Slashdot Mirror

SharkLaser writes "Microsoft's Bing search engine has overtaken Yahoo for the first time. While both Bing, Yahoo and a bunch of meta-search engines like the privacy-oriented DuckDuckGo use Bing's back-end, it clearly shows Yahoo's declining market share. comScore has also released its search data for 2011 — overall, Bing gained 3.1% of market share while Yahoo lost 1.5% and Google lost 0.7%. Yahoo's new CEO Scott Thompson has lots of work to do."

bs0d3 writes "The music industry has initiated a lawsuit against the Irish government for not having blocking laws on the books; on the theory that if blocking laws were in place then filesharing would go away. On Tuesday the music industry issued a plenary summons against the Irish government which is the first step towards making this litigation possible. This all began in October 2010 (EMI v. UPC), when an Irish judge ruled that Irish law did not permit an order to be made against an ISP requiring blocking of websites. Recently several ISPs across the European Union have been ordered by courts to block thepiratebay.org through legal maneuvers."

bs0d3 writes "The music industry has initiated a lawsuit against the Irish government for not having blocking laws on the books; on the theory that if blocking laws were in place then filesharing would go away. On Tuesday the music industry issued a plenary summons against the Irish government which is the first step towards making this litigation possible. This all began in October 2010 (EMI v. UPC), when an Irish judge ruled that Irish law did not permit an order to be made against an ISP requiring blocking of websites. Recently several ISPs across the European Union have been ordered by courts to block thepiratebay.org through legal maneuvers."

bs0d3 writes "The music industry has initiated a lawsuit against the Irish government for not having blocking laws on the books; on the theory that if blocking laws were in place then filesharing would go away. On Tuesday the music industry issued a plenary summons against the Irish government which is the first step towards making this litigation possible. This all began in October 2010 (EMI v. UPC), when an Irish judge ruled that Irish law did not permit an order to be made against an ISP requiring blocking of websites. Recently several ISPs across the European Union have been ordered by courts to block thepiratebay.org through legal maneuvers."

daveschroeder writes "In the wake of previous coverage alleging that Apple, Nokia, RIM, and others have provided Indian government with backdoors into their mobile handsets — which itself spawned a US investigation and questions about handset security — it turns out the memo which ignited the controversy is probably a fake designed to draw attention to the "Lords of Dharmaraja." According to Reuters, "Military and cyber-security experts in India say the hackers may have created the purported military intelligence memo simply to draw attention to their work, or to taint relations between close allies India and the United States." Apple has already denied providing access to the Indian government."

astroengine writes "Last year, using the exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope as a guide, astronomers took a statistical stab at estimating the number of exoplanets that exist in our galaxy. They came up with at least 50 billion alien worlds. Today, astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., and the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration have taken their own stab at the 'galactic exo-planetary estimate' and think there are at least 100 billion worlds knocking around the Milky Way."

An anonymous reader writes "U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie Foschio has sanctioned Paul Ceglia, a man that claims he owns half Facebook, and ordered him to pay $5,000 to the court. The judge also ordered Ceglia to pay for part of Facebook's attorney fees and expenses, an amount which will likely be much higher. The social networking giant hopes to have Ceglia's lawsuit dismissed early this year."

ambermichelle pointed out a story about the search for life on other planets, and the likelihood that it would be much different than what we find on Earth. With the increase of extremophile discovery in recent years perhaps it's time to reassess what the definition of "life" should be. "In November 2011, NASA launched its biggest, most ambitious mission to Mars. The $2.5 billion Mars Science Lab spacecraft will arrive in orbit around the Red Planet this August, releasing a lander that will use rockets to control a slow descent into the atmosphere. Equipped with a 'sky crane,' the lander will gently lower the one-ton Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. Curiosity, which weighs five times more than any previous Martian rover, will perform an unprecedented battery of tests for three months as it scoops up soil from the floor of the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater. Its mission, NASA says, will be to 'assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life.' For all the spectacular engineering that's gone into Curiosity, however, its goal is actually quite modest. When NASA says it wants to find out if Mars was ever suitable for life, they use a very circumscribed version of the word. They are looking for signs of liquid water, which all living things on Earth need. They are looking for organic carbon, which life on Earth produces and, in some cases, can feed on to survive. In other words, they're looking on Mars for the sorts of conditions that support life on Earth. But there's no good reason to assume that all life has to be like the life we're familiar with. In 2007, a board of scientists appointed by the National Academies of Science decided they couldn't rule out the possibility that life might be able to exist without water or carbon. If such weird life on Mars exists, Curiosity will probably miss it."

ambermichelle pointed out a story about the search for life on other planets, and the likelihood that it would be much different than what we find on Earth. With the increase of extremophile discovery in recent years perhaps it's time to reassess what the definition of "life" should be. "In November 2011, NASA launched its biggest, most ambitious mission to Mars. The $2.5 billion Mars Science Lab spacecraft will arrive in orbit around the Red Planet this August, releasing a lander that will use rockets to control a slow descent into the atmosphere. Equipped with a 'sky crane,' the lander will gently lower the one-ton Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. Curiosity, which weighs five times more than any previous Martian rover, will perform an unprecedented battery of tests for three months as it scoops up soil from the floor of the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater. Its mission, NASA says, will be to 'assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life.' For all the spectacular engineering that's gone into Curiosity, however, its goal is actually quite modest. When NASA says it wants to find out if Mars was ever suitable for life, they use a very circumscribed version of the word. They are looking for signs of liquid water, which all living things on Earth need. They are looking for organic carbon, which life on Earth produces and, in some cases, can feed on to survive. In other words, they're looking on Mars for the sorts of conditions that support life on Earth. But there's no good reason to assume that all life has to be like the life we're familiar with. In 2007, a board of scientists appointed by the National Academies of Science decided they couldn't rule out the possibility that life might be able to exist without water or carbon. If such weird life on Mars exists, Curiosity will probably miss it."

