(Reuters) – Dozens of police departments nationwide are gearing up to use a tech company’s already controversial iris- and facial-scanning device that slides over an iPhone and helps identify a person or track criminal suspects.

The so-called “biometric” technology, which seems to take a page from TV shows like “MI-5″ or “CSI,” could improve speed and accuracy in some routine police work in the field. However, its use has set off alarms with some who are concerned about possible civil liberties and privacy issues.
But constitutional rights advocates are concerned, in part because the device can accurately scan an individual’s face from up to four feet away, potentially without a person’s being aware of it.

Experts also say that before police administer an iris scan, they should have probable cause a crime has been committed.

“What we don’t want is for them to become a general surveillance tool, where the police start using them routinely on the general public, collecting biometric information on innocent people,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the national ACLU in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, advocates see the MORIS as a way to make tools already in use on police cruiser terminals more mobile for cops on the job.

“This is (the technology) stepping out of the cruiser and riding on the officer’s belt, along with his flashlight, his handcuffs, his sidearm or the other myriad tools,” said John Birtwell, spokesman for the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department in southeastern Massachusetts, one of the first departments to use the devices.

By Zach Howard
CONWAY, Mass | Wed Jul 20, 2011

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/20/us-crime-identification-iris-idUSTRE76J4A120110720

The pairing of Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 with processors from companies like Qualcomm and Nvidia is expected to spawn a new kind of low-cost laptop, according to IHS-iSuppli, possibly threatening Intel’s overwhelming dominance in laptops.

“After more than 30 years of domination by a single microarchitecture–Intel Corp.’s X86–the PC microprocessor…market finally is set for some real competition,” Matthew Wilkins, an analyst at IHS-iSuppli, wrote in a research note today.

This will happen as shipments of ARM processors soar in the coming years, eventually shipping in about one out of every four laptops in 2015, according to Wilkins.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20080472-64/windows-8-to-spawn-new-breed-of-low-cost-laptops

For years, an extension called Firebug has been a powerful tool that kept Web programmers loyal to Firefox.

But now, as browser makers add their own tools geared to attract those who build Web sites and applications, the lead Firebug programmer has taken a job with Chrome, CNET has learned.

“Monday, I start work on next-gen Web dev tools at Google on the Chrome browser team. Consequently I will no longer be contributing routinely to the development and maintenance of Firebug for Firefox,” John J. Barton told members of a Firebug mailing list yesterday.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20080338-264/firefox-world-loses-web-dev-guru-to-chrome/?tag=topStories3

From Cnet, but still interesting to share.

Remarks made by Microsoft’s Andy Lees at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference are igniting rumors that the next-generation Xbox device could run Windows as its operating system. The expected time frame for this integration could be about four years, timing that would coincide with the expected refresh of the XBox and Windows 8.

Analysts are chewing over the implications of Microsoft’s announced plans to create a unified ecosystem for phones, computers and other devices. One thing that could mean is that the next generation Xbox device could run on a version of Windows.

Andy Lees, who heads up Microsoft’s Windows Phone division, said at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles that the time is approaching when there won’t be an ecosystem for phones and tablets. “They’ll all come together,” Lees said, hinting at “a single ecosystem and not ecosystems themselves.”

Ten-Year Lifespan

The expected time frame for this integration could be about four years, according to sources who spoke to The Escapist blog, timing that would coincide with the expected refresh of the XBox and Windows 8. Thisismynext’s Nilay Patel also noted that Lees said the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant wants to provide “coherence and consistency” across devices, “particularly with Xbox.” Sources told Thisismynext that Microsoft may even give up the name Windows, the company’s best established trademark, for something entirely new during that 2015-2016 time frame.

Michael Inouye, digital home analyst for ABI Research, said reports of the Windows Xbox are “certainly credible,” but he added, “the implementation of a cross-platform/device OS might not happen as some are envisioning. The branding might span devices as may some of the critical components, but I would expect the next Xbox to remain a ‘separate’ platform.”

It is unlikely, he said, that the next Xbox will be able to install non-gaming or non-browsing software such as the Officeproductivity suite.

“The Xbox will remain a game/media machine first and foremost, which is why the Xbox and Xbox 360 operating systems were designed separately from Windows,” said Inouye. “This isn’t to say there aren’t any shared components, but they are separate operating systems. I would expect some aspects like a Microsoft application storefront/service to be cross platform/device as well as other features/services like Internet Explorer, social networking, video marketplaces, etc. We are already seeing some of this with Xbox Live.”

