Slashdot Mirror

theodp writes "Toddlers don't need to be texting, concedes the NYT's Lisa Belkin, but since they have always had toy typewriters and toy telephones, why not toy Blackberrys? If your little tyke is itching to text, the NYT has a round-up of texting devices aimed at children as young as three who want to talk with their thumbs. The question of, 'when is a child is old enough for their own cell phone' has been replaced with the question of, 'what type of texting gadget is appropriate for which age group.' But don't forget to lay down the law: 'Our 13-year-old got a phone with an unlimited plan as a reward for good grades,' says HiTechMommy.com blogger Cat Schwartz. 'Each night he is required to turn the phone in at 10 p.m. and then gets it back first thing in the morning.'"

FleaPlus writes "Steve Cook, project manager for the Ares I-X, Ares I, and Ares V rockets, announced that he will resign from NASA MSFC after 19 years at the agency, leaving for an executive position at Dynetics, Inc. This raises doubts about the future of the Ares program, which has been plagued with development problems and massive cost/schedule overruns since its inception. Steve Cook also oversaw the (since discredited) 2005 ESAS study which scrapped NASA's prior plans to adapt already-existing commercial rockets for human/beyond-LEO exploration in favor of internally developing the Ares rockets."

coondoggie writes "Nearly a year after announcing the plan, new Federal Trade Commission rules prohibiting most robocalls are set to take effect Tuesday, Sept. 1. With the rules, prerecorded commercial telemarketing robocalls will be prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls. Hopefully the rules will go a long way to helping consumers eat dinner in peace without being interrupted by amazingly annoying telemarketer blather or in this case prerecorded blather. The requirement is part of amendments to the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) that were announced a year ago. After September 1, sellers and telemarketers who transmit prerecorded messages to consumers who have not agreed in writing to accept such messages will face penalties of up to $16,000 per call."

An anonymous reader writes "The country that has bought Sukhois, tanks and 100,000 AK-103's, is planning to build a manufacturing plant of Russian rifles, and oppresses peaceful marches has decided to ban 'violent' video games because they 'promote violence and can alter the behavior of children.' The new legislation in Venezuela says, 'The violence found in video games is translated into the real world.' This new law affects people who sell, 'use,' produce, import and distribute these games. Video games as a whole have been labeled as 'a consequence of savage capitalism' by PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela), which is the political party led by Hugo Chavez. Days before this law was approved by the National Assembly, Chavez promoted the use of traditional toys like the Yo-Yo and Trompo, and suggested that electronic toys like 'the Nintendo' be put aside because they promote 'egoism, individualism and violence.' Just today the AFP released a report showing Caracas as the second most violent city on the planet — even more violent than Baghdad. I guess all those violent gangs in Venezuela are addicted to video games."

Kawahee was one of several readers to tip news of a price cut for the Xbox 360. This comes after Sony dropped PS3 prices and unveiled the Slim model last week. The 360 Elite will now retail for $299, but will no longer ship with HD cables. The 360 Pro has been reduced to $249, but Microsoft is phasing it out. Analysts don't expect this new price point to be a huge boon for sales because the Elite doesn't match the PS3's hardware capabilities and is still more expensive than the Wii. Microsoft has "no plans" for a smaller version of the 360.

angry tapir writes "At the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University, Sun presented plans for a security accelerator chip that it said would reduce encryption costs for applications such as VoIP calls and online banking Web sites. The coprocessor will be included on the same silicon as Rainbow Falls, the code name for the follow-on to Sun's multi-threaded Ultrasparc T2 processor."

Mr_Blank writes to mention that the United States' largest business lobby is pushing for a public trial to examine the evidence of global warming and have a judge make a ruling on whether human beings are warming the planet to dangerous effect. "The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court. The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a 'waste of time' and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be 'frivolous.' [...] Environmentalists say the chamber's strategy is an attempt to sow political discord by challenging settled science — and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end."