Michael J. Ross writes "The last few years have seen the emergence of several significant advances in web technologies, including HTML5 and CSS3 — all impacting the development of traditional and mobile-centric web sites. In turn, various technical book publishers have released titles addressing one or more of these technologies. While one book may focus on HTML5 and the new JavaScript APIs, another might include extensive coverage of CSS3, with little mention of JavaScript. A recent title, Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours, focuses on some of the more commonly employed elements introduced with HTML5, and how they can be used for creating mobile sites and applications." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours author Jennifer Kyrnin pages 496 pages publisher Sams Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-0672334405 summary A tutorial on building web sites and apps with HTML5. This book was authored by Jennifer Kyrnin, who has plenty of experience in using as well as teaching web design techniques, and who curates the Web Design / HTML section of About.com. The book was put out by Sams Publishing (an imprint of Pearson Education) on 25 November 2011, under the ISBN 978-0672334405. On the publisher's page, visitors will find the book's description and table of contents, and some sample content in a PDF document, including the first chapter, "Improving Mobile Web Application Development with HTML5." The page appears to not list any reported errata. This book is available in both print and electronic formats (EPUB and PDF), but prospective buyers should be warned that the e-book is less than seven dollars cheaper than the print version ($25.59 versus $31.99), despite the huge disparity in production and distribution costs. The author's web site offers additional information, primarily in the form of a newsletter devoted to HTML5. The preface claims that this second web site has the example source code from the book, as well as ways to ask questions and report errata; but if so, they are well hidden, as of this writing.

Spanning 496 pages in total, the book's material is organized into two dozen chapters, as is usual with any of the books in the "Sams Teach Yourself X in 24 Hours" series. Readers may well wonder if this artificial constraint causes the various authors to structure their books in a way that does not always make sense. In the case of this title, there does appear to be some forced splitting of material between two chapters, namely, "Building a Mobile Web Application" and "Converting Web Apps to Mobile." Conversely, three topics that may deserve their own chapters are lumped together, in "WebSockets, Web Workers, and Files." Moreover, it is arguably unrealistic to expect that the typical reader will be able — or would even attempt — to read and comprehend a technical book of such length and subject matter in only 24 hours — to say nothing of the time required to type in the sample code (in order to test it and reinforce the information learned). This "teach yourself in 24 hours" format borders on "brain surgery in three easy steps." Lastly, it leads to silly phrasing such as: "a result of reading the hour" (page xvii).

The chapters and appendices are grouped into four parts, the first of which is titled "Building Web Pages and Applications with the Open Web Standard." The structure of the first chapter is replicated in all of the other chapters: The author briefly lists what the reader will learn, and then begins explicating the concepts, illustrated with example code wherever appropriate. Each chapter concludes with a summary (which is of no value), several FAQs (whose material should instead be folded into the main chapter content), and a workshop section comprising quiz questions and exercises for the reader to tackle. Part I's eight chapters introduce HTML5, web applications, the W3C Open Web Standard, the new HTML5 elements and their attributes, CSS3 (with justifiably limited coverage), mobile browser detection, JavaScript, and jQuery. Then the author presents the basics of how to build mobile web apps, both from scratch and from using a non-mobile web site as a starting point.

Part II, "Learning the HTML5 Essentials," goes into greater detail of numerous basic aspects of HTML5: the new HTML5 sectioning, heading, and semantic elements; the semantic repurposing of some HTML 4 elements; the new canvas element (with limited coverage of this extensive topic); new typography support; audio and video elements; new form capabilities; HTML editable content, spell checking, and other user interactivity; microformats, microdata, and RDFa; in-page drag and drop; and new functionality for linking (the <a>, <area>, and <link> elements). Readers should note that the discussion in the ninth chapter on the new sectioning elements starts off rather confusingly, but soon improves, making it well worth reading.

The third part of the book, "HTML5 for Mobile and Web Applications," begins with an introduction to web apps, as well as the HTML5 application programming interfaces (APIs) and data sets upon which they may rely. The author then discusses specific APIs that can be of great use in web apps — specifically, the WebSockets, Web Workers, and File APIs, which allow one to make asynchronous connections between the app and a remote host, perform scripted background processing, and access local files. The remaining chapters show how to: make a web app usable even when it is disconnected from the Internet; save data on the client side (using local storage, session storage, Web SQL, and IndexedDB); control the browser history; geolocate the client; and convert an HTML5 application into a native mobile app, with detailed information on using PhoneGap. Aside from the index, the book concludes with three appendices that cover: answers to the end-of-chapter quizzes; a list of the HTML5 elements and their more commonly-employed attributes; and a list of other books and web sites that address HTML5 and mobile design and development.

The average programming book — particularly one of this size, and in a first edition — will contain some errata, and this one is no exception: "shortcut style" should read "shorthand style" (page 37); "Specific[,] Measurable" (87); "complimentary" should read "complementary" (93); the "By the Way" section on page 131 is missing a close parenthesis; "html5elmeents" (136); "will [be] eventually" (184); "a straight line [] they" (184); "makes build[ing] forms" (223); "method[s] exist" (362); "the page [it] is on" (383); and "()creates" (390).

