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-Hot News Topics this week (*Prepped 24 Hours Prior)

-Review of Hot Topics (*Elaborate on Hot Topics)

1 - FCC Chairman Backs Use Of White Spaces - FCC Chairman Kevin Martin threw his support behind using parts of the empty TV spectrum -- known as white spaces -- for unlicensed wireless use.

Companies like Dell (^{Dell), Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Motorola have been lobbying the FCC for years to authorize use of this spectrum. They say it could be used to cheaply connect underserved communities to the Internet, as well as open the door for innovative new services. Google said more than 18,000 have signed its online petition to free up the white spaces.}

"This news should be greatly encouraging for American consumers," ^{wrote Google's Richard Whitt. "The FCC now has more than enough information to develop appropriate rules that protect TV stations and wireless microphone users from harmful interference, while at the same time allowing innovators and entrepreneurs to develop technology that productively uses these airwaves."}

The FCC finished testing proof-of-concept devices this summer, and its Office of Engineering Technology released a ^{technical report Wednesday that showed minimal interference for certain devices in using the white spaces.}

2 - Wikipedia adopts Ubuntu for its server infrastructure – The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind the user-driven Wikipedia project, is in the process of migrating its servers to the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Wikimedia's move to Ubuntu is part of an effort to simplify administration of the organization's 400 servers, which previously ran a mix of various versions of Red Hat and Fedora.

Although the Wikimedia Foundation is a nonprofit organization that is primarily funded by donations, the organization's technical requirements are significant. Wikimedia CTO Brion Vibber published some statistics in the ^{slides (PDF) from his presentation at the Wikimania conference which took place in July at the new Library of Alexandria.}

In an ^{interview with Computerworld, Vibber provided some insight into some of Wikimedia's technical challenges and discussed the benefit of migrating the entire set of servers to a single distribution.}

Canonical initially ^{announced the availability of Ubuntu for servers in 2005 and has taken several major steps since then to boost its popularity, including a partnership with Sun and several certification initiatives for major enterprise software packages. At the Ubuntu Live conference last year, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said that the company will increasingly fund server improvements and also announced Landscape, a server management tool.}

Despite these efforts to push Ubuntu in the server market, Canonical has had difficulty competing with Red Hat and Novell for enterprise server marketshare. Some changing trends could, however, soon give Ubuntu an advantage. Organizations are increasingly turning toward free, community-driven Linux distributions as in-house Linux expertise becomes more accessible. During a presentation at the LinuxWorld conference earlier this year, 451 Group analyst Jay Lyman said that Ubuntu and CentOS will both ^{gain enterprise acceptance as a result of this trend.}

Up first is a new MacBook Pro, with a buttonless trackpad, full glass screen (like the iMac), and all ports migrated to one side of the machine. The new buttonless trackpad adopts the iPhone's multitouch functionality, offering a glass surface area that is both 39 percent larger than previous trackpads and allows for gestures involving up to four fingers. The new construction features an LED-backlit display, next-gen Nvidia GeForce 9400M and 9600M graphics with 512MB of GDDR3 RAM (and the ability to run them in ^{Hybrid SLI mode), and a "precision aluminum unibody enclosure" that cuts down on parts costs while offering a much more rigid construction than the current aluminum design. These models start at $1,999 for 15.4" LED-backlit display, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo/3MB L2, 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 memory, both NVIDIA chips, 250GB hard drive, and slot-loading SuperDrive. The $2,599 model has 4GB of RAM, 512MB of video RAM, and a 2.53GHz CPU.}

4 – T-Mobile sold out its first 1.5 million pre-orders of HTC's G1 phone, the first handset based on the Google Android Java/Linux stack, says The Motley Fool. The wireless carrier also plans to have several million handsets available for the Oct. 22 retail launch, says the story. As pre-orders escalated, T-Mobile quickly tripled its shipment of approximately a half a million handsets, but the additional million G1s were sold out as well, says the story by Anders Bylund. By comparison, the story notes that at Apple's iPhone 3G launch, the company expected it would sell 10 million of the phones this year. Still, the high interest in G1 represents "a heck of a rush for an unproven software concept on never-before-seen hardware," writes Bylund.

