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Editor's Note

Just as a reminder, we now have two publications of this wonderful newsletter, one as a download{this publication}, and the other as a blog publication.

I would also like to add that we have withdrawn all our download links from Download.com { a.k.a CNET}. 

They have, without permission, added third party marketing promotions {Crapware, to you and I... } to all our installshields and applications. We have fortunately found alternatives like “MajorGeeks.com” and “FreeWareFiles.com” to host all our wonderful software downloads.

Have a great month of September!  

Office 15 Development To Go JavaScript, HTML5 For Extensibility

Programmers have had to put up with Microsoft dithering over Office development for a long while. The macro language VBA has been on its way out ever since .NET was introduced and yet it is still the only macro language available.

Now it looks as if Microsoft plan to put JavaScript and HTML5 into Office 15. And how do we know this? By reading job ads to discover what projects Microsoft is hiring for.

Lightning Strike KOs Amazon, Microsoft EuroClouds

A lightning strike has caused power outages at the major cloud computing data hubs for Amazon and Microsoft in Dublin, Ireland. The incident has caused downtime for many sites using Amazon's EC2 cloud computing platform and Microsoft's BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite).

Facebook: We Have Proof Ceglia's Contract Is Fake

Facebook says it has found the proof that shows Paul Ceglia, a man that claims he owns half of the company over a 2003 contract, is a fraud. Facebook says it has found the original 'authentic contract' between Zuckerberg and Ceglia.

Anti-Matter Belt Discovered Around Earth

A thin band of antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time. The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth's magnetic field could trap antimatter.

The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and cosmic rays. Aside from confirming theoretical work that had long predicted the existence of these antimatter bands, the particles could also prove to be a novel fuel source for future spacecraft - an idea explored in a report for NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts.

DARPA Commits To Funding Useful Hacking Projects

Fahmida Y. Rashid reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will fund new cyber-security proposals under the new Cyber-Fast Track project intended to cut red tape for hackers to apply for funding for projects that would help the Defense Department secure computer networks, says Peiter Zatko, a hacker known as Mudge who was one of the seven L0pht members who testified before a Senate committee in 1998 that they could bring down the Internet in 30 minutes and is now a program manager for the agency's information innovation office.

Anything that could help the military will be considered, including bug-hunting exercises, commodity high-end computing and open software tools and projects with the potential to 'reduce attack surface areas, reverse current asymmetries' are of particular interest. Under the Cyber-Fast Track initiative, DARPA will fund between 20 to 100 projects annually. Open to anybody, researchers can pitch DARPA with ideas and have a project approved and funded within 14 days of the application.

Comcast Launching $9.95 Low Income Broadband Plan

Comcast is launching 'Internet Essentials,' a new initiative offering discounted Internet access and home computers to families that meet low income requirements. The program was mandated as a requirement of Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal, earlier this year. In that way, it's very similar to AT&T's Naked DSL program, which AT&T was required to offer as a condition of its merger with BellSouth. Internet Essentials will be available wherever Comcast offers broadband, which means 39 states.

India Wants To Monitor Twitter, Facebook

India's home ministry has asked its communications ministry to monitor social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook amid fears that the services are being used by terrorists to plan attacks. The request suggests that the Indian government is trying to broaden the scope of its online surveillance for national security. Under new rules to the country's IT Act that came into force earlier this year, websites and service providers are required to provide government security agencies with information on private accounts, including passwords, on request without a court order.

Start-Up Claims Immortality For Data With 'Stone-Like' Disc

Start-up Millenniata and LG plan to soon release a new optical disc and read/write player that will store movies, photos or any other data forever. The data can be accessed using any current DVD or Blu-ray player. The M-Disc can be dipped in liquid nitrogen and then boiling water without harming it. It also has a Defense Department study (PDF) backing up the resiliency of its product compared with other leading optical disc competitors.

The company would not disclose what material is used to produce the optical discs, referring to it only as a 'natural' substance that is 'stone-like.' Like DVDs and Blu-ray discs, the M-Disc platters are made up of multiple layers of material. But there is no reflective, or die, layer. Instead, during the recording process a laser 'etches' pits onto the substrate material.

North Korea Accused of Hacking Online Games For Profit

According to South Korean authorities, North Korean computer experts were tasked with raising money by attacking the servers of popular online games and using automated software to accumulate in-game enhancements they could sell to legitimate players. "In a little less than two years, the police said, the organizers made $6 million.

The North Korean computer experts were each required to send at least $500 a month back to the Pyongyang government, the police said. It remained unclear how much of the rest of their profits they pocketed for themselves, given different layers of party and military officials involved in a typical illicit operation. What appeared clear from the case, the police said, was that North Korean agencies, increasingly hamstrung by international sanctions, were exploring any new means to raise cash for Mr. Kim and prove their loyalty.

Australian Research Network Plans For 100Gbps

The Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) has announced a wide range of initiatives around network upgrades, collaboration, and mobility as part of a new five-year plan. The plan includes delivering a 100Gbps backbone to its education and research customers, to ensure sufficient "headroom" for major projects such as the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope.

Terrorist Target Mexican Nanotechnology Professors

A Mexican terrorist organization sent an explosive device to an ITESM professor due to his research in nanotechnology. ITS or Individuals with Wild Tendencies in english, is a group that claims to be against the 'nanotechnology revolution' in fear of a nanomachine take over that will mean the end of civilization. The group has published on their website that they plan to target individuals in this research field to ensure the survival of mankind. Mexican authorities are investigating the case.

