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Fireside Logic News
 GamePolitics has an article about a research paper issued by the AU government's Institute of Criminology titled "Crime Risks of Three-Dimensional Virtual Environments." The paper discusses the legal questions raised by game worlds and avatars, ranging from regulation of in-game currency to a report of virtual rape. "A person controlling an avatar that is unexpectedly raped or assaulted might experience the physical reaction of 'freezing,' or the associated shock, distrust and loss of confidence in using [3D virtual environments]. While civil redress for psychological harm is conceivable, the 'disembodied' character of such an incident would invariably bar liability for any crime against the person. However, Australian federal criminal law imposes a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment for using an internet carriage service to 'menace, harass or cause offence' to another user. Further, US and Australian laws ban simulated or actual depictions of child abuse and pornography. Therefore, any representations of child avatars involved in virtual sexual activity, torture or physical abuse are prohibited, regardless of whether the real-world user is an adult or child." More >>>
geek4 writes with this excerpt from eWeek Europe: "Data from the Environmental Working Group places the BlackBerry Bold 9700 as the mobile device with the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation among popular smartphones. Research In Motion's BlackBerry Bold 9700 scores the highest among popular smartphones for exposing users to the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation, according to the latest 2010 Environmental Working Group ranking. Following the Bold 9700 are the Motorola Droid, the LG Chocolate and Google's HTC Nexus One. The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules." BlackBerry Bold Tops Radiation Ranking
In Gartner's assessment of the server market in the fourth quarter of 2009, X64 servers and blades in particular were singled out as the growth engines. With IDC's similar, but different, report Thursday we learn that the Windows platform was the real beneficiary of the bump in sales.… Windows server revenue outpaced Linux in Q4
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p>Microsoft's server and tools chief Bob Muglia has chided Oracle for peddling a return to "1960s computing," accusing its rival of going against industry trends and backing a dying and expensive operating-system architecture.… Microsoft: Oracle will take us back to 1970s hell
VMware Inc. agreed to buy some software and expertise from majority shareholder EMC Corp.'s Ionix IT management business for $200 million, the companies said Thursday. (VMW) (EMC) VMware buying EMC line for $200M
SAP says its new SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand software offers analytics and reporting tools to casual business users who otherwise might not have the experience or skills necessary to make use of business intelligence in their daily workflow. SAP has increasingly focused on the small and midsize business segment as a way to increase its enterprise applications revenue stream, a move mirrored by its competitors, such as Oracle. The announcement comes on the heels of a substantial management shakeup at SAP.
SAP Unveils BI Tool Set for Casual Users, SMBs
IBM researchers have developed a new algorithm that could in minutes analyze terabytes' worth of raw data to more quickly predict weather and electricity usage, the company said Thursday. IBM speeds up data analysis with new algorithm
There hasn’t been a lot of talk yet from Oracle about their plans for HPC now that the Sun purchase has been consummated - so what's going on?… Oracle: What now for HPC?
A promising open source driver for NVIDIA graphics hardware, a replication solution to prevent server down times, "ATA Trim" support and a host of new and improved drivers are some of the most prominent improvements in Linux 2.6.33
What's new in Linux 2.6.33
 This week, the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) took legal action in cooperation with other tech industry members and Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing team (TWC) to decapitate and severely limit the activity of the spam botnet Waledac, one of the 10 largest botnets in the US and a major distributor of spam globally.
The notorious Waledac botnet was being used by Eastern European spammers to send 1.5 billion spam messages every day, and infect hundreds of thousands of machines with malware. In a suit filed in the US District Court of Eastern Virginia, Microsoft accused 27 unnamed defendants of violating federal computer crime laws. It further requested that domain registrar Verisign temporarily deactivate the domains, shutting down the control servers being used to send commands to the machines. The request was secretly approved by District Judge Leonie Brinkema, allowing the action to be taken covertly, preventing Waledac's operators from switching domains. More >>>
 Aarhus University scientists have found that sulphur-eating bacteria that live in muddy sediments beneath the sea floor may be connected by a network of microbial nanowires that could shuttle electrons back and forth, allowing communities of bacteria to act as one super-organism. Analogously, in the movie Avatar, the Na'avi people of Pandora plug themselves into a network that links all elements of the biosphere, from phosphorescent plants to pterodactyl-like birds. (20th Century Fox) (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527493.800-the-real-avatar-ocean-bacteria-act-as-superorganism.html)
David Cope's algorithmic compositions rival the beauty of music by human composers and have passed the musical equivalent of the Turing Test (listeners cannot determine which music is human-composed). They herald the future of a new kind of musical creation: armies of computers composing (or helping people compose) original scores, he believes. But some -- especially composers -- are threatened by the ability of artificial creativity programs to compose works fast that are good and that the audience likes. Undeterred, Cope thinks humans are actually more robotic than machines. "The question," Cope says, "isn't whether computers have a soul, but whether humans have a soul." (Source: http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/triumph-of-the-cyborg-composer-8507/)
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