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Barence writes "This week's IFA show has seen a flurry of Android-based alternatives to the iPad emerge from leading manufacturers. The Samsung Galaxy Tab made a strong first impression on PC Pro's reviewer. The 7-inch tablet's TFT screen 'beams forth with rich, saturated colours and wide, wide viewing angles,' the device is capable of Full HD playback and the TouchWiz UI is 'clearly intended to draw customers away from the iFamily.' Elsewhere, ViewSonic has launched a pair of 7-inch and 10-inch tablets, the larger of which dual boots into either Android or Windows 7. 'Our first moments with Windows 7 were surprisingly painless, too: we expected the Atom processor and 1GB of memory to be horrendously sluggish, but it wasn't the case,' PC Pro reports. Finally, Toshiba's 10.1in Folio 100 marries Android 2.2 with Nvidia's Tegra 2 platform to deliver 'mighty graphics crunching power.' The build quality left a little to desire, though. 'The 14mm thick chassis feels lightweight, and even relatively gentle twisting motions left the Folio's plastic body creaking under the stress.'"

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mspohr writes with a sad excerpt from Fast Company: "Despite a seemingly stout business plan, and all the financial, social, and educational benefits it would bring, the FCC's just turned down M2Z's application for a coast-to-coast free wireless broadband system. ... The FCC is known to have heard complaints about M2Z's plan from existing wireless carriers. Though M2Z's network would've operated at under 1 Mbps peak speeds — meaning it was very slow by today's standards, and probably snail-like by tomorrow's — its free pricing may well have tempted many folks away from spending cash with an established ISP. Those carriers are now reported to be pleased with the FCC's decision, though they argue it's in line with the greater National Broadband Plan. Whenever that actually gets off the ground."

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pickens writes "The LA Times reports that 84-year-old Cuban ex-President Fidel Castro consumes 200 to 300 news items a day on the World Wide Web. In a recent interview he called Web communication 'the most powerful weapon that has existed' and extolled its power to break a stranglehold on the media by 'the empire' and 'ambitious private groups that have abused it' adding that the Internet 'has put an end to secrets.... We are seeing a high level of investigative journalism, as the New York Times calls it, that is within reach of the whole world.' Well, not the whole world. Cuba has the lowest level of Internet penetration in the Western Hemisphere (lower than Haiti), plus severe government restrictions and censorship affecting those who do have access. In addition Cuban law bans using the Internet to spread information that is against what the government considers to be the social interest, norms of good behavior, the integrity of the people or national security."

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angry tapir writes "A clever spammer found a glitch in Facebook's photo upload system and used it to post thousands of unwanted Wall messages last week. Facebook confirmed the bug Friday, after notifying affected users of the issue. Most of the messages promised 'Free iPhones,' a common spam message on Facebook these days. Facebook says that the spammer hit thousands of profiles before the company removed the spammy photos and notified affected users. No accounts were compromised as a result of the bug."

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paulelaguna writes "The dream of owning a household robot is starting to become reality, particularly for people in Japan. There are robots to help you do the dishes, move furniture, and even robotic wheelchairs to help you get around. Really, the only question that remains for us is when do we move?"

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The Iso writes "Las Vegas based company Righthaven found two articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal about Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle reprinted on her web site without permission, so it did what it always does: bought the rights to the articles from the Review-Journal and sued the alleged infringer, seeking unspecified damages."

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De un año a la fecha las compañías de telefonía celular argentinas (eufemismo por compañías que "operan" en Argentina ya que son todas extranjeras), nos bombardean con publicidad y "promociones" induciéndonos a que adoptemos sus artificios técnicos para conectarnos a Internet "a velocidades increíbles con estabilidad asegurada".

¿El costo? Accesible y acorde al ancho de banda prometido: unos 45 Euros al cambio actual peso Arg./Euro.

¿La cobertura y/o alcance de señal? Buena en algunas, mala en otras y pésima en una particularmente y cuyo nombre cambió tantas veces que ya ni es claro a quien pertenece...

