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Stories · 13,059
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Obama Proposes Digital Health Records
An anonymous reader writes "'President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort to revive the economy, has proposed a massive effort to modernize health care by making all health records standardized and electronic.' The plan includes having all conventional records converted to digital within 5 years. Independent studies are fixing this cost somewhere in the range of $75 to $100 Billion, with most of the money going to paying and training technical staff to work on the conversion. Early government estimates are showing 212,000 jobs could be created by this plan."
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SCO Proposes Sale of Assets To Continue Litigation
gzipped_tar sends in this excerpt from the Salt Lake Tribune: "The embattled SCO Group Inc. is proposing to auction off its core products and use proceeds to continue its controversial lawsuits over the alleged violations of its copyrights in Linux open-source software. The Lindon company has filed a new reorganization plan with the federal court in Delaware where it sought bankruptcy protection from creditors after an adverse ruling in the Linux litigation. If approved by a bankruptcy judge, the plan could mean SCO's server software and mobile products lines are owned by other parties while SCO itself remained largely to pursue the lawsuits under the leadership of CEO Darl McBride. 'One goal of this approach is to separate the legal defence of its intellectual property from its core product business,' McBride said in a letter to customers, partners and shareholders. Jeff Hunsaker, president and COO of The SCO Group, said the litigation had been distracting to the company's efforts to market its products. 'We believe there's value in these assets and in order for the business to move forward it's imperative we separate it from our legal claims and we allow our products business to move forward,' he said Friday."
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State Dept E-mail Crash After "Reply-All" Storm
twistah writes "It seems that a recent 'reply-all storm' at the State Department caused the entire e-mail infrastructure to crash. A notice sent to all State Department employees warned of disciplinary actions which will be taken if users 'reply-all' to lists with a large amount of users. Apparently, the problem was compounded by not only angry replies asking to be taken off the errant list, but by the e-mail recall function, which generated further e-mail traffic. One has to wonder if capacity planning was performed correctly — should an e-mail system be able to handle this type of traffic, or is it an unreasonable task for even the best system?"
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DIRECT Post-Shuttle Plan Pitched To Obama Team
FleaPlus writes "Popular Mechanics reports that a 'renegade' group including NASA engineers has met with President-Elect Obama's space transition team to present information on the DIRECT architecture for launching NASA missions after the Space Shuttle is retired. According to the group, DIRECT's Jupiter launch system will be safer, less expensive, better-performing, and be ready sooner than the Ares launch system NASA is currently developing, while still providing jobs for much of the existing shuttle workforce. Meanwhile, it's expected that current NASA head and adamant Ares supporter Michael Griffin will be replaced by a new NASA administrator."
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Git Adoption Soaring; Are There Good Migration Strategies?
Got To Get Me A Git writes "Distributed version control systems (DVCS) seem to be the next big thing for open source software development. Many projects have already adopted a DVCS and many others are in the process of migrating. There are a lot of major advantages to using a DVCS, but the task of migrating from one system to another appears to be a formidable challenge. The Perl Foundation's recent switch to Git took over a year to execute. The GNOME project is planning its own migration strategy right now after discovering that a significant majority of the project's developers favor Git. Perhaps some of the projects that are working on transitions from other mainstream version control systems can pool their resources and collaborate to make some standardized tools and migration best practices documentation. Does such a thing already exist? Are any folks out there in the Slashsphere working on migrating their own project or company to a DVCS? I'd appreciate some feedback from other readers about what works and what doesn't."
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UK Email Retention Plan Technically Flawed
deltaromeo points out a BBC report calling the UK's law requiring ISPs to retain users' emails for at least a year an "attack on rights." The article also points out financial and technical flaws with the plan (which we first discussed in October). TechCrunch goes a step further, detailing how it conflicts with other governmental goals. Quoting: "...with one hand the government seeks to lock down the British Internet with an iron fist, while at the same time telling us it is boosting innovation and business online. It is quite clearly blind to the fact that one affects the other. Are we also expected to think that the consumers using online services are not going to be put off from engaging in the boom of 'sharing' that Web 2.0 created? How would you feel if every Twitter you sent, every video uploaded, was to be stored and held against you in perpetuity? That may not happen, but the mere suggestion that your email is no longer private would serve to kill the UK population's relish for new media stone dead, and with it large swathes of the developing online economy."