There are some other parts of the text where either the author or the editorial team may have been careless — for instance, the figcaption and figure tags repeated on pages 16 and 18. Fortunately, such cases are few and far between. The HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code is generally of decent quality, except much of the HTML markup is not indented properly. In the JavaScript code, most if not all of the string concatenation is jammed together, making the elements difficult to distinguish (e.g., page 72). Also, some of the HTML does not utilize the more streamlined attributes of HTML5, such as <script type="text/javascript"> (e.g., page 20), or is not well formed, such as </li> tags missing (e.g., pages 236 and 250).

The author occasionally uses terminology that would be comprehensible only to someone who already has the knowledge that the narrative presents for the first time, without providing at least a quick explanation, e.g.: the !"!" JavaScript operator (page 55); the terms "rollover" and "user agent" (page 69 for both); and "the manifest comes up 404 or 410" (page 342). Some of the advice may be true, but is rather outdated, such as the admonitions in the first chapter to not use frames, nor to use tables or spacer images for layout. Those principles were validated and disseminated many years ago. Some statements could easily be misinterpreted by beginners, e.g., "As long as your HTML file is in the same folder as your style sheet file, it will load your styles when your page is loaded" (page 36). Other statements are not explained in detail or substantiated, and consequently the reader will probably not understand the reasoning behind it, e.g., "using the min- and max- extensions is more effective" (page 61), and "a separate mobile domain [] makes your mobile site easier to find" (page 10). Readers may disagree completely with some of the claims, e.g., "XHTML [is] very difficult to write" (page 2).

There are only two discernible problems with the production of the book: In some of the HTML code, curly quotes are used (e.g., page 303). Secondly and more importantly, the san-serif font used to indicate keywords looks much too similar to the serif font of the regular text, causing the keywords to blend into the surrounding material.

Yet the main problem with the narrative is the somewhat erratic manner in which the author skips from one topic to the next, often providing just a few paragraphs or even sentences for each topic — giving the impression that critical information may have been neglected as a result of the less-than-methodical organization of the material. Most of those topics are discussed again, in varying levels of detail, in later chapters. This is not optimal, because technical readers generally hope to find full coverage of any given topic in one place; hence, it can be frustrating if the information is scattered throughout a book. This is especially true if the reader has already read the book in full, and is now returning to it in order to utilize it as a reference source. For instance, in many cases, attributes are presented, but without detailed explanation or examples. Fortunately, the worst of it seems to be confined to Part I of the book, which contains most of the introductory material. Most if not all of the key concepts appear to be addressed to at least some extent. Lastly, some of the information that should have been presented right up front, is not, e.g., the definitions of HTML5 on pages xiv, 1, and 52.

Unlike most programming books nowadays, this one has few instances of phrasing that would baffle the reader for long, and there are no goofy attempts at humor. For most of the topics, the information provided is the minimum to achieve the bulk of the desired results. The advantage to this is that the narrative is generally concise and quick to read, and the author is able to cover a lot of ground without having to package such a broad topic in a (more expensive) tome. Some of the narrative is quite good, such as the explanations of the various browser exceptions involved in the HTML5 drag-and-drop functionality.

Despite the aforementioned blemishes, this book is definitely worth a look, because it is currently one of the most complete tutorials for learning how to use HTML5 for creating mobile apps and web sites.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.

You can purchase Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "The last few years have seen the emergence of several significant advances in web technologies, including HTML5 and CSS3 — all impacting the development of traditional and mobile-centric web sites. In turn, various technical book publishers have released titles addressing one or more of these technologies. While one book may focus on HTML5 and the new JavaScript APIs, another might include extensive coverage of CSS3, with little mention of JavaScript. A recent title, Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours, focuses on some of the more commonly employed elements introduced with HTML5, and how they can be used for creating mobile sites and applications." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours author Jennifer Kyrnin pages 496 pages publisher Sams Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-0672334405 summary A tutorial on building web sites and apps with HTML5. This book was authored by Jennifer Kyrnin, who has plenty of experience in using as well as teaching web design techniques, and who curates the Web Design / HTML section of About.com. The book was put out by Sams Publishing (an imprint of Pearson Education) on 25 November 2011, under the ISBN 978-0672334405. On the publisher's page, visitors will find the book's description and table of contents, and some sample content in a PDF document, including the first chapter, "Improving Mobile Web Application Development with HTML5." The page appears to not list any reported errata. This book is available in both print and electronic formats (EPUB and PDF), but prospective buyers should be warned that the e-book is less than seven dollars cheaper than the print version ($25.59 versus $31.99), despite the huge disparity in production and distribution costs. The author's web site offers additional information, primarily in the form of a newsletter devoted to HTML5. The preface claims that this second web site has the example source code from the book, as well as ways to ask questions and report errata; but if so, they are well hidden, as of this writing.

Spanning 496 pages in total, the book's material is organized into two dozen chapters, as is usual with any of the books in the "Sams Teach Yourself X in 24 Hours" series. Readers may well wonder if this artificial constraint causes the various authors to structure their books in a way that does not always make sense. In the case of this title, there does appear to be some forced splitting of material between two chapters, namely, "Building a Mobile Web Application" and "Converting Web Apps to Mobile." Conversely, three topics that may deserve their own chapters are lumped together, in "WebSockets, Web Workers, and Files." Moreover, it is arguably unrealistic to expect that the typical reader will be able — or would even attempt — to read and comprehend a technical book of such length and subject matter in only 24 hours — to say nothing of the time required to type in the sample code (in order to test it and reinforce the information learned). This "teach yourself in 24 hours" format borders on "brain surgery in three easy steps." Lastly, it leads to silly phrasing such as: "a result of reading the hour" (page xvii).