Unequivocal writes "The FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, told Congress today that the 'Federal Communications Commission plans to keep the Internet free of increased user fees based on heavy Web traffic and slow downloads. ...Genachowski... told The Hill that his agency will support "net neutrality" and go after anyone who violates its tenets. "One thing I would say so that there is no confusion out there is that this FCC will support net neutrality and will enforce any violation of net neutrality principles," Genachowski said when asked what he could do in his position to keep the Internet fair, free and open to all Americans. The statement by Genachowski comes as the commission remains locked in litigation with Comcast. The cable provider is appealing a court decision by challenging the FCC's authority to penalize the company for limiting Web traffic to its consumers.' It looks like the good guys are winning, unless the appeals court rules against the FCC."

RobotRunAmok writes "The Nielsen Company has been the principal entity tracking TV shows' popularity, and, by extension, their potential profitability. But as our media consumption practices change, some believe that Nielsen's methods have not kept pace. A new consortium including networks owned by NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp, Viacom, CBS, Discovery, and Walt Disney — along with major advertisers — is calling for the creation of a new audience measurement service, and planning to solicit bids from outside firms by the fourth quarter of this year. Nielsen says they're not worried about so many of their customers ganging up on them, having just invested more than a billion dollars in research to stay modern. Except that today Nielsen announced they would pointedly not be adding weights to DVR households, and that adding weights for the presence of a personal computer or Internet access in under-represented households would provide 'no significant change or enhancement' to its national TV ratings sample. The pundits deride Nielsen's 'archaic' methodology and 'disco-era tactics,' but others scoff that such a consortium will only 'put the foxes in charge of the henhouse.' Stay tuned..."

xp65 writes "NASA has invited Russia to carry out a joint manned flight to Mars, the head of NASA's Moscow office said on Tuesday. Russia is currently planning to send its own expedition to Mars some time in the future. Marc Bowman told an international aviation and space conference in Moscow that the Mars mission should take advantage of the achievements made by the International Space Station and use a multinational crew."

Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes with an idea that he thinks could help keep browsing on Microsoft's browser more secure for users — and benefit Microsoft as a result. "Tests show that IE's malware filter performs well against other browsers that use the Safe Browsing blacklist from Google. But wouldn't IE's filter be even more effective if it used both filter lists at the same time? And are the political obstacles to that really so insurmountable?" Read on for the rest of a plan that seems a lot more than half-baked. Most major browsers now come with a built-in blacklist of malware-infected or phishing websites, that display a warning if the user tries to access them in the browser. Internet Explorer 8 uses Microsoft's SmartScreen filter, while Firefox, Safari and Chrome all use Google's Safe Browsing API. Recent tests from NSS Labs reported that IE's filter blocked 81% of "socially engineered malware sites" from the lab's sample, while Firefox, in second place, blocked only 27%, and other browsers trailed even further behind. When NSS Labs ran a test of the different browsers' efficiency at blocking phishing sites, IE and Firefox scored about the same, both blocking about 80% of the sites in the sample. These results left a lot of unanswered questions, such as: Why Firefox, Safari and Chrome got such different scores in both tests (since they supposedly all use the Safe Browsing blacklist), and why such a huge gap between IE's and Firefox's performance in the malware test, but such close scores for the two browsers in the phishing test (the Google Safe Browsing API page says that the database is an attempt to list both malware and phishing sites, after all).

But I had a different question: Since Google allows anybody to use the Safe Browsing API, why doesn't Internet Explorer use it as well, in conjunction with their own blacklist, so that a site will be blocked by IE if it's present on either list? This would almost certainly increase the block rate for IE (unless the set of sites blocked by Safe Browsing was entirely a subset of the sites blocked by SmartScreen, which is extremely unlikely). Google's Terms of Use for the Safe Browsing API do require parties to obtain written permission for any usage that will result in more than 10,000 users sending "regular requests" to the API, which would obviously include Internet Explorer. But Google already serves requests for all Firefox users who have the SafeBrowsing API turned on, so for them to process requests for all Internet Explorer users might require four or five times as much computing power, not orders of magnitude more. It's impossible to guess what kind of deal Microsoft and Google would make for the right to have IE do lookups on the Safe Browsing API, but if Microsoft placed a dollar value on increasing the protection for their users, and that dollar value exceeded the cost to Google of running the servers to process the additional queries, then in theory they should be able to agree on a price between those two amounts. Google might well offer to service the queries for free, just for the prestige of being able to say that the Safe Browsing database provided protection for almost all major browsers on the market.

