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WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealanders eager to be the first in the world to buy Apple's new-generation iPhone have began queuing up in freezing temperatures, two days before its release, local media reported on Wednesday.

o2binbuzios writes "I have two pre-teen boys who are avid readers, and I am going through my mental catalog for great sci-fi & fantasy books for them. What are some of the classics (and maybe new additions to the classics) that would be great for them to read? I am asking because some of the 'straight-up' classics I remember actually seem kind of dark & cynical for younger readers. Starship Troopers and some of the other Heinlein are definitely darker and more political than I remember... Foundation Trilogy and psycho-history maybe too dry. Road-trip reading season is upon us — what are the good reads for the kids in the back seat?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Watch clips of Sadville on virtual YouTube TV It starts with a hug, then some petting on top of colored balls and before you know it your down at some 3D sex club wielding a dildo.…

LoCo About Ubuntu!: "In a recent article published on CodingExperiments.com, it was noticed that the search term 'Ubuntu' was coming closer to passing the term 'Linux' on Google’s search engine..."

i4u writes in to let us know that Kodak has announced the world's first 50 million pixel CCD image sensor for professional photography (i.e., for medium-format cameras). Engineering-grade devices of the CCD, the KAF-50100, are currently available. Kodak plans to enter volume production in Q4 2008. "At 50 megapixels, the sensor captures digital images with unprecedented resolution and detail. For instance, with a 50 megapixel camera, in an aerial photo of a field 1.5 miles [about 2.5 km] across, you could detect an object about the size of a small notebook computer (1 foot by 1 foot)." Here's CNet's Crave blog with a few more technical details.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Now playing - Acronym Wars: The Convergence Brutality Clashing acronym disarray has hit the networking scene with Brocade's recent claim that vendors won't rally 'round Cisco's version of data center Ethernet.…

Reality hardware needed In those archaic days before tennis adopted the Hawkeye ball tracking system, the TV audience could have some fun with close line calls. Following a controversial shot, we'd receive a number of slow-motion replays from various angles and get to make up our own minds as to whether or not the lines person was a dolt. But, in the US at least, NBC has sucked away that precious privilege.…

Multiple DNS implementations vulnerable to cache poisoning

Microsoft Updates for Multiple Vulnerabilities

Open Source Initiative: "In a free market, over time, competition in the production of a commodity product will eliminate all profits..."

Hugh Pickens writes "As companies collect, use, and disseminate data regarding online users, there is concern that tracking individuals' Internet activity and gathering information from online users violates their expectations of privacy. The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday to look at the policy issues, and the hottest topic will be proposed systems by which ISPs can watch users and sell information about their surfing habits to advertising companies. The Center for Democracy and Technology has issued a report suggesting that these systems may violate federal law (PDF). 'Advertising per se is not the evil here,' says Leslie Harris from CDT. 'It's the collection of individuals' information, usually without their knowledge, always without their consent, creation of profiles and the complete inability of people to make choices about that.' On the other side NebuAd, the most active ad-targeting company, says its profiles are interest-based, and not personally identifiable. 'We have designed our entire company to make sure that we stay on the opt-out side of those laws and policies,' says NebuAd CEO Robert Dykes. Charter Communications announced last month that it would suspend a trial of NebuAd due to customer concerns about privacy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mikesd81 recommends an AP piece covering a lot of examples of the ways free speech and other rights don't exist on the private Web. One case featured was that of Dutch photographer Maarten Dors, who had this picture deleted by flickr. Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. While Dors eventually got the photo restored, after the second time it was deleted, the case highlights the consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. "Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion. Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines. First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child." Reason.com has some more analysis on the issues brought up by the AP story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NEW YORK (Billboard) - "Guitar Hero" won't be the only music videogame to launch its sequel in time for the holidays.

