whfeilong.com

The Department of Defense initiated the JTRS program in 1997 to bring military communications into the network-centric digital age. The program, which could ultimately result in the replacement of hundreds of thousands of radios, has been plagued by massive cost overruns (PDF) and lack of vision. This contract signals a major step forward.

Incorporating advanced software and network capabilities for secure voice, text, and video communications that can operate across the frequency spectrum, the AMF JTRS is expected to enable any ad hoc mobile wireless network of vehicles and planes to connect instantly using the Wideband Networking Waveform.

That is, if it’s not obsolete by the time it hits the quartermaster’s shelf.

The Pentagon has awarded defense heavyweight Lockheed Martin the contract for next-stage development of the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS), a new-generation radio technology that will replace dozens of legacy systems throughout the U.S. military (PDF).

Initial design and development costs for this phase, called Airborne Maritime and Fixed Station, will run $800 million to $1.2 billion, with a potential $10 billion more for full production later. Boeing and Lockheed Martin worked on separate preliminary designs for the new programmable, tactical radio system, but only Lockheed nailed the contract.

(Credit:
DOD)

It uses readily available parts and no electronics, making it more durable in salt water.

Wave- or tidal-power devices use underwater turbines or buoys to convert the motion of the ocean’s water into electricity.

Independent Natural Resources plans to have an 18-pump field in the Gulf of Mexico used to desalinate seawater.

(Credit:
Independent Natural Resources)

A source of electricity? Click on the image to see installation of the Seadog Pump in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

The company last week said that Texas A&M University at Galveston’s Marine Engineering Technology Department had evaluated a demonstration machine in the Gulf of Mexico. The university found that the Seadog Pump was able to convert 22 percent of ocean wave energy into usable energy.

The company says the simplicity of design will make it cheaper to scale up.

The Seadog Pump from Independent Natural Resources in Minnesota just focuses on pumping water.

Independent Natural Resources is looking to test the system for generating power for electrical utilities or for desalination. Water treatment and pumping are very energy-intensive.

Ocean power is, for the most part, experimental technology. One company called Marine Current Technologies is expecting to commission a 1.2-megawatt installation in Ireland in the coming months.

There are a number of other tests taking place. But there’s a great deal of potential: experts estimate that wave and tidal power could generate gigawatts of electricity within 10 years, enough to power millions of U.S. homes.

There are a growing number of designs being floated to make electricity from the sea. But the Seadog Pump may get the prize for the simplest.

(Credit:
Independent Natural Resources)

A schematic of how the Seadog Pump works to pump water, which is stored and then passed through a turbine to make electricity.

“We are planning our first commercial demonstration facility by year-end 2008 or first-quarter 2009, and have already applied for permitting through the required regulatory agencies,” said Doug Sandberg, a company vice president.

A floating station uses wave motion to drive a piston that pumps water through an exhaust pipe. That water is collected and then passed through standard turbines to make electricity when needed, returning the water to its source.

If he did, he was wrong. MySpace has won a legal judgment against Wallace after he failed numerous times to turn over documents or even to show up for court, according to records obtained by CNET News.com.

CNET News.com’s Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.

By now, Wallace should know his way around a courtroom.

The court did not accept his reasons as a valid excuse, but continued to give him chances to comply. Nothing worked. After Wallace continuously failed to appear or respond to filing deadlines, the court issued a default judgment against Wallace.

According to records filed on April 15 with U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, Wallace was ordered numerous times to turn over documents requested by MySpace and provide a deposition. A MySpace representative did not respond to an interview request.

“It is…a defendant’s responsibility to respond to discovery, obey court orders, and avoid dilatory tactics,” the court wrote in its order. “Taking all of the above factors into account, a default is appropriate. The court finds that Wallace’s noncompliance is due to willfulness, fault, or bad faith…Wallace has had every opportunity to avoid the sanction of default. (He) has never provided any explanation for his behavior to the court.”

Sanford Wallace, the so-called spam king, has often been accused of sending annoying messages that are typically ignored by the recipient. Perhaps he considered a series of court orders as something he could blow off.

