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Steampunk, the pseudo-Victorian mechanical aesthetic favored by alternate history and science fiction buffs seems like an unlikely source of inspiration...

It's easy to figure out why e-readers and tablets are the size that they are: They're all about the size of paperback books. But why are paperbacks that size? It all has to do with the sheep.

Jake writes with this excerpt from Ars: "Microsoft is warning about a new piece of malware, Rogue:MSIL/Zeven, that auto-detects a user's browser and then imitates the relevant malware warning pages from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome. The fake warning pages are very similar to the real thing; you have to look closely to realize they aren't the real thing. The ploy is a basic social engineering scheme, but in this case the malware authors are relying on the user's trust in their browser, a tactic that hasn't been seen before. Beyond the warning pages, the actual malware looks like the real deal: it allows you to scan files, tells you when you're behind on your updates, and enables you to change your security and privacy settings. Performing a scan results in the product finding malicious files, but of course it cannot delete them unless you update, which requires paying for the full version. Attempting to buy the product will open an HTML window that provides a useless 'Safe Browsing Mode' with high-strength encryption. To top it all off, the rogue antivirus webpage looks awfully similar to the Microsoft Security Essentials webpage; even the awards received by MSE and a link to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center have been copied."

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It is not known if Jobs will accept his award in person at the Beverly Hilton ceremony, as the CEO is selective about which events he attends. A number of other celebrities are being honored this year however, such as anchorman Dan Rather, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, and Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

The new Apple TV was probably the most interesting part of yesterday's Apple announcements. But while it's a step in the right direction for people who want to get video content on their TVs, it doesn't offer the right content or the right plans yet.

10 iPhone apps to help students manage their college life

Just in time for the holiday weekend, a California-based consumer group has purchased space on a Times Square jumbotron to display a video that attacks Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and his company's privacy policies.

Looking at the top 5 countries with the highest number of Internet users, we see China in the lead with ...

submitted by lelee to pics [link] [34 comments]

waderoush writes "On top of all the other features that it has crammed into iTunes, Apple this week added Ping, a Facebook-like social network for music discovery. It's all part of the company's plan to dominate the world of consumer media, but Xconomy argues that this time, Apple may have gone a bridge too far. iTunes, nearing its tenth birthday, started out merely as a program for ripping CDs, and has grown increasingly creaky and impenetrable as Apple has added more and more cruft, the article argues. The company won't have a stable base for its new media empire until it rebuilds iTunes from scratch — perhaps along the lines suggested by its other new product this week, the revamped Apple TV."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ars goes hands-on with iTunes 10 and finds some performance improvements. Unfortunately, it takes a step back in the UI department. At least you can get rid of the annoying, vertically aligned window controls.

By now, most iTunes users have already downloaded and installed iTunes 10. We've already given you the low-down on the biggest addition to the new version of iTunesthe Ping social networkbut we also wanted to give our impressions on two "improvements" promised in the release notes: look-and-feel and performance. While we agree that iTunes is "faster and more responsive," we're not sold on the revised user interface. Read the comments on this post

By now, most iTunes users have already downloaded and installed iTunes 10. We've already given you the low-down on the biggest addition to the new version of iTunesthe Ping social networkbut we also wanted to give our impressions on two "improvements" promised in the release notes: look-and-feel and performance. While we agree that iTunes is "faster and more responsive," we're not sold on the revised user interface. Read the comments on this post

Manufacturing partners are now said to be delivering 2 million iPads per month, double recent levels.

Lucas123 writes "After a storage area network in a data center run by Northrop Grumman went down last week, crippling 26 state agencies' websites — some for more than a week — Northrop Grumman has now apologized to Virginia, saying it will learn from its mistakes in order to recover systems faster in the future. Northrop's $2.6 billion service contract with Virginia's government has come under harsh criticism in the past for service outages, along with project delays and cost overruns."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A group of French scientists have come up with a new physics equation to help explain how Brazilian soccer star Roberto Carlos scored his "impossible" kick in 1998.

The jury is still out whether Foursquare can figure out a way to monetize its hot location-based mobile service, but that hasn't stopped the World Economic Forum from including it among a class of 31 companies deemed pioneers in technology.

For two men who outwardly have little in common, save for spectacular wealth, Murdoch and Apple boss Steve Jobs are awfully simpatico these days. Murdoch has often gushed with admiration for the iPad, which he calls a "game-changer" that will revive the newspaper industry. And the Wall Street Journal is one of the only publications that already sells subscriptions to its iPad edition.

Dangerous_Minds writes "Drew Wilson has been following HADOPI (France's three strikes law) a lot lately, and the latest developments are that the French ISPs and the French government are edging closer to a full-on war over compensation. The French government apparently requested that ISPs send an invoice of the bills after a certain period of time, but the French ISPs don't feel this is good enough — probably because of worries that the compensation the government will ultimately provide won't be enough. The ISPs are demanding adequate compensation, and if the government doesn't give it to them, they simply will not hand over evidence required to enforce HADOPI law. While HADOPI demands that ISPs cooperate, speculation suggests that if the government takes ISPs to court, the ISPs will simply rely on constitutional jurisprudence to shield them from liability (translation)."

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Offering capacities up to 16GB in a size that is only 0.7 inches long and 0.35 ounces, the device is short enough to lay flush against a notebook while being stored in a bag.