rights

As expected, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a settlement with the wireless industry over a controversial law that would have required city retailers to inform customers about the possible dangers of cell phone radiation.

By a 10-to-1 vote, the Board agreed to a permanent injunction against the "Right to Know" ordinance and promised that it will refrain from further litigation. In return, the CTIA, the wireless industry's trade association, will waive any claims to attorney's fees. Supervisor John Avalos was the lone dissenting vote.

Ellie Marks, the director of the California Brain Tumor … Read more

Subscribe to Crave:

iTunes (HD) | iTunes (SD) | iTunes (HQ)

RSS (HD) | RSS (SD) | RSS (HQ)

A Belgian artist has invented a memory foam chair that expands when heated up. Plus, we take a look at a $1,500 solar-powered scooter and try on the Predator Helmet. All that and more on this week's super-futuristic episode of Crave. … Read more

The Free Software Foundation, never a friend to digital rights management, has taken issue with its arrival in the Web standards world.

In a letter from the FSF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, and other allied groups yesterday, the group called on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to keep DRM out of the standards it defines.

"We write to implore the World Wide Web Consortium and its member organizations to reject the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) proposal," the groups said. "DRM restricts the public's freedom, even beyond what overzealous copyright law requires, to the perceived … Read more

If I had a dime for every time someone writes "I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords," I'd have enough money to bribe my future robot master into sparing me from the meatsack ghettos.

Our dystopian robot future is always good grist for lame jokes. Unless it might actually happen.

Human Rights Watch seems very serious about a new campaign it has launched against what it calls "killer robots." … Read more

A San Francisco Board of Supervisors committee on Thursday voted unanimously to approve a watered-down settlement with the wireless industry over legislation that required cell phone retailers to distribute radiation warning materials.

As currently written, the settlement calls for San Francisco to agree to a permanent injunction against the "Right to Know" ordinance and promise that it will refrain from further litigation. In return, the CTIA, the wireless industry's trade association, will waive any claims to attorney's fees.

The proposed settlement now advances to the full board for consideration at its May 7 meeting. If approved … Read more

If you haven't found a way to wrangle all those little notes stuck to your monitor, RightNote Portable offers a solution that lets you add, organize, and search notes with nearly any type of information and keep them on your computer. While it certainly does more than the typical sticky note, it's also much more complicated than jotting down a note and placing it on your PC or workstation.

Initially, RightNote opens with a very busy interface packed with information about the program. It not only tells you what the product can do, but it also demonstrates the &… Read more

The App Store has created a number of interesting crossover games in the last few years. From branded iOS games to crossovers between Angry Birds and various films, existing brands are seeing the wisdom of investing in fun, short spurts of gaming on the iPad or iPhone to reach their audience. The Price is Right Slots is just such a game, marrying the compulsive game play of other gambling and coin-operated games with the classic price-guessing games and imagery of the long running TV show.

This game is similar to many others in the niche. After installation, you can choose … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week, readers wrote in with questions on how to best manage software updates for many computers on a network, the options for using the right-click in OS X, and concerns about the feasibility of corrupting a system through apparently normal use. I welcome views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Managing software updates for many computers on a network MacFixIt reader Beth asks:

Mozilla Firefox (download for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, or the Portable App) didn't invent tabbed browsing, but they sure as heck perfected it, or at least the extended network of extensions developers did. If Firefox doesn't include a tabbed-browsing feature you want, there's a good chance you can find one among its numerous add-ons.

Personally, I'm a tab glutton. I might be using a Windows XP box from 2004, but that doesn't stop me from running four Firefox windows with 10-15 tabs open in each. Each window usually relates to a specific task, project, or … Read more