Ars Technica
From Horizon Project
[edit] Ars Technica 
- The math gap: it's cultural (so stop mocking nerds) (Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:54:00 -0700)
A new study examines individuals capable of exceptional achievements in math and reveals that gender and ethnic differences appear to be largely the result of cultural expectations and practices. In other words, stop making fun of nerds!Read More... - Wal-Mart joins MSN and Yahoo, leaves DRM servers online (Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:05:00 -0700)
Wal-Mart is the latest company to change its mind about pulling its DRM key servers offline. After receiving "feedback" from customers who were about to be held hostage by their old music, the company has decided to leave the servers up... for now. Read More... - Iowa State to charge students for dorm room land lines (Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:24:56 -0700)
Students are increasingly arriving at college with their own cell phones, causing some universities to shift budgets for dorm room land lines to other projects, like wireless Internet.Read More... - Think of the children! AA and Delta agree to filter porn (Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:20:00 -0700)
Both American Airlines and Delta announced this week that, contrary to their previous stance on the issue, they plan to start filtering inappropriate websites from being accessed with their in-flight WiFi services. Read More... - Quantum encryption and the weakness of European science (Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:43:00 -0700)
Researchers congregated in Vienna this week to see a fantastic demonstration of quantum encryption technology, but the demo also illustrated the advantages and disadvantages of the European scientific funding system.Read More... - Holiday wars: Sony counts on games, Microsoft on price (Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:01:00 -0700)
Sony and Microsoft are both ready to fight for console supremacy this holiday season, but their weapons are very different. We take a look at the gaming giants as they gird up for war. Read More... - Seagate spins plans for solid-state drives in 2009 (Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:12:00 -0700)
Seagate will be hopping on the bus with all the other hard drive manufacturers, with SSD enterprise drives coming in 2009. For the moment, that's all the world's largest HDD company is talking about?below the highest end, its a disk-spinning world.Read More... - Osama bin Fragged: a review of terrorist propaganda games (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:30:00 -0700)
You've probably heard about so-called "terrorist propaganda" games, either via the Internet or TV. Well, we at Ars found some and reviewed them (and in the process probably Googled our way onto the NSA's hitlist). Reviews inside, as we continue our two-day look at serious games.Read More... - Download services increasingly popular with universities (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:50:00 -0700)
Legal, school-sponsored music and movie services have exploded in popularity over the last few years?well, in popularity with administrators, at least. 15 percent of all US schools and 39 percent of the big ones offer such services. It's not clear that students love them as much as admins do, however.Read More... - Yahoo Web Analytics to finally give Google some competition (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:45:00 -0700)
Yahoo quickly turned around the acquisition of a web analytics firm to take on Google with "near real-time" access to raw data. Along with an upcoming developer API and an already established hosting platform, Yahoo has a shot at snagging its fair share of the market?if it acts fast.Read More... - Wikipedia adopts Ubuntu for its server infrastructure (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:40:00 -0700)
The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind the hugely successful Wikipedia project, is migrating all of its server infrastructure to the Ubuntu Linux distribution. This move reflects the growing viability of Ubuntu for enterprise-scale server deployments.Read More... - Intel to examine AMD split for x86 licensing violations (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:35:00 -0700)
Intel has its own set of concerns about AMD's foundry split and plans to investigate the company's agreement. Whether or not AMD is actually in violation of anything (or has any recourse if it is) is, for the moment, unclear. Read More... - Parents want to be "cool," are using SMS with their kids (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:05:00 -0700)
Parents raised on answering machines and voice mail are turning to SMS to get in touch with their kids according to a new report. Read More... - NSA eavesdropped on Americans, journalists in Baghdad (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:10:00 -0700)
Two whistleblowers tell ABC that the NSA had them recording the regular conversations of ordinary Americans stationed in the Middle East, conversations that they were ordered to archive despite their apparent lack of a connection to anything terror-related.Read More... - Kentucky seizes two gambling domains, sites fight back (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:30:00 -0700)
Despite protests from industry groups and interested parties, the state of Kentucky has seized the domains of two online gambling sites, and may do the same to 139 more. Judge Wingate heard comments from pro-online gambling groups on Tuesday, but has yet to indicate if he'll send the case on to a forfeiture hearing.Read More... - Google to play catchup with search result RSS feeds (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:22:00 -0700)
Google News will soon get RSS feeds for search results, offering more flexibility for viewing and notifications. The feature is a great idea, but it's one that many competitors have done very well for quite some time now.Read More... - Interorganizational wrangling begins as .gov studies DNS fix (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:48:00 -0700)
In the wake of recent DNS hijacking hacks, a number of top-level Internet domains have deployed DNSSEC. Now, the US Commerce Department is requesting comments on proposals to roll it out for the root DNS servers. Read More... - City-owned fiber network a go as judge tosses telco lawsuit (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:58:00 -0700)
A judge has dismissed a telco's entire lawsuit against a Minnesota community that decided to build its own fiber-to-the-home network.Read More... - Verizon rolls its own Geek Squad with Expert Care (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:39:00 -0700)
Verizon has announced an expansion of its tech support offerings to include home support for PC hardware and software issues, phone problems, and TV repairs. Pricing is on-par with Geek Squad and AT&T's offering, ConnecTech, but is there room for three players in the home repair market?Read More... - Megachurch pastor criticizes white space broadband proposals (Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:50:00 -0700)
Another wireless mic-laden church warns the FCC about unlicensed white space devices. Meanwhile, another proposal to auction off white space blocks has been brought before the Commission.Read More...
