noah Lehmann-Haupt, who launched an exotic car rental company, shows off the tools that rev his engine.
The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee has postponed further debate on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
If HP wants a future for struggling WebOS, it must invest in the platform -- not abandon it.
Dell has confirmed that it has ceased production of its Inspiron Mini netbook computer, in effect ending its pursuit of the receding netbook market.
The demand for these three positions will rise as cloud computing grows.
Samsung Electronics filed four additional patent claims against Apple on Friday in a German court while also going to trial over three other patents that the...
There's a new generation gap: Millennials want to use their own digital tools at work, regardless of corporate guidelines
Adobe Systems has released Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.4.7 in order to patch two vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited in attacks against companies...
Europe’s police force has arrested more than 100 people in a major crackdown on online child porn, but warned that the Internet is making it easier for offenders...
CyanogenMod drops support for the Samsung Vibrant after discovering that the phone cannot dial 911 while using its custom Android software.
Fooled by scareware? A legal settlement includes payouts of about $20 to all who fell for a multinational malware swindle scheme.
Zynga's initial public offering Friday, a raft of acquisition announcements this week from IBM, Salesforce and others, and some upbeat reports on the chip and...
Love Skyrim? Whether you're playing on PC, PS3 or Xbox 360, you can score some nerd cred by earning these fan-made Skyrim Achievements.
Sprint says 26 million handsets are loaded with the monitoring program, while AT&T Claims it's on 900,000 of its phones.
Facebook users have seven days to clean up their profile before the default Timeline layout goes live. Here is a checklist of things you'll want do so your past doesn't come back to haunt you.
Dell’s 10-inch Mini netbooks have disappeared from sale online, and shoppers are instead offered the likes of an Inspiron or a Latitude.
A creative scheme that charges people via SMS for what should be a free copy of Adobe Systems' Flash player is apparently undergoing a test run on a Russian...
Watch for a beefier processor, sleeker display, and perhaps a smaller sibling -- but when?
UPDATE: Committee rejects more than 20 amendments intended to moderate anti-piracy bill that gives broad authority to copyright holders.
The plethora of spectrum bands used for LTE (Long-Term Evolution) will result in more expensive devices, and also make the ability to roam globally using the...
The filesystem encryption keys are obtainable in iPhone 4S -- perhaps only temporarily -- but long enough to offer access to hacks.
Galaxy Nexus owners will get Flash Player update, which may be the last version of the plug-in for Android devices.
A Congressional committee rejects amendments that addressed opponents' concerns about heavy-handed tactics.
Beijing city authorities are requiring users of China's Twitter-like microblogging services to register with their real name identities, a move that could scare...
Apple is experiencing problems with its iTunes Store and iCloud services, with many Twitter users reporting that they are unable to log in using their Apple ID...
Even though the Internet is the newest medium for anonymous, uncomfortable expression, online speech is equally protected under the U.S. First Amendment.
Showcasing some incredibly detailed animation and syncing, this heavy metal fan's Christmas decorations probably put the rest of the neighborhood to shame.
Research In Motion said it won't start selling phones with its new software platform until the "later part" of 2012 and had to take a US$485 million...
Rather than shell out tens to hundreds of dollars for smartphone docks, this origami design will teach you how to make them from scratch.
I've written for years that it is impossible to make a product too easy to use. But the industry has proved me wrong, by making products that are so focused on...
Apple's extraordinary run over the last few years may begin to show signs of slowing next year--its first year without visionary leader Steve Jobs.
Clearwire's big payday on Tuesday, when it raised US$734 million through a stock offering and a new investment by majority owner Sprint Nextel, helped the WiMax...
Reader Sigil has an interesting question regarding a MacBook Pro with ailing i-sight.
Picking out your favorite beverage can get a lot more high-tech, as this concept design shows how vending machines can guess what you want to drink.
Adobe plans to release a patch Friday for an older version of the Reader PDF viewer to stymie attacks.
A cancer diagnostics firm is using a single sign-on service to secure a growing pool of SaaS subscriptions.
2011 was a tumultuously transitional year for Cisco.
Salesforce.com announced Thursday it will acquire cloud-based performance management vendor Rypple in a bid to enter the human resources software market.
Greenpeace International has ended a long-running campaign calling on Facebook to "unfriend coal" as a source of energy for its data centers, after Facebook...
LG and Intel have formed a partnership to bring built-in WiDi technology to HDTVs.
Amazon breaks tradition and discusses sales figures for its Kindle lines.
Zoho unveiled a significant upgrade to its on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) software on Thursday with new features including an overhauled user...