Alpha 680 Android netbook spotted, still unavailable

While all the other kids on the block are letting themselves become duly distracted by Google Chrome OS, at least Skytone is still out there in the trenches, fighting to get its Android-powered Alpha 680 netbook to market. Initially it looked like this one would be making the scene sometime this summer, and although this has not come to pass, the OEM (Airis) is still strutting it in front of vendors and threatening us with an eventual release. According to Le Journal du Geek, who managed to get its hands on one and snap plenty of pics, the device is still “not really stable.” (Take your time, guys…) Hit that read link for plenty of glamor shots of the this stark white, 7-inch resistive touchscreen wonder — you’ll be glad you did.

Filed under: Laptops

Alpha 680 Android netbook spotted, still unavailable originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alpha 680 Android netbook spotted, still unavailable

While all the other kids on the block are letting themselves become duly distracted by Google Chrome OS, at least Skytone is still out there in the trenches, fighting to get its Android-powered Alpha 680 netbook to market. Initially it looked like this one would be making the scene sometime this summer, and although this has not come to pass, the OEM (Airis) is still strutting it in front of vendors and threatening us with an eventual release. According to Le Journal du Geek, who managed to get its hands on one and snap plenty of pics, the device is still “not really stable.” (Take your time, guys…) Hit that read link for plenty of glamor shots of the this stark white, 7-inch resistive touchscreen wonder — you’ll be glad you did.

Filed under: Laptops

Alpha 680 Android netbook spotted, still unavailable originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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It’s a Terrible Day to Be a Pirate (Bay) [The Pirate Bay]

It’s bad enough that the Pirate Bay’s prospective buyers are world-class sketchballs—today, we find out that the Pirate Bay’s business dealings are even shadier. Oh, and Google’s culling TBP from their results Things: they don’t look so good.

Given their earnest public defense of filesharing and aggressive posturing, I always assumed the Pirate Bay was just a couple of fellas, who happened to start a popular website, happened to get in trouble for it, and happened to become icons for a vocal, if misguided, movement against copyright. This, it turns out, is not the case: The real Pirate Bay is a shadowy property that’s been passed from mysterious shell corporation to mysterious shell corporation, and seems awfully hard to get a read on, much less buy, according to Nate Anderson at Ars:

GGF wants to buy The Pirate Bay site from a mysterious company called Reservella, based in the Seychelles islands. Reservella has no known contact information, no website, and the company that helped it register in the Seychelles refuses to provide any contact information. The Pirate Bay’s current admins claim to Ars that they don’t even know who’s behind the company. That’s odd enough, but they also tell Ars that Reservella acquired the company from another unnamed company, who took it over in 2006 after the Swedish government seized some Pirate Bay servers.

The Bay’s founders have “absolutely no connection” to Reservella, a “fact” which morphs this whole fiasco from a weird situation into an incomprehensible one.

On top of it all, Google has honored a DMCA complaint filed by a porn company called Evasive Angel, which alleges the Pirate Bay is hosting links to unauthorized content including Horny Black Mothers 8 and Big Butt Latin Maids 2. (No, really, it’s in the filing.) Not that delisting the site from Google will stop anyone from going there, but still. UPDATE: The listings are back, and Google says the delisting was an error.

In short, the future doesn’t look so great for anyone involved, be it the company that (still) wants to buy the Bay, the founders of the site, or people who use it regularly. Actually, no, scratch that: Everyone is screwed. [Ars Technica, BoingBoing Gadgets]

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Bangladeshi Farmer Slaughters 83,000 Rats, and All He Got Was a Crappy 14-Inch TV [TV]

Bangladesh has a disgusting rat problem: It imports 3 million tons of food a year, and rats destroy 1.5-2 million tons of it. So the government made killing rats a legit sport, with prizes.

The king of rat genociders was Mokhairul Islam who killed 83,450 over nine months on his farm. Impressive, when you consider second place took out fewer than half of that, only 37,450 of the bastards. For his efforts, Mokhairul received a measly 14-inch color TV. Which is apparently all the thanks he needed, since he’s sworn to keep killing them. But seriously, the guy deserves at least a Vizio plasma or something.

Oh I forgot the really gross part—to prove that he’d really murdered that many rodents to collect his TV, he kept the rats’ tails. That means he had a room somewhere filled with 80,000 rotting rats’ tails. Ewwwwwwww. [Telegraph]

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Concept Watch Actually Projects the Time Onto Your Wrist…With Lasers [Design]

Sure, some of us wear the time on our wrist, but this concept watch quite literally puts the time on your wrist.

Designed by Andy Kurovets, this concept uses a laser mounted inside the wrist band and angled over the flat part of the wrist to reveal digital time. Very slick, undeniably futuristic. [Yanko Design]

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Gokivo Drops Monthly Rate to $5/Month [IPhone Apps]

Possibly in response to the amazingly low price of Fullpower’s MotionX GPS (stay tuned for full review), Networks In Motion has reduced the monthly rate of its Gokivo iPhone app to $4.99. [iTunes Link]

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Elite Military Hacker Squad Would Stop Wars With Bits, Not Bombs [Cybersecurity]

Efforts to drag our military’s cybersecurity into the 21st century are well underway, but John Arquilla, professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, wants more: A preemptive international hacker force, which would cripple enemies before they even become a problem.

Existing plans for a new online defense strategy don’t seem particularly bad, except for that first part: defense plans. The professor’s idea is to deploy a much more proactive attack strategy:

[Arquilla would] like the US military’s coders to team up with network specialists abroad to form a global geek squad. Together, they could launch preemptive online strikes to head off real-world battles.

Armies (even guerrilla armies) are so dependent on digital communications these days that a well-placed network hit could hobble their forces. Do these cyberattacks right-and openly-and the belligerents will think twice before starting trouble. Arquilla calls his plan “a nonlethal way to deter lethal conflict.”

The strategy makes the assumption that digital communications are completely vital to enemies big and small, which is generally true, and putting cyberwar directly before more traditional measures like sanctions could have a huge effect: If guerrilla groups can’t organize, they won’t be too effective; if governments can’t use their vital defense networks, they’re basically toothless. Wired’s posted a few scenarios of how this could actually out, and even if they sound a little naive—they do—they’re satisfying cinematic, for whatever that’s worth. [Wired]

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