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theodp writes "The Age of Broadband Caps begins Monday, with AT&T imposing a 150 GB cap on DSL subscribers and 250 GB for UVerse users, and keeping the meter running after that. The move comes as AT&T's 16+ million customers are increasingly turning to online video such as Hulu and Netflix on-demand streaming service instead of paying for cable. With AT&T's Man in the White House, some fear there's a 'digital dirt road' in America's future. Already, the enforcement of data caps in Canada has prompted Netflix to default to lower-quality streaming video to shield its users from overage fees."

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Developer Jon Nordby has posted a video demo of the on-screen keyboard Maliit — intended "to be the input method project for MeeGo and other GNU/Linux-based embedded/mobile platforms" — working on a tablet running Gnome 3 under Fedora. Nordby mentions that Fedora packages are in the works for those who'd like to try it out. The keyboard looks impressively smooth and flexible (including language-specific character sets); I only wish it had the smooth-swiping predictive ability of keyboards like Swype.

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With the acquisition of Fig Card PayPal is laying down a marker that the pioneer in disruptive payment won’t be left behind in the coming e-wallet revolution.

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HizookRobotics writes "German Aerospace Center (DLR) designed "Rollin' Justin" to fix satellites in space. But robotics work isn't all work and no play ... In the past, DLR engineers had Justin 'dancing like in Pulp Fiction.' More recently, in work to be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in two weeks, DLR engineers demonstrated whole-body real-time control, allowing Justin to catch two balls at once, or prepare you a cup of coffee."

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Zing Toys sent us several boxes of its newest office weapons, so we asked the children of various Wired employees to test them.

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The voice acting is great, gameplay is fun and maybe the trash planet Hutta doesn't make for the most impressive starting area, but there are few complaints beyond game-balance tweaks. A hands-on look at the highly anticipated sci-fi game.

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gabbo529 writes "Like it has done previously with earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis, a NASA satellite has captured a devastating natural disaster from a space satellite. An image acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) from NASA's Aqua satellite on April 28, distinctly shows three tornado tracks in Tuscaloosa, Ala." For those not following the news, a cluster of tornadoes and close-enough storms earlier this week caused the death of hundreds across several US states.

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angry tapir writes "Yet another problem has cropped up preventing some Windows Phone 7 users from getting two software updates, adding a new chapter to the update saga that started in February."

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An anonymous reader writes "Military and police marksmen could see their rifle sights catch up with the 21st century with a fiber-optic laser-based sensor system that automatically corrects for even tiny barrel disruptions. Factors such as heat generated by previously fired shots, to a simple bump against the ground can affect the trueness a rifle barrel. The new system precisely measures the deflection of the barrel relative to the sight and then electronically makes the necessary corrections. With modern high-caliber rifles boasting ranges of up to two miles, even very small barrel disruptions can cause a shooter to miss by a wide margin."

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itwbennett writes "Google and Oracle each submitted proposals on Friday to reduce the number of claims in their Java patent infringement lawsuit, which could help bring the case to a speedier conclusion. Earlier this month, lawyers for the two companies gave Judge William Alsup of the US District Court in San Francisco a crash course in Java to prepare him for a claim construction conference."

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April 2011

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