----- Posted by [105]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 11:32 PM from the i-wish-i-had-this-kind-of-problem dept. [106]Math [107]Roland Piquepaille writes "About a year ago, I told you about how computer scientists from Dartmouth college were investigating digital images. But they're also interested in old paintings authentication, as reports Wired Magazine in [108]The Rembrandt Code. Mathematicians are using high-resolution digital cameras and computers to examine old paintings and evaluate their authenticity. Even the New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is asking them to discover which of the 42 paintings it owns and that were once believed to be Rembrandts are really authentic. The Wired article is pretty entertaining, but this overview contains [109]more details, pictures and references about this authentication process." ----- Posted by [115]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 09:48 PM from the i-seem-to-have-misplaced-this-small-item dept. [116]Privacy An anonymous reader writes "[117]Marriott International has admitted that it is missing backup computer tapes containing credit card account information and [118]the Social Security numbers of about 206,000 time-share owners and customers, as well as employees of the company." From the Washington Post story: "Officials at Marriott Vacation Club International said it is not clear whether the tapes, missing since mid-November, were stolen from the company's Orlando headquarters or whether they were simply lost. An internal investigation produced no clear answer. The company notified the Secret Service over the past two weeks, and has also told credit card companies and other financial institutions about the loss of the tapes." ----- Posted by [123]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 07:49 PM from the goopera dept. [124]Google [125]sayanchak writes "Reuters reports that Opera Software has agreed that [126]Google will be the default partner for its mobile Internet browsers. Google will be the default search partner for the mobile browsers, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini." From the article: "Oslo-based Opera Software is a tiny competitor of Microsoft in the Internet browser market, but the fast-growing part of its business is in browsers for mobile phones and other mobile electronic devices." ----- Posted by [130]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 05:41 PM from the how-do-you-sign-up-to-be-a-poster-boy dept. [131]Businesses An anonymous reader writes "Wired has [132]a profile of Jason Calacanis, the former Dot-Com bubble rider, and now the mind behind the sale of Weblogs, Inc. to AOL." From the article: "Calacanis and Alvey wanted to get in on the action, but the scale and limitations of blogs bugged them. 'We decided that one blog, like Rafat's, could make tens of thousands of dollars a year,' says Alvey. 'Definitely enough for one person who works 24 hours a day to sustain a business. But how could you get so that you could add more people?' The answer, they decided, was to build a network of blogs." ----- Posted by [137]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 04:39 PM from the cheap-games-probably-look-good-right-now dept. [138]Games [139]cyrus_zuo writes "For anyone looking for something different Game Tunnel presents the 2005 Independent Game of the Year awards. Game Tunnel's list of the [140]Top 10 Independent Games of the Year covers gaming from a different angle, looking at the Independent and the Innovative. The awards also include the best of each genre as well as technical categories. [141]Last year's results are still available." ----- Posted by [148]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 03:44 PM from the digital-elves dept. [149]The Internet An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet is reporting on another [150]blockbuster year for online shopping. Online shopping was up almost 30 percent over last year." From the article: " Clothing was the top seller in terms of dollar amount, at $5.3 billion total, up 42 percent from last year's revenue, the report said. Computer hardware and peripherals showed the most growth, 126 percent, at $4.8 billion. Consumer electronics was the second fastest growing category, garnering $4.8 billion, up 109 percent. People spent $3 billion on books online, up 66 percent, and $2.3 billion on products in the toys/video games category of hardware and software, a drop of 9 percent from last year, the study found. " ----- Posted by [155]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 02:33 PM from the isn't-apple-leaving-a-bad-thing dept. [156]IBM An anonymous reader wrote to mention an IBM article looking back on what the piece calls [157]the best year ever for the Power Architecture. From the article: "While IBM is considered by many to be an 800lb. gorilla, in the microelectronics space, it is actually very