He has been sued by the Federal Trade Commission and companies such as AOL and Concentric Network Corp. In May 2006, Wallace and his company Smartbot.net were ordered by a federal court to turn over $4,089,500.

Each time, MySpace waited and each time Wallace failed to comply. Early on, Wallace informed MySpace he was having a hard time finding legal counsel. Soon after, he said he couldn’t comply because he was unaware of his court dates; he wasn’t accepting mail or signing for packages and that’s why he missed receiving notifications.

In March of last year, MySpace filed suit against Wallace alleging he launched a phishing scam to fraudulently access MySpace profiles. Wallace was also accused of spamming thousands of MySpace users with unwanted advertisements and luring them to his Web sites.

To say Wallace, who could not be reached for comment, failed to mount a vigorous defense would be an understatement.

I’ve looked at a handful of price watching services, but this one has got to be the coolest. It’s called Pricepinx, and it’s been designed to work on any site–not just some of the big retailers.

All you have to do to get going is add a small bookmarklet to your browser, highlight the price of the item and click on the bookmarklet. If there are any changes in price, you’ll be notified by e-mail. As an added bonus for those who register with the service, added items are pooled together in a list. You can also sign on as a guest user and get any updates to whichever e-mail address you specify.

Besides individual pricing, the service is a hive-mind for tagged sale items. Each Pricepinx item that’s added to your list also goes public, and the biggest droppers and most added items are served up in individual lists you can browse and use to hunt for deals.

The one major snag I can foresee with this tool is companies changing page designs, or not picking up on potentially important limited time rebate information that’s not reflected in the total cost. The example I’ve picked below is Newegg, which frequently offers product rebates that might not always be reflected in the list price, but that can potentially save you a lot of cash. Pricepinx also doesn’t work with some sites that dynamically generate pricing based on location, or any of the Gap Web sites.

Related:
Use the Web to watch for price drops

[via Lifehacker via The Red Ferret Journal]

Say you want to track this price–now you can with Pricepinx, just by highlighting the digits you want to track and clicking on the bookmarklet that's been added to your browser's toolbar.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

It’s time to take another look at the intriguing case of United States v. Boucher, which may set the ground rules for whether or not criminal defendants can be compelled to divulge encryption passphrases.

When I last wrote about the Boucher case, the U.S. Department of Justice was refusing to comment on the matter. Here’s my original article from last month for background.

The case arose because federal agents believe Boucher has child pornography on his laptop, and obtained a warrant to search it. But part of the hard drive was PGP-encrypted, and the Feds obtained a subpoena to force him to disclose (or even simply type in) his passphrase.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier in Vermont rejected the subpoena on Fifth Amendment grounds–namely, that compelled disclosure of a passphrase amounted to self-incrimination. The Fifth Amendment says no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

The Washington Post, by the way, finally got around to writing about this (a month later) on Wednesday in a page one article. It quotes Boucher as saying that he likes to download Japanese cartoons and occasionally adult pornography, but that he does not seek to view child porn.

Now the Justice Department is filing a sealed appeal to the magistrate judge’s decision to U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions. Sessions is a Clinton appointee, a former public defender who became a partner at the Middlebury, Vt. law firm Sessions, Keiner, Dumont & Barnes. He was part of the U.S. Sentencing Commission during the Clinton administration.

What’s a bit odd is that, as far as I can tell, the Feds’ appeal brief itself was filed under seal on January 2, and Boucher’s reply brief in opposition filed on January 15 was also under seal. Considering that the original criminal complaint is public, and the magistrate judge’s Fifth Amendment decision is public, there’s no obvious reason why this extra secrecy is necessary. More on this as the case progresses.

This post was updated to clarify the size of Imeem compared to Last.fm.

Music videos from Universal Music Group’s artists are now available on social music site Last.fm, the companies announced Tuesday.

That will make ad-supported videos from artists like the Killers, Jay-Z, Snow Patrol, and Amy Winehouse available on Last.fm, which already had a partnership to stream Universal’s music catalog.

