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• Apple's Jobs has hormone imbalance, will stay CEO
  NEW YORK - Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs, a survivor of pancreatic cancer whose gaunt appearance in the past year has alarmed the Mac and iPod lovers who look to him as an oracle, said Monday he has an easily treated hormone imbalance and will remain in charge of the company.
• Even in recession, CES to have stuff worth seeing
  The recession figures to tone down the flashiness of this week's International Consumer Electronics Show, but the lineup of innovative products likely will measure up to those of past years.
• Recession to steal some glitz from gadget show
  The International Consumer Electronics Show, the largest trade show in the U.S., opens this week in Las Vegas with a full slate of giant TVs and inventive gadgets, despite the pall of a recession hanging over the industry.
• MySpace is research place for busybody 'Dr. Meg'
  CHICAGO - Many teenagers cleaned up their MySpace profiles, deleting mentions of sex and booze and boosting privacy settings, if they got a single cautionary e-mail from a busybody named "Dr. Meg."
• LG high-def TVs to stream Netflix videos directly
  NEW YORK - Netflix Inc. has come up with another way to get movies to people without sending DVDs in the mail.
• Feds start wait list for DTV converter box coupons
  WASHINGTON - Consumers who apply for federal coupons to pay for converter boxes ahead of next month's transition to digital television broadcasts are being placed on a waiting list and may not receive their vouchers before the switchover, the Commerce Department said Monday.
• China targets Google in crackdown on pornography
  BEIJING - China launched a major crackdown on Internet pornography Monday targeting popular online portals and major search engines such as Google.
• Madoff victims selling memorabilia on eBay
  NEW YORK - Did you get fleeced by Bernard Madoff? Or did you buy that Madoff Securities fleece jacket on eBay?
• Wikipedia meets $6 million fundraising goal
  SAN FRANCISCO - The nonprofit foundation that runs Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia of user-contributed articles, said Friday it has met its $6 million fundraising goal for fiscal 2008.
• Facebook nudity policy draws nursing moms' ire
  Web-savvy moms who breast-feed are irate that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace restrict photos of nursing babies. The disputes reveal how the sites' community policing techniques sometimes struggle to keep up with the booming number and diversity of their members.

Slashdot

• Employees the Next (Continuing) Big Security Risk?
  surely_you_cant_be_serious writes "A nationwide survey finds that most companies consider their systems vulnerable to attack. Historically, crime rates increase during recessions — and some believe that cybercrime may well follow suit, especially given massive layoffs and the dim prospects many laid-off employees face in finding a new job. 'One thing companies can start doing is monitoring their networks on an ongoing basis so that they understand the normal pattern of data flow and usage, Brill said. In many cases, companies may not have the internal capability to do this, but outsourcing options are available. Kroll Ontrack, for instance, will be rolling out a 24/7 monitoring service for its global clients manned from a US location by professionals in early 2009.'"

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• A Hacker's Audacious Plan To Rule the Underground
  An anonymous reader writes "Wired has the inside story of Max Butler, a former white hat hacker who joined the underground following a jail stint for hacking the Pentagon. His most ambitious hack was a hostile takeover of the major underground carding boards where stolen credit card and identity data are bought and sold. The attack made his own site, CardersMarket, the largest crime forum in the world, with 6,000 users. But it also made the feds determined to catch him, since one of the sites he hacked, DarkMarket.ws, was secretly a sting operation run by the FBI."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Distributed "Nuclear Batteries" the New Infrastructure Answer?
  thepacketmaster writes "The Star reports about a new power generation model using smaller distributed power generators located closer to the consumer. This saves money on power generation lines and creates an infrastructure that can be more easily expanded with smaller incremental steps, compared to bigger centralized power generation projects. The generators in line for this are green sources, but Hyperion Power Generation, NuScale, Adams Atomic Engines (and some other companies) are offering small nuclear reactors to plug into this type of infrastructure. The generator from Hyperion is about the size of a garden shed, and uses older technology that is not capable of creating nuclear warheads, and supposedly self-regulating so it won't go critical. They envision burying reactors near the consumers for 5-10 years, digging them back up and recycling them. Since they are so low maintenance and self-contained, they are calling them nuclear batteries."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• ESA Embraces Open Source With New SAR Toolbox
  phyr writes "The European Space Agency (ESA) has released its Next ESA SAR Toolbox (NEST) freely as GPL for Linux and Windows. It provides an integrated viewer for reading, calibrating, post-processing and analysis of ESA (ERS 1&2, ENVISAT) and 3rd party (Radarsat2, TerraSarX, Alos Palsar, JERS) SAR level 1 data and higher. ESA has chosen to distribute the software as fully open source to allow the remote sensing community to easily develop new readers/writers and post-processors for SAR data with their NEST Java API. The software provides both a command line interface and GUI for all features including data conversion, graph processing, coregistration, multilooking, filtering, and band arithmetic."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Ubuntu Kung Fu
  Lorin Ricker writes "Back in the dark ages of windows-based GUIs, corresponding to my own wandering VMS evangelical days, I became enamored of a series of books jauntily entitled Xxx Annoyances (from O'Reilly & Assocs.), where "Xxx" could be anything from "Windows 95", "Word", "Excel" or nearly piece of software which Microsoft produced. These were, if not the first, certainly among the most successful of the "tips & tricks" books that have become popular and useful to scads of hobbyists, ordinary users, hackers and, yes, even professionals in various IT pursuits. I was attracted, even a bit addicted, to these if only because they offered to try to make some useful sense out of the bewildering design choices, deficiencies and bugs that I'd find rampant in Windows and its application repertory. Then I found Keir Thomas, who has been writing about Linux for more than a decade. His new "tips" book entitled, Ubuntu Kung Fu — Tips & Tools for Exploring Using, and Tuning Linux, and published by Pragmatic Bookshelf, is wonderful. Having only recently wandered into the light of Linux, open source software, and Ubuntu in particular, this book comes as a welcome infusion to my addiction." Read below for the rest of Lorin's review.

