Over the summer, navigation device maker TomTom announced plans to buy Tele Atlas, one of the two leading providers of mapping data. Earlier this month, Nokia announced plans to buy Navteq, the other major provider. That resulted in immediate speculation about how Garmin (TomTom's main competitor) would respond. Apparently, the answer is with lots and lots of money. Garmin has now put in an unsolicited bid of $3.3 billion for Tele Atlas, hoping to outbid its rival by 15%. So, at this point, a game of musical chairs begins, with Nokia, Garmin and TomTom fighting it out over the two mapping data providers. Since both TomTom and Garmin seem to feel that they need to have Tele Atlas, don't be surprised to see the price keep going up.

Online Voting writes "The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has published new voting systems testing and certification standards for 190 days of public comment. For all the critics of electronic voting, this is your opportunity to improve the process. This will be the second version of the federal voting system standards (the first version is the VVSG 05). To learn more about these Voluntary Voting System Standards see this FAQ."

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By now it should be clear that politicians just can't resist passing new legislation that they can use to claim they're "protecting the children" -- even when those laws quite often tend to be unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. While state legislatures keep on passing unconstitutional bans on video game sales to children (and keep getting smacked down by the courts), at the federal level, Congress basically just keeps trying to rewrite laws that get trashed by the courts, hoping that eventually, it will find that magic formula that's allowed. As you may recall, the worst parts of the Communications Decency Act got thrown out in court about a decade ago, only to be followed up by similar, but slightly different laws. There was the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) which was smacked down earlier this year.

The Supreme Court is apparently hearing a case about another, similar, but more narrowly focused law, called the Child Pornography Prevention Act -- and even though a lower court found the law unconstitutional, some feel that the Supreme Court's early questioning suggests it might not have a huge problem with the law. Of course, it sounds like they were helped along by the lawyer making the case against the law. When the justices asked him to describe a situation where an innocent person would be harmed by the law, he was unable to do so. The key issue is whether or not advertising that you have child pornography is still a crime -- even if what you have isn't actually pornographic, and apparently many of the justices don't have a problem with that being illegal. Of course, the lines are a little blurred by the details of this particular case, where the guy in question did, in fact, have child pornography -- it's just that it happened to be different child pornography than what he had offered. So while there is no question over his guilt on possession of child porn, there is the question of whether or not he's guilty of advertising it -- even though what he advertised didn't exist. Either way, it sounds like maybe, just maybe, Congress has finally constructed a statue for protecting children that is narrowly defined enough to remain constitutional.

An anonymous reader writes "A recent unfortunate casualty of anti-terrorism laws is the home chemistry set. Once deemed the gift that saved Christmas, most Slashdotters probably remember early childhood experimentation with one of the many pre-packaged chemistry sets that were on the market. Unfortunately the FBI has decided that home chemistry sets are a threat to national security and they are rapidly disappearing from the market entirely. Those that remain are shallow boring versions of the old kits."

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mattnyc99 writes "PopularMechanics.com takes a peek into the growing world of high-tech piracy on the open seas, which the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard are looking to cut off by investing in a new fleet of superfast, gun-mounted unmanned surface vessels (USVs). From the article: "The Interceptor is available now. But the USV market is just getting started: Two months ago, British defense firm Qinetiq debuted its own robotic vessel, the jetski-size Sentry. Among its potential duties is intruder investigation, which could include scouting out unidentified boats, along the lines of the raft that detonated alongside the USS Cole in Yemen, as well as offering a first look at a possible pirate-controlled vessel.""

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There's lots of talk in the news today saying that Google is pretty close on a deal to have Verizon Wireless be the first to offer Google's new wireless bundle of software that many people are referring to as the "GPhone" (which still hasn't officially been announced). This might seem like an odd pairing to some. After all, it seems like the two companies are pretty vehement in disagreeing on some key telecom issues concerning things like 700 MHz spectrum and network neutrality. Besides, Verizon Wireless is infamous for being the US carrier most focused on walled gardens, while a big part of the supposed point of the GPhone is to force more openness into the wireless arena. So why the pairing? It's actually fairly simple. Blame Apple. Verizon Wireless famously turned down the chance to be Apple's partner for the iPhone, claiming that Apple had too many strict rules to make it worthwhile. So how do you fight back against the juggernaut of the iPhone? Yup, with the GPhone. It's got nothing to do with openness, the features the Gphone provides or any of the other disputes. It's all about Google's brand and the fact that it's, perhaps, the one brand on a phone that will attract enough attention to (maybe) come close to the hype surrounding the iPhone.

Malware for OS X is rare, but here's a new trojan that Mac users should be know about:

A malicious Trojan Horse has been found on several pornography web sites, claiming to install a video codec necessary to view free pornographic videos on Macs. A great deal of spam has been posted to many Mac forums, in an attempt to lead users to these sites. When the users arrive on one of the web sites, they see still photos from reputed porn videos, and if they click on the stills, thinking they can view the videos, they arrive on a web page that says the following:

Quicktime Player is unable to play movie file.
Please click here to download new version of codec.

After the page loads, a disk image (.dmg) file automatically downloads to the user’s Mac. If the user has checked Open “Safe” Files After Downloading in Safari’s General preferences (or similar settings in other browsers), the disk image will mount, and the installer package it contains will launch Installer. If not, and the user wishes to install this codec, they double-click the disk image to mount it, then double-click the package file, named install.pkg.

