RSS News Feeds Slashdot.org News Feed Wikileaks To Sell Hugo Chavez' Email I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wikileaks seems to be a bit hard-up for cash, so they're trying a little experiment. They plan to auction off an archive with three years worth of Hugo Chavez' email. The winner will get a period of embargoed access to break any stories they can find in the files, while Wikileaks will later publish the archive in full. Wikileaks plans to use the profits for their legal defense fund, but they may run into trouble because most reputable news outlets have policies against paying sources."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Quebec Gov Sued For Ignoring Free Software Mathieu Lutfy writes "The CBC is reporting that "Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives. "...Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally.". The group also has a press release in English."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Changing Customers Password Without Consent risinganger writes "BBC News is reporting that a customer had his password changed without his knowledge. After some less than satisfactory service the customer in question changed his password to 'Llyods is pants'. At some point after that a member of staff changed the password to 'no it's not'. Requests to change it back to 'Llyods is pants', 'Barclays is better' or censorship were met with refusal. Personally I found the original change funny, like the customer did. After all, god forbid a sense of humour rears it's ugly head in business. What isn't acceptable is the refusal to change it per the customers requests after that."Read more of this story at Slashdot. New Map From Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "NASA has received interesting results from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, originally known as GLAST, which has allowed them to create new map of the gamma-ray sky. The secret to its ability to resolve gamma-rays is that they use layers of tungsten interleaved with silicon detectors. When a gamma-ray strikes tungsten, it produces an electron/positron pair due to the photoelectric effect, which cascades as it goes through further layers of tungsten. Meanwhile, they record which silicon detectors had electrons or positrons pass through them to determine the direction of the source and they also record the total energy of the electron/positron pairs to calculate the wavelength of the gamma-ray using Planck's Law. The data gathered in just its first few hours of operation is reportedly comparable to the data from the Energetic Gamma-Ray Experiment Telescope, which gathered data for nine years back in the 1990's and there are hopes that it could detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs)."Read more of this story at Slashdot. 45th Known Mersenne Prime Found? An anonymous reader writes "The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has apparently discovered a new world-record prime number. A GIMPS client computer reported the number on August 23rd, and verification is currently under way. The verification could take up to two weeks to complete. The last Mersenne prime discovered was over 9.8 million digits long, strongly suggesting that the new value may break the 10 million digit barrier — qualifying for the EFF's $100000 prize!"Read more of this story at Slashdot. The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms DesScorp writes "The Times reports on the problems of adding wind farms to the power grid. Because of the grid's old design, it can't handle the various spikes that wind farms sometimes have, and there's no efficient way to currently move massive amounts of that power from one section of the country to the other. Further complicating things is the fact that under current laws, power grid regulation is a state matter, and the Federal government has comparatively little authority over it right now. Critics are calling for federal authority over the grid, and massive new construction of "superhighways" to share the wind power wealth nationally. Quoting the article, 'The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Digital Storage To Survive a 25-Year Dirt Nap? 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."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Andy Hertzfeld Shares His Thoughts on 25 Years of the Mac 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.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Full Immersion Cooling Comes To Desktop PCs mr_sifter writes "After three years of research and around £100,000 of R&D costs, UK-based Armari has unveiled its XCP prototype. It's a full immersion liquid cooled PC which supports standard ATX components. Unlike conventional liquid cooled PCs, the components are all easy to swap in and out as they're swimming in liquid, rather than under waterblocks. It also looks amazing, pumping around 70KG of electrically inert cooling fluid (salvaged from an old Cray) around its military grade perspex shell."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Mozilla Labs' "Ubiquity" Helps Automate Web Interactions 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."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Corporate Gaming Is Good For Business 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."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Capturing 3D Surfaces Simply With a Flash Camera MojoKid writes with this excerpt from Hot Hardware (linking to a video demonstration): "Creating 3D maps and worlds can be extremely labor intensive and time consuming. Also, the final result might not be all that accurate or realistic. A new technique developed by scientists at The University of Manchester's School of Computer Science and Dolby Canada, however, might make capturing depth and textures for 3D surfaces as simple as shooting two pictures with a digital camera — one with flash and one without. First an image of a surface is captured without flash. The problem is that the different colors of a surface also reflect light differently, making it difficult to determine if the brightness difference is a function of depth or color. By taking a second photo with flash, however, the accurate colors of all visible portions of the surface can be captured. The two captured images essentially become a reflectance map (albedo) and a depth map (height field)."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Zero Day Threat Ben Rothke writes "Zero Day Threat: the Shocking Truth of How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity is an interesting and eye-opening look at how banks and credit card companies make ID theft and fraud rather elementary. But with all that, this book must be read in the larger context of how today's society deals with, and is often oblivious to, risk. When is comes to risk, American society tolerates tens of thousands of drunk-driving deaths, gives millions in federal tobacco subsidies, and is oblivious about near-epidemics such as heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. With all that, it is doubtful that the myriad horror stories Zero Day Threat details will persuade Congress or the other players to do anything to curtail the problem with identity theft and internet fraud." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Google Tests Custom Highlights, Comments In Search 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."Read more of this story at Slashdot. iPhone Web Claims Draw Governmental Rebuke in UK 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?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.     AzCenral.com News Feed Lanes aim to speed screening Federal officials this week quietly rolled out ''self-select'' lanes that may help passengers at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport get through security checkpoints 30 percent faster. Secret language of quarterbacks Learning how to call a play and execute it in the NFL can be twice as difficult as learning a new language for a quarterback. Cosmetics store - and workers - strip down ''Want to know why we're naked?'' Laura Fielding asked two puzzled elderly women who froze in their tracks at Scottsdale Fashion Square. Cheney expected to speak in Phoenix Recall petition on mayor due Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon could face a recall election in March if enough valid signatures are delivered Thursday to the City Clerk's Office. Candidates zero in on voters Voters who haven't returned early ballots for Tuesday's primary election are paying the penalties for procrastination: stacks of campaign literature in mailboxes and dinnertime political phone calls. Quartzsite mayor resigns over tax dispute Steve Bennett owns a local business, called Kool Kovers, and is also a construction contractor. No drain on the environment One Valley company is the latest to dive headfirst into cleaning dirty pool water rather than draining it - an effort its managers say will help owners keep the environment clean and save them money. Freeway-construction crews to get long holiday weekend Arizona Department of Transportation construction crews will be taking the Labor Day holiday weekend off. 2 women held in bait-car theft In a law-enforcement rarity, two women have been arrested by Glendale police, accused of trying to steal a bait car. Wickenburg's Zerby isn't only challenge for Harper Jack Harper, the state Senate's reliable lightning rod, has drawn opponents in his political races like, well, metal draws lightning. Border agent sues Ford A U.S. Border Patrol agent is suing the Ford Motor Co., claiming that defective design left him paralyzed from a rollover accident in 2007 on the Tohono O'odham Reservation in southern Arizona. Top candidate for Buckeye PD chief withdraws Buckeye's national hunt for a police chief is starting over, after the leading candidate had second thoughts about the job. Tattered U.S. flag at gated community angers residents A tattered American flag flying near the entrance to a south Chandler neighborhood has angered residents who drive past the remains every day. Driver in rollover that killed 9 faces new charges Vehicle crash killed nine people on Aug. 7. Sheriff's deputies raid Mesa landscaping business More than two dozen people suspected of being in the country illegally are handcuffed, put on buses. Police a-Twitter over news alerts Scottsdale police are jumping to the leading edge of digitally disseminating news about crime, road closures and other safety issues as they happen.