IT News HeadLines (HardOCP) 10/08/2010

The Cops Love Idiots With iPhones
Here's a bit of advice to would-be criminals, the cops love it when you own and iPhone. No seriously. Go buy one before your next big heist. iPhones can help police learn where you've been, what you were doing there and whether you've got something to hide. "When someone tells me they have an iPhone in a case, I say, 'Yeah!' I can do tons with an iPhone," said Fazio, who works in the sheriff's department high-tech crimes unit. Comments
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Woman in HP Scandal 'Surprised, Saddened'
The woman behind the HP sexual harassment case that ended in the company's CEO being fired, is "surprised and saddened" at the outcome. What the?!? I'm not sure what she thought was going to happen after she hired a million dollar celebrity attorney to go after the company for sexual harassment. Duh. "I was surprised and saddened that Mark Hurd lost his job over this. That was never my intention," Jodie Fisher, a former salesperson and actress, said in a statement released Sunday by Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred. Her statement confirms earlier reports that she had resolved her claim against Hurd and said the two of them did not have a sexual relationship. Comments
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ATI Radeon Powers The New iMac & Mac Pro
AMD announced that Apple has selected the world renowned ATI Radeon™ graphics solutions for the new line of Apple® iMac® and Mac Pro® tower. Now featured in Apple Stores as well as online retail, ATI Radeon graphics offer outstanding power and performance as the standard configuration for the new iMac and Mac Pro tower which will hit store shelves soon. Comments
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Mobile Augmented Reality for Do-it-Yourself Tech Support
Intel researchers recently demonstrated, at Research@Intel Day 2010, a future where computer vision and Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) along with a device with the latest Intel® Atom™ processor could be used to help guide a consumer to do his own home PC repair project. The device was able to identify the model of the PC and provide text and graphical instructions to the user for each step of the repair. Comments
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Borderlands Patch Leaks DLC Details
A user sifting through the latest PC patch has found hints of what is to come in the next DLC. involving a rebellious ninja Claptrap who creates an army from spare parts. Enemies are said to include Claptrap versions of various menaces from the game, including Grunts, Midgets, Kamikazes, Rakks, and Turrets. More enemy and plot details follow at the link, for those interested in possible spoilers. Comments
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The Duke Voice Acting for Valve's DotA
I'm a pretty big fan of League of Legends, so when I heard this I got excited. Valve hired the creator of the Defense of the Ancients mod last year, and now the voice behind Duke Nukem has tweeted he was in Seattle visiting Valve to do some "recording for DotA." Hope we hear some more on this soon! There have been a few DotA-style games released already, including the popular League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth, but if Valve's collaboration with Icefrog is actually called Defense of the Ancients, it could be even closer to the classic game than any of the full-scale competitors. Comments
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Massive Censorship Campaign at Digg Uncovered
A group of nearly one hundred conservative members known as the "Digg Patriots" have been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign aimed at trying to ban progressive articles on Digg. Thanks to Major for the link! they are able to bury over 90% of the articles by certain users and websites submitted within 1-3 hours, regardless of subject material. Literally thousands of stories have already been artificially removed from Digg due to this group. Comments
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Blast From the Past
Since Quakecon is coming up this month, how about a little nostalgia? Quakecon 2003! Holy mother of [H], check out all the beige cases and CRTs. Come and share old Quakecon stories
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ex HP CEO Mark Hurd to Receive $50M Takeaway
Mark Hurd is resigning over the sexual harassment and falsified expense reports scandal. Between his severance pay and stock options, his total financial takeaway is between $40 to $50 million dollars. "This is a painful decision for me to make after five years at HP," said former HP CEO Mark Hurd, resigning his position Friday as the CEO of one of the largest technology companies on the planet. "But I believe it would be difficult for me to continue as an effective leader at HP and I believe this is the only decision the board and I could make at this time." Comments
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Schmidt: 200,000 Android Devices Sold Daily
Google believes that around 200,000 Android devices are being sold each day, leading to significant revenue from increased mobile search traffic. "Trust me that revenue is large enough to pay for all of Android's activities and a whole bunch more," he said. "I should also say that we love the success of the iPhone because the iPhone also uses Google's search and we get a chunk of that revenue when people search on the iPhone." Comments
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Private Browsing not so Private
Dan Boneh and team have discovered a security leak in the private browsing mode of IE, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Also, their study revealed that most people use said mode when visiting adult websites. Duh? "Again, if the user visits a site that generates an SSL client key pair, the resulting keys will leak the site's identity to the local attacker." Comments
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RIM to let Saudis Monitor BlackBerry Data
In order to avoid being banned in Saudi Arabia, Research in Motion has decided to allow the government access to BlackBerry user's messages. The Saudis have expressed concern that the BlackBerry, which features exceptionally strong privacy safeguards, could be used by terrorists to avoid detection. The U.S. government and others have acknowledged that danger but have voiced their own concerns about protecting freedom of speech. The Saudi government blocks some Internet content for political reasons, and some have suggested that the pressure on RIM is an effort by the country to exert more control over communications. Comments
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How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months
Here's a very insightful page on the planning, building and selling of a blog. The author claims to have sold several blogs in the $20,000 USD price range. I knew you can make some nice money off of ads, but I had no idea people were interested in buying blogs. Secondly, if you don't enjoy working, writing and building the blog you will lose interest after about a month. Glen from Viper Chill talks about this a lot. The initial excitement of making a bucket load of cash wears out really fast, especially if it doesn't go as fast as you anticipated. If you don't enjoy writing those posts you will pay the price from a profit point of view. Comments
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