If the user then proceeds with installation, the Trojan horse installs; installation requires an administrator’s password, which grants the Trojan horse full root privileges. No video codec is installed, and if the user returns to the web site, they will simply come to the same page and receive a new download.

Link

theodp writes "Far from a PowerPoint killer, Slate's Paul Boutin finds Google's online presentation tool Preso more like a PowerPoint commercial — a half-baked app that shows how powerful Microsoft's program really is. But if you have your druthers, Boutin suggests ditching both and opting for Apple's Keynote, which helped snag an Oscar for Al Gore and inspired this Dear-PPT-Letter. 'The first hurdle ... You can't use it on a plane. Google Preso only works if you've got a live, high-bandwidth Internet connection. You can save the finished product to an HTML presentation on your laptop, but you can't edit the saved version or upload it back. The Splunkers would need to finalize their presos early in the morning in a rented conference room, where both Wi-Fi and Verizon wireless cards have been known to fail. That would kill the presentation.'"

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We've talked about the importance of "safe harbors" protecting service providers from the actions of users. Too often, companies go after service providers because they're easier to target and because they have more money -- but they're not the ones actually breaking the law, and making them liable for the actions of their users would be an incredible burden on any company that allowed users to do... well... anything. However, a recent ruling has shown one limitation to the section 230 safe harbors found in the CDA: if you're selling illicit phone records that were obtained via pretexting, you are still liable, even if you didn't do the pretexting yourself. In this case, a company called Accusearch offered to sell phone records, but contracted out the actual pretexting work to obtain the phone records. So, when the FTC came calling to fine Accusearch, it claimed that it was protected under section 230. As Eric Goldman explains in the above link, some of the court's reasoning was a little suspect, even if it came to the right conclusion at the end. One key point as to why this is different? This wasn't about "users" generating content that was potentially a problem. This was a company specifically buying and then reselling content -- so it was clearly a part of the process. If, say, a similar service opened up where it was simply bulletin boards where people posted illicitly gained phone records (or the ability to get them), then the company might have retained safe harbor protections.

The Byelorrusian Spamtrap writes "Wired Magazine's made its position clear on the state of play in America's cellular industry, delivering a long, satisfying screed on why all of us should stop complaining and do something about it. 'They own politicians - Sure, it's just phones. In a world where worse things happen all the time amid the muck and despair of human existence, having to pay for premium text is hardly worth worrying about, is it? You can (and should) opt out, and not sign on the dotted line to begin with. But today's cell towers might be tomorrow's Pony Express: they're TV stations, internet access, emergency 911 and news networks all rolled into one. WWAN could well end up supplanting copper sooner than anyone expects: do you want these companies in charge of it?'"

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An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek is reporting that a court in Virginia has issued an injunction against controversial new patent rules that were supposed to go into effect tomorrow. The court granted a motion filed by GlaxoSmithKline, which is suing the U.S. patent office over the issue. Among other things, the new rules would limit the extent to which existing patent applications can be modified. The patent office says the new rules would speed up the patent process, but critics say they hurt inventors."

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Marco says: "Paul Rand left a huge mark on American graphic design thanks to his corporate logo designs you've all probably seen. It was only recently that the UPS logo was redesigned from his original look.

"Here is a 4 minute Quicktime film tributing Paul's work, a delicious animated journey through very familiar shapes and colors as Paul explains graphic design. In short, it looks really great.

"Paul Rand was inducted to the One Show Creative Hall of Fame this week." Link

Mason says:

Bamboo microscopes that cost just $4 are being made in India by a group called Jodo Gyan. They're hoping to supply kids with more hands-on learning, and get away from rote memorization.

Nature has an article about this, with photos of the microscope and of a woman making them.

Link

Jumbled Pile is a volunteer for the Jail Library Group, which provides reading materials to the residents of jails in Dane County, Wisconsin.

Occasionally, he comes across notes and sketches placed between the pages of the books. He scans these and posts them to his Flickr site. Link (Thanks, Seán in Seattle!)

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets we saw a disgusting automatic donut maker, an interview with the writer of Portal, a bungee-strap for your laptop case, another rentable tank, the Asus Eee sub-notebook on sale, new versions of The Secret Life of Machines, a better painter's masking tape, a 900-lumen metal halide flashlight, a calculator belt buckle, and Portal papercraft. Today's also the last day to get in on our latest contest with the prize of one Neuros OSD. (Team bOING bOING has taken second place overall in the Cosmology@Home distributed computing program!)

Dan says: "Here is a great story I found about Arnold Schwarzenegger telling a British journalist that marijuana is not a drug. He was trying to deflect suggestions that he had used drugs in the past by saying weed is 'not a drug. It's a leaf." Then the PR machine began, predictably, to crank into full gear."

Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger's press secretary, said the governor made the comments in a lighthearted context, noting his interviewer was Piers Morgan, one of the judges on "America's Got Talent." Morgan is a former British newspaper editor.

"The governor was doing an interview with the host of 'America's Got Talent,' the newest version of the gong show," McLear said. "I think it's important to keep that quote in the context of the environment where it was said."

Link

gooman writes "The LA Times reports on a proposal to secretly scan suspects' hard drives which is causing unease in a nation with a history of official surveillance. Along with several other European countries, Germany is seeking authority to plant secret Trojan viruses into the computers of suspects that could scan files, photos, diagrams and voice recordings, record every keystroke typed and possibly even turn on webcams and microphones in an attempt to gain knowledge of attacks before they happen."

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