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AT&T goes live with Encrypted Mobile Voice, kills your dreams of breaking into Pelosi’s social circle

AT&T told us back in July that it was fixing to launch the first carrier-provided two factor encryption service, and it seems that today’s the day. The day it goes live, we mean. At any rate, the company’s Encrypted Mobile Voice service is reportedly active, and it’s already providing “high-level security features for calls on the AT&T wireless network.” Of course, none of this fancy security is meant for simpletons like us — instead, it’s targeting government agencies, law enforcement organizations, financial services institutions and international businesses. We’re told that the tech combines KoolSpan’s TrustChip and SRA International’s One Vault Voice, with the former being a microSD card and the latter being a software layer. Currently, it only plays nice with BlackBerry and Windows Phones, but until we see Biden bust out a Bravo , we’ll assume the lack of Android support isn’t “a big flipping deal.” Continue reading AT&T goes live with Encrypted Mobile Voice, kills your dreams of breaking into Pelosi’s social circle AT&T goes live with Encrypted Mobile Voice, kills your dreams of breaking into Pelosi’s social circle originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 09:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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How bad does your party have to be if you think it will take pro-pot legislation to get your voters to turn out ? Democratic strategists are studying a California marijuana-legalization initiative to see if similar ballot measures could energize young, liberal voters in swing states for the 2012 presidential election. Some pollsters and party officials say Democratic candidates in California are benefiting from a surge in enthusiasm among young voters eager to back Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in certain quantities and permit local governments to regulate and tax it. Party strategists and marijuana-legalization advocates are discussing whether to push for similar ballot questions in 2012 in Colorado and Nevada—both expected to be crucial to President Barack Obama’s re-election—and Washington state, which will have races for governor and seats in both houses of Congress. I guess it doesn’t matter to Democrats that possession and use of pot is still a federal crime no matter what the states do.

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LifeEdited: What We Can Learn From Camping Equipment

TreeHugger founder Graham Hill is trying to radically reduce his footprint and live happily with less space, less stuff and less waste on less money, but with more design. He calls it “LifeEdited.” At TreeHugger we are going to go seriously back to first principles, looking at the design and furnishing of his 420 square foot apartment. There is a lot to learn from camping equipment. Most kitchen stoves weigh in at a couple of hundred pounds of steel and take up 5 square feet of space, or over 1% of Graham’s apartment. Yet Warren has shown us

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Does Weekly Trash Collection Discourage Recycling?

Image credit: Net_Efekt , used under Creative Commons license . The new Conservative-lead coalition in Britain may have won considerable green kudos by committing to 10% CO2 cuts across government activity in just one year , but they should by no means be confused with the Green Party. From getting grouchy over pay-as-you… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Displax Overlay Multitouch turns your LCD or plasma into a touchscreen, demands a pretty penny

Remember when Displax teased us earlier in the year with a polymer film that could take any conventional LCD, plasma or RPTV and turn it into a touchscreen? Yeah, well now that very technology is shipping to Average Joes and Janes like yourself your good pal Jim. Starting nowish, the outfit’s customizable Overlay Multitouch will be heading out to screens ranging from 32- to 103-inches in size in order to add multitouch capabilities to a screen that previously hated even the thought of being groped. Of course, with a starting tag of €1,300 ($1,805), we get the impression that most of the orders (at least initially) will be coming from corporations looking to jazz up their boardrooms. In related news, the company is also debuting a 42-inch Windows 7-based multitouch table that can detect up to four independent touches at once. The Oqtopus uses a specific kind of optical technology that allows bare fingers, styluses and even gloved hands to operate it, but with a starting price of €4,500 ($6,250), we’re guessing your own personal Santa is already signaling “no.” Gallery: Displax Oqtopus and Overlay Multitouch Displax Overlay Multitouch turns your LCD or plasma into a touchscreen, demands a pretty penny originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 09:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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MRC’s Worst of the Week: Media Fulfilling Their Role in Dems 2010 Playbook

