snydeq writes "AT&T says it won't interfere with a highly anticipated talk on intercepting cell phone calls at the Black Hat conference this week. Hacker Chris Paget last week said that he plans to demonstrate on Saturday how to set up what's essentially a fake cell tower that allows him listen in on nearby mobile calls.
Slashdot: Design
Fly Eyes Used For Solar Cells
Submitted by editor on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 01:05disco_tracy writes "Researchers took corneas from blow flies, fixed them on a glass substrate, added a polymer to protect the shape and then coated nine-eye arrays in nickel within a vacuum chamber.
Chevy Volt Not Green Enough For California
Submitted by editor on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 01:05thecarchik writes "The first two plug-in cars from major manufacturers will go head-to-head on warranties and lease prices: $350 a month for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, $349 for the 2011 Nissan Leaf. Now the choice shifts to other measures, including electric and overall range, as well as the plug-in perks that states like California offer to early adopters to encourage them to opt for electric cars. This is where it gets interesting.
ASCAP Refuses To Debate Lessig
Submitted by editor on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 01:05An anonymous reader writes "Back in June ASCAP oddly declared war on free culture, specifically calling out Creative Commons, EFF and Public Knowledge, making a number of false statements about all three. The war of words continued as the three groups responded politely, pointing out the errors in the statement from ASCAP's Paul Williams. Larry Lessig wrote a blog post where he asked Williams to debate these topics, saying that it might help if they could get away from making false statements.
Oracle's Java Company Change Breaks Eclipse
Submitted by editor on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 01:05crabel writes "In Java 1.6.0_21, the company field was changed from 'Sun Microsystems, Inc' to 'Oracle.' Apparently not the best idea, because some applications depend on that field to identify the virtual machine. All Eclipse versions since 3.3 (released 2007) until and including the recent Helios release (2010) have been reported to crash with an OutOfMemoryError due to this change.
Commission Affirms NVIDIA Violated Rambus Patents
Submitted by editor on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 01:05MojoKid writes "The International Trade Commission has announced its findings in the NVIDIA/Rambus patent infringement lawsuit, and it's not the sort of ruling Team Green would've preferred. The commission found NVIDIA to be in violation of three Rambus patents. The trade panel also granted an injunction Rambus had requested, which theoretically prevents NVIDIA and the various companies attached to the lawsuit (Asus, HP, Palit, and MSI among others) from selling products that contain the infringing IP.
UK Courts Rule Nintendo DS R4 Cards Illegal
Submitted by editor on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 01:05CheShACat writes "A UK high court ruled today that R4 cards for the Nintendo DS are illegal, finding two vendors guilty of selling 'game copiers.' The ruling by Justice Floyd is quoted as saying, 'The economic effect on Nintendo of the trade in these devices is substantial as each accused device can store and play copies of many Nintendo DS games [...] The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence.' No word in the article as to what law in particular they were found to have broken, nor of the penalty the vendors are facing, but this looks like bad news
Tennessee Town Releases Red Light Camera Stats
Submitted by editor on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 01:05SonicSpike links to what he calls "a transparent look at some statistics released by a small town's red-light camera program," writing
"Specifically, in the last fiscal quarter, 7,213 incidents were recorded, 2,673 incidents were rejected by the reviewing officer, and 662 incidents were not processed due to technical issues or lack of information. All in all 3,878 citations were issued between April I — June 30 in a town of 17,000 residents.
DefCon Ninja Badges Let Hackers Do Battle
Submitted by editor on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 01:05eecue writes "The folks at DefCon, the world's largest hacker convention [previously on Slashdot], have been making awesome badges for years. Last year along with the convention badge, a group of hackers known as the Ninjas created an electronic badge for their exclusive party. This year the Ninjas have taken the whole electronic badge thing to the next level with an interactive, wireless, encrypted ninja battle video game badge.
GNOME 3.0 Delayed Until March 2011
Submitted by editor on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 01:05Julie188 writes "GNOME 3.0 was scheduled to be released in September but during the developers conference, GUADEC 2010 in Den Haag, the organization had to face facts: the much ballyhooed GNOME Shell really wasn't ready. The Shell is supposed to bring 'a whole new user experience to the desktop.' So now, in September, what users will see is GNOME 2.32, distributed as a new stable release.