Copycat "hiPhone 5" Surfaces In China

A fake iPhone 5, inspired by the leaked images of the device, has been discovered to be on sale in China. The quality of the hiPhone 5 varies with the price, with the most premium version of the device being available for 800 yuan or £76.

The device reportedly comes in red and pink. Chinese media is reporting that the fake iPhone 5 is thinner than the iPhone 4 and comes with round edges. Other reports are claiming that the device is extremely light and almost feels like that one is holding a plastic toy. The reports are likely based on some images that were leaked by the supply chain.

Since they're going to the trouble of building counterfeit stores, the knock-off phones shouldn't surprise anyone.

Wall Street: Software More Valuable Than Oil

The tech industry's answer to this week's stock market roller coaster was delivered on Tuesday by the mighty Apple Inc. Apple saw its stock price rise enough - gaining more than 5% - to briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company in the U.S., according to an AP analysis of its market cap. (Exxon Mobile wound up the day slightly ahead of Apple.)

Most of the other major tech companies - including Intel, IBM, Dell, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard - all finished in positive territory yesterday, as markets made up ground lost in the big sell-off on Monday that also hit oil prices and other commodities.Tuesday's rally may be all that's needed to shake away, at least temporarily, some of the economic concerns the IT industry still faces. By closing in on Exxon, Apple effectively affirmed that there are few limits to tech growth.

CW blogger Jonny Evans posits that ideas are why Apple beats Exxon on market cap, noting, 'While Exxon drills, hammers and crushes its way to find its billions, Apple's mind-miners explore myriad complexities to develop and understand new technologies.

Cop Seeks Wiretapping Charges For Woman Who Videotaped Beating

A police officer who was disciplined for his role in the beating of a Massachusetts man (many broken bones in his face and permanent partial blindness) is looking to bring criminal wiretapping charges against the woman who caught much of the incident on video. The officer received a 45-day suspension for the beating. He does not appear to deny anything that happened in the video, but he apparently thinks it shouldn't have been filmed.

NASA Opens New Office For Space Missions

NASA has been tasked with landing astronauts on a space rock by 2025, and on the Red Planet by the mid 2030s. To reach those goals, the United States must develop a new heavy-lift rocket capable of traveling that far, and a capsule to bring people safely there and back again. The new Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate will be responsible for overseeing all this and more. 'America is opening a bold new chapter in human space exploration,' NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

By combining the resources of Space Operations and Exploration Systems, and creating the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, we are recommitting ourselves to American leadership in space for years to come.

Pakistan Lets China View US Stealth Technology

Tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan have moved up a notch in light of news that Pakistan allowed China to examine the downed stealth helicopter used in the operation to kill Osama bin Laden. Pakistan also provided Chinese intelligence with samples of the 'stealth skin.' 'Pakistan enjoys a close relationship with China, which is a major investor in telecommunications, ports and infrastructure in the country.

Music Copyright War Looming

When copyright law was revised in the mid-1970s, musicians, like creators of other works of art, were granted 'termination rights,' which allow them to regain control of their work after 35 years, so long as they apply at least two years in advance. Recordings from 1978 are the first to fall under the purview of the law, but in a matter of months, hits from 1979, like 'The Long Run' by the Eagles and 'Bad Girls' by Donna Summer, will be in the same situation. ... 'We believe the termination right doesn’t apply to most sound recordings,' said Steven Marks, general counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America, a lobbying group in Washington that represents the interests of record labels.

As the record companies see it, the master recordings belong to them in perpetuity, rather than to the artists who wrote and recorded the songs, because, the labels argue, the records are 'works for hire,' compilations created not by independent performers but by musicians who are, in essence, their employees.

Mussels With Hydrogen Fuel Cells Found

According to scientists, there are mussels at the bottom of the ocean that are efficiently converting hydrogen into energy in their very own, nature-made hydrogen fuel cells (abstract). The mussels were found near hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor and have onboard symbiotic bacteria that convert hydrogen into energy. With this discovery, researchers might be able to clone the hydrogen eating bacteria to create all-natural hydrogen fuel cells to power things other than sea life.

Anti-Piracy Lawyers Accuse Blind Man of Downloading Films

As the mass-lawsuits against BitTorrent users in the United States drag on, detail on the collateral damage this extortion-like scheme is costing becomes clear. It is likely that thousands of people have been wrongfully accused of sharing copyrighted material, yet they see no other option than to pay up. One of the cases that stands out is that of a California man who's incapable of watching the adult film he is accused of sharing because he is legally blind.

Analysis of Google's Motorola Acquisition

Pundits have been analyzing Google's Motorola acquisition since its announcement. Dan Lyons, formerly known as Fake Steve Jobs, says Google never cared for the Nortel patents, and that they drove the bidding price up intentionally while negotiating to buy Motorola. This idea is questioned by MG Siegler, who believes buying Motorola for $12.5 billion - almost two years' worth of Google's annual profits - is an act of desperation.

John Gruber notes that Motorola was threatening to wage a patent war against other Android partners during the time they would have been negotiating with Google, and that Motorola likely forced them into an expensive buyout rather than a patent license agreement. Google may have also been motivated by the fact that Microsoft was reportedly pursuing a Motorola buyout.

S&P researchers apparently weren't a fan of the deal.