If Democrats are going to stem their losses, CBS’s Jeff Greenfield opined on Monday’s Evening News , they need to “convince the voters that this election is a choice” and “Republicans are just too extreme.” Greenfield’s probably right about this strategy being Democrats’ best hope — and his fellow reporters are already hard at work fulfilling their role in painting Republicans as “extreme.” On Monday’s Good Morning America , Jonathan Karl characterized as astonishing how “Alaska’s Joe Miller talked about rolling back the power of the federal government further than Republicans have talked about for more than 70 years.” Even more jaw-dropping to ABC: “Miller and other Tea Party candidates also favor eliminating the Department of Education.” How is that more radical than Democrats’ takeover of private-sector health care? The next morning, NBC’s Today dropped any pretense of neutrality , casting Republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino as an “angry candidate” at the “heart of one of the nastiest races in New York history.” Co-host Matt Lauer accused the Tea Party-backed Paladino of engaging in “nasty campaigning,” then challenged: “How can you practice that gutter politics for a long period of time and then all of a sudden say, ‘That’s not me anymore?’” But 24 hours later, Lauer showed no such contempt in an interview with DNC Chairman Tim Kaine. “Even with a high turnout, Republicans hold a 13-point lead over Democrats,” Lauer fretted, “so how do Democrats chip away at those numbers in the next four weeks?” Even as journalists generously dispensed such in-kind contributions to liberals, on Tuesday’s CBS Evening News Nancy Cordes saw a scandal in how outside groups favoring Republicans are raising five times more than groups favoring Democrats. “Outside groups,” a horrified Cordes asserted without offering any evidence, “are often even less constrained by facts than the candidates they support.” The next morning on CBS’s The Early Show , co-host Harry Smith rued that this spending on behalf of Republicans “literally takes these elections out of the hands of the voters.” Talk about Bizarro World: It’s a perpetually biased media that unfairly favors Democrats more than Republicans; whose facts can’t be trusted; and who attempt to take elections “out of the hands of the voters.” But journalists never see a scandal in their own bias. They just want to shut down everybody else.

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Western Digital debuts My Book Live NAS / media streamer, revamped My Photos app

The My Book Live definitely doesn’t mark Western Digital’s first foray into the world of connected storage , but the devil’s in the details on this one. The company’s newly released network drive falls into the budget-friendly My Book line, but promises access to files at up 100Mbps, or triple the speed of standard USB 2.0 units. Additionally, Apple Time Machine support comes baked in from the factory, and there’s also an integrated DLNA-compatible media server that can stream photos, videos and audio through any number of devices (WD TV Live Plus HD, Xbox 360, your Blu-ray player, a PlayStation 3, etc.). It’ll also double (triple?) as an iTunes music server, and when paired with the company’s refreshed WD Photos app — which is now optimized for iPad and iPhone 4 — users can flip through their photo albums remotely. The My Book Live is now available for $169.99 (1TB) / $229.99 (2TB), and the aforementioned app can be sucked down as we speak from the action-packed App Store. Gallery: Western Digital debuts My Book Live NAS / media streamer, revamped My Photos app Western Digital debuts My Book Live NAS / media streamer, revamped My Photos app originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 09:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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TED Talk: How Ice and Corals Unveil Mysteries About Ancient Climates

Photo via christine zenino (chrissy575) How much of the mystery of past climates can be revealed by prehistoric ice? Rob Dunbar, an expert at reading the sagas told by ancient corals and sediments, is studying the ice of the Antarctic to find out how our climate has changed over the past 12,000 years. His work contributes to how we decide the maximum amounts of greenhouse gasses our atmosphere and earth systems can handle, and what we need to dip down to to stabilize the planet. In a powerful TED talk, Dunbar discusses how of all the problems we… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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That seems to be the mantra of some Democrats running in conservative districts : South Carolina Democratic candidate Rob Miller has apparently adopted Republicans’ “Fire Pelosi” mantra. According to a report by The Associated Press, Miller — who is hoping to oust Rep. Joe Wilson (R) in the South Carolina 2nd district race — said Wednesday that he would not vote to keep Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as Speaker in the 112th Congress. The AP reported that Miller’s comments were in response to a Wilson ad showing side-by-side images of Miller and Pelosi, who has contributed money to the Democrat’s campaign. Now Miller evidently is looking to distance himself from Pelosi, and he told the AP that Washington is broken and blamed leaders for the strife, according to the wire service. This bit of news has ticked off the liberal activists like the guy who runs DailyKos. He linked to the story above with this Tweet: @markos: How many of you gave money to this dumbass, b/c his opponent screamed “you lie” at Obama? Heh.

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It looks like everyone’s taxes are going to go up at the end of the year thanks to Congress’s unwillingness or inability to extend the Bush tax relief laws. So what’s your Congressman’s excuse? Have you asked your Representative what his or her excuse is? Was it any better than these?

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