Scrabulous, the controversial third-party Facebook app, has once again been removed from the social networking site.

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Washington Post

Melting polar ice hits 'tipping point,' nears record loss USA Today -2 hours ago Calling it a "tipping point" for global warming, scientists said today that Arctic Ocean ice has melted this summer to the second-lowest level in three decades – and the low point was reached just last September. Arctic sea ice drops to 2nd lowest level on recordThe Associated Press Scientists Report Further Shrinking of Arctic IceWashington Post TheDenverChannel.com - Mongabay.com - Reuters - Scientific American all 479 news articles

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AP – When a computer system that distributes flight plans nationwide came rolling to a halt this week because of a software glitch, so did airplanes on tarmacs from Orlando to Chicago. The ensuing delays drove home just how easily an apparently isolated problem can trigger network-wide disarray in the country’s aging air traffic control system.

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Reuters – Federal officials on Wednesday arrested a man on suspicion of violating copyright laws for placing songs on the Internet from an unreleased album by rock band Guns N’ Roses.

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chrb writes “BBC News is reporting that laptops taken to the International Space Station by NASA astronauts are infected with the Gammima.AG worm. The laptops have no net connection; officials suspect the worm may have been transferred via a USB flash drive owned by an astronaut. NASA have said this isn’t the first time computer viruses had travelled into space.”

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CyberPower is a well-known PC supplier. Today we review one of their monster quad-core machines with dual GTX 280s. How does it perform? In a word, great….

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Malware has managed to get off the planet and onto a laptop on the International Space Station, NASA confirmed today. And it’s not the first time that a worm or virus has stowed away on a trip into orbit.

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Barence writes “Meet the Space Cube — the world’s smallest fully functional PC. Primarily designed for use in space, it somehow manages to cram a working PC with USB ports, card readers, audio outputs and proprietary interfaces into a tiny cube chassis measuring just two inches square. It runs a basic Linux front-end, which the blogger takes a look at, and there are some great photos of the device being loomed over by everyday objects like coffee mugs and cellphones. It has connections for controlling various electronics used by ESA, NASA and JAXA, but it will also apparently be for sale to the public soon, for use by amateur engineers and robotics clubs.”

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The Economist is running a story about how gaming is on the rise in corporate environments, and how games are also becoming a popular tool for advertising. From internally developed games to commercial offerings to simply creating a framework in which employees can interact, game-based competitions and community building are leading to increased productivity, even for Fortune 500 companies. Quoting: “Take Microsoft’s own experience. Before it releases a new version of its Windows operating system, it asks staff to help debug the software by installing and running the system. In the past, project managers had to spend a great deal of time and effort persuading busy Microsoftees to help them with this boring task. So for Windows Vista, the system’s latest incarnation, Microsoft created a game that awarded points for bug-testing and prizes such as wristbands for achieving certain goals. Participation quadrupled.”

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12.3 megapixels, ISO 6400, 11-point AF, and a 920,000 dot 3″ LCD are featured on the upcoming D90….

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E Canada Now

Psystar hits back in Apple clone case VNUNet.com -48 minutes ago Apple's case against a Macintosh clone vendor took a new twist this week when defendant Psystar accused the company of violating anti-trust laws. Psystar Claims Apple Violates Antitrust LawsCRN Psystar finally answers to Apple's suit by suing right backArs Technica InformationWeek - TG Daily - PC World - MacNewsWorld all 74 news articles

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Siliconrepublic.com

Microsoft Previews Internet Explorer 8 Washington Post -2 hours ago Earlier today, Microsoft shipped the Beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 8 — the first new version since 2006's Internet Explorer 7, which itself marked the first major update to IE since Internet Explorer 6 shipped back in 2001. Microsoft Readies New Browser As It Responds to Firefox's GainsWall Street Journal Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 lets you browse in privateUSA Today VNUNet.com - Financial Times - TG Daily - PC Magazine all 397 news articles

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A company that makes touch sensors for interacting with computer applications and games has agreed to pay Microsoft more than $20 million to settle a patent suit.

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InfoWorld – An open-source technology has been launched to help developers using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 find duplicated code in their software projects.

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Ian Lamont writes “Google is testing functionality that lets users tinker with query results by re-ranking them and commenting on them. The reason for the commenting feature: ‘We’re just curious to see how it will be used,’ according to a Google engineer quoted in the article. The company has posted screenshots of some of the experiments, which also involve highlighting certain results as well as stems and synonyms within results. Google declined to answer any questions about the experiments, and it’s not known whether Google would factor the rearranging of results by users into the overall computation for ranking results for those specific queries. It’s also not clear whether search result comments would be made available to anyone to read.”

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Onion Radio News – with Doyle Redland

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BROWNSVILLE, IN—Peter Geyer passed on legend Frank Caldwell, saying his reputation was more based on mystique when his plane crashed after only one year on the board.

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U.S. companies are pulling back hard on IT spending as the economic downturn continues, a new study by ChangeWave Research has found.

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Woz and Ratner are speaking today, and we should get some good R&D info later in the keynote. This should last from 11am EST to 12:45pm EST, so not quite as long as yesterday, but hopefully even cooler….

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Telegraph.co.uk

Virus Found On Computer In Space Station InformationWeek -1 hour ago Citing security policies, NASA would not disclose details about how the virus got on a laptop on the International Space Station. By Thomas Claburn NASA confirmed on Wednesday that a computer virus was identified on a laptop computer aboard the … Ground Control To Major Tom: Check Your Laptop For WormsCRN Space — the final frontier for computer virusesCNET News Computerworld - Space.com - ABC News - Monsters and Critics.com all 90 news articles

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The Money Times

AMC decides to allow fans' 'Mad Men' Twittering CNET News -7 hours ago After initially demanding that Twitter shut down the accounts of users who were posting unauthorized updates based on the 'Mad Men' characters, AMC was persuaded to let the accounts be re-activated. @DarthVader? 11 Fake Twitterers Ripe for a TakedownWired News Fans atwitter over shutdown of "Mad Men" feedReuters WebProNews - United Press International - Silicon Alley Insider - ZDNet all 25 news articles

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Today’s IDF keynotes, covered in real time, dealing with everything from mobility and digital home to software….