The chapters and appendices are grouped into four parts, the first of which is titled "Building Web Pages and Applications with the Open Web Standard." The structure of the first chapter is replicated in all of the other chapters: The author briefly lists what the reader will learn, and then begins explicating the concepts, illustrated with example code wherever appropriate. Each chapter concludes with a summary (which is of no value), several FAQs (whose material should instead be folded into the main chapter content), and a workshop section comprising quiz questions and exercises for the reader to tackle. Part I's eight chapters introduce HTML5, web applications, the W3C Open Web Standard, the new HTML5 elements and their attributes, CSS3 (with justifiably limited coverage), mobile browser detection, JavaScript, and jQuery. Then the author presents the basics of how to build mobile web apps, both from scratch and from using a non-mobile web site as a starting point.

Part II, "Learning the HTML5 Essentials," goes into greater detail of numerous basic aspects of HTML5: the new HTML5 sectioning, heading, and semantic elements; the semantic repurposing of some HTML 4 elements; the new canvas element (with limited coverage of this extensive topic); new typography support; audio and video elements; new form capabilities; HTML editable content, spell checking, and other user interactivity; microformats, microdata, and RDFa; in-page drag and drop; and new functionality for linking (the <a>, <area>, and <link> elements). Readers should note that the discussion in the ninth chapter on the new sectioning elements starts off rather confusingly, but soon improves, making it well worth reading.

The third part of the book, "HTML5 for Mobile and Web Applications," begins with an introduction to web apps, as well as the HTML5 application programming interfaces (APIs) and data sets upon which they may rely. The author then discusses specific APIs that can be of great use in web apps — specifically, the WebSockets, Web Workers, and File APIs, which allow one to make asynchronous connections between the app and a remote host, perform scripted background processing, and access local files. The remaining chapters show how to: make a web app usable even when it is disconnected from the Internet; save data on the client side (using local storage, session storage, Web SQL, and IndexedDB); control the browser history; geolocate the client; and convert an HTML5 application into a native mobile app, with detailed information on using PhoneGap. Aside from the index, the book concludes with three appendices that cover: answers to the end-of-chapter quizzes; a list of the HTML5 elements and their more commonly-employed attributes; and a list of other books and web sites that address HTML5 and mobile design and development.

The average programming book — particularly one of this size, and in a first edition — will contain some errata, and this one is no exception: "shortcut style" should read "shorthand style" (page 37); "Specific[,] Measurable" (87); "complimentary" should read "complementary" (93); the "By the Way" section on page 131 is missing a close parenthesis; "html5elmeents" (136); "will [be] eventually" (184); "a straight line [] they" (184); "makes build[ing] forms" (223); "method[s] exist" (362); "the page [it] is on" (383); and "()creates" (390).

There are some other parts of the text where either the author or the editorial team may have been careless — for instance, the figcaption and figure tags repeated on pages 16 and 18. Fortunately, such cases are few and far between. The HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code is generally of decent quality, except much of the HTML markup is not indented properly. In the JavaScript code, most if not all of the string concatenation is jammed together, making the elements difficult to distinguish (e.g., page 72). Also, some of the HTML does not utilize the more streamlined attributes of HTML5, such as <script type="text/javascript"> (e.g., page 20), or is not well formed, such as </li> tags missing (e.g., pages 236 and 250).

The author occasionally uses terminology that would be comprehensible only to someone who already has the knowledge that the narrative presents for the first time, without providing at least a quick explanation, e.g.: the !"!" JavaScript operator (page 55); the terms "rollover" and "user agent" (page 69 for both); and "the manifest comes up 404 or 410" (page 342). Some of the advice may be true, but is rather outdated, such as the admonitions in the first chapter to not use frames, nor to use tables or spacer images for layout. Those principles were validated and disseminated many years ago. Some statements could easily be misinterpreted by beginners, e.g., "As long as your HTML file is in the same folder as your style sheet file, it will load your styles when your page is loaded" (page 36). Other statements are not explained in detail or substantiated, and consequently the reader will probably not understand the reasoning behind it, e.g., "using the min- and max- extensions is more effective" (page 61), and "a separate mobile domain [] makes your mobile site easier to find" (page 10). Readers may disagree completely with some of the claims, e.g., "XHTML [is] very difficult to write" (page 2).

There are only two discernible problems with the production of the book: In some of the HTML code, curly quotes are used (e.g., page 303). Secondly and more importantly, the san-serif font used to indicate keywords looks much too similar to the serif font of the regular text, causing the keywords to blend into the surrounding material.

Yet the main problem with the narrative is the somewhat erratic manner in which the author skips from one topic to the next, often providing just a few paragraphs or even sentences for each topic — giving the impression that critical information may have been neglected as a result of the less-than-methodical organization of the material. Most of those topics are discussed again, in varying levels of detail, in later chapters. This is not optimal, because technical readers generally hope to find full coverage of any given topic in one place; hence, it can be frustrating if the information is scattered throughout a book. This is especially true if the reader has already read the book in full, and is now returning to it in order to utilize it as a reference source. For instance, in many cases, attributes are presented, but without detailed explanation or examples. Fortunately, the worst of it seems to be confined to Part I of the book, which contains most of the introductory material. Most if not all of the key concepts appear to be addressed to at least some extent. Lastly, some of the information that should have been presented right up front, is not, e.g., the definitions of HTML5 on pages xiv, 1, and 52.