Santa Cruz Tests Predictive Policing Program

The police department of Santa Cruz, California is testing a new method for apprehending criminals: beating them to the crime scene. No, they haven't harnessed a group of pre-cogs; they're relying on a computer program that analyzes past crime statistics.

Based on models for predicting aftershocks from earthquakes, it generates projections about which areas and windows of time are at highest risk for future crimes by analyzing and detecting patterns in years of past crime data. The projections are recalibrated daily, as new crimes occur and updated data is fed into the program. ... For the Santa Cruz trial, eight years of crime data were fed into the computer program, which breaks Santa Cruz into squares of approximately 500 feet by 500 feet. ... Officers are given a list of the 10 highest-probability 'hot spots' of the day at roll call. They check those areas during times that they are not out on service calls. Before the program started, they made such 'pass through' checks based on hunches or experience of where crimes were likely to occur.

Navy Bomb Squads Get a Solar Power Upgrade

The U.S. Navy's bomb squads have a weight problem. To keep their field gear powered up, the typical explosive ordnance disposal unit has to haul fifty pounds of specialized chargers and related devices around, creating an unwieldy and potentially dangerous drag on the operation. Now help is coming from an unexpected source: the sun. The Navy's Explosive Ordnance Disposal Training and Evaluation Unit 2 in Virginia has been testing five prototype lightweight field power kits that include solar cells as a key component. The kits replace fifty pounds of equipment with a compact system that weighs only about nine pounds.

Floating Nuclear Power Plant Seized By Court

The world's first nuclear barge has been impounded while still under construction - but not because of looming safety or environmental concerns. The shipyard's parent companies are embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings, and Russia's state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, was worried that a creditor would end up with this valuable nuclear asset, and asked the bankruptcy court to seize the barge to protect it.

Righthaven Loses Again

Righthaven, the Las Vegas copyright troll, won't be collecting any damages from a man it once branded as a copyright infringer but instead must pay the man's legal fees of $34,045. US District Judge Philip Pro awarded the fees in the case of Kentucky message board poster Wayne Hoehn, finding that Righthaven didn't have standing to sue him due to the Review-Journal maintaining control of the column [and that] Hoehn was protected by the fair use doctrine.

This is the second attorney's fee award against Righthaven. These are likely just the tip of the iceberg, with prevailing defendant Thomas DiBiase asking for $199,250 while the Democratic Underground will likely seek a fee award of many hundreds of thousands of dollars after Righthaven was dismissed from that suit for lack of standing. The bottom line for Righthaven is that so far it has not won a single lawsuit of 275 filed since 2010.

C++0x Finally Becomes a Standard

On Friday August 12th 2011, the results for the final ISO ballot on C++0x came in, and the ISO C++ Standards Committee were unanimous in favor of approving the new C++0x (for now unofficially known as C++11) object-oriented programming language standard which is intended to replace the existing C++ standard. The new standard is to offer new and improved features such as lambda functions, concurrent programming functionality, direct data field initialization, and an improved standard library to name but a few.

Although I haven't heavily used C++ in years, it is nice to see a decade long effort finally come to fruition. Especially nice is the support for type inference which should save quite a few people from RSI and make refactoring code a bit less obnoxious.

DARPA Hypersonic Vehicle Splash Down Confirmed

DARPA has announced that its Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 flight on Thursday, 11 August, 'experienced a flight anomaly post perigee and into the vehicle's climb. The anomaly prompted the vehicle's autonomous flight safety system to use the craft's aerodynamic systems to make a controlled descent and splash down into the ocean.

According to a preliminary review of the data collected prior to the anomaly encountered by the HTV-2 during its second test flight,' said DARPA Director Regina Dugan, 'HTV-2 demonstrated stable aerodynamically controlled Mach 20 hypersonic flight for approximately three minutes. It appears that the engineering changes put into place following the vehicle's first flight test in April 2010 were effective. We do not yet know the cause of the anomaly for Flight 2.

Computer Prediction Used to Design Better Organic Semiconductors

Creating a flexible display requires finding an organic material that's both durable and capable of carrying an electric signal fast enough. To create such a material requires choosing the right compound and combining it with an organic base material. It's a hit and miss affair that can take years of synthesis to get right, but even then the final material may not be good enough. Stanford and Harvard researchers have come up with a much faster solution: use computer prediction to decide on the best compound before synthesizing begins. They also proved it works by developing a new organic semiconductor material 30x faster than the amorphous silicon used in LCDs.

Canadian Government Seeking New Net Snooping Powers

A bill being considered by the Canadian federal parliament includes two clauses specifically to reduce the 'due process' imposed when the police need information from ISPs. Under the proposed bill, law enforcement officers will not require a warrant to acquire information about internet subscribers from Canadian ISPs ... Paul Ducklin has criticized the bill saying that it 'doesn't even seem to propose that the requests be based on any sort of specific identifier, such as a name or an email address ... This suggests, in the worst case, that an ISP might be compelled simply to hand over information about all subscribers. No warrant needed, and thus no proactive oversight by the judiciary.

ARM Is a Promising Platform But Needs To Learn From the PC

Linux and ARM developers have clashed over what's been described as a 'United Nations-level complexity of the forks in the ARM section of the Linux kernel.' Linus Torvalds addressed the issue at LinuxCon this week on the 20th anniversary of Linux, saying the ARM platform has a lot to learn from the PC. While Torvalds noted that 'a lot of people love to hate the PC,' the fact that Intel, AMD, and hardware makers worked on building a common infrastructure 'made it very efficient and easy to support.' ARM, on the other hand, 'is missing it completely,' Torvalds said.