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• New Method To Revolutionize DNA Sequencing
  Anonymous Coward writes "A new method of DNA sequencing published this week in science identifies incorporation of single bases by fluorescence. This has been shown to increase read lengths from 20 bases (454 sequencing) to >4000 bases, with a 99.3% accuracy. Single molecule reading can reduce costs and increase the rate at which reads can be performed. 'So far, the team has built a chip housing 3000 ZMWs [waveguides], which the company hopes will hit the market in 2010. By 2013, it aims to squeeze a million ZMWs [waveguides] onto a single chip and observe DNA being assembled in each simultaneously. Company founder Stephen Turner estimates that such a chip would be able to sequence an entire human genome in under half an hour to 99.999 per cent accuracy for under $1000.'"

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• LG High-Def TVs To Stream Netflix Videos
  DJAdapt writes to tell us that LG has launched a new line of high definition TVs that will be capable of streaming Netflix videos with no additional hardware. This is just another in a long line of expansions from the once DVD rental service, which has expanded to the Roku set top box, Xbox 360, PC, Mac, and Linux platforms recently. "Piping movies directly to TV sets is the natural evolution of the video streaming service, said Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix. "The TV symbolizes the ultimate destination," he said. That idea -- shared by Sony Corp., which already streams feature films and TV shows directly to its Bravia televisions -- is still in its early stages. Netflix's streaming service taps a library of 12,000 titles, while the company's DVD menu numbers more than 100,000 titles. Hastings expects that gap will "definitely narrow" over time, but he noted that DVDs maintain an advantage over streaming, which is that "they are very profitable" for film studios."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Do Twitter Phishing Scams Herald the End of Microblogs?
  An anonymous reader writes "Twitter's been hit by a big phishing scam. Culture Crash blogger Dan Tynan says this is the end Twitter's innocence. Will tweets become like email, with two out of every three just worthless spam?"

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Microsoft Rumored To Lay Off Thousands Worldwide
  nandemoari writes "It seems not even Microsoft is impervious to the effects of this increasingly painful recession. According to reports, the Redmond-based company is preparing to lay off about 17 per cent of its entire workforce in the coming months. Despite its portfolio diversity — including operating systems, antivirus software, and video game consoles — Microsoft is clearly feeling the pressure applied by a tightening global economy. In fact, there seems to be a sense of emergency to the massive cuts (about 15,000 workers out of 90,000), which rumors suggest should be made official by January 15."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Steve Jobs Issues Update On His Health
  i4u writes "Rumors about Steve Jobs' health have been flying high again after Apple announced that he will not be holding the keynote at the Macworld 2009. Today Steve Jobs issued a letter with a rather personal update on why he was losing weight in 2008. The reason for losing weight in 2008 is a hormone imbalance that has been reducing proteins. The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward according to Jobs. Steve and his doctors predict that he will have normal weight again by Spring. So stop the rumors and enjoy Macworld 2009."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Review of 'MacHeads' Documentary
  An anonymous reader writes "Just prior to its premiere at MacWorld later this week, CNet has a review of MacHeads, the new documentary film covering the obsessive world of Apple fanboyism. MacHeads features commentary from original Apple employees, the self-confessed Apple-obsessed and girls who claim they'll never sleep with Windows users. Summed up by CNet: 'MacHeads is a superb film that will give Apple haters a few cheap laughs, and Apple fans a few cheap thrills. But it'll entertain both equally, while educating everybody else.'"