Unlike most programming books nowadays, this one has few instances of phrasing that would baffle the reader for long, and there are no goofy attempts at humor. For most of the topics, the information provided is the minimum to achieve the bulk of the desired results. The advantage to this is that the narrative is generally concise and quick to read, and the author is able to cover a lot of ground without having to package such a broad topic in a (more expensive) tome. Some of the narrative is quite good, such as the explanations of the various browser exceptions involved in the HTML5 drag-and-drop functionality.

Despite the aforementioned blemishes, this book is definitely worth a look, because it is currently one of the most complete tutorials for learning how to use HTML5 for creating mobile apps and web sites.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.

You can purchase Sams Teach Yourself HTML5 Mobile Application Development in 24 Hours from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

adeelarshad82 writes "After years of promises to enter the smartphone market, Intel has finally done so. During his keynote at CES, Intel's Chief executive Paul Otellini said that Intel has signed Lenovo and Motorola to contracts to use its Atom processors in smartphones. Unlike past launches, Intel has held Medfield back until its partners were ready to go to press as well. According to an early preview, Medfield pairs a 1.6GHz Atom CPU with an SGX540 GPU designed by PowerVR. This is the same GPU we've seen tip up in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Droid Razr, though Intel is clocking it higher, at 400MHz. Intel's new SoC encodes video at 720p at 30 fps, can playback 1080p at 30 fps, and supports 1920×1080 output via HDMI. The first smartphone to carry an Intel chip will debut on China Unicom during the second quarter."

New submitter swinferno writes "After recent successes in Finland, Italy and Belgium, the Dutch Copyright protection organization BREIN has obtained a verdict that forces two major ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay domains and gives them the right to submit future domains/IP addresses to be blocked in the future without court order."

judgecorp writes "The British Education Secretary Michael Gove has said that the school ICT curriculum will be scrapped and replaced with programming and real computer science. Britain's schoolchildren have had compulsory ICT (information and communications technology) lessons for some time, but they are hated by staff and pupils alike, amounting to little more than Power Point training, using the products rather than understanding the code. There is room for improvement — and the British-designed Raspberry Pi could be part of this, but can the new system break away from the old product-centric regime when it will apparently be sponsored by companies including Google and Microsoft?"

judgecorp writes "The British Education Secretary Michael Gove has said that the school ICT curriculum will be scrapped and replaced with programming and real computer science. Britain's schoolchildren have had compulsory ICT (information and communications technology) lessons for some time, but they are hated by staff and pupils alike, amounting to little more than Power Point training, using the products rather than understanding the code. There is room for improvement — and the British-designed Raspberry Pi could be part of this, but can the new system break away from the old product-centric regime when it will apparently be sponsored by companies including Google and Microsoft?"

sfcrazy writes with news that developers for the Tizen project, an open source mobile OS based on MeeGo (itself a child of Moblin and Maemo), have posted a preview of their source code and SDK. They warn, "Please keep in mind that this is a very early preview and is not yet designed for use to create production applications. Further enhancements and improvements to Tizen and its development environment will continue as we work towards a formal release over the coming months." The source code is available here.

An anonymous reader writes "Two U.S. congressmen have accused Facebook of evading questions about whether it tracks users in order to deliver targeted ads. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, and Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the social networking giant failed to adequately answer questions raised by a patent application that suggests Facebook could be tracking users on other websites. The duo previously asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate accusations that Facebook tracks its users even after they log out of the social network, an issue the company says it has since fixed."

An anonymous reader writes "Two U.S. congressmen have accused Facebook of evading questions about whether it tracks users in order to deliver targeted ads. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, and Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the social networking giant failed to adequately answer questions raised by a patent application that suggests Facebook could be tracking users on other websites. The duo previously asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate accusations that Facebook tracks its users even after they log out of the social network, an issue the company says it has since fixed."

RobinEggs writes "After long speculation and a few affirmative hints, Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 3 will have a console version. Responding to a fan who asked him to 'confirm or deny' a console version of D3, Blizzard community manager Bashiok said, 'Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo console project.' Here's hoping Blizzard remains one of the few companies to fully develop both the console and PC version of their titles, rather than simply porting the Xbox version to PC. I think we've all had enough of bizarre scrolling, menus that can't be used with a mouse, and 'Controls' menus that don't even bother replacing the 360 controller image with an actual keyboard layout."

First time accepted submitter xwwt writes "G-Form has a nice video of an iPad launched into the stratosphere via weather balloon and protected using its new protective gear 'Extreme Edge' to see how well the gear worked in the iPad free fall to Earth. The gear is being introduced at this year's CES where our own timothy will be attending and reviewing new products. The cool part of this whole video is really that the iPad survives the free fall from space, remaining fully functional."

MrSeb writes with a piece on Google's renewed push for Google TV adoption. From the article: "In spite of a mediocre launch caused by an overpriced device and low consumer adoption, Mountain View is attempting to breathe life into Google TV in the way of a major marketing push at CES 2012. By announcing partnerships with companies like Marvell and LG, and an effort to cut costs by switching to ARM architecture, Google is hoping to finally achieve the mass adoption it has been hoping for with the service. Is this a case of too little, too late?"

gManZboy writes "The FBI's Sentinel project, a digital case-management system meant to replace outdated, paper-based processes, has been delayed again. The FBI's CIO and CTO bet big on using agile development to hasten the project's completion. But now performance issues have arisen in testing and deployment has been pushed out to May. It's the latest in a series of delays to build a replacement for the FBI's 17-year-old Automated Case Support system. In 2006, the FBI awarded Lockheed Martin a $305 million contract to lead development of Sentinel, but it took back control of the project in September 2010 amid delays and cost overruns. At the time, the FBI said it would finish Sentinel within 12 months, using agile development strategies."

