A federal judge has struck a blow to the Bush Administration`s use of the "state secrets" privilege in a lawsuit over its domestic surveillance practices. The ruling also undercuts the Democrats` rationale for signing off on retroactive immunity for the telecoms.

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Viacom boldly asked the judge in its case against Google/YouTube for a copy of Google`s search engine source code. The request was denied, but Viacom will get a copy of any video ever pulled from YouTube and a 12TB database of who watched what when.

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The latest data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that broadband adoption is slowing down, its price remains a barrier, and nearly a quarter of the US population just isn`t interested in the whole Internet thing.

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Apple is now selling its super slim MacBook Air for $2598, down from the $3098. The cut was the result of a cut in price for two of the MacBook`s components. The Intel Core 2 Duo processor upgrade for the Air`s 1.8GHz was reduced to $200 from $100. The second reasons being that cost of the Flash memory based 64GB SDD drive upgrade to $599 from $999, That`s nearly a 50% slash of the original price. Oh and my be the sales of that particular SKU were not no hot... Now, customers may now configure a 1.6GHz MacBook Air with a SDD Drive starting from $2398.

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There are a number of situations where technology can tilt a tactical situation in favor of Police forces but it’s hard to associate Segways to any kind of tactical situation. In Paris, there are organized Segway tours and it’s not uncommon to see a poor tourist being slapped to the ground by a Segway “gone mad” – that’s my experience, at least. Anyhow, the sight of the picture above is just too ridiculous to skip, but I really hope that these guys won’t have to shoot anyone in this precarious position. Now, is it not as scary as seeing police use a flame thrower in an Olympic terror situation... via Xinhuanet [Thanks Randy for sending this in]

Permalink | Comment | Uberbargain | Uberphones

Most users are growing accustomed to manufacturer`s way of getting out of tight spots. Is your console having problems? Well, a firmware update will normally fix it. Unfortunately, this clearly isn`t the case with Sony`s latest 2.40 firmware upgrade for the Playstation 3. Problems range from microphone issues to frozen consoles, and this has prompted Sony to pull the upgrade for the moment. Unfortunately for most users, sites are stating that the only known fix at the moment is a hard drive reformat, which will effectively wipe all the current saved game data.

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Visit eHomeUpgrade for the full post.

Visit eHomeUpgrade for the full post.

Visit eHomeUpgrade for the full post.

With some providers, trying to figure out what their broadband tiers` upstream speeds are from their website isn`t entirely unlike unearthing national security secrets. If that`s the case, it`s usually because on some level, they`re embarrassed by what they`re offering. I noticed that Light Reading has an entertaining rant about the upstream speed of Qwest`s new ADSL2+ service, which the company is offering to a limited number of homes.

Firefox has joined some esteemed company in the Guinness Book of World Records. With the release of Firefox 3, the browser now officially holds the record for the greatest number of downloads in a twenty-four hour period. On June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3, according to the official website. The website counter says there has been 29,113,166 downloads of the browser since launch.
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Like Comcast, Time Warner Cable is migrating to switched digital video (SDV) in order to conserve bandwidth on their network. Unfortunately for customers in Kansas City, the company is upgrading to SDV before the technology has been modified to work properly with CableCARDs, so users of third party set-tops (like TiVo) are being told to downgrade to Time Warner Cable boxes. The Kansas City Star blog chats up a company spokesman:

Telephony Online asks the simple but highly contentious question: how much bandwidth does the American home really need? The question was raised again recently when Comcast and Verizon began offering 50Mbps tiers in some markets. For an individual user those speeds may seem excessive, but for an entire home it`s quickly going to become commonplace. The piece notes that customer desire to download media is proportional to the cost to store it, and looks forward to storage costs in 2015:

It appears that Comcast is expanding their tests of switched digital video (SDV) in two additional markets -- Minneapolis and St. Paul. SDV frees up bandwidth on cable systems by holding unwatched channels at the edge router, instead of transmitting all channels, regardless of whether they`re in use, to your set-top box. Comcast is already using Cisco for a SDV trial in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and has tagged Motorola for a trial in the Denver area. In February, Comcast execs claimed they`d introduce SDV in about 15 percent of their markets by the end of 2008.
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I`m generally amused when a broadband provider employs low caps in the age of FiOS and HD web delivery, but I`m far more entertained when their marketing departments try and convince customers how reasonable those caps are. For instance when Rogers recently began charging overages, they sent out an e-mail informing customers, with pictures, that their new caps allowed 6,291,456 e-mails and 1,572,864 page views. Time Warner Cable has started marketing their capped trial in Beumont, Texas, and the website uses similar measurements for caps as low as 5GB:

A federal judge has struck a blow to the Bush Administration`s use of the "state secrets" privilege in a lawsuit over its domestic surveillance practices. The ruling also undercuts the Democrats` rationale for signing off on retroactive immunity for the telecoms.

Read More...

Viacom boldly asked the judge in its case against Google/YouTube for a copy of Google`s search engine source code. The request was denied, but Viacom will get a copy of any video ever pulled from YouTube and a 12TB database of who watched what when.

Read More...

The latest data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that broadband adoption is slowing down, its price remains a barrier, and nearly a quarter of the US population just isn`t interested in the whole Internet thing.

Read More...

It`s the 4th of July weekend, which means sun for most of us and all kinds of fun outdoor activities, many of them including squirt guns. If you`re hardcore, you use nothing but the Super Soaker, which was first introduced in 1989 and have evolved into personal water cannons that seem capable of blasting holes in concrete. Hyperbole aside, they`ve come a long way, and iSoaker has a very cool interactive, clickable chart showing the evolution of the worlds most popular water gun. Which one was your favorite? [iSoaker]

This is some pretty exciting news for us Palm fans who`ve been waiting (and waiting and waiting) for something new from the handset maker. It turns out Palm has hired Matias Duarte to design the UI for the next Palm OS. You probably haven`t heard of him, but he`s the guy behind the impressive interfaces for the Sidekicks and Helio`s phones. The idea of giving this guy a large install base and a touchscreen to play with is a good one. Palm`s got an uphill battle to take on the iPhone, but this could be how they do it. [Engadget]

Motorola`s got another Q in the queue in the form of the new Napolean world phone. It`s a CDMA smartphone for Verizon that does double duty with GSM, so you can use it pretty much anywhere. It also includes Wi-Fi if you`re not feeling like using its EV-DO Revision A or EDGE data, runs Windows Mobile 6.1, and includes a fingerprint scanner and a 2-megapixel camera with flash. It sounds like a great phone for world travelers, but probably overkill for anyone else. [BGR]

Got dial-up and don`t want to give it up? You`re not alone.

An estimated 10 percent of Americans are surfing the net via dial-up connections, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

And a lot of those people apparently see no ...

Satellite TV provider Dish Network said Tuesday that AT&T will end its agreement to bundle its TV service with AT&T`s broadband and phone service at the end of the year.

AT&T and Dish have had a joint marketing deal since July 2003, which allows AT&T ...

Skyhook Wireless announced Monday that it is integrating GPS into its geolocation service to get an even more accurate fix for location-based services.

Up until now, Skyhook`s geolocation service, which is used on Apple`s iPhone, among other services and devices, has used Wi-Fi hot spots to get a ...

There`s no question that Verizon Communications hit a home run with its aggressive fiber strategy.

The fiber-to-the-home network called Fios has enabled Verizon to supercharge broadband speeds and compete against cable in the TV market.

Fios also has helped future-proof Verizon`s network. While its cable competitors buckle under the pressure ...

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers voted Thursday to relax rules for naming Web sites.

At its meeting in Paris, ICANN, a not-for-profit organization that oversees the naming scheme for Web sites, voted to accept a proposal that will allow companies to purchase new top-level domain names ending ...