Computer Business Review: "Some interesting comments stem from Glacier Computer, a designer of rugged industrial PC-compatible devices, which has just announced shipment of the Everest industrial computer with two options for the Linux operating system..."

arbitraryaardvark sends in a story a couple of weeks back in Yahoo's Ecogeek blog, reporting that Mercedes will phase out petroleum-powered cars by 2015 (mirror), and notes: "Story is unconfirmed but well sourced." "In less than 7 years, Mercedes-Benz plans to ditch petroleum-powered vehicles from its lineup. Focusing on electric, fuel cell, and biofuels, the company is revving up research in alternative fuel sources and efficiency."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

wxRemind is a wxPython-based front/back-end for Remind, a powerful calendar and alarm application. The display features a calendar and daily event list suitable for visualizing your schedule at a glance. Dates and associated events can be quickly selected either with the mouse or cursor keys, and dates in the calendar are color coded to reflect the total duration of scheduled events. wxRemind integrates with an external editor of your choice to make editing of reminder files more efficient, provides hotkeys to quickly access the most commonly used options, and allows popup, sound, and/or spoken alarms. License: GNU General Public License (GPL) Changes: A bug in automatic configuration in which integers were erroneously converted to strings has been fixed.

GAMGI (General Atomistic Modelling Graphic Interface) is a program to build, view, and analyze atomic strucures such as molecules, crystals, glasses, liquids, etc. It aims to be useful for: the scientific community working in Atomistic Modelling that needs a graphic interface to build input data and to view and analyse output data, calculated with Ab-Initio and Molecular Mechanics programs; the scientific community at large studying chemistry, physics, materials science, geology, etc., that needs a graphic interface to view and analyse atomic structural information and to prepare images for presentations in classes and seminars; teaching chemistry and physics in secondary schools and universities; science promotion in schools, exhibitions and science museums. License: GNU General Public License (GPL) Changes: This release adds mass data for most important isotopes, including isotope abundance and half-life (Wikipedia). It adds radius data including natural half-distances, effective and calculated atomic radius, effective and calculated (2008) covalent radius, and Van der Waals radius (WebElements). It adds the widely used Shannon ionic radius, depending on valence and coordination (Acta Cryst. paper). Option menus have been cleaned up and replaced by combo boxes in Cell->Link, Cell->Create, and Cell->Modify. New screenshots have been added. There is improved Help information for exported type formats, Atom->Create, and Atom->Modify.

CorneliOS is an easy-to-use and cross-browser "Web Desktop Environment", "Web Operating System", or "Web Office" that comes with a set of cool applications. It includes a Content Management System (CMS) so that you can easily set up and manage your own website as well as a Database Management System that allows you to rapidly build any kind of database application. License: GNU General Public License (GPL) Changes: This is a maintenance release that features a new SQL application launcher with enhanced security, an object parser with built-in JavaScript support, several critial fixes (a render engine bug that could corrupt background images, a parser problem that corrupted textarea contents, and an io.pl bug that could overwrite existing images during upload), and an updated file system structure (external POD files were replaced by internal module POD information).

ISPConfig is an ISP management and hosting control panel. It manages your Web server, email server, BIND DNS, proftpd + vsftpd FTP server, MySQL databases, SpamAssassin, and disk quotas with an easy to use Web interface for administrators, resellers, and clients. License: BSD License (revised) Changes: This release adds support for CentOS 5.2 and OpenSuSE 11.0. A new interface for cron jobs and support for mod_python have been added. Several minor bugs were fixed.

GromJS is server-side JavaScript implementation of Mozilla's SpiderMonkey interpreter. It provides Web designers and programmers with the ability to use JavaScript object-based code for creating dynamic pages and Web scripts and to interact with objects on the Web server. For example, it can be used to manipulate files and directories, handle client- sent data and databases, and to create content management systems. It includes support for files, SQLite3 databases, session variables, hash arrays, HTTP file-upload, cookies, pipes, and many other. It currently supports Linux and FreeBSD. License: Mozilla Public License (MPL) Changes: This release includes an easier installation procedure for the GromJS server-side JavaScript interpreter, a number of new features/enhancements, and additions to the documentation.