It’s the first time Last.fm is bringing music videos to its site, which began offering original video programming last month.

“We want to offer a video library that rivals our unparalleled music catalog, as we work towards Last.fm becoming the only place you need to go to for all music-related content,” co-founder Martin Stiksel said in a statement, “and this deal marks the first step towards that goal.” Rival Imeem, a start-up that focuses more on playlist creation than music discovery and which pulls in either comparable or greater traffic than Last.fm depending on which metrics source is used, has also been inking video deals, and the far bigger MySpace offers music videos on its MySpaceTV player.

However, the Universal Music announcement comes just a week after Warner Music Group, another major label, pulled its catalog from Last.fm’s music service. CBS Interactive, which acquired Last.fm last year, said that a new contract is under negotiation.

Disclosure: CNET Networks, parent of CNET News.com, is set to become part of Last.fm parent company CBS in an acquisition expected to close in the third quarter.

Word from the Nintendo Developer Conference in London suggests the company is encouraging third-party developers to think outside of the box when it comes to DSi downloadable content on the DSi Shop.

While Nintendo has focused its WiiWare platform around games, it seems the DSi might be a viable platform for applications outside of gaming. While we know games will be available–there are already plenty circulating in Japan–the unique photo, microphone, and touch-screen capabilities embedded in the system could make for some very interesting third-party applications.

The possibilities are potentially endless. Think about it: a Facebook app? Maybe a Flickr app that will let you upload photos? This certainly erases any doubt about Nintendo following the same Apple App Store model found on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Now that everyone is familiar with the new media features on the DSi, what kind of app would you like to see on it?

The DSi launches in North America on April 5 for $170. Stay tuned for more developments on DSi downloadables. For now, check out our hands-on First Look video of the handheld itself.

(Source: develop)

The following products are available:

On Sale Now: $169.99
View the latest prices for Nintendo DSi (blue)

On Sale Now: $169.95 - $169.99
View the latest prices for Nintendo DSi (black)

In the last few months, both Google and eBay unit PayPal have quietly rolled out new online-payment solutions that specifically target Internet-based political-campaign contributions.

While the companies primarily pitch their new products as methods for “attracting more supporters” and “increasing online giving to your campaign,” the Internet titans have also laid the groundwork for phishing-resistant campaign contributions.

Google Checkout for Political Contributions

(Credit:
Google)

In a research paper released last year, Markus Jakobsson, Oliver Friedrichs, and I wrote about the looming threat of phishing Web sites posing as legitimate political-campaign sites.

The phishing problem is a particular threat to campaign sites, for a number of reasons:

The various campaigns use completely inconsistent naming schemes for their domains. Users have no way of knowing if they should go to Hillaryclinton.com or Hillary.com, Rudygiuliani.com or Joinrudy2008.com.
Politicians were nice enough to exempt themselves from antispam laws. An online store cannot send out unsolicited e-mail and ask you to buy their products, but politicians can send out hundreds of thousands of e-mails asking people to donate money.
While online banks have gone to great lengths to educate their users about the dangers of clicking on links in e-mails, the campaigns all encourage this dangerous behavior. At the end of e-mail messages describing the threat posed by the opposite party, potential donors are asked to click and donate.
Campaign contributions don’t result in the sale of a physical good. If a phisher pretends to be Amazon.com and tricks a user into entering his or her credit card number, there is a good chance that the victim will figure it out when her book never shows up. However, once a donor has given money using a legitimate campaign Web site, the only thing they will ever receive is a thank-you e-mail, which can easily be spoofed by a phisher.

In our research paper, we suggested that Google and PayPal begin to offer online-campaign contribution systems. The two companies have already spent millions of dollars in establishing trusted brands–enough that millions of users entrust the firms with their credit card details and other personal information, both have Web site names that users can remember, and the two companies have well-staffed security teams that can respond in real time to phishing threats.

A couple weeks ago, PayPal launched its “PayPal Kit for Non-Profits” product. Similarly, Google recently announced a form of Google Checkout specifically designed for political campaigns.