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Stoobalou writes "The British music industry has called for a truce with the technology firms with whom it has till now fought a bitter battle over rights, royalties and file sharing. Feargal Sharkey, CEO of lobby group UK Music, told a conference in London this week that it was time for the music and technology industries to set aside their differences and strive instead toward a common goal: nothing less than the total global domination of British music."

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eldavojohn writes "MSNBC spoke with the senior producer of a new stereoscopic 3D game called Killzone 3 and highlighted problems they are trying to solve with being one of the first FPS 3D games for the PS3. The team ran into serious design problems, like where to put the crosshairs for the players (do they constantly hover in front of your vision?) and what to do with any of the heads-up display components. Aside from the obvious marketing thrown in at the end of the article (in a very familiar way), there is an interesting point raised concerning normalized conventions in all video games and how one ports that to the new stereoscopic 3D model — the same way directors continue to grapple with getting 3D right. Will 3D games be just as gimmicky as most 3D movies? If they are, at least Guerrilla Games is at least making it possible for the player to easily and quickly switch in and out of stereoscopic 3D while playing."

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Hugh Pickens writes "Members of 4chan aren't known for doing things that are cute and heart-warming and when they decide to go after someone, it's typically to subject them to ridicule. But not this time. Someone at 4chan decided that the Internet should get together and wish 90-year-old WWII veteran William J. Lashua a happy birthday, and soon Lashua's local branch of the American Legion was deluged by birthday calls from people as far away as Sweden. The account someone set up for Mr. Lashua's birthday on Facebook had 3,956 'likes' and over 500 comments, most of which wished him a happy birthday and thanked him for his military service. It's not clear how 4chan originally came across a photo of Lashua, but a member of the site posted a snapshot of a flyer that was on the bulletin board at a store in Ashburnham, Massachusetts asking for guests to attend the nonagenarian's birthday on at the American Legion hall and the post took off. In contrast to their usual behavior, 4chan members 'were giving him nice phone calls and sending him nice notes' and discouraging those who wanted to do something stupid or mean. 'They were all being.. well, shucks, awful nice.'"

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An anonymous reader writes "One of the big, unsolved problems in explaining how life arose on Earth is a chicken-and-egg paradox: How could the basic biochemicals - such as amino acids and nucleotides - have arisen before the biological catalysts (proteins or ribozymes) existed to carry out their formation? In a paper appearing in the current issue of The Biological Bulletin, scientists propose that a third type of catalyst could have jumpstarted metabolism and life itself, deep in hydrothermal ocean vents."

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Kilrah_il writes "The fine-structure constant, a coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, has been measured lately by scientists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and has been found to change slightly in light sent from quasars in galaxies as far back as 12 billion years ago. Although the results look promising, caution is advised: 'This would be sensational if it were real, but I'm still not completely convinced that it's not simply systematic errors' in the data, comments cosmologist Max Tegmark of MIT. Craig Hogan of the University of Chicago and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., acknowledges that 'it's a competent team and a thorough analysis.' But because the work has such profound implications for physics and requires such a high level of precision measurements, 'it needs more proof before we'll believe it.'"

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lewko writes "Our company is about to build a central monitoring facility and I'm looking for ideas/suggestions about the best hardware and the best way to make it comfortable for those manning a screen. It will be manned 24x7 and operators will be monitoring a variety of systems including security, network, fire, video and more. These will be observed via local multi-monitor workstations and a common videowall. This is going to be a massively expensive exercise and we only get one chance to get it right. The facility is in a secure windowless bunker and staff will generally be in there for many hours at a time. So we have to implement design elements which make it a 'happy' place. At the same time, it has to be ergonomically sound. Lastly, we will be showing it to our clients, so without undoing the above objectives, it would be nice if it was 'cool' (yet functional). Whilst Television doesn't transfer to real life always, think 'CTU' from 24."