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• The Perils of Simplifying Risk To a Single Number
  A few weeks back we discussed the perspective that the economic meltdown could be viewed as a global computer crash. In the NYTimes magazine, Joe Nocera writes in much more depth about one aspect of the over-reliance on computer models in the ongoing unpleasantness: the use of a single number to assess risk. Reader theodp writes: "Relying on Value at Risk (VaR) and other mathematical models to manage risk was a no-brainer for the Wall Street crowd, at least until it became obvious that the risks taken by the largest banks and investment firms were so excessive and foolhardy that they threatened to bring down the financial system itself. Nocera explores the age-old debate between those who assert that the best decisions are based on quantification and numbers, and those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. Reliance on models created a 'false sense of security among senior managers and watchdogs,' argues Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who likens VaR to 'an air bag that works all the time, except when you have a car accident.'"

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Software Development Predictions For 2009
  snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister lays out his development predictions for 2009. These include further struggles from Microsoft in retooling its image, a more open source mindset for Java, twilight for Sun, the Web as platform of choice, and a dearth of innovation due to dwindling economic prospects. 'When customers aren't buying, tool vendors don't innovate — so don't expect many groundbreaking new technologies to debut this year,' McAllister writes, adding that smart companies will realize that 'process automation is one of the best ways to reduce costs in any business,' making 2009 the ideal time to 'revisit old software schemes that got shelved back when staffing budgets were flush.'"

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Player Piano Roll Production Ceases
  boustrophedon writes "The Buffalo News reports that QRS Music Technologies halted production of player piano rolls 108 years after the company was founded in Chicago. QRS continues to make digitized and computerized player-piano technology that runs on CDs. 'We're still doing what we always did, which is to provide software for pianos that play themselves. It's just the technology that has changed. But I would be lying to say [the halting of production] doesn't sadden me,' said Bob Berkman, the company's music director. Piano rolls can last for decades, but not forever. Volunteers at the International Association of Mechanical Music Preservationists build piano-roll scanners to scan rolls optically and convert them to MIDI files. The IAMMP archive and others contain thousands of scanned rolls."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• How Web Advertising May Go
  Anti-Globalism sends us to Ars Technica for Jon Stokes's musing on the falling value of Web advertising. Stokes put forward the outlying possibility — not a prediction — that ad rates could fall by 40% before turning up again, if they ever do. "A web page, in contrast, is typically festooned with hyperlinked visual objects that fall all over themselves in competing to take you elsewhere immediately once you're done consuming whatever it is that you came to that page for. So the page itself is just one very small slice of an unbounded media experience in which a nearly infinite number of media objects are scrambling for a vanishingly small sliver of your attention. ... We've had a few hundred years to learn to monetize print, over 75 years to monetize TV, and, most importantly, millennia to build business models based on scarcity. In contrast, our collective effort to monetize post-scarcity digital media have only just begun."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  

The Social

• Update: Twitter blames celebrity hack on 'individual'
  
  
  
  

  CNN anchor Rick Sanchez wasn't really high on crack this morning, and the reason his Twitter feed said so wasn't the phishing scam that's been going around--it was a lone hacker, the microblogging service said later on Monday.

  "The issue with these 33 accounts is different from ...

  
  
• Oops! Twitter hack snares CNN anchor
  
  (Credit: Twitter, screengrab by Ian Schafer (ianschafer.com))
  
  

  Clarification: Twitter has clarified that this incident was the work of a hacker and separate from the phishing scheme.

  CNN anchor Rick Sanchez is one of the most popular users on microblogging service Twitter, with nearly ...

  
  
• Facebook silences Project Playlist widgets
  
  

  Social network Facebook has disabled widgets from music-sharing site Project Playlist at the behest of the music industry, several days after rival site MySpace did the same. The reason? The user-uploaded music on Project Playlist that doesn't have industry sanction.

  "The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) initially contacted ...

• Good news for Project Playlist: Sony BMG strikes deal
  

  Project Playlist has struck a deal with Sony BMG to bring the label's catalog to its streaming-music service. It's the first major-label deal for Project Playlist, which recently brought former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta on as CEO but has been dealing with legal problems that have seen ...

• The mixtape wars keep on: MySpace bans Project Playlist
  
  

  MySpace has officially blocked access to embedded widgets from Project Playlist, one of the myriad start-ups that lets members create music playlists and share them with friends.