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AMD Plans 1,000-GPU Supercomputer For Games, Cloud
arcticstoat writes "AMD is planning to use over 1,000 Radeon HD 4870 GPUs to create a supercomputer capable of processing one petaflop, which the company says will make 'cloud' computing a reality. When it's built later this year, the Fusion Render Cloud will be available as an online powerhorse for a variety of people, from gamers to 3D animators. The company claims that it could 'deliver video games, PC applications and other graphically-intensive applications through the Internet "cloud" to virtually any type of mobile device with a web browser.' The idea is that the Fusion Render Cloud will do all the hard work, so all you need is a machine capable of playing back the results, saving battery life and the need for ever greater processing power. AMD also says that the supercomputer will 'enable remote real-time rendering of film and visual effects graphics on an unprecedented scale.' Meanwhile, game developers would be able to use the supercomputer to quickly develop games, and also 'serve up virtual world games with unlimited photo-realistic detail.' The supercomputer will be powered by OTOY software, which allows you to render 3D visuals in your browser via streaming, compressed online data."
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Researchers Apply P2P Principles To Car Traffic
alphadogg writes to tell us that lessons learned from peer-to-peer networks are being applied to traffic systems in order to prevent jams. "Their Autonet plan would center around ad hoc networks of vehicles and roadside monitoring posts supported by 802.11 technology (the prototype uses 11b). The vehicles would essentially be the 'clients' in such a system and feature graphical user interfaces to pass along information to drivers. They're building the system to be able to handle data on thousands of traffic incidents and road conditions."
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Lexus To Start Spamming Car Buyers In Their Cars
techmuse writes "Lexus has announced plans to send targeted messages to buyers of its cars based on the buyer's zip code and vehicle type. Unlike regular spam, these messages will be delivered directly to the buyer's vehicle, and will play to the vehicle's occupants as audio. Lexus has promised to make the messages relevant to the car buyers." Imagine the fun that some targeted malware could do — not that such a thing could happen to a Lexus.
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Apple's Life After Steve Jobs
animusCollards writes "Slate ponders a post-Steve Jobs Apple, including possible successors, and the future is... boring. '..it's certainly true that Jobs' style is central to the company's brand and the fierce connection it forges with its customers. His product announcements prompt hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free press coverage and whip up greater and more loyal fans, generating ever-greater interest in the company. ... At some point, all that will end. Jobs will eventually leave the company. There are no obvious plans for succession; in addition to Schiller, observers finger Tim Cook, Apple's COO, and Scott Forstall, who helped develop Mac OS X and the iPhone's software, as contenders for the job. But Tuesday's keynote illustrated how difficult it will be for any of those guys to replace Jobs.'"
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Researchers Hack Intel's VPro
snydeq writes "Security researchers from Invisible Things Lab have created software that can 'compromise the integrity' of software loaded using Intel's vPro Trusted Execution Technology, which is supposed to help protect software from being seen or tampered with by other programs on the machine. The researchers say they have created a two-stage attack, with the first stage exploiting a bug in Intel's system software. The second stage relies on a design flaw in the TXT technology itself (PDF). The researchers plan to give more details on their work at the Black Hat DC security conference next month."
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A Hacker's Audacious Plan To Rule the Underground
An anonymous reader writes "Wired has the inside story of Max Butler, a former white hat hacker who joined the underground following a jail stint for hacking the Pentagon. His most ambitious hack was a hostile takeover of the major underground carding boards where stolen credit card and identity data are bought and sold. The attack made his own site, CardersMarket, the largest crime forum in the world, with 6,000 users. But it also made the feds determined to catch him, since one of the sites he hacked, DarkMarket.ws, was secretly a sting operation run by the FBI."
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UK Police To Step Up Hacking of Home PCs
toomanyairmiles writes "The Times of London reports that the United Kingdom's Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain to routinely hack into people's personal computers without a warrant. The move, which follows a decision by the European Union's council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state that drives 'a coach and horses' through privacy laws."
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Obama Moves To Link Pentagon With NASA
Amiga Trombone sends this quote from the beginning of a story at Bloomberg: "President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the US's civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China. Obama's transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency's planned launch vehicle, which isn't slated to fly until 2015, according to people who've discussed the idea with the Obama team."