ARM is this hodgepodge of five or six major companies and tens of minor companies making random pieces of hardware, and it looks like they're taking hardware and throwing it at a wall and seeing where it sticks, and making a chip out of what's stuck on the wall.

Company Wants You to Visit Near-Space In Their "Bloon"

While space tourism efforts by the likes of Space Adventures and Virgin Galactic are relying on the tried and true technology of rockets to launch paying customers into space, Barcelona-based company zero2infinity proposes a more leisurely and eco-friendly ride into near-space using a helium balloon called the bloon.

Designed to carry passengers to an altitude of 36 km (22 miles), an unmanned scale prototype bloon was flown to an altitude of 33 km (20 miles) last year and the company is already taking bookings for passenger flights that are expected to lift off sometime between 2013 and 2015.

13-Year-Old Uses Fibonacci Sequence For Solar Power Breakthrough

An anonymous reader tips news of 7th grader Aidan Dwyer, who used phyllotaxis - the way leaves are arranged on plant stems in nature - as inspiration to arrange an array of solar panels in a way that generates 20-50% more energy than a uniform, flat panel array.

Aidan wrote,

"I designed and built my own test model, copying the Fibonacci pattern of an oak tree. I studied my results with the compass tool and figured out the branch angles. The pattern was about 137 degrees and the Fibonacci sequence was 2/5. Then I built a model using this pattern from PVC tubing. In place of leaves, I used PV solar panels hooked up in series that produced up to 1/2 volt, so the peak output of the model was 5 volts.

The entire design copied the pattern of an oak tree as closely as possible. ... The Fibonacci tree design performed better than the flat-panel model. The tree design made 20% more electricity and collected 2 1/2 more hours of sunlight during the day. But the most interesting results were in December, when the Sun was at its lowest point in the sky. The tree design made 50% more electricity, and the collection time of sunlight was up to 50% longer!

His work earned him a Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History and a provisional patent on the design.

More Photoshopped Evidence In Apple v. Samsung

It seems that Apple can't stop Photoshopping evidence in its EU lawsuit against Samsung. We already saw that the company used trickery in its side-by-side comparison of the iPad and Galaxy Tab; now it appears that it's fudging the comparison between the iPhone and Galaxy S as well.

Rare Earth Restrictions To Raise Hard Drive Cost

Multiple manufacturers in the IT industry have been keeping a wary eye on China's decision to cut back on rare earth exports and the impact it may have on component prices. There have been reports that suggest we'll see that decision hit the hard drive industry this year, with HDD prices trending upwards an estimated 5-10 percent depending on capacity.

Although rare earth magnets are only a small part of a hard drive's total cost, China cut exports last year by 40 percent, which drove pricing for these particular components up an estimated 20-30x. China currently controls 97 percent of the rare earth elements market for popular metals like neodymium, cerium, yttrium and ytterbium.

Study Shows Dogs Can Sniff Out Lung Cancer

Last year, researchers developed a cancer-detecting electronic nose inspired by dogs' ability to sniff out different types of ovarian cancer. Now a new study has found that sniffer dogs' abilities extend to reliably detecting lung cancer. The researchers say the results of the study (abstract) confirm that there is a stable marker for lung cancer, which offers the possibility that a 'breath test' for the early detection of lung cancer could be developed.

Alaskan Village's Orange Goo Was Fungal Spores

In a follow-up to a report that was mentioned on Slashdot a week ago, the NOAA has determined that the orange 'goo' that washed up on the beaches at the remote Alaska village of Kivalina was not eggs of crustaceans, but rather spores from a fungus that creates rust on plants. It is not known whether the fungus is harmful to humans or not.

Sun May Disrupt Spacecraft and Satellites In Coming Decades

A newly published study (abstract) predicts that solar storms are going to become increasingly disruptive to satellites and communications in the coming decades as the sun cycles towards a minimum of activity. 'The work, published in Geophysical Research Letters, predicts that once the Sun shifts toward an era of lower solar activity, more hazardous radiation will reach Earth.

The team says the Sun is currently at a grand solar maximum. This phase began in the 1920s - and has lasted throughout the space age....The evidence seems to indicate that although there are fewer solar storms once the Sun leaves its grand maximum, they are more powerful, faster and therefore carry more particles.

Windows 8 To Fight Piracy With the Cloud

With the latest Windows 8 build (8064) that has been delivered to Intel, it's clear that the company is taking strides to make sure that its upcoming OS isn't quite so easy to pirate. For starters, the generic volume license keys that were so easily exploited during the early days of Windows 7 leaks will no longer be an option for pirates. Product keys also won't be shipped in the prodkey.txt file included in the build packages. Instead, installers will need to retrieve a unique key from a Microsoft web page. There's also a good possibility that the recently-surfaced fast booting patent could come into play as well.

If Microsoft does indeed have designs on using a remote server to push OS code to systems at boot time, that code would be a very clever place to embed activation-related programming. Even if a crack was discovered, it would be neatly undone during a subsequent start-up sequence - similar to the way Microsoft's now-idle Windows Steady State could turn back the clock on an entire Windows installation after rebooting.

Microsoft has also indirectly confirmed in a recent blog post that Windows 8 will make use of an app store.