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lewko writes "Our company is about to build a central monitoring facility and I'm looking for ideas/suggestions about the best hardware and the best way to make it comfortable for those manning a screen. It will be manned 24x7 and operators will be monitoring a variety of systems including security, network, fire, video and more. These will be observed via local multi-monitor workstations and a common videowall. This is going to be a massively expensive exercise and we only get one chance to get it right. The facility is in a secure windowless bunker and staff will generally be in there for many hours at a time. So we have to implement design elements which make it a 'happy' place. At the same time, it has to be ergonomically sound. Lastly, we will be showing it to our clients, so without undoing the above objectives, it would be nice if it was 'cool' (yet functional). Whilst Television doesn't transfer to real life always, think 'CTU' from 24."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

pickens writes "The LA Times reports that 84-year-old Cuban ex-President Fidel Castro consumes 200 to 300 news items a day on the World Wide Web. In a recent interview he called Web communication 'the most powerful weapon that has existed' and extolled its power to break a stranglehold on the media by 'the empire' and 'ambitious private groups that have abused it' adding that the Internet 'has put an end to secrets.... We are seeing a high level of investigative journalism, as the New York Times calls it, that is within reach of the whole world.' Well, not the whole world. Cuba has the lowest level of Internet penetration in the Western Hemisphere (lower than Haiti), plus severe government restrictions and censorship affecting those who do have access. In addition Cuban law bans using the Internet to spread information that is against what the government considers to be the social interest, norms of good behavior, the integrity of the people or national security."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If Nevada gubernatorial candidate Eugene "Gino" DiSimone gets his way, $25 will buy you the right to drive up to 90mph for a day. DiSimone estimates his "free limit plan" will raise $1 billion a year for Nevada. From the article: "First, vehicles would have to pass a safety inspection. Then vehicle information would be loaded into a database, and motorists would purchase a transponder. After setting up an account, anyone in a hurry could dial in, and for $25 charged to a credit card, be free to speed for 24 hours."

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destinyland writes "In the Central African Republic, broadband internet service costs 3891% of the average monthly income. 'Put another way, a month's broadband service costs more than three years' average wages in the country,' notes one technology blog, 'compared with less than two hours' earnings in Macau.' A United Nations' technology group released the figures in a new report in advance of a September 19 summit on the digital divide in developing countries. ('We are trying to avoid a broadband divide,' said Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the secretary general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union.) Their agency noted that the rate for broadband penetration is below 1% in many poor countries, with monthly costs higher than the average monthly income. 'By contrast,' notes the BBC, 'in the world's most developed economies, around 30% of people have access to broadband at a cost of less than 1% of their income.' And the report also estimates that there are 5 billion cellphones in the world — though some people may own more than one."

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Peter Cus writes "Cluny Lace, an English lacemaking manufacturer, has reverted to 19th-Century Leavers machines in order to stay competitive. These 19th-Century machines use Jacquard punch cards. Ian Elm, thought to be the last of the card punchers, says young people don't want factory work: 'Younger people coming into a trade want a guarantee of a career out of it, and this is so uncertain.'"

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cybernanga writes "A group of researchers in South Africa has developed a filter that can purify water straight from the bottle. The filter sits inside a tube fitted on top of a bottle and purifies water as it is poured on a cup. From the article: 'The designer behind the filter, Dr Eugene Cloete, from the Stellenbosch University in South Africa, says the filter is only as big as an ordinary tea bag. He says the product is cost-effective and easy to use. "We are coming in here at the fraction of the cost of anything else that is currently on the market," says Dr Cloete on BBC World Service.'"

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theodp writes "Network analysis uses data about your social network interactions to make assumptions and predictions about your behavior. The Economist notes the upside for companies looking to sell products. But don't forget about the downside, warns Adrian Chen, of living in a world where network analysis is used by financial firms to determine risky borrowers by looking at social ties, or by Internet businesses to determine which customers are more equal than others (nice to see Microsoft's back on the forefront of some tech!). So, did Mom envision Social Network Analytics when she gave you that you-are-the-company-you-keep lecture?"

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