small -- last year IBM was way down at number 21 on the iSuppli list of the top 25 semiconductor suppliers worldwide. Now, that isn't necessarily a bad thing: for instance, it means that IBM Semiconductor solutions is small and nimble and competitive -- and this agility (coupled with the fact that we do get to share Research and some other resources with the parts of IBM that are 800lb. gorillas) has led some to predict that the IBM chips division will be named the fastest growing semiconductor supplier of 2005. In fact, there is a very good chance that IBM may regain the coveted #18 spot on iSuppli's list this year!" ----- Posted by [163]CmdrTaco on Sun Jan 01, '06 12:50 PM from the happy-new-years-windows-users dept. [164]Worms An anonymous reader writes "After less than a four days after original [165]mailing list posting there are [166]reports [167]about a new [168]Instant Messaging worm exploiting unpatched [169]Windows Metafile vulnerability. This worm is using MSN to spread, reports Viruslist.com." ----- Posted by [174]CmdrTaco on Sun Jan 01, '06 11:52 AM from the probably-4%-to-much dept. [175]Businesses zlite writes "There's a [176]new wiki that's tracking which of the Fortune 500 have public blogs. So far it appears that less than 20 of them are doing so, and their average share performance badly lags the rest of the F500. Why? [177]This post suggests one reason: it's so risky that companies tend do it only when their traditional corporate messaging isn't working." ----- Posted by [181]CmdrTaco on Sun Jan 01, '06 10:51 AM from the correct-your-watches-immediately dept. [182]Technology [183]Ruff_ilb writes "Because of the discrepency between an ephemeris second (the fraction 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time) and the second of atomic time (the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom), we're left with more than leap years. In order to ensure that the the atomic time and civil stay coordinated, "Civil time is [184]occasionally adjusted by one second increments to ensure that the difference between a uniform time scale defined by atomic clocks does not differ from the Earth's rotational time by more than 0.9 seconds."" And Happy New Years everyone ;) ----- Posted by [188]CmdrTaco on Sun Jan 01, '06 10:00 AM from the i'll-tell-you-why dept. [189]Technology [190]yogikoudou writes "Recent research conducted by Yahoo! and Ipsos reveals that while 12% of surveyed Yahoo users know what RSS is, [191]only 4% of surveyed Internet users use it (PDF) (and know they use it). Podcasting is also reviewed, with the conclusion that 2% of surveyed people use it. The [192]increasing number of blogs should go with an increasing number of syndicated readers, as they are now an important part of the web." I've said it before, I'll say it again- if RSS was called SpeedFeed every user would have to have it. ----- Posted by [197]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 08:37 AM from the year-of-the-turtle dept. [198]The Internet [199]segphault writes "The [200]Chinese government has shut down nearly 600 pornographic web sites, and arrested over 200 people for distributing "obscene" content. The Chinese government has also started performing covert surveillance of mobile phone text messages in order to crack down on banking fraud and prostitution organized and perpetrated with text messages. Ars Technica has the story: 'With more than 100 million Internet users, China has the second largest population of web content consumers after the United States. Although the Chinese government promotes web use for business, education, and government activity, the communist regime has committed its resources to crushing web sites that challenge government authority, or distribute content that the government considers to be detrimental to society'" ----- Posted by [206]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 07:31 AM from the little-green-us dept. [207]Space An anonymous reader wrote to mention a Guardian report on the [208]return trip of the Stardust mission, which has snatched material from the tail of a passing comet. From the article: "Scientists are particularly interested in comets because they believe they are rubble left over from making the solar system, which later played a profound role in the development of Earth. They probably delivered most of the water for Earth's oceans and bombarded our planet with complex organic compounds that could have been crucial to the evolution of life here. For these reasons, researchers have sought a source of comet molecules and designed Stardust to provide it." Wow, this thing has been out there a long time. When I Googled to make sure this wasn't a dupe, I ran across CmdrTaco's post about the [209]Stardust probe entering the comet's tail - almost exactly two years ago. ----- Posted by [215]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 05:40 AM from the taking-their-ball-and-going-home