Former Wikileaks Spokesman Destroyed Documents

Former Wikileaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg claims to have destroyed more than 3,500 unpublished files that had been sent from unknown informants and are now apparently lost irrevocably. Among the files destroyed are the US gov's 'no-fly list' and inside information from 20 right wing organizations. Daniel Domscheit-Berg is now known as one of the founders of openleaks.

NASA Tries To Save Hubble's Successor

Last month we discussed news that the James Webb Space Telescope, the planned successor to the HST, is on the budgetary chopping block. Now, an anonymous reader points out hopeful news from TPM's Idea Lab blog, which says NASA is trying to "spread the cost across the agency rather than just pulling from the $1 billion astrophysics division, with at least half of the funds coming from other areas of NASA's total $18 billion budget." According to Nature News, the decision resides with the White House's Office of Management and Budget, and support for the project depends in particular on Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD).

Samsung Cites 2001: A Space Odyssey In Apple Patent Case

suraj.sun and several other readers sent word that Samsung is using a clip from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example of prior art in its defense against Apple's patent infringement claims. "In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. ... As with the design claimed by the D'889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table's surface), and a thin form factor." Samsung also supplied a clip from 1970s British TV series The Tomorrow People.

Judge Nixes Warrantless Cell Phone Location Data

The government sought warrantless access to 113 days of location data for a Verizon Wireless customer. On Monday, a judge refused the request (PDF), ruling that cell phone users have an expectation of privacy in location information. 'There is no meaningful Fourth Amendment distinction between content and other forms of information, the disclosure of which to the Government would be equally intrusive and reveal information society values as private,' said Judge Nicholas Garaufis. Privacy advocates in DC will be cheering as soon as they climb out from under their desks!

Russia Approves Siberia-Alaska Railway

In what could easily be one of the boldest infrastructure developments ever announced, the Russian Government has given the go-ahead to build a transcontinental railway linking Siberia with North America. The massive undertaking would traverse the Bering Strait with the world's longest tunnel - a project twice the length of the Chunnel between England and France. The project aims to feed North America with raw goods from the Siberian interior and beyond, but it could also provide a key link to developing a robust renewable energy transmission corridor that feeds wind and tidal power across vast distances while linking a railway network across 3/4 of the Northern Hemisphere.

Canadian Firm Gave Libyan Rebels Surveillance Drone

The Libyan revolutionaries are more of a band of enthusiastic amateurs than experienced soldiers. But it turns out the rebels have the kind of weaponry usually possessed by advanced militaries: their very own drone. Aeryon Labs, a Canadian defense firm, revealed on Tuesday that it had quietly provided the rebel forces with a teeny, tiny surveillance drone, called the Aeryon Scout. Small enough to fit into a backpack, the three-pound, four-rotor robot gave Libyan forces eyes in the sky independent of the Predators, Fire Scout surveillance copters and manned spy planes that NATO flew overhead. Don't worry, it's not armed.

Oracle vs Google: Copyright Claims Must Remain

More in the Oracle/Google patent infringement saga. Oracle says no court has ever found that APIs for software like Java are ineligible for copyright protection. The claims were made in its objection to Google's request that the court make a summary judgment on Oracle's copyright allegations. In early August, Google asked the judge to rule that Google doesn't infringe Oracle copyright in its implementation of Android. In an objection to that request, Oracle asked the judge to let the charge go to trial. Earlier, Judge Alsup denied Google's attempt to get a potentially damaging e-mail redacted. Looks like this one could take a while.

Chinese Propaganda Accidentally Reveals Cyberwar

A Chinese military propaganda video aired in mid-July inadvertently showed a Chinese military university launching cyberattacks against U.S. websites. The Epoch Times reports the video shows 'custom-built Chinese software apparently launching a cyber-attack against the main website of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, by using a compromised IP address belonging to a United States university.' A screen in the video also reveals 'the name of the software and the Chinese university that built it, the Electrical Engineering University of China's People's Liberation Army.

Victory For Music Locker Services?

Michael Robertson, the owner and founder of the MP3Tunes music locker service, has been locked in a copyright infringement case with EMI Records for a while now, especially because of the Sideloading search engine that is tacked along with the locker service. Now the case has been resolved though: EMI Records won. But lost on all the accounts that actually really matter."

The important parts here are that MP3Tunes was granted safe harbor protection under the DMCA, and that merging multiple copies of the same file doesn't make distributing that master copy a public performance.

Origins of Lager Found In Argentina

After decades of pondering, scientists have found the secret to the creation of lager. An elusive species of yeast isolated in the forests of Argentina was key to the invention of the crisp-tasting German beer. From the article: 'Their best bet is that centuries ago, S. eubayanus somehow found its way to Europe and hybridized with the domestic yeast used to brew ale, creating an organism that can ferment at the lower temperatures used to make lager. Geneticists have known since the 1980s that the yeast brewers use to make lager, S. pastorianus, was a hybrid of two yeast species: S. cerevisiae - used to make ales, wine and bread - and some other, unidentified organism.

Dutch Court Says Android 2.3 Violates Apple Patents

A Dutch court came to some interesting conclusions in the Apple-Samsung patent case raging there. The court rejected claims that Samsung stole intellectual copyrights, or that it slavishly copied Apple's iPad and iPhone. It did decide that Android 2.3 violated an Apple photo management patent - but said that Samsung could get around this simply by upgrading its phones to Android 3.0.