(Microsoft's SmartScreen team declined to comment on the record about their reasons for not using the Safe Browsing list in addition to their own database. I couldn't get an official response from Google about what position they would have on Internet Explorer using the Safe Browsing list, although unofficially an employee said the team would probably be "delighted" if IE were to use it.)

It's worth underlining what a strong statement Microsoft is making by not using the Safe Browsing list. They're not just saying that their own list is better. They're saying that the Safe Browsing list is of such low quality that adding it to their own product would actually make the product worse.

This is different from, for example, what McAfee and Symantec might say about each other's anti-virus lists. Consider the set of all viruses that McAfee blocks and the set of all viruses that Symantec blocks. Let List X be the overlap — the huge swath of viruses that are blocked by both McAfee and Symantec. Then let List Y be the set of all viruses that are blocked by McAfee but not blocked by Symantec, and let list Z be the set of all viruses that are blocked by Symantec but not by McAfee. (So McAfee blocks viruses in the set X+Y, and Symantec blocks viruses in the set X+Z.) Now, representatives from McAfee and Symantec will each say that their list is the better one, which they may or may not believe. But even McAfee is not claiming that List Z — that portion of the list that is blocked by Symantec but not by McAfee — is so worthless that McAfee wouldn't incorporate it into their own product if they could get it for free. If Symantec allowed any anti-virus maker to download Symantec's anti-virus signature database, then presumably McAfee would scratch their heads a bit about why Symantec would do this, but if they cared about giving their users maximum protection, they would incorporate it into their product as well (so that McAfee would then be blocking all viruses in the set X+Y+Z, instead of just the set X+Y as they were before). But Symantec doesn't make it available for free, so McAfee doesn't have the option of using it and the issue doesn't come up. Other than each company claiming their product is the better one (which is par for the course for competitors), the two companies' positions are not contradicting each other.

But consider the analogous situation for anti-malware lists, where X is the set of all sites blocked by both IE's SmartScreen and by the Google Safe Browsing API, Y is the set of all sites blocked by SmartScreen but not by the Safe Browsing API, and Z is the set of all sites blocked by the Safe Browsing API but not by SmartScreen. When Microsoft says that they don't want to use the Safe Browsing list in addition to their own — that they would rather block just X+Y than block X+Y+Z — they're saying that they're estimating that the list Z is of such poor quality (too much risk of containing too many false positives) that it would be better not to block it at all.

In this case, Microsoft's position really is contradicting that of Google, Firefox, Safari, and others who use the Google Safe Browsing API. To achieve the best tradeoff between user safety and convenience, should the sites on List Z — the set of sites on the Safe Browsing API blacklist but not on the SmartScreen blacklist — be blocked, or not? If the answer is Yes, then IE should use the Safe Browsing API in addition to their own SmartScreen list. If the answer is No, then Google should take the URLs in the Safe Browsing API list, run them through IE using some automated script, and then remove all the URLs that weren't blocked by IE — in other words, remove all the URLs on List Z from the Safe Browsing blacklist. But I can think of no consistent set of assumptions that would lead one to recommend that both companies continue doing what they're doing now — that IE should continue not to use the Safe Browsing API, and that Google should continue publishing the Safe Browsing API without trimming URLs that aren't also blocked by IE. Microsoft is saying that the URLs on List Z should not be blocked; Google is saying that they should be.

(Note that this argument is independent of the relative weights that you assign to the benefit of blocking a genuinely malicious site, versus the cost of accidentally blocking a site which is not malicious. Different users might assign different values to these costs and benefits, and depending on what values they assign, those users would want different thresholds to be used in deciding whether to block a site or not. And Microsoft and Google have picked default thresholds that they estimate will meet the needs of the average user. But no matter what values you assign to the benefit of blocking a malicious site and the penalty for blocking a false positive, it's still the case that blocking the sites on List Z either does increases the total cost/benefit score — in which case IE should block sites on the Safe Browsing list in addition to its own — or it doesn't — in which case Google should remove sites from the Safe Browsing list that aren't blocked by SmartScreen.)