New submitter DCTech writes "South Korea's Fair Trade Commission is accusing Google of methodically interfering with an anti-competition investigation into Android. 'Google deleted files and made its employees work from home in an attempt to frustrate the investigation, alleges the commission in an interview with a South Korean newspaper [machine translation]. The non-cooperation allegedly came after Google's Seoul office was raided by the commission's officials in September. The anti-competition probers were looking into whether Google's Android phones unfairly prioritize Google search and are "systematically designed" to make it difficult to switch to another option'. Now the South Korean watchdog is considering maximum fines for Google's non-compliance. Google is currently under investigation for similar anti-competition issues in Europe and the U.S."

Apotekaren writes "The Finnish ISP Elisa has been forced to block several domains leading to the infamous torrent-tracker site The Pirate Bay following a court case initiated by IFPI Finland... The Helsinki District Court ruled in favor of IFPI Finland in October, but the ISP resisted implementing the block until today because of the terms of the block not being specific enough. The ISP is calling the block 'temporary' and is appealing the court decision." Analysis from Torrent Freak shows that the block is probably easily circumvented.

Apotekaren writes "The Finnish ISP Elisa has been forced to block several domains leading to the infamous torrent-tracker site The Pirate Bay following a court case initiated by IFPI Finland... The Helsinki District Court ruled in favor of IFPI Finland in October, but the ISP resisted implementing the block until today because of the terms of the block not being specific enough. The ISP is calling the block 'temporary' and is appealing the court decision." Analysis from Torrent Freak shows that the block is probably easily circumvented.

An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from a ZDNet article: "The Electronic Privacy Information Center is unhappy with the way Facebook launched its new Timeline profile. Last month, the privacy organization complained Facebook went too far because it started rolling out the redesign without asking users first. EPIC then followed up with a (four-page letter (PDF) to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate the new feature to insure that it meets with the terms of a November 29th FTC-Facebook settlement. Facebook denies these claims, saying that the Timeline launch has nothing to do with its users' privacy."

An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from a ZDNet article: "The Electronic Privacy Information Center is unhappy with the way Facebook launched its new Timeline profile. Last month, the privacy organization complained Facebook went too far because it started rolling out the redesign without asking users first. EPIC then followed up with a (four-page letter (PDF) to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate the new feature to insure that it meets with the terms of a November 29th FTC-Facebook settlement. Facebook denies these claims, saying that the Timeline launch has nothing to do with its users' privacy."

Computerworld is one of many publications heralding the expected arrival next week of the long-awaited OLPC tablet, and making much of one very cool feature: the price. The initial XO laptops from OLPC never quite made it to the hoped-for under-$100 level. But at least with an ordinary LCD screen, says project founder Nicholas Negroponte, the new XO-3 actually has. (An optional daylight-readable Pixel Qi screen bumps the price up, but it's not clear quite how much.) Both OLPC and Pixel Qi will be at next week's CES; hopefully I'll get a chance to provide some first-hand details, and ask whether there will be another round of the Buy One Give One program, so users outside the reach of big government buying programs can both further the project and play with the product; so far, the word is that these will only be available for large government buyers. (TechCruch has better pictures of the new device.)

An anonymous reader writes with this news as carried by the San Francisco Chronicle: "After the nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima plant, 'Japan says it will soon require atomic reactors to be shut down after 40 years of use to improve safety.' If, however, a nuclear plant is deemed still safe it may continue operation."

snydeq writes "U.S. Congress appears likely to move forward with SOPA and PIPA, despite widespread opposition, IDGNS reports. The U.S. Senate is expected to begin floor debate on PIPA shortly after senators return to D.C. on Jan. 23, and supporters appear to have the votes to override a threatened filibuster. Some opponents of the bills hold out hope: 'We're optimistic that if members really understood the Internet architecture and cybersecurity measures, they would not support SOPA as written. Instead, members who are really committed to combatting online piracy would look for effective ways to do that without compromising cybersecurity or the open architecture of the Internet,' said a CCIA spokesperson. Others remain doubtful that Congress will come to this understanding."

OverTheGeicoE writes "TSA recently announced that it is looking for vendors of 'radiation measurement devices'. According to the agency's Request for Information, these devices 'will assist the TSA in determining if the Transportation Security Officers (TSO) at selected federalized airports are exposed to ionizing radiation above minimum detectable levels, and whether any measured radiation doses approach or exceed the threshold where personnel dosimetry monitoring is required by DHS/TSA policy.' A TSA spokeman claims that their RFI 'did not reflect any heightened concern by the agency about radiation levels that might be excessive or pose a risk to either TSA screeners or members of the traveling public.' Concern outside the agency, however, has always been high. TSA has long been criticized for its apparent lack of understanding of radiological safety, even for its own employees. There has been speculation of a cancer cluster, possibly caused by poor safety practices in baggage screening."

smitty777 writes "Given the U.S.'s recent drone issues, what is the new recipe for sending a drone over another country of interest? Simple, just take a balloon and attach a Tempest drone to the bottom of it. Now, attach two more CICADA drones to that. The balloon climbs to over 55k feet, then drops the first drone, which can travel another 11 miles or so. It then deploys the CICADA drones. These unpowered gliders slip past radar undetected and start sending back information. There are future plans to mount many (count hundreds) of the CICADA glider drones to the Tempest in the future. The article quotes the flight engineer describing the process as 'straightforward.'"

hypnosec writes "Civil rights campaigners have spoken out against a technology used by several shopping centers in the UK to track consumers using their mobile signals. The shopping centers claim that the technology helps them provide better services to consumers and retailers without compromising privacy. The system, called the Footpath, allows them to know how people are spending time in a shopping center, which spots they visit the most and even the route they take while walking around. Several consumer and civil rights groups, including Big Brother Watch, say consumers must be given a choice on whether they want their movement tracked or not." We covered a similar tracking system here in the U.S. last month.