dept. [216]Microsoft tlhIngan writes "From a developer's blog, Windows Vista will [217]no longer support DVD-ROM drives that do not handle region coding in hardware (RPC1 drives) - thus preventing playback of DVDs that are region/CSS encoded with those drives. Not a big problem, as RPC1 drives haven't been officially manufactured since 2000 (and Microsoft claims their drives are all broken), but for those with hacked drives (RPC2 with RPC1 firmware), or move the RPC1 drive to new computers, well, no more DVD movies for you!" ----- Posted by [223]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 03:24 AM from the so-many-ways-this-could-go-badly dept. [224]Robotics [225]GeneOff writes "Just in time for Christmas, comes [226]FA1, the fighting android from SDT (Self Defence Technologys.) I loved my Rock-Em, Sock-Em robots I got one year from Santa. But it was tough getting opponents. Well, no more. Here is a hackable real robot that won't whimp out on you." From the article: "... a robot that can jab, hook, and cross, but still keep the violence to a minimum with adjustable difficulty levels. The FA1 can also dodge your punches with "human-like" movements and he should be hanging out on the show floor at CES -- so we'll be sure to challenge him to a round of verbal barbs from a distance." ----- Posted by [232]Zonk on Sun Jan 01, '06 01:32 AM from the first-post dept. [233]Microsoft paritosh wrote to mention an Ars article about the joining up of Microsoft and Softbank to provide [234]enterprise-level VoIP, IM, email, Internet, and groupware to the Japanese market. They are already discussing bringing it to the U.S. if it succeeds there. From the article: "With Softbank BB supplying most of the VoIP infrastructure, Microsoft's primary focus in this agreement will be providing hosted versions of its server products. Some of the products mentioned in the agreement include Exchange 2003, Office Live Communications Server 2005 and SharePoint. I wouldn't be surprised to see Windows Messenger make its way into the mix considering its new PC-to-POTS capability, which can act as a segue into the larger areas of the VoIP market in North America." ----- Posted by [239]Zonk on Sat Dec 31, '05 11:28 PM from the you-live-you-learn dept. [240]It's funny. Laugh. An anonymous reader wrote to mention a BBC list of [241]100 topical pieces of information that they've reported on over the course of 2005. While some of them are very Brit-specific ("16. The London borough of Westminster has an average of 20 pieces of chewing gum for every square metre of pavement."), there are some interesting, touching, and humorous stories in there. "20. The Queen has never been on a computer, she told Bill Gates as she awarded him an honorary knighthood. 32. 'Restaurant' is the most mis-spelled word in search engines. 65. Actor James Doohan, who played Scotty, had a hand in creating the Klingon language that was used in the movies, and which Shakespeare plays were subsequently translated into." ----- Posted by [246]Zonk on Sat Dec 31, '05 09:37 PM from the squirmy-thought-worms dept. [247]Biotech [248]Roland Piquepaille writes "In the last ten years, biotech companies have been busy accumulating mountains of data. And it's becoming more and more difficult to find useful information about interactions between genes and proteins for example. It's one of the reasons why the European Union has started the BioGrid project. In [249]Mining biotech's data mother lode, IST Results describes this project. Among current results, the researchers involved in it have delivered a better search engine for [250]PubMed by analyzing over-expressing genes and predicting the protein interactions that are likely occurring. And many of the tools developed by BioGrid are available for public use -- even by yourself. For more information, this overview contains [251]additional details, pictures and references about this project." ----- Posted by [256]Zonk on Sat Dec 31, '05 07:51 PM from the learn-things-dangit dept. [257]Education Dareth writes "Are we being overloaded by knowledge? Is the number of sources growing faster than we can keep up with them? These questions are posed by this [258]article in USA Todays's tech section The article seems to suggest we need 'better technology to cope with the problems better technology creates.'" From the article: "With a generation growing up expecting everything on the Internet, libraries, non-profit organizations and leading search companies like Yahoo and Microsoft are committing hundreds of millions of dollars collectively to scan books and other printed materials so they can be indexed and retrieved online. HarperCollins Publishers even announced plans in mid-December to digitize its vast catalog." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Jan 04, '06 11:36 PM from the stuff-is-moving-but-barely dept. [104]Space [105]IZ Reloaded writes "Any would be travellers to Pluto should bring extra winter gear. The new temperature on Pluto according to scientists is 43 degrees Kelvin. That's [106]10 degrees Kelvin colder than expected. From CNN: "Astronomers think Pluto's colder than expected temperature reading involves interactions between nitrogen ice on the planet's surface and the nitrogen gas that makes up its atmosphere...Pluto is a dynamic example of what we might call an anti-greenhouse effect..."" ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Jan 04, '06 10:21 PM from the my-hat-is-a-scanner dept. [112]Technology Enigma50 writes "From the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) comes the world's first USB flash wristband. The uniquely designed [113]Imation Flash Wristband provides an easy way to transport your precious digital files, such as photos, music or videos, securely around your wrist or attached to a backpack. Sure to be a hit with the kids!" ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Jan 04, '06 09:09 PM from the sign-on-the-dotted-line dept. [119]United States [120]feamsr00 writes "In an [121]affirmation of its business relationship with [122]Unisys Corp., the Department of Homeland Security awarded the Blue Bell firm a "bridge" contract worth up to $750 million. Some controversy erupted in the fall after it was reported that the government was auditing a Unisys contract because the company had possibly overbilled the [123]Transportation Security Administration by as much as 171,000 hours of labor and overtime. TSA is a division of the Homeland Security department. Unisys is also to upgrade the Department of Homeland Security's headquarters facility in Washington." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Jan 04, '06 08:01 PM from the better-safe-than-sorry dept. [131]Security BeanBunny writes "I realize that this topic is almost as volatile around here as Intelligent Design, but I think this is interesting nonetheless. US-CERT has released their year-end [132]vulnerability summary. According to InformationWeek.com, Linux/Unix (including Mac OS) had almost [133]three times the number of OS-specific vulnerabilities reported last year compared to Microsoft Windows. Obviously, statistics are meaningless without the proper conjecture, speculation, and opinionation, so let the debate begin again over which OS is really more secure." ----- Posted by [140]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 06:59 PM from the don't-trust-the-media-too-much dept. [141]Slashback Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Why the media can't get Wikipedia right, Linux Netwosix author follows up, Hwang Woo-suk defends himself, Plasma thruster verified by the ESA, and Google dispels PC rumors. Read on for details. ----- Posted by [150]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 05:48 PM from the ohms-from-davey-jones dept. [151]Power [152]Sterling D. Allan writes "Sea Solar Power Inc., run by three generations of James Hilbert Andersons, has developed a solar power technology that does not fluctuate with the weather, but is available constantly. Their solution is to harness the [153]solar energy stored in the sea by tapping the thermal gradient that exists naturally between the surface and deep waters, using a reverse refrigeration cycle. The modeling and testing done by the Anderson family over three generations since 1962 predicts that the cost of energy generation through this method will be within a price range comparable to nuclear, coal, natural gas, and other contemporary grid power plants. Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC, was invented in 1881 by a French scientist, Jacques Arsene D'Arsonval. SSP should be ready to build their first full prototype 2-3 years from now." ----- Posted by [161]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 05:01 PM from the honesty-is-for-sissies dept. [162]United States [163]AdamBLang writes "[164]Previously [165]covered on Slashdot, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle today signed legislation that "will require the software of touch-screen voting machines [166]used in elections to be open-source. Municipalities that use electronic voting machines are responsible for providing to the public, on request, the code used." Madison's [167]Capital Times reports "the bill requires that if a municipality uses an electronic voting system that consists of a voting machine, the machine must generate a complete paper ballot showing all votes cast by each elector that is visually verifiable by the elector before he or she leaves the machine."" ----- Posted by [172]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 04:14 PM from the open-source-poster-child dept. [173]Mozilla Oslo_the_CKC writes to tell us that French Magazine Linux Pratique recently published an interview with General Brachet of the Gendarmie Nationale. In the interview he discusses why they have moved over [174]100,000 