Controlling Your Experience

Another concern, he said, was that Microsoft must limit what users can install and do on its gaming platform to ensure the Xbox is optimized for media and games.

“In addition there are security issues that also favor a closed/protected system as well — e.g., content protection and protecting users from malware.”

But Microsoft and other major players in the gaming industry may have to do something to ramp up interest in platform-based games: A new survey by NPD found that sales of games suffered a major drop in June, bringing in revenue of $995 million, compared to $1.1 billion during the same month in 2010, a 10 percent drop.

Software sales fell 12 percent, and game accessories fell 11 percent, a likely result of greater use of free or cheap downloadable game apps for tablets and smartphones.

Microsoft can worry less: The Xbox 360 dominated the market in May with 34 percent of all game revenues, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Source: www.toptechnews.com

A security consultant has notified Skype of a cross-site scripting flaw that could be used to change the password on someone’s account, according to details posted online. Skype said it would issue a fix next week.

The consultant, Levent Kayan, based in Berlin, posted details of the flaw on his blog on Wednesday and notified Skype a day later. He said on Friday he hasn’t heard a response yet.

The problem lies in a field where a person can input their mobile phone number. Kayan wrote that a malicious user can insert JavaScript into the mobile phone field of their profile.

When one of their contacts comes online, the malicious user’s profile will be updated, and the JavaScript will be executed when the other contact logs in. Kayan wrote that the other person’s session could be hijacked, and it may be possible to gain control of that person’s computer. An attacker could also change the password on someone’s account.

There are some mitigating factors, such as that the attacker and victim must be friends on Skype. Also, the attack may not immediately execute when the victim logs in. Kayan said he noticed the behavior happened only after the victim logged in several times. But he said in an e-mail that once it happens the first time, “it happens with each re-login.”

Skype should be checking the input into the mobile phone field and validating that it is indeed a phone number and not executable code. The problem affects the latest version of Skype, 5.3.0.120, on Windows XP, Vista and 7 as well as Mac OS X.

Skype disagreed somewhat with Kayan’s description of the issue, characterizing it as minor.

“Essentially it allows for one of your top contacts on Windows to display messages or redirect to websites within the SkypeHome page,” said Adrian Asher, Skype’s chief information security officer, in a statement.

In order to exploit this a person would have to be a validated contact of yours and one of the most frequent people you are in contact with, and therefore very unlikely to cause any issues in the real world, however it should not be like this and will be fixed,” he said.

Image and  Article Source: www.macworld.com

DOJ: We can force you to decrypt that laptop

The Colorado prosecution of a woman accused of a mortgage scam will test whether the government can punish you for refusing to disclose your encryption passphrase.

The Obama administration has asked a federal judge to order the defendant, Ramona Fricosu, to decrypt an encrypted laptop that police found in her bedroom during a raid of her home.

Because Fricosu has opposed the proposal, this could turn into a precedent-setting case. No U.S. appeals court appears to have ruled on whether such an order would be legal or not under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which broadly protects Americans’ right to remain silent.

Please Read the source here. http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20078312-281/doj-we-can-force-you-to-decrypt-that-laptop/?tag=topTechContentWrap;mostRead

Netflix: Bigger than cable. Too big for the Internet?

According to the DVD and online video rental king Netflix’s last quarterly report, Netflix now has more subscribers than Comcast, the largest cable U.S. TV operator. 7% of all U.S. citizens now subscribe to Netflix. That’s great for Netflix but what about the Internet, on which it increasingly relies for its video transport?

Back in October, Netflix, and other video content were already taking up more bandwidth than any other single Internet service Gaming, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing, and Web surfing were all falling behind. It’s only gotten worse since then. When I recently looked at how much traffic IPv6 was transporting on the Internet, I found that Netflix, all by itself, was taking up 20%–the largest single share-of all Internet traffic.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but is there enough bandwidth on the Internet to support this if this video trend continues? I doubt it.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are capping their monthly services, ISPs, like Comcast, are also trying to charge Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), the high-speed Internet traffic backbones used by video services, such as Level 3 extra charges for their traffic.