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NEW YORK—Mere seconds after a hotly contested rebound during a game between the vice president’s biggest on-court rivals, a mishandled basketball rolled across the blacktop of “the Cage” before being brought to a stop by the wing-tipped foot of Dick Cheney.

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It’s finally here, a GPU accelerated H.264 transcoder that promises to speed up one of the most time intensive things you can do on your desktop. Unfortunately the first incarnation of Elemental’s Badaboom media converter is hardly a replacement for established H.264 codecs/frontends, despite delivering solid performance….

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Four moisturizers have been found to cause skin cancer in mice. What do you think?

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Wills writes “Apple has been running an iPhone ad saying ‘all parts of the internet are on the iPhone’, but it had to be withdrawn after Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it gave ‘a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone’ because the iPhone cannot access Flash or Java – features that are essential to some websites. This raises an interesting issue of where do you draw the line between essential and non-essential features of websites. What should the web look like? Should government authorities be the ones making that decision?”

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dBTechno

Orange fesses up to limiting iPhone 3G data speeds IntoMobile -2 hours ago There’s nothing worse than paying for high-speed 3G wireless data and then getting shafted with artificially-limited data speeds. Report: Orange backs off iPhone 3G throttlingCNET News Orange owns up to download speed limit for all 3G devicesArs Technica BetaNews - Macworld - InformationWeek - Motley Fool all 85 news articles

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NASA

Dark matter detected in cosmic crash MSNBC -47 minutes ago This clash of galaxy clusters provides further evidence for dark matter. Ordinary matter, mostly in the form of hot gas, glows brightly in X-rays (shown in pink) and has been slowed down by the collision. Colliding galaxies shed light on dark matterReuters Powerful Cosmic Collision Creates Divorce of MatterSpace.com Science News - HubbleSite - New Scientist (subscription) - Newswise (press release) all 30 news articles

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Reuters – Sony’s (6758.T) joint venture with cell phone maker Ericsson (ERICb.ST) must do better, Sony’s chief executive was quoted as saying by a German newspaper on Wednesday.

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Martin writes “Mozilla Labs have released a prototype version of the Firefox add-on Ubiquity. It is basically Launchy (the application launcher) for Firefox with the difference that Ubiquity makes use of web APIs and the Firefox browser. The official website contains examples, a command list, information about creating your own commands and of course the Ubiquity extension that is compatible with Firefox 3.x. Ubiquity can pull and send data to various services like Twitter, display, find and embed Google Maps, perform searches, write emails, add entries to the calendar, digg stories and more.”

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Onion Radio News – with Doyle Redland

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We were unimpressed with the keynote but it’s not because of the speaker. NVIDIA’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang sat down with us and answered some tough questions about Intel, VIA and the future of NVIDIA….

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blackbearnh writes “It may make you feel very, very old, but the Macintosh will be turning 25 in January. As we approach this momentous anniversary, O’Reilly News had a talk with Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Macintosh designers, about the long and storied history of the Mac. Hertzfeld, who tells the story of the Mac in his book A Revolution in the Valley, shares his thoughts about how the Mac has aged over time, how life might have been different if Steve Jobs had stayed on at Apple, and the differences between working for Apple, and for Google (his current employer.)” Read on below for a bit of what Hertzfeld had to say.

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CNET – The first ever reported computer virus has infected at least two laptops onboard the International Space Station more than 200 miles above Earth.

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Ars Technica

Immersion Paying Microsoft $21 Million 1UP.com -2 hours ago By Kyle Stallock, 08/27/2008 My how the tables have turned. Instead of receiving money from a lawsuit, Immersion now has to pay some out. Microsoft Emerges $20.75 Million Richer From Immersion LawsuitCRN Immersion to Pay Microsoft $20 Million to Settle Patent SuitPC World InformationWeek - PC Magazine - Ars Technica - DailyTech all 108 news articles

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Pat Gelsinger and Dadi Perlmutter are on stage and are going to be talking about everything from Nehalem to Larrabee and Atom….

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Dell unveiled Wednesday two new laptops and two desktops in its Vostro range designed to meet the needs of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), governments, and educational institutions in emerging markets in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe.

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TechShout!

AT&T expands iPhone international data plans CNET News -10 hours ago AT&T announced Tuesday it’s expanding its iPhone international data plans, in a move designed to cut consumers’ reliance on pay-per-use data services. iPhone gets two AT&T data plans for international travelersComputerworld AT&T offering cheaper international iPhone data plansArs Technica New York Times - InformationWeek - Macworld - Register all 28 news articles

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AlHunt writes “I’ve been tasked with finding a way to bury digitally stored photographs in a small underground time capsule to be opened in 25 years. It looks like we’ll be using a steel vessel, welded closed. I’ve thought of CDs, DVDs, a hard drive, or a thumb drive — but they all have drawbacks, not the least of which is outdated technology 25 years from now. Maybe I’ll put a CD and a CD-ROM drive in the capsule and hope that the IDE interface is still around in 25 years? Ideas and feedback will be appreciated.”

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Economic trouble in many regions of the world is slowing down cell phone sales, presenting challenges to some phone vendors and opportunity for others, say Gartner researchers.

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