First time accepted submitter sweetpea86 writes "An executive who uploaded his CV to LinkedIn was forced to quit his job because he ticked a box stating he was interested in 'career opportunities'. John Flexman is demanding hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation from his former employer, gas exploration firm BG Group, where he earned £68,000 pounds a year as a Graduate and Development Manager. He is thought to be the first person in the UK to bring a case for constructive dismissal. The case highlights a grey area around employees' use of social networks such as LinkedIn. According to Kate Hodgkiss, Partner at law firm DLA Piper, employers have every right to seek to protect confidential company information by restricting LinkedIn and other profiles, but cannot prevent employees from looking for a new job. The news echoes a report in December that a Californian Twitter user was being sued for $340,000 by his former employer for taking his online followers with him when he switched jobs. PhoneDog launched legal proceedings against Noah Kravitz, seeking damages of $2.50 a month per follower for eight months."

LinuxScribe writes "The Linux Foundation has quietly restored all of the websites it took down following the September 2011 breach that affected Linux.com and all other Foundation websites--an attack that was linked to the August 2011 breach of kernel.org. But one website won't be coming back: the Linux Developer Network, launched in 2008. Content from the site will now be hosted across all of the Linux Foundation's web properties."

1sockchuck writes "The U.S. government now expects to shutter at least 1,200 data centers by the end of 2015 in its data center consolidation project. That's about 40 percent of the IT facilities identified in the latest update from federal CIO Steven VanRoekel. The number of government data centers has grown steadily — jumping from 1,100 to 2,094 and now to 3,133 — as the Obama administration has identified more facilities than expected, and expanded the initiative to target telecom closets. The CIO's office says it is on track to close 525 facilities by the end of this year, and has published a list of data centers targeted for closure."

1sockchuck writes "The U.S. government now expects to shutter at least 1,200 data centers by the end of 2015 in its data center consolidation project. That's about 40 percent of the IT facilities identified in the latest update from federal CIO Steven VanRoekel. The number of government data centers has grown steadily — jumping from 1,100 to 2,094 and now to 3,133 — as the Obama administration has identified more facilities than expected, and expanded the initiative to target telecom closets. The CIO's office says it is on track to close 525 facilities by the end of this year, and has published a list of data centers targeted for closure."

gManZboy writes "Automatic teller machine maker Diebold has taken a novel approach to protecting bank customer data: virtualization. Virtualized ATMs store all customer data on central servers, rather than the ATM itself, making it difficult for criminals to steal data from the machines. In places including Brazil, customer data has been at risk when thieves pulled or dynamited ATMs out of their settings and drove off with them. With threats increasing worldwide at many retail points of sale, such as supermarket checkout counters and service station gas pumps, Diebold needed to guarantee the security of customer data entered at the 50,000 ATMs that it manages. Diebold last year partnered with VMware to produce a zero-client ATM. No customer data is captured and stored on the ATM itself." Perhaps Diebold should take the same approach to vote-tabulating machines.

If you've ever tried to look up public records online, you may have run into byzantine sign-up procedures, proprietary formats, charges just to view what are ostensibly public documents, and generally the sense that you're in a snooty library with closed stacks. Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org has for years been forging a path through the grey goo of U.S. government data, helping to publicize the need for accessible digital archives — not just awkward, fee-per-page access. (Mother Jones calls him a "badass.") Malamud has (with help) been making it easier to get to the huge swathes of data in government sources like PACER, EDGAR, and the U.S. Patent Office. He's got a new initiative now to establish a "Federal Scanning Commission," the task of which would be to assess the scope and outcomes of a large-scale effort to actually digitize and make available online as much as practical of the vast holdings of the U.S. government. ("If we were able to put a man on the moon, why can't we launch the Library of Congress into cyberspace?") Ask Malamud below questions about his plans and challenges in disseminating public information. (But please, post unrelated questions separately, lest ye be modded down.)

tonymercmobily writes "With the latest news from Microsoft, which will allow open source apps in their store, we will see more and more an abundance of per-pay applications mixed with license-free ones. What if you can't tell between free and non-free anymore? Even now, a quick search on the Android market is just not telling enough. But what do you do then when Ubuntu has the same problem?" For Android there's always the F-Droid market that exclusively lists Free Software (it's small, but I've found it pretty useful).

symbolset writes "Slashgear is reporting that Tivo has achieved a settlement in their patent lawsuit with AT&T. Tivo will receive the minimum sum of $215 million over six years — more if AT&T DVR subscribers go above a certain level. This settles a patent dispute going back to 2009 and has been covered here with some side issues. Confirmed by Tivo press release."

symbolset writes "Slashgear is reporting that Tivo has achieved a settlement in their patent lawsuit with AT&T. Tivo will receive the minimum sum of $215 million over six years — more if AT&T DVR subscribers go above a certain level. This settles a patent dispute going back to 2009 and has been covered here with some side issues. Confirmed by Tivo press release."