personnel over to Firefox and Thunderbird (70,000 and 45,000 respectively). This follows on last year's [175]switch to OpenOffice.org so it seems like the French Military Police are enjoying the success of open source. ----- Posted by [182]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 03:22 PM from the believe-it-when-you-see-it dept. [183]PC Games (Games) [184]JamesO writes to tell us that Infinium Labs has announced the release of their "[185]Phantom Lapboard" for later this year. From the article: "Infinium Labs' Phantom game service is still to launch, despite [186]claims years ago that it would appear at Christmas 2004, but this hasn't stopped the company from continuing with the system's development. One of the most talked about aspects of the system is its wireless keyboard and mouse combo called the Lapboard. Infinium Labs has decided that the Lapboard is so good that it will be released as a peripheral for PC users in quarter-two 2006. What makes the Lapboard unique is that the keyboard can be angled upwards to create a surface for the mouse to operate on underneath. The device is also wireless and can operate at a distance of up to 30 feet." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Jan 04, '06 02:39 PM from the better-development dept. [194]Programming FrazzledDad writes "Andrew Troelsen's Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform, 3rd Ed. gives a great breadth and depth of coverage to C# and the features of Microsoft's .NET 2.0 Framework. He does a fine job covering fundamentals of C# and .NET in general and then dives into terrific detail on a number of important topics." Read the rest of Jim's review. ----- Posted by [203]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 01:47 PM from the then-we-will-be-protected-from-ourselves dept. [204]Media [205]Michael writes to tell us TheTechLounge is reporting that Fuji Film has announced the [206]release of Blu-Ray and HD DVD media by mid 2006. From the article: "Consumers are driving demand for interactive gaming and entertainment applications that require enormous storage capacity," noted Steve Solomon, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Recording Media Division, Fuji Photo Film U.S.A. "Fujifilm coating technology will ensure the precision and quality of signal strength in these new media formats. The success of new recording technologies depends on the availability of affordable, reliable media and our scientists are already working to perfect next-generation storage solutions, long before they hit the market." ----- Posted by [214]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 01:02 PM from the not-just-a-lot-of-hot-air dept. [215]Technology An anonymous reader writes "Canton Rep has an interesting article on Ohio entrepreneurs who hope to get their business 'off the ground'. Brian Martin and Robert Rist think they are close to testing a prototype of their patented [216]Dynalifter hybrid. They announced last week that their airship -- part blimp and part airplane -- has been completed, and they hope to conduct a test flight this spring. Martin and Rist hope the Dynalifter will help bring in a new transportation era. They see it as a way to move materials at a lower cost than jets and at a higher speed than ships. From the article: 'They think it could be used in emergency situations, such as Hurricane Katrina, to transport supplies. It might have military uses, such as delivering equipment and supplies to sites that might not be easily reachable.'" ----- Posted by [226]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 12:16 PM from the i'll-take-two dept. [227]Television [228]H_Fisher writes "CNN offers an article from Fortune magazine, giving [229]a look at the problems surrounding the [230]mandatory switch from analog to digital TV in the U.S., now slated for 2009. 'Managing this transition -- which will render about 70 million TV sets obsolete -- will be not be easy,' Marc Gunther writes. Among the problems: millions of American households without cable or satellite access will lose free access to news and weather along with the rest of their broadcast fare. Uncle Sam's solution? 'Yes, the very same federal government that is cutting back on college loans and food stamps will soon be issuing TV vouchers' - $1.5 billion to help U.S. households buy new digital TV equipment." ----- Posted by [236]Zonk on Wed Jan 04, '06 11:33 AM from the that's-sold-not-shipped dept. [237]Nintendo [238]DS Gamer writes "Nintendo has announced that worldwide [239]sales of their twin-screen handheld console the Nintendo DS have reached the 10 million mark since its launch in the United States during late November 2004. The vast majority of sales have been in the United States (4 million) and Japan (5 million) where the DS became the fastest selling games machine of all time. From the Reuters article: 'It is on the upswing of its life