  This could come across negatively because MySpace runs MySpace Music, a service that competes with Project Playlist. And that's probably why the ...

• Report: Digg still mining for profits
  
  

  This post initially misstated Digg's 2007 loss as reported by 'BusinessWeek.' The company reported lost $2.8 million in 2007.

  There are some stunning numbers in BusinessWeek about social news site Digg: In 2007, the company reportedly pulled in only $4.8 million in revenue and lost $2.8 ...

• MySpace, Facebook IM come to Meebo
  
  

  Web-based chat company Meebo has announced that it now supports MySpace and Facebook's instant-messaging services. That adds to a lineup that already includes Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and ICQ.

  "Today's announcement reflects Meebo's long-time goal of offering open access to ...

• Scribd chalks up another $9 million
  
  

  Document-sharing service Scribd has pulled in $9 million in a Series B funding round, the company announced Friday. The round was led by Charles River Ventures with participation from existing investors Redpoint Ventures and Kinsey Hills Group.

  With the new cash, Scribd plans to speed up its product development and ...

• Twitpay brings micropayments to Twitter
  
  

  The New York Times has a nice little writeup about Twitpay, an experimental new app that lets you send payments using Twitter.

  Here's the premise: Sign up, put some cash in your Twitpay account through another payment service like PayPal, and then send out a "tweet" to another Twitpay ...

• Facebook's growth goes faster and faster and faster
  
  

  Facebook is still growing like wildfire: earlier this week, the social network put out stats that peg its active-user count at 140 million.

  Inside Facebook blogger Justin Smith compared this to the date that Facebook said it hit 130 million members, and estimated that Facebook must be growing by a ...