Facebook Data Collection Under Fire Again

A German privacy protection authority is calling on organizations there to close their Facebook fan pages and remove the social networking site's 'Like' button from their websites, arguing that Facebook harvests data in violation of German and European Union law. The Independent Centre for Privacy Protection (ULD), the privacy protection agency for the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, issued a news release on Friday saying Facebook builds a broad, individualized profile for people who view Facebook content on third-party websites.

Data is sent back to Facebook's servers in the U.S., which the agency alleges violates the German Telemedia Act, the German Federal Data Protection Act and the Data Protection Act of Schleswig-Holstein. The agency alleges the data is held by Facebook for two years, and wants website owners in the state to remove links to Facebook by the end of next month or possibly face a fine.

NASA Creating Laser Communication System For Mars

NASA is in the process of developing a new technology under project Laser Communications Relay Demonstration or LCRD which will allow them to provide faster means of communications from Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) currently can only send at speeds of around 6 Mbps or about like a DSL modem here on Earth. At this rate, it can take upwards to 90 minutes to transmit a single high resolution image to Earth from Mars. With the MRO outfitted with the new technology it would be able to transmit the same high resolution image back to Earth at over 100 Mbps and only taking about 5 minutes to do so.

Estimated Transfer Time Is No More In Windows 8

Ahh, the Windows Explorer progress dialog. For years it has been struggling to figure out how to calculate how long our copy and delete operations would take, sliding the progress bar back and forth in a seemingly random, haphazard way, the laws of time all but ceasing to exist - five seconds remaining one moment and 13 minutes the next. That's (almost) all going to change, with the arrival of a greatly improved file management experience in Windows 8. Copy, move, delete, rename, and conflict resolution are all being overhauled and it's about time!

Cybercrime Treaty Pushes Surveillance Worldwide

As part of an emerging international trend to try to 'civilize the Internet', one of the world's worst Internet law treaties - the highly controversial Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Cybercrime - is back on the agenda. Canada and Australia are using the Treaty to introduce new invasive, online surveillance laws, many of which go far beyond the Convention's intended levels of intrusiveness.

Negotiated over a decade ago, only 31 of its 47 signatories have ratified it. Many considered the Treaty to be dormant but in recent years a number of countries have been modeling national laws based on the flawed Treaty. Leaving out constitutional safeguards, gag orders in place of oversight, and forcing service providers to retain your data may all be coming soon.

Do You Want Best Buy Opening Your New Laptop?

I went to Best Buy the other day to get a new laptop for a client. I didn't realize till I got it home that they had broken the seal and opened the box. They put a sticker on the box that said, 'Inspected by Best Buy.' I found they had created the user profile, recovery disks, and installed a trial of Trend Antivirus. Seems to me this is more of a marketing agenda than inspection.

SEC Hit With Data Destruction Complaint

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US financial regulator, has been accused of destroying thousands of data files on high profile inquiries including an early-stage investigation into convicted Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernard Madoff. The allegations, raised by former SEC employee Darcy Flynn, have prompted the US Senate Judiciary Committee to write to SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro to demand an immediate explanation.

The SEC exists to set a tough example on corporate governance, and it fines banks heavily for both lax practice and deliberate malpractice. Questions over any involvement it may have in sensitive document destruction are not likely to sit comfortably with some in the industry. The SEC insists it has kept records in accordance with the law on its computer system.

Coordinated, Global ATM Heist Nets $13 Million

An international cybercrime gang stole $13 million from a Florida-based financial institution earlier this year, by executing a highly-coordinated heist in which thieves used ATMs around the globe to cash out stolen prepaid debit cards. 'Prepaid cards usually limit the amounts that cardholders can withdraw from a cash machine within a 24 hour period.

Apparently, the crooks were able to drastically increase or eliminate the withdrawal limits for 22 prepaid cards that they had obtained. The fraudsters then cloned the prepaid cards, and distributed them to co-conspirators in several major cities across Europe, Russia and Ukraine.

The attack is eerily similar to the 2008 attack on RBS WorldPay that stole $9.4M. The men who pleaded guilty to the RBS attack were arrested and charged in Russia, but were later given only probation.

Mobile Carriers Impose Handicaps On Smartphones

A team at the University of Michigan and Microsoft Research has uncovered, for the first time, the frequently suboptimal network practices of more than 100 cellular carriers. By recruiting almost 400 volunteers to run an app on their phones that probes a carrier's networks, the team discovered, for example, that one of the four major U.S. carriers is slowing its network performance by up to 50 percent (PDF). They also found carrier policies that drained users' phone batteries at an accelerated rate, and security vulnerabilities that could leave devices open to complete takeover by hackers.

China Removes Cyberwar Video, Denies Everything

Anyone looking for the video clip showing the Chinese regime launching cyberattacks using script kiddie tactics was greeted with a message stating 'Error Page - This page does not exist anymore,' on the state-run TV website. The propaganda video, still available on YouTube, included a clip showing an unseen user launching a cyberattack against an Alabama-based website of the Falun Gong meditation practice. China's Defense Minister told the Washington Post via e-mail that the video was 'pure action of the producer,' adding that the 'Chinese military has never implemented any form of cyber attacks.' The statement is the common line given by the regime after they're tacked with launching a global cyberattack - including after GhostNet, Operation Aurora, Operation Night Dragon, and Operation Shady Rat were revealed.