cycle," Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing, told Reuters in a telephone interview. She declined to give a sales forecast but said the Japan-based company would provide additional information during its upcoming quarterly financial report. Kaplan added that Nintendo's seven-week-old Wi-Fi Connection wireless gaming service has had more than 550,000 unique visitors globally.'" Commentary is available on [240]Forbes and [241]Gamespot. ----- Posted by [246]CmdrTaco on Wed Jan 04, '06 10:50 AM from the techno-porn-is-good dept. [247]Technology moto writes "ThinkComputers is reporting from [248]CES Unveiled, and they have the scoop on all the latest gadgets coming out this year, from the article: "Well CES is only a day away now, but there is a special press only event called CES Unveiled. This event gives manufacturers a chance to showcase new products before the big event. There are only a handful of companies that chose to exhibit at this event, and there is free food and drinks, which makes it even better. So today we will be showing you some of the cool new products that were shown at this event."" ----- Posted by [252]CmdrTaco on Wed Jan 04, '06 10:02 AM from the simple-is-key dept. [253]Mozilla [254]Vivek Jishtu writes "Tech Crunch predicts that the AllPeers Firefox extension will [255]massively increase the attractiveness of that already popular browser, drawing more millions away from embattled Internet Explorer. [256]AllPeers is a simple, persistent buddy list in the browser. Initially, interaction with those buddies will be limited to discovering and sharing files." ----- Posted by [261]CmdrTaco on Wed Jan 04, '06 09:19 AM from the just-ship-me-review-units-please dept. [262]Apple Moby Cock writes "Jason O'Grady has posted [263]the odds on what is to be announced at the Macworld Expo beginning next week. Coming in at 100:1 is OS X 10.5 and even money on a new and sexy Intel Mac Minis and iBooks. Gentlemen, start your credit cards." ----- Posted by [268]CmdrTaco on Wed Jan 04, '06 08:31 AM from the good-ideas-are-good-ideas dept. [269]Software [270]VeryVito writes "Portableapps.com has released [271]Portable OpenOffice.org 2.01 -- the complete office suite you can run from a USB drive for complete access to both your files and your office apps -- anywhere you go. More than just a neat idea, [272]some say it's a perfect example of "the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't have to worry about selling as many licenses of their work as possible." I don't imagine we'll see a portable [273]Microsoft Office suite any time soon." ----- Posted by [278]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 07:22 AM from the let-the-edit-wars-begin dept. [279]The Internet [280]brettlg writes to tell us LinuxInsider is reporting that Utah Democratic hopeful, Peter Ashdown, is hoping to leverage his knowledge of the internet and small business resourcefulness to [281]take down the incumbent Senator Orrin Hatch next year. From the article: "Peter Ashdown is the founder of Xmission, Utah's oldest Internet service provider (ISP). His [282]Web site includes a blog and a monthly live chat session. But Ashdown's site takes public participation on his campaign Web site one step further -- opening his platform to all. The site is based on the "Wiki" open-source model made famous by Wikipedia." ----- Posted by [288]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 05:34 AM from the tell-us-what-you-really-think dept. [289]Quickies [290]Phil817 writes to tell us that Bob Metcalfe recently gave a TV interview in which he stated that current operating systems (Windows and Linux) are outdated clunkers that wont be able to adequately handle the coming of "video internet" and suggests that new operating systems need to be developed to take hold in a few years. Also, when asked if current deals in the works like eBay's purchase of Skype were an indication of more investment hype he replied with "I'm looking forward to the next Internet bubble. I don't know what everyone's so negative about. The last bubble was lots of fun.". Let us at least hope we learned a few things from the last bubble. ----- Posted by [298]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 03:28 AM from the i-am-bender-please-insert-light dept. [299]Technology An anonymous reader writes "In Oregon, physicists have developed a material for creating a real superlens that in theory could attain a [300]one-nanometer visual resolution. The idea is to use exotic materials to create "negative" refraction of light, which literally means steering it in the opposite direction of that found in the natural world." ----- Posted by [306]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Jan 04, '06 01:33 AM from the gettin-it-from-the-tap dept. [307]Software [308]Andy Updegrove writes "After Peter Quinn resigned, only two brief statements -- both from spokesman for Governor