I suspect, of course, that the answer is the former — that the set of sites on List Z, those which are blocked by the Safe Browsing API but not blocked by SmartScreen, are probably approximately as likely to be malware as the rest of the sites on the list, and that it would make Internet Explorer safer if Microsoft augmented SmartScreen to use the Safe Browsing API as well. So why don't they?

The answer is probably what people have been shouting out from the back of the classroom since the first paragraph: That for political reasons, Microsoft doesn't want to be seen incorporating anything from Google into their own flagship application. It's not news that a company would prefer to promote its products over its rivals'. But this goes beyond, for example, Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows instead of Google's Chrome browser. Chrome and Internet Explorer do virtually the same thing, so it would look positively odd for Microsoft to promote IE over Chrome. But IE's SmartScreen list and Google's Safe Browsing list can be used simultaneously, providing more protection than either one by itself.

Still, Microsoft has already calculated that it would be an unwise move politically to use Google's Safe Browsing list. So I'm not trying to second-guess the calculation that they made, based on data that was available to them at the time. Rather, I think that if some publicity can increase the political benefit that they could get from using Google's Safe Browsing list in conjunction with SmartScreen (and increase the political cost of not using it), that might lead them to recalculate and make a different decision. To that end, let me raise up a banner that people can gather under if they want to:

Microsoft, we will not think any less of you if you use the Google Safe Browsing API in Internet Explorer in conjunction with the SmartScreen filter! We'll give you credit for setting aside petty rivalries and using the technology of a competitor in order to make users safer.

The IE team's blog post about the initial success of the SmartScreen filter, from March 2009, cited statistics showing 10 million malware blocks in the previous six months, and asked readers to think about those numbers in terms of their impact on real humans and the grief it saved them: "These are BIG numbers — each malicious download blocked helps prevent compromise of that user's computer." Since then, Microsoft has released new statistics showing that SmartScreen has delivered about 70 million blocks since IE8 was officially released. Of course, not every one of those blocks made the difference between infecting a machine with spyware and keeping it clean (many users wouldn't have downloaded or installed the software that the website was trying to send them), but the IE team is right to be proud anyway. However that also means that if adding Safe Browsing support to IE resulted in only a small percent increase in the filter's effectiveness, it would mean several million additional malware blocks over the same period, and cumulatively tens of millions of more in the years ahead. Isn't that worth Microsoft forming an alliance with Google, especially if doing that would make them look good?

Several sources are discussing the recent attempted shutdown of The Pirate Bay by Swedish authorities. It seems that following the recent court defeats and the pending civil actions, Swedish authorities threatened TPB's main bandwidth supplier with a hefty fine in order to get them shut down. Not surprisingly TPB has relocated and is back online although the tracker still seems to be down. As a gesture of their "appreciation" TPB plans on sending a mocking t-shirt to the people believed responsible for the takedown attempt.

Precision submits "Intel Corp., the largest maker of chips in the world, has outlined plans to make chips using 4nm process technology in about thirteen years. According to Intel, integration capacity of chips will increase much higher compared to fabrication process."

Xemu writes "Global Gaming Factory X (GGF), the company that plans to purchase Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, has encountered an additional setback. Last week trading in GGF stock were suspended due to suspected insider trading. On Friday, Magnus Bergman, GGF chairman, submitted his resignation to the Swedish Companies Registration Office. Bergman's resignation is the latest in a series after the previous departures of board member Johan Sällström and adviser Wayne Rosso. The CEO of GGF, Hans Pandeya, is being pursued by the Swedish enforcement service for mounting unpaid debts. In an interview with the Swedish business daily 'di.se' today, CEO Hans Pandeya says that the deal is still on."

DesiVideoGamer writes "John Carmack, the lead developer for id's Tech 5 graphics engine, does not plan on making a Linux port for the new engine. From his e-mail: 'It isn't out of the question, but I don't think we will be able to justify the work. If there are hundreds of thousands of Linux users playing Quake Live when we are done with Rage, that would certainly influence our decision.' One of the reasons for not making a Linux port was due to the fact that the new engine 'pushes a lot of paths that are not usually optimized' and that the Linux port would have to use the binary blob graphics driver in order to work."