Evidence Points To Huge Underground River Beneath Amazon

Researchers at the department of geophysics of the Brazil National Observatory have showed evidence of the existence of an underground river that flows 13,000 feet beneath the Amazon. The width of the newly-named Hamza is said to be 3,700 miles long, flowing 13,000 feet below the Amazon. Both rivers flow from west to east, but the Hamza flows at only a fraction of the speed of Amazon.

Russian Resupply Crash Could Mean Leaving ISS Empty

In the wake of the Russian Progress vehicle crash shortly after launch on Aug. 24, a chain of events has been set into motion that could result in the decision not to fly astronauts into orbit. If this happens, the ISS will be temporarily mothballed before the end of the year to avoid landing astronauts during the harsh Kazakh winter.

NZ Illegal Downloading Crackdown Law In Effect

As of Sept 1 at midnight, 'anyone caught downloading copyrighted content illegally could face fines of up to $15,000 and have their internet cut off' in New Zealand. You don't even have to do the deed yourself. The 'account holder needs to know what's going on even if they themselves don't do anything online...' Scary stuff, although I wonder how much actual enforcement is likely to happen.

WikiLeaks Sues the Guardian Over Leak

WikiLeaks complaining of a leak is hard to get one's head around. That it's suing The Guardian - its great ally - is even harder. That The Guardian did such a ridiculous thing to warrant litigation in the first place almost defies belief.

Update: 09/01 04:59 GMT by S : Changed the first link to point to the statement on WikiLeaks' website. The Guardian has denied the allegations, saying, "Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours.

Kernel.org Compromised

There is a note posted on the main kernel.org page, that kernel.org has been compromised earlier this month: 'Earlier this month, a number of servers in the kernel.org infrastructure were compromised. We discovered this August 28th. While we currently believe that the source code repositories were unaffected, we are in the process of verifying this and taking steps to enhance security across the kernel.org infrastructure. The note goes on to say that it is unlikely to have affected the source code repositories, due to the nature of git.

Another Unreleased iPhone Lost by Employee In a Bar

Looks like another Apple employee left an iPhone prototype in a bar. From the article: 'The errant iPhone, which went missing in San Francisco's Mission district in late July, sparked a scramble by Apple security to recover the device over the next few days, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Last year, an iPhone 4 prototype was bought by a gadget blog that paid $5,000 in cash.

This year's lost phone seems to have taken a more mundane path: it was taken from a Mexican restaurant and bar and may have been sold on Craigslist for $200. Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like.' Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy

UCLA Develops Stretchable OLED Display

While there have been some intriguing developments recently in the field of stretchable electronics and flexible OLED displays, one thing we haven't heard much about is stretchable displays. So is it possible to make a screened device in which every part of it could be stretched. The answer could now be yes, with news that researchers from UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have demonstrated a stretchable polymer light-emitting device.

Record-Low Error Rate For Qubit Processor

Thanks to advances in experimental design, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have achieved a record-low probability of error in quantum information processing with a single quantum bit (qubit) - the first published error rate small enough to meet theoretical requirements for building viable quantum computers.

One error per 10,000 logic operations is a commonly agreed upon target for a low enough error rate to use error correction protocols in a quantum computer,' said Kenton Brown, who led the project as a NIST postdoctoral researcher. 'It is generally accepted that if error rates are above that, you will introduce more errors in your correction operations than you are able to correct. We've been able to show that we have good enough control over our single-qubit operations that our probability of error is 1 per 50,000 logic operations.

Russia Close To Findings On Soyuz and Proton

It's still early, but there are findings for the recent losses of a Proton and Soyuz rockets. There was a procedural error in the Proton's flight planning, and the 3rd stage gas-generator is the center of attention in the Soyuz. From the article: 'The Soyuz investigation has not formally issued its findings or recommended corrective actions. A launch schedule for the next manned flight to the International Space Station will not be decided until the commission completes its work.

Chinese Want To Capture an Asteroid

The Chinese want to capture an asteroid into earth's orbit and mine it. From the article: 'At first glance, nudging an asteroid closer to Earth seems like one of those "what could possible go wrong" scenarios that we generally try and avoid, and for good reason: large asteroid impacts are bad times. The Chinese, though, seem fairly optimistic that they could tweak the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid by just enough (a change in velocity of only about 1,300 feet-per-second or so) to get it to temporarily enter Earth orbit at about twice the distance as the Moon.

Apple's Chinese Suppliers Accused of Causing Significant Environmental Damage

Environmental watchdog groups in China on Wednesday released a report detailing a 5-month investigation on electronic suppliers that they believe are used by Apple. According to the report, accessory manufacturer Kaedar Electronics and printed circuit board maker Unimicron have allegedly been discharging waste water and harmful gas from their plants in the Chinese city of Kunshan. The report claims that over a 10-year period, 'many people have fallen sick, with a sharp increase in the village's cancer rates.

Since 2007, more than nine people have suffered or died from cancer in the village, which has a population of fewer than 60. Apple declined to say if the companies named were in fact its suppliers, but company spokeswoman Carolyn Wu, responding to the report, said, 'Apple is committed to driving the highest standards of social responsibility throughout our supply base.