I’m not going to claim credit for inspiring these product deployments, as I’m sure that the legal complexities in designing a campaign contribution system are significant enough that the firms were working on the products long before my colleagues and I published our paper. However, it is nice to see that we successfully predicted the future.

Both sites pitch their products as ways for campaigns to increase the amount of money that is donated and a way to increase the number of potential people who will give. The massive security benefits to donors and the campaigns (in terms of reputation damage in the event that a phishing attack occurs) is glossed over.

The introduction of these products is a great first step. However, the millions of people who donate to campaign sites are not yet safe from phishing attacks.

First, the campaigns need to all ditch their own home-brew payment-processing solutions and switch to the exclusive use of either Google, PayPal, or both.

Second, the campaigns need to stop telling users to click on links in donation solicitation e-mails.

Third, the campaigns need to engage in user education and tell people that they should not give money through anything other than Google or PayPal.

With millions of dollars per week being raised online for the presidential campaigns, this is an area that is ripe for fraud and evil activity. While the phishers have thus far not targeted campaign sites, it is surely a matter of time before they do. However, if the campaigns are smart, and start taking advantage of the tools made available to them by trusted online-payment sites, they can do much to reduce the risk that phishers pose to the online-donation process.

It remains to be seen if the campaigns will actually be wise enough to embrace Google, PayPal, and others–or if they will allow their reputations and the confidence of online users to be trashed due to an inability to see future threats.

Disclosure: I interned with Google’s security team in 2006 and have received $5,000 of fellowship money from Google and the Hispanic College Fund in both 2007 and 2008.

CUPERTINO, Calif.–Apple, why hast thou forsaken me?

That, loosely paraphrased, is what some Aperture customers had been asking after Apple went too long without updating its higher-end photo editing and cataloging software. It got to the point where some were plotting strategies on Apple forums about how to flee to Adobe Systems’ rival Photoshop Lightroom software with their photo metadata intact.

On Tuesday, though, Apple came back with the new Aperture 2.0, a version that addressed many common gripes, caught up with Lightroom in several important respects, and signaled that the company hasn’t lost interest in the market. On the contrary, a price cut to $199 from $299–also Lightroom’s current price–shows Apple wants to expand Aperture’s use.

Apple’s Aperture is used to edit and catalog photos.

(Credit:
Apple)

“There’s huge interest from the hobbyist market,” said Joe Schorr, Apple’s senior product manager of photo applications. “It was clear this was the right price to make that more palatable to them.”

He said Apple’s October 2007 market research showed 54 percent of iPhoto users thought of themselves not as mere snapshooters but rather as photo hobbyists, some serious enough to aspire to sell photos. Apple is trying to bring those customers into the fold while also catering to the professionals whom the company initially targeted with Aperture.

Schorr bridled a bit when I asked him Wednesday about some people’s fears that Apple isn’t committed to Aperture. “Releasing a new version is as big a commitment as you can demonstrate,” he said. “This is not a maintenance release. It takes quite a bit of engineering resources. Apple’s commitment is unmistakable.”

Aperture is designed to edit the detailed and flexible but unwieldy and proprietary “raw” image files taken unprocessed from higher-end cameras’ image sensors. Apple was first to market with software that not only handles this computing-intensive editing task but also lets photographers sort images into catalogs and add metadata such as captions, tags, and titles.

However, since then, Adobe came on strong with Lightroom in 2007, outpacing Aperture’s adoption among professionals in a matter of months, even after factoring out the fact Lightroom also runs on Windows. Apple has clout with creative professionals, but that’s the center of Adobe’s business.

Whipping Aperture into shape
Schnorr knows the company hit a rough patch with Aperture 1.5, which wasn’t able to support many high-profile new cameras such as Nikon’s D3 and D300 and Canon’s 1Ds Mark III and PowerShot G9. Apple’s new raw support only arrived this week, months after Lightroom could handle those cameras’ raw files.