and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney -- were made to the press regarding whether Quinn's OpenDocument format policy would survive. Both were vague, and both spoke only of the "rules not changing", leaving ODF supporters worried that ODF would be swapped out for Microsoft's XML Reference Schema, even before its expected approval by Ecma. But today, in a private meeting with ITD General Counsel Linda Hamel, Secretary of Administration and Finance Thomas Trimarco assured her that Peter Quinn's departure "will result in [309]no change to the Administration's position on the ODF standard." Trimarco is the public official that will supervise whoever Quinn's replacement will be until after the deadline for the new Massachusetts' policy is to become effective." ----- Posted by [103]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 11:28 PM from the every-dog-has-their-day dept. [104]Music An anonymous reader writes to tell us Yahoo News is reporting that the last week of December turned out to be a [105]golden week for music downloads. From the article: 'In the seven-day stretch between Christmas and the new year, millions of consumers armed with new MP3 players (primarily iPods) and stacks of gift cards gobbled up almost 20 million tracks from iTunes and other download retailers, Nielsen SoundScan reports. In the process, consumers shattered the tracking firm's one-week record for download sales.'" ----- Posted by [110]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 09:37 PM from the pure-speculation-and-idle-discussion dept. [111]Technology An anonymous reader writes "Reuters is reporting on the breathless anticipation that leads up to Macworld every year. Many analysts are hedging their bets that this year will bring a long overdue [112]update to the Mac laptop family. From the article: 'We think the iBook, PowerBook, Mac Mini, and potentially Xserve are areas that are going to move to Intel first,' said Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research." ----- Posted by [118]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 07:04 PM from the things-to-never-live-down dept. [119]Technology triso writes to tell us that the recent unveiling of the new Toshiba HD DVD production model [120]met with a few difficulties. From the article: "It was supposed to be the grand unveiling of a new generation in home entertainment when Kevin Collins of Microsoft Corp. popped an HD DVD disc into a Toshiba production model and hit 'play.' Nothing happened. The failed product demo at this week's International Consumer Electronics Show was hardly an auspicious start for the HD DVD camp in what's promising to be a nasty format war similar to the Betamax/VHS video tape battle." ----- Posted by [126]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 05:34 PM from the time-for-a-field-trip dept. [127]Space An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have found a doomed star orbiting what appears to be a medium-sized black hole. This black hole appears to be a theorized [128]'in-between' category of black hole that has eluded confirmation and frustrated scientists for more than a decade." ----- Posted by [134]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 04:02 PM from the ipod-mania-continues dept. [135]Handhelds [136]Ant writes "Jason Kottke's Web site has compiled a list of [137]50 fun things to do with your iPod besides listening to music with those white earbuds: From the article 'In the four years since its introduction, the iPod has proven to be a versatile little device. Despite a relatively closed architecture, hackers have found their way in. Content creators and software makers put information at your fingertips when you're on the go. Would-be designers have added to the fashionable stylings of the now-ubiquitous white ear buds. Hardware makers and enthusiasts have augmented the iPod with new add-on gadgets. Here are a few dozen things you can do with your iPod besides listen to music.'" ----- Posted by [143]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 02:23 PM from the suddenly-hit-any-key-become-caress-any-key dept. [144]Technology [145]Roland Piquepaille writes "It certainly happened to you to be so frustrated by the 'reactions' of your computer that you wanted to break it. And the computer industry has noticed, trying to build hardware and software as user-friendly as possible. Still, it would be a good idea for your computer to guess when you're about to become mad at it. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany are working on [146]computers that estimate our emotions. Their solution involves cameras and image analysis, but also special gloves equipped with sensors to record your heartbeat and breathing rate, your blood pressure or your skin temperature. And even if it's difficult to train a computer to interpret emotions, they have enough confidence in their system to demonstrate it at the next CeBIT in March 2006