The U.S. Federal Trade Commission plans to take a hard look at how it enforces consumer privacy standards in the coming months, with new rules for online companies possibly on the way, the agency’s chairman said Monday.
More: continued here
If you thought you just heard a disturbance in the Force–as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced–then take a deep breath and relax: it’s just a pair of Java software updates for Mac OS X.
More: continued here
harrymcc writes “Barnes & Noble’s Nook — the most significant e-reader since Amazon’s original Kindle — hits B&N’s retail stores today. I’ve published an extensive review of the device, which is also the first e-reader to run Google’s Android OS: It’s an interesting and capable gadget in many ways, but the interface — which is sluggish and somewhat quirky — isn’t polished enough to render it a Kindle killer.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
More: continued here
adeelarshad82 writes to tell us that Fusion Garage seems to be ignoring the drama surrounding the “CrunchPad” and is planning to launch their “JooJoo” tablet this Friday at midnight. Unfortunately, the device will be a long way from the imagined $200 price point, weighing in at a hefty $499. “The JooJoo comes in black and has a capacitive touch screen, enough graphic power to deliver full high-definition video, offline capabilities, and a 4GB solid-state drive, though ‘most of the storage is done in the cloud,’ Rathakrishnan said. He promised 5 hours of battery life. In a demo during the webcast, the device powered on in about 10 seconds, and showed icons for web-based services like Twitter, Hulu, CNN, and Gmail, though the JooJoo will not come pre-loaded with any apps, Rathakrishnan said. Scroll through them with your finger as you would on the iPhone. In terms of the ownership drama, Rathakrishnan said that TechCrunch editor Arrington has created an ‘incomplete and distorted story.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
More: continued here
Acer recently launched some updated laptops with Windows 7. For that matter, just about every laptop manufacturer out there has new laptops sporting Windows 7, but we’re going to start our coverage of mobile press releases with Acer since they were kind enough to send us the pertinent details. (Ed: This blog may be a bit long, but we’ll try to do them more…
More: continued here
Onion Radio News – with Doyle Redland
More: continued here
AP – Amazon.com Inc. will add two features to the Kindle e-book reader to make the gadget more accessible to blind and vision-impaired users.
More: continued here
A Palm Pre user is suing Palm and Sprint Nextel, alleging they caused him to lose most of the data from his phone, and he wants to turn the suit into a class action.
More: continued here
WINDERMERE, FL—A spokesman for the Windermere Police Department told reporters Thursday that investigators have gathered enough weird-ass evidence to officially classify Tiger Woods’ recent car accident as pretty fucking strange.
More: continued here
Panelists discuss whether there is an epidemic among young people today who get stoked over everything from free keychains to tacos.
More: continued here
An anonymous reader writes “According to Sophos, Facebook users are getting sloppier with their personal info, not better. Revisiting a 2007 survey in which a plastic frog got 87 hits out of 200 friend requests, this time a rubber duck and a cat got 87 out of 200 friend requests, plus a bonus 8 friends who decided to trust them anyway. The research also suggests that older Facebook users are sloppier than the young, being keener to build their list of friends. (The older users had more than 4x the friends each, on average, than the young.)”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
More: continued here
Today marks a monumental day in the CPU world, as AMD and Intel have settled their differences and dropped all suits against each other. The ramifications are monumental: AMD will officially go fabless…
More: continued here
Michael Lato writes “I’ve been a speaker at several Information Technology conferences and I know that I use conferences as both an opportunity to gain new skills and to network with my peers. In hopes of assisting others, I’ve started my own conference in order to boost the soft skills of computer professionals. However, we may need to cancel due to a lack of attendees. What are people looking for in a conference in the midst of this recession? Have we missed the mark in thinking topics like project management and remote team leadership will be well-received?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
More: continued here
With an assist from Microsoft, SAP is making a renewed push against Oracle in the EPM (enterprise performance management) space, and has a rip-and-replace success story to show for it.
More: continued here
Agner Fog, a Danish expert in software optimization is making a plea for an open and standarized procedure for x86 instruction set extensions. Af first sight, this may seem a discussion that does not concern most of us. After all, the poor souls that have to program the insanely complex x86 compilers will take care of the complete chaos called “the x86 ISA”,…
More: continued here
WASHINGTON—According to Beltway sources, the recent actions of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have severely, and perhaps irrevocably, damaged…
More: continued here
An anonymous reader writes “‘Some hackers out there don’t like to do all the hard work of running a successful phishing campaign. Instead, they developed a simple online service to “steal” account details from the hard-working phishers. Named AutoWhaler, the service allows anyone to scan a phishing server for log files that contain juicy information such as usernames and passwords.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
More: continued here
We tried to find out what the new AMD roadmap means for our IT readers: the professionals who actually configure and buy these servers….
More: continued here
Science Daily is reporting that researchers from Yale have discovered “very large RNA structures within previously unstudied bacteria that appear crucial to basic biological functions such as helping viruses infect cells or allowing genes to ‘jump’ to different parts of the chromosome.” Ronald Breaker, professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale, stated that this would be equivalent to protein scientists finding a whole new class of enzymes. “The Breaker laboratory has used the explosion of DNA sequence information and new computer programs to discover six of the top twelve largest bacterial RNAs just in the last several years. One of the newly discovered RNAs, called GOLLD, is the third largest and most complex RNA discovered to date, and appears to be used by viruses that infect bacteria. Another large RNA revealed in the study, called HEARO, has a genetic structure that suggests it is part of a type of ‘jumping gene’ that can move to new locations in the bacterial chromosome.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
More: continued here
The public broadcasting mainstay Sesame Street celebrated its 40th anniversary last month. Here are some highlights from…
More: continued here
WASHINGTON—”This is such an exciting time to be an employer in America,” said Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, adding that every single day 6,500 more citizens join America’s growing possible workforce. “There’s such a massive and diverse pool of job-ready Americans to choose from. And each month the number only gets higher.”
More: continued here