The problem: Apple’s product cycle was out of sync with the camera companies. The new cameras “happened to hit when we were in the thick of replacing the entire raw engine…It was a perfect storm,” Schnorr said.

Another big problem was performance. Processing raw-image files is a computationally onerous job, but Lightroom outperformed Aperture, and speed is essential for either to meet their potentially.

With the ability to manage images, edit them in large batches, and export them as Web galleries, Aperture and Lightroom have liberated raw images from the one-by-one plodding interface of regular Photoshop and other raw-processing tools. The vision was ahead of the technology, though: a free-wheeling editing style, jumping from one photo to another, only works if you don’t have to spend a lot of time waiting for the computer to laboriously construct and update images from the raw originals.

Apple has done well with Aperture 2.0, based on my test of ingesting and editing a batch of my own photos on a dual-core iMac. On top of a general performance boost, it’s got a new preview mode that specifically emphasizes speed by using only fast-rendering JPEGs instead of the full-on raw images. Lightroom and Aperture are geared to map a photographer’s image workflow, but I generally take an extra step to review images with BreezeBrowser to cull out the duds before I import the rest into Lightroom.

I also liked the single-keystroke ability to switch editing controls swiftly into metadata controls. I find that adding tags and captions is a process that’s not as far removed from editing as Lightroom’s separate library and develop modes would have you think.

I’m not alone in noticing Aperture’s kick in the pants. “I feel like someone snuck a new CPU into my machine,” gushed photographer Josh Anon in a Wednesday blog posting about Aperture 2.0.

Plug-ins ahoy
One of the unknown factors for Lightroom and Aperture is what the future holds for third-party editing plug-ins. Photoshop has a rich supply, but the nondestructive editing requirements of Lightroom and Aperture throw a wrench into the works of an algorithm that permanently alters an image’s pixels.

Lightroom’s future here is fuzzy, though Adobe has released a beta version of a software development kit (SDK) for plug-ins limited to actions during the photo-export phase.

Aperture 2.0 will accept editing plug-ins, though, Schorr said.

“We’ve laid the groundwork for an image-editing plug-in architecture,” he said. Asked about the difficulties of nondestructive editing, he said, “We’ve found a way of implementing a plug-in system we believe is very effective.”

Schorr wouldn’t share further details about the plug-ins architecture, but did say Apple will release its own SDK.

Raw engine overhaul
Aperture 2.0 got several of its new editing abilities through Apple’s new raw-processing engine. So what’s so great about the new raw engine? Schnorr points to several changes:

• It handles highlights better and lets photographers use a recovery slider to pull back overexposed regions.

• It handles noise better, preserving details and changing the turning speckles into a something closer to the grain of high-speed films of analog photography days.

• It preserves more detail in shadow regions rather than blocking them up into a dark murk.

• It’s got changes in color rendering to handle skin tones better.

The flip side of the new raw engine, which is built into
Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.2 is that it requires the latest software to use it. That means Aperture 1.5 users will have to pay the $99 upgrade fee if they want the new camera support, Schnorr said. For iPhoto users, the newer version 7 released last fall, is required.

Apple has supported many cameras much closer to their debut in the past, sometimes even releasing new camera support software independently from operating system updates. With the new engine now done, adding support for new cameras “should be easier for us,” Schorr said.

(Credit:
Etsy)

In your face, iPhone! CrackBerry addicts now have a new way to show their loyalty to the smartphone–by dangling tiny versions from their ears.

And there’s no need to fear added radiation from these BlackBerrys. The earrings, which measure about three-quarters of an inch high–are made from Fimo, a polymer clay. They were selling for $3 (plus shipping) on Etsy, an online market for homemade goods, but they’re sold out now.

Maybe the upcoming release of Research In Motion’s highly anticipated Bold will inspire the artist, whose Etsy handle is picnicbybarbfeldman, to pound out some more. She has been working with Fimo since 1971 and says she can make the earrings even tinier than the ones pictured–as studs about three-eighths of an inch wide and a half an inch high. Um, talk about BlackBerry thumb!

Thanks to Popgadget for ringing us up on this one.