MiamiHerald.com: Technology

• Feds start wait list for DTV converter box coupons
  Consumers who apply for federal coupons to pay for converter boxes ahead of next month's transition to digital television broadcasts are being placed on a waiting list and may not receive their vouchers before the switchover, the Commerce Department said Monday.
• MySpace is research place for busybody 'Dr. Meg'
  Many teenagers cleaned up their MySpace profiles, deleting mentions of sex and booze and boosting privacy settings, if they got a single cautionary e-mail from a busybody named "Dr. Meg." The e-mail was sent by Dr. Megan Moreno, lead researcher of a study of lower-income kids that she says shows how parents and other adults can encourage safer Internet use.
• SkyWi president says Qwest cost his firm customers
  The president of a New Mexico internet and telephone provider says he fears his company has lost its customers' trust after Qwest Communications disconnected its service last week.
• Text of Steve Jobs' letter to `Apple community'
  Here is the letter that Apple CEO Steve Jobs released Monday morning to address questions about his health.
• Virginia co. acquires Tenn. nuclear fuel provider
  A Virginia company that specializes in nuclear technology services has completed its acquisition of Tennessee-based Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. for an undisclosed price, the companies announced Monday.
• Apple CEO Steve Jobs, at a glance
  NAME - Steven Paul Jobs.
• Apple's Jobs has hormone imbalance, will stay CEO
  Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs, a survivor of pancreatic cancer whose gaunt appearance in the past year has alarmed the Mac and iPod lovers who look to him as an oracle, said Monday he has an easily treated hormone imbalance and will remain in charge of the company.
• China targets Google in pornography crackdown
  China warned Google and other popular Web portals Monday that they must do more to block pornographic material from reaching Chinese users, the latest in a series of government crackdowns targeting Internet content.
• LG high-def TVs to stream Netflix videos directly
  Netflix Inc. has come up with another way to get movies to people without sending DVDs in the mail.
• Recession to steal some glitz from gadget show
  The International Consumer Electronics Show, the largest trade show in the U.S., opens this week in Las Vegas with a full slate of giant TVs and inventive gadgets, despite the pall of a recession hanging over the industry.
• Time is almost up for analog TVs
  Television viewers who use rabbit ears and rooftop antennas to get their reception will find their screens have gone to static on Feb. 17 -- if they don't take certain steps to make sure their sets are capable of receiving a digital signal.
• Wikipedia meets $6 million fundraising goal
  The nonprofit foundation that runs Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia of user-contributed articles, said Friday it has met its $6 million fundraising goal for fiscal 2008.
• Digital TV subsidy program running out of money
  The Feb. 17 transition from analog to digital television broadcasts looms and as many as 8 million households are still unprepared, but the government program that subsidizes crucial TV converter boxes is about to run out of money.
• Facebook nudity policy draws nursing moms' ire
  Web-savvy moms who breast-feed are irate that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace restrict photos of nursing babies. The disputes reveal how the sites' community policing techniques sometimes struggle to keep up with the booming number and diversity of their members.
• 60-second review | Logio Secure Password Organizer
  Product: Logio Secure Password Organizer by Atek Features: It's about the size of a credit card and is 1/8-inch thick. Has flat keypad and can store 200 or more passwords and records. Screen displays three lines of text for website name or address, user ID and password. Available in black or white.
• 60-second review | BlackBerry Bold for AT&T
  Features: Full QWERTY keyboard and trackball navigation. Has a 2-megapixel camera with flash, zoom and video recording. One gigabyte of on-board memory can expand to 16 GB with a memory card. Includes Wi-Fi, an HTML browser, GPS and additional applications available for download from AT&T.
• 60-second review | BlackBerry Bold for AT&T
  The phone is great. But if you're used to zipping your finger around a touch-screen phone, using a trackball might be an issue.
• 60-second review | HTC Touch Diamond and Pro by Sprint
  The Touch Diamond and Touch Pro are pretty much sister phones, which is why I'm reviewing them together.
• 60-second review | HTC Touch by Sprint
  Products: HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch Pro, sold by Sprint Prices: HTC Touch Diamond is $249.99 and Touch Pro is $299.99; both prices are after a $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year contract.
• 60-second review | Samsung Rugby cellphone for AT&T
  It's a good phone for people who need something that can withstand abuse. But don't buy this just because you are a butterfingers and drop your phone often. This is a work-centric phone for a tough job.
• 60-second review | T-Mobile G1
  The T-Mobile G1 is a fantastic phone. But keep this in mind: If you're not near a Wi-Fi connection, you'll have to use T-Mobile's 3G or EDGE network.
• 60-Second Review | Ion VCR 2 PC
  It's not always easy to set up your computer to record from your VCR or television. So if you're not tech savvy, you'll like this. It's a hassle-free way to preserve your family's VHS movies on your computer and burn them to a DVD.
• A gift guide for gamers on your list
  Finding the perfect holiday gift for the gamer in your life can be a daunting task. There are tons of titles out there, many with hefty price tags. But how do you know which is worth your buck and which will put a smile on the recipient's face? We've compiled a list of the top games sure to please every type of gamer on your list.
• Get creative with 'LittleBigPlanet'
  The biggest mystery among this fall's video games could be Sony's LittleBigPlanet, a gorgeous PlayStation 3 title that combines running, jumping and puzzle-solving with a complete tool kit that allows you to assemble your own levels. The question: Once LBP is out there, will we see a flowering of player creativity? Or will most buyers pack it away once they've conquered the built-in levels?
• New Wii lets you sweat off the blubber
  The Nintendo Wii has already done what video game naysayers said couldn't be done -- get children and adults off the couch with active games such as Wii Sports. The innovative Wii Fit takes it a step farther by creating a virtual gym in your living room that helps families incorporate fitness, as well as the escapist fun of video games, into their daily routine.
• Characters, city come alive in Grand Theft Auto IV
  Grand Theft Auto IV is all about the American Dream. An immigrant comes to this country with dreams of escaping his past and building his fortunes. But instead of finding streets paved in gold, he finds a city where hookers and hustlers work the streets and crime is a way of life and the only way to survive.
• Halo 3 is worth the wait, worth the hype
  The gamers stood in line for hours, from Los Angeles to Miami. Three years without a Halo fix and the day finally arrived. At 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, thousands of fans rushed inside stores across the nation to reach the holy grail of video games - a copy of Halo 3. Was it worth the wait?
• Games releasing week of Sept. 24
  The week belongs to Halo 3. Does it really matter what else is out in stores? For those few gamers without the Halo fever, CSI 4: Hard Evidence is also debuting.
• Games releasing week of Sept. 17
  This week the Sims franchise comes to the Wii, street racing gets Juiced and composer Frederic Chopin stars in Eternal Sonata.
• Games releasing week of Sept. 10
  Gamers are in for a tough choice this week: competing NHL titles, a promising action-adventure game for the Playstation 3 and a skateboarding simulator. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
• Even in recession, CES to have stuff worth seeing
  The recession figures to tone down the flashiness of this week's International Consumer Electronics Show, but the lineup of innovative products likely will measure up to those of past years.
• 60-second review | Logio Secure Password Organizer
  Product: Logio Secure Password Organizer by Atek Features: It's about the size of a credit card and is 1/8-inch thick. Has flat keypad and can store 200 or more passwords and records. Screen displays three lines of text for website name or address, user ID and password. Available in black or white.