The Wall Street Journal is running a piece about the growing momentum behind the idea of NASA outsourcing to private companies everything from transporting astronauts to ferrying cargo into orbit. Quoting: "Proposals gaining momentum in Washington call for contractors to build and run competing systems under commercial contracts, according to federal officials, aerospace-industry officials and others familiar with the discussions. While the Obama administration is still mulling options and hasn't made any final decisions, such a move would represent a major policy shift away from decades of government-run rocket and astronaut-transportation programs such as the current space-shuttle fleet. ... In the face of severe federal budget constraints and a burgeoning commercial-space industry eager to play a larger role in exploring the solar system and perhaps beyond, ...a consensus for the new approach seems to be building inside the White House as well as [NASA]. ... Under this scenario, a new breed of contractors would take over many of NASA's current responsibilities, freeing the agency to pursue longer-term, more ambitious goals such as new rocket-propulsion technology and manned missions to Mars. ...[T]hese contractors would take the lead in servicing the International Space Station from the shuttle's planned retirement around 2011 through at least the end of that decade."

uolamer writes with word that the Economic Crimes Bureau in Sweden has opened an investigation into the upcoming purchase of The Pirate Bay by Global Gaming Factory X. Quoting: "The Swedish newspaper SvD reported Saturday that authorities are looking for possible insider trading after Global Gaming's stock jumped a week before they announced plans to acquire The Pirate Bay. Trading of Global Gaming shares was halted by AktieTorget, a Swedish exchange, on Friday after officials there requested proof that Global Gaming had enough money to complete the sale. Global Gaming has yet to produce the required documentation. Until officials get the proof they need, they said they won't allow the stock to be traded again."

ericatcw writes "Apple Inc. may still be coy about whether it plans to launch a touch-screen tablet computer this year, but Windows PC makers are forging right ahead. In the past three weeks, five leading PC makers have announced or been reported to confirm plans to release touch-screen PCs in time for the multi-touch-enabled Windows 7, reports Computerworld. Many appear to be using technology from New Zealand optical touch vendor, NextWindow, which already supplies HP's market-leading TouchSmart line, and Dell's Studio One. NextWindow's CEO says the company is working with partners on 8-10 products set for launch within two months, in time for Windows 7's October 22nd release."

Death Metal sends along this excerpt from Torrentfreak about how Global Gaming Factory, the company who is buying The Pirate Bay, plans to change the site in order to avoid the wrath of the entertainment industry: "In a letter addressed to [shareholders], the company confirms that the new Pirate Bay will become a pay site, while revealing some additional details on how GGF plans to legalize it. To please the entertainment industry, GGF will install a system that will allow the copyright holders to either authorize the 'illegal' torrent or have it removed from the site. If the copyright holder chooses the first option, they will be compensated every time the file is downloaded. In addition, the board says that it will pay penalties if it has to. 'The holder will be able to leave the file and obtain compensation or ask for removal of the file. GGF will also pay any penalties that may arise,' the GGF board announced."

Officials at the Sea Life London Aquarium are hoping that "The Walrus of Love" can work his magic on Zorro, their six-year-old zebra shark. For some reason Zorro hasn't been able to seal the deal with his potential mate, Mazawabee. The aquarium hopes that playing White's, "Baby We Better Try To Get It Together" and "My First, My Last, My Everything" will heat things up between the two sharks. If Barry doesn't do the trick they plan on giving Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and Lionel Richie a shot. "Zorro has something of a reputation as a 'ladies' shark'' and as Mazawabee has been 'single' for a number of years now we really thought they would get together very quickly. But it's been months since their first introduction and although there are certainly signs that Zorro has been making advances, we would really have expected some serious mating by now. Research suggests that fish can not only hear music but can appreciate different tunes and melodies so we have decided to see if some good old fashioned love songs will get them in the mood," said Paul Hale, the aquarium curator.