Panda Poo Yields Key To Cheaper Biofuels

A new study unveiled at the American Chemical Society points to panda poop as a source of remarkably efficient enzyme-producing bacteria that are able to break down plant materials for cheaper and more efficient biofuel production. Inspired by the giant panda's voracious appetite for bamboo, scientists began to study the fecal matter of giant pandas at the Memphis Zoo. A year of samples indicated that the pandas have a unique ability to convert lignocellulose from plant matter into energy. In fact, gut bacteria of a giant panda can convert 95 percent of the plant's biomass into simple sugars.

EPIC Uncovers: Mobile Scanners Not 'Certified People Scanners'

The Electronic Privacy Information Center received more FOIA documents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security regarding mobile x-ray scanners (a.k.a. Z Backscatter Vans). We've discussed these devices before. Perhaps the most interesting part is slide #11 ('Disclaimer About Scanning People') on page 6 of this PDF explaining that the radiation output of these devices is too high to comply with ANSI N43.17.

In other words, they output too much radiation even by TSA's questionable standards for airport body scanners. Regardless, the slide ends with the author stating that the ANSI standard 'is not applicable to covert operations.' What might that assertion have meant to the presentation's intended audience?

Battle of the SATA 3.0 Controllers

Think that all SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s) controllers are alike? As Techgage explores, that's not the case. While most SATA 3.0 controllers do deliver the performance promised, the most popular offering on the market does not - at least where bandwidth-busting SSDs are concerned. The controller comes from Marvell, and was bundled on all motherboards prior to AMD and Intel launching their own SATA 3.0 solutions.

In some cases, Marvell's controller is half as fast as the others, making it no better than a SATA 2.0 controller. For those with motherboards using a Marvell controller, the solutions are few; build a new PC, or invest in a super-expensive add-in card.

Solar Company Folds After $0.5B In Subsidies

Solyndra, a Silicon Valley solar energy firm, subsidized to the tune of $500 million and held as a 'gleaming example of green technology,' announced bankruptcy yesterday. 1,100 employees fired.

Windows 8 Desktop 'Just Another App'?

Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, said this week that Windows 8 will let users treat the traditional desktop as 'just another app' that loads only on command. When it unveiled Windows 8's UI in June, Microsoft said it would feature a 'touch-first' interface to compete in the fast-growing tablet market. Underneath that, however, would be a traditional Windows-style desktop. 'Having both of [the] user interfaces [work] together harmoniously is an important part of Windows 8,' Sinofsky said in a blog post on Wednesday.

The Metro-style UI - the one inspired by Windows Phone 7's tile-based design - will be the first to show up when a user boots a device. At that point, users reach a crossroads. 'If you want to stay permanently immersed in that Metro world, you will never see the desktop - we won't even load it (literally the code will not be loaded) unless you explicitly choose to go there,' Sinofsky said. 'If you don't want to do ... 'PC' things, then you don't have to and you're not paying for them in memory, battery life or hardware requirements.' If using a conventional PC with keyboard and mouse, Windows 8 users will run an 'app' to load the desktop, he said. 'Essentially, you can think of the Windows desktop as just another app.

Did Apple Impersonate Police To Recover the Lost iPhone 5?

This whole lost iPhone 5 prototype story just got whole lot more interesting. According to SF Weekly, six investigators claiming to be members of the San Francisco police department descended upon one Bernal Heights, San Francisco man's home in search of a lost iPhone 5 prototype that CNET originally reported had been left in a bar. The scary part? The SFPD does not seem to be aware of such an investigation. Instead, it appears as though they may have actually been members of Apple's security team allegedly impersonating police officers.

So far this claim seems to be developing solely through media communications; in order for the SFPD to start an investigation, the man whose house was searched would need to speak with the police directly.

Mining Browsing History With Google Cookie Data

Recent research reveals details on how Google's SID cookie can be used to discover what websites a user has visited. In principle, the cookie is a low security risk because it doesn't allow acess to any data without authentication - thus it is sometimes transmitted in the clear and easy to intercept. With a little help from Google Search History and the 'Visited Pages' filter, researchers were able to list up to 80% of the pages visited by volunteer victims. Throw into the mix the 'social' filter and you can discover a lot more.

China Calls For Even Firmer Internet Control

Chinese state media has published a long article detailing why China needs to take even firmer stances on sites like Twitter and the internet as a whole, or risk backlash to the Communist Party from 'Internet opinion.' The commentary warned, 'Unless administration is vigorous, criminal forces, hostile forces, terrorist organizations and others could manipulate public sentiment by manufacturing bogus opinion on the Internet, damaging social stability and national security.

China seized upon the London riots recently to justify tighter internet censorship. The article, of course, ends with the conclusion that 'Clearly, in the future when developing and applying new Internet technologies, there must first be a thorough assessment, adopting even more prudent policies and enhancing foresight and forward thinking in administration.' While this provides China with their Emmanuel Goldstein and his Brotherhood, it should be noted that the People's Daily is often over the top.

Mr. President, There Is No (US) Engineer Shortage

Vivek Wadhwa has written an article in the Washington Post titled, 'Mr. President, there is no engineer shortage,' which addresses the perceived national shortage of engineers. Wadhwa slams China for its practice of applying the 'engineer' label to auto mechanics and technicians, yet fails to slam the U.S. for its practice of applying the 'engineer' label to sanitation workers, building janitors, boiler operators, FaceSpace coders, MSCEs and DeVry graduates.

He also says, 'Some of [the U.S.'s] best engineers are not doing engineering, and some of its best potential engineers are not even studying engineering, leaving us short-changed in solving the important problems of the day.