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More Climate Scientists Now Support Geoengineering
ofcourseyouare writes "The Independent is a UK newspaper which has been pushing hard for cuts in CO2 emissions for years. It recently polled a group of 'the world's leading climate scientists,' revealing a 'growing support for geoengineering' in addition to cutting CO2 — not as a substitute. For example, Jim Lovelock, author of The Gaia Theory, comments: 'I disagree that geoengineering the climate is a dangerous distraction and I disagree that on no account should it ever be considered. I strongly agree that we now need a "plan B" where a geoengineering strategy is drawn up in parallel with other measures to curb CO2 emissions.' Professor Kerry Emanuel of MIT said, 'While a geoengineering solution is bound to be less than desirable, the probability of getting global agreement on emissions reductions before it is too late is very small.'"
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NASA Mars Rovers Hit 5-Year Anniversary
An anonymous reader writes "NASA's Mars rovers have been on the red planet for five years now. The rovers were originally planned to stay operational on the planet for only 90 days, but it has turned into a much longer mission than anticipated. NASA has put together a video to celebrate the anniversary. The rovers have made important discoveries about wet and violent environments on ancient Mars. They also have returned a quarter-million images, driven more than 21 kilometers (13 miles), climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more than 36 gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. To date, the rovers remain operational for new campaigns the team has planned for them."
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How Do You Stay Upbeat Amidst the Idiocy?
Techdirt has a wonderful summary of how hard it is sometimes to stay upbeat when faced with some of the complete idiocy that intelligent, tech-savvy readers often have to deal with in their day-to-day lives. While the frustration will probably never go away, nor will the news calling attention to it, it does seem that opening people's eyes to problems helps things move in the right direction, so keep it up. "Yes, we're in the midst of a brutal financial mess — but that won't stop innovation. Yes, incumbent forces, with short-sighted plans and a desire to hold back the tides are annoying and disruptive (not in a good way) in the short run. But even they are finding they can't hold back progress. Robert Friedel has a wonderful book called A Culture of Improvement that details how we, as a society, are constantly looking to improve on what we already have. We add ideas and ingenuity to old concepts and build something better — not because of the desire to grab some "intellectual property," but because of the desire to improve our own lot, to build a better tool that we want to use. Incumbent short-sighted players have been able to hinder and harm progress, but they can't keep it down completely. That culture of improvement can't be stopped entirely."
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Security Checkpoints Predict What You Will Do
An anonymous reader writes "New security check points in 2020 will look just like something out of the futuristic movie, The Minority Report. The idea of the new checkpoints will allow high traffic to pass through just as you were walking at a normal pace. No more waving a wand to get through checkpoints — the new checkpoint can detect if you have plans to set off a bomb before you even enter the building."
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Content Filtering Pulled From Free Broadband Proposal
huzur79 writes "Electronista is reporting that Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC, has dropped the content filtering provisions from the proposal for free wireless broadband service, according to an interview with Ars Technica. Previous drafts of the plan required protection methods to prevent users from accessing objectionable content, such as pornography. 'I'm saying if this is a problem for people, let's take it away,' Martin said. The proposal has received criticism and opposition from a variety of groups including the Bush administration, wireless companies, and consumer interest organizations. T-Mobile has argued that communicating data on the allocated frequency bands will cause interference and quality degradation. Civil liberties groups argue that the FCC would overstep its authority and violate the Constitution."
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How Can the Stimulus Plan Help the Internet?
Wired is running an article raising the question of how a US economic stimulus plan could best help broadband adoption and the internet in general. We discussed President-elect Obama's statements about his plan, which would include investments in such areas, but Wired asks how we can avoid the equivalent of the New Deal's "ditches to nowhere" without more data about where the money would actually make a difference. Quoting: "... the problem is that no one knows the best way to make the internet more resilient, accessible and secure, since there's no just no public data. The ISP and backbone internet providers don't tell anyone anything. For instance, the government doesn't know how many people actually have broadband or what they pay for it. ... In September, the FCC found that its data collection on internet broadband was incomplete and thus ruled that AT&T, Qwest and Verizon could stop filing some reports — because the requirements did not extend to cable companies, too."