As reported at the ^{G1 launch in late September, the T-Mobile G1 runs Linux and Android on an unidentified processor. It offers 1GB of flash, a 3.2-inch touchscreen haptic display, a slide out QWERTY keyboard, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS. T-Mobile says it has 100 million customers in Europe, but only about 30 million in the U.S.}

The T-Mobile G1 is available now for pre-order for T-Mobile customers, and will ship in the U.S. on Oct. 22 for $180 with a two-year voice and data agreement, says T-Mobile. The G1 will then ship in the UK in November, and in the rest of Europe in the first quarter of 2009. More information may be found ^{here. The Motley Fool story should be found here.}

5 - YouTube now includes full-length CBS shows - The popular video-sharing portal YouTube has began running full length TV shows from CBS' archives in attempts to build revenue from advertising, according to a ^{report on Friday. Typically, a YouTube video is no longer than 10 minutes, but the CBS agreement sees episodes that occupy normal TV-length episodes that last between 20 to 48 minutes each. Among the shows offered will be episodes of Star Trek, Young and the Restless and Beverly Hills 90210.}

As part of the deal, CBS would sell ads for the streamed episodes, with the two companies sharing the resulting revenue, although no specific financial terms were announced. YouTube has previously experimented with full-length shows for the last few months with Time Warner Inc's HBO and CBS' Showtime TV shows.

Video-hosting rival <sup>Hulu already streams TV shows, although it focuses chiefly on newer episodes and offers a larger selection from content providers that include FOX, NBC Universal, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros. and others.

The move means anyone with a YouTube application on their devices, including iPhone owners, can access at least a partial selection of full-length TV shows without having to download or pay for the content.</sup>

6 - Sharp's Aquos LCD TV with Blu-ray recorder inside - Sharp will make the first LCD TV with a Blu-ray Disc recorder built in.

The catch? They're only available in Japan for now, but Sharp is planning to sell it in the U.S. by the end of the year, according to ^{PC World.. Whether it would find success stateside is a little murkier. While competitor Panasonic has already said it's bringing Blu-ray recorders to the U.S. by the first half of 2009, some other CE manufacturers aren't so sure.}

Sony, the most high-profile backer of the Blu-ray format, has no immediate plans to bring Blu-ray recorders here. The general lack of interest in DVD recorders (compared with interest in DVD players) thus far, doesn't bode well for widespread interest in recording devices for a format that still ^{hasn't totally caught on with average consumers.}

Plus, it's unclear what you'd actually be able to do with a Blu-ray recorder here, as ^{studios tend to be sensitive about how consumers manipulate and use their content.}

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10066773-1.html?tag=mncol;title

- Viewer Questions (*Troubleshooting, New Tech, Etc.)

Are there any alternatives to LimeWire for P2P file sharing? (Gnutella ‘/nʊˈtɛlə/’ and BitTorrent)

“Mention P2P fire sharing risks (spyware, viruses, etc…) Therefore I do not recommend any P2P file sharing due to these risks.”

This application has been developed by the open source community to avoid the threat of potential legal action faced by ^{LimeWire, from which it has been forked, and to maintain the freedom that P2P users have come to expect (right or wrong), in the sharing of copyrighted material. Some reviewers have compared FrostWire to the old Napster, the controversial file-sharing pioneer.}

(Auto Tech, Alt. Fuel, Environment, Hacking, High Tech, etc…)

1 – New Electric Car Leaves the Tesla Roadster in its Dust - If you’re dreaming of going electric, but also want to go fast, Venturi has designed a new all-electric roadster capable of reaching 160 mph, leaving the ^{Tesla Roadster in the dust.} 

Introduced at the Paris Motor Show, the ^{Volage uses Michelin’s Active Wheel technology, encasing two electric motors (one for propulsion, one for suspension) and brakes within each wheel.  Putting all the power in the wheels allows for the slim, lightweight, carbon-fiber frame and greater vehicle control.  All this amounts to extra speed.}    

2 – Fuel Cells Powered by Hydrogen from Sewage - Researchers at the Oregon State University College of Engineering have discovered ^{an efficient way to produce hydrogen from different types of biowaste, including municipal sewage.} 

“In these systems, ^{naturally occurring microorganisms from sewage attach to the surface of an anode and degrade the waste in the sewage, in a device that is something like a battery. The waste decomposes, eventually leaving protons that migrate to the cathode, combine with electrons and generate hydrogen.”} 

3 - An End to Paralysis with Artificial Brain-to-Muscle Connectors - Using a computerized connector between the brain and muscles in the body, scientists have been able to restore movement to paralyzed limbs. A group of neuroscientists report in Nature today that they used a brain-computer interface to join the motor cortex of an ape to the muscles in its wrist. After scientists paralyzed the ape's arm temporarily, it was still able to make its wrist move my sending electrical impulses directly from its brain to the muscles, bypassing the damaged nerves in between. The study has profound implications for people whose nerves have been severed or damaged, leaving them paralyzed.

BELLINGHAM -- Investigators believe an electrical problem sparked a fire at Western Washington University that destroyed five computer servers, shut down a college's Web sites and caused about $750,000 in damage.

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