Hugh Pickens writes "Kevin Mandia has spent his entire career cleaning up problems much like the recent breach at Stratfor where Anonymous defaced Stratfor's Web site, published over 50,000 of its customers' credit card numbers online and have threatened to release a trove of 3.3 million e-mails, putting Stratfor is in the position of trying to recover from a potentially devastating attack without knowing whether the worst is over. Mandia, who has responded to breaches, extortion attacks and economic espionage campaigns at 22 companies in the Fortune 100 in the last two years and has told Congress that if an advanced attacker targets your company then a breach is inevitable (PDF), calls the first hour he spends with companies 'upchuck hour' as he asks for firewall logs, web logs, and emails to quickly determine the 'fingerprint' of the intrusion and its scope. The first thing a forensics team will do is try to get the hackers off the company's network, which entails simultaneously plugging any security holes, removing any back doors into the company's network that the intruders might have installed, and changing all the company's passwords. 'This is something most people fail at. It's like removing cancer. You have to remove it all at once. If you only remove the cancer in your leg, but you have it in your arm, you might as well have not had the operation on your leg.' In the case of Stratfor, hackers have taken to Twitter to announce that they plan to release more Stratfor data over the next several days, offering a ray of hope — experts say the most dangerous breaches are the quiet ones that leave no trace."

snydeq writes "As the world gets more and more technical, we can't let Luddites decide the fate of dangerous legislation like SOPA, writes Deep End's Paul Venezia. 'Very few politicians get technology. Many actually seem proud that they don't use the Internet or even email, like it's some kind of badge of honor that they've kept their heads in the sand for so long. These are the same people who will vote on noxious legislation like SOPA, openly dismissing the concerns and facts presented by those who know the technology intimately. The best quote from the SOPA debates: "We're operating on the Internet without any doctors or nurses on the room." That is precisely correct,' Venezia writes. 'The best we can do for the short term is to throw everything we can behind legislation to reinstate the Office of Technology Assessment. From 1974 through 1995, this small group with a tiny budget served as an impartial, nonpartisan advisory to the U.S. Congress on all matters technological.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Iran says it has successfully test fired a cruise missile during naval exercises near the Strait of Hormuz, and the surface-to-sea missile, known as the Qader, struck its targets with precision and destroyed them. Iran had previously announced that it intended to test a missile during the exercises, raising fears that it might try to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for tougher international sanctions. The Qader missile is said to be capable of striking warships at a range of about 125 miles, a distance that would include some American forces in the Gulf region as Iran is about 140 miles at its nearest point from Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based. Analysts say Iran's increasingly strident rhetoric, which has pushed oil prices higher, is aimed at sending a message to the West that it should think twice about the economic cost of putting further pressure on Tehran. 'No order has been given for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz,' Iran's state television quoted navy chief Habibollah Sayyari as saying. 'But we are prepared for various scenarios.'"

Sir Mal Fet writes "In a very polemic move by the Spanish parliament, the infamous 'Sinde' law, already discussed here, was implemented on December 31st. Albeit modified from their original version, the law will allow the Spanish government to request ISPs to summarily close a website due to copyright infringement (English translation). If the ISP refuses, then it's passed to court where a judge can order the website closed. It seems it's one good, one bad over there. The law is in public consult until March, and No Les Votes, a Spanish organization that opposes the law, has already started a campaign to boycott it (English translation)."

Sir Mal Fet writes "In a very polemic move by the Spanish parliament, the infamous 'Sinde' law, already discussed here, was implemented on December 31st. Albeit modified from their original version, the law will allow the Spanish government to request ISPs to summarily close a website due to copyright infringement (English translation). If the ISP refuses, then it's passed to court where a judge can order the website closed. It seems it's one good, one bad over there. The law is in public consult until March, and No Les Votes, a Spanish organization that opposes the law, has already started a campaign to boycott it (English translation)."

jrepin sends this excerpt from an opinion piece at OSNews: "Late last year, president Obama signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia — but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality."

SharkLaser writes "Google's search engine has always looked pretty much the same since it was introduced in 1998. However, Google is now testing a revamped look that is the largest change the search engine has ever done to its website. The new look strips the black bar running horizontally at top and places it as an openable menu on the left side. The move is said to promote Google's other services without making the search engine too cluttered. The new side menu is also more similar to Chrome OS and allows Chromebook and Google's website to have the same look and feel. Another consequence of the move is that it now takes users two clicks to enter other services such as Images and News, which is said to improve the amount of ad clicks and visitors advertisers get. Considering that European Commission is examining claims of Google downgrading rival websites and U.S. senators are calling FTC to inspect Google for unfair practices, the move comes at a surprising time."

theodp writes "Google took some heat for pulling the plug on App Inventor for Android, but all was good with the announcement that App Inventor would live on at MIT. But try to run the App Inventor Java test today and you'll be told that 'as of December 31, 2011, Google ended support of App Inventor', even though the Google-funded Center for Mobile Learning at the MIT Media Lab won't be able to provide a large scale App Inventor service for general public access until 'sometime in the first quarter of 2012.' Until then, schools offering App Inventor classes and others who desire continued access to the easy-to-use mobile development environment are advised to try to run their own App Inventor Services on Google App Engine using MIT's test JAR files, a seemingly daunting task, especially considering App Inventor's target audience. Any thoughts on why Google would unplug the old system before the new one was ready?"