The cable companies are in the odd place of having their comparatively low-revenue ISP services starting to eat their far more profitable cable TV services. On top of that, to supply the need for more and faster bandwidth, they need to upgrade their backbones to IEEE 802.3ba, the standard for 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) and 100GigE Ethernet.

100GiigE may sound fast–and it is–but it’s not fast enough. Some people are already demanding, not mere Terabit networking, but 1.4Terabit networks. In the meantime, ISPs are still struggling to get 802.3ba up and running. And, let’s not even talk about how much trouble it is to get decent broadband in the last mile from the ISP to your home or office.

Please Read The Source here http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/netflix-bigger-than-cable-too-big-for-the-internet/994?tag=mantle_skin;content

What do you think about this?

Apple is announcing its quarterly earnings on July 19 and analysts areprepping their sales estimates for the big day. Philip Elmer-Dewitt of Apple 2.0 compiled a handful of these projections which range from a high of 20.25 million from Nicolae Mihalache of Traderhood down to a low of 15 million from Charlie Wolf of Needham.

The average estimate falls at 16.9 million units which is a 101% year-over-year increase and a slight drop from the 18.6 million sold last quarter. In four years of  iPhone sales, DeWitt estimates Apple has sold over 125 million handsets.

So when Apple reports its 3rd quarter earnings next week, everybody who follows the company — from its most steadfast investors to its fiercest competitors — will be paying particular attention to how many iPhones it sold.

[UPDATE: Three more analysts have come in with iPhone numbers since this was posted: Wedbush's Scott Sutherland (18.65 million), UBS's Maynard Um (18.35) and CitiGroup's Richard Gardner (18 million). That brings the Wall Street consensus up to 16.6 million and puts the overall average above the 17 million mark.]

Sources:
www.tuaw.com.
tech.fortune.cnn.com.

Occurro is, I would say, an above average space-based dual stick shooter for the iPhone. It doesn’t offer much more than an arcade experience, as you pilot a small ship around the screen with one thumb while shooting in any direction with your second thumb. But Occurro is a particularly well-done version of this genre, with controls feeling really speedy and precise, and a few nice touches such as a double-tap screen-clearing bomb and a shield around your ship for a little extra time to play instead of just a one-hit kill.

Occurro actually came out a few years ago, but it’s recently been revamped, with new graphics and extras such as multitasking support and Game Center. Plus, as a bonus, developer Acceleroto has dropped the game down to the low, low price of free until further notice. It’s definitely worth a grab at that price: Occurro is available in the App Store right now.

Source: www.tuaw.com.

It’s official folks! That foldable dual-screen S2 tablet from Sony that we’ve been absolutely desperate to get our hands on is headed to AT&T. Of course, pricing and availability were missing from the press release, although Sony did promise that we would see the Android 3.0 Honeycomb-powered S2 “later this year.” We also got to go hands-on with both the S1 and S2, which was basically the most exciting part of my week.

We’ve never had a chance to see the S2 completely folded up, and its portability is something we’ve been wondering about. To give you some perspective, the S2 entered the stage from the breast pocket of an executive’s sport coat and was much smaller than I expected it to be. It would fit easily in a pocket, both pants and jacket, as well as a purse.

Unfortunately, Sony was super stingy about specs, but we did hear that this tablet will have both WiFi connectivity and 4G support from AT&T. However, there are a couple tidbits of new information that may be of interest. For one, Sony has implemented some new technologies on both the S1 (folding-design 10-incher) and S2 tablets. “Quick View” is a user-managed setting that helps load websites faster than your average tablet by loading pictures first, and java script afterwards. In a demo, an S1 with Quick View turned on loaded pages three to five seconds faster than an S1 with Quick View turned off. The other technology is called “Quick-Touch Panel” and is a special software that increases the perceptiveness of the touchscreen for both scrolling and multi-touch gestures.

The S2 will have access to Sony’s Qriocity media platform, with an e-reader app pre-loaded as well. We also learned that the S2 will be pre-loaded with Crackle, Pinball Hero and Crash Bandicoot. Both the S1 and S2 are Playstation-certified devices, so users will have access to genuine PS1 and PSP titles, with more information on what exactly will be available coming in August. All the core apps, as well as the pre-loaded apps, have been optimized for the S2′s 5.5-inch dual screens.

Owners of the Sony S2 will have the option to choose pre-paid and post-paid rate plans, rather than a contractual agreement with good ol’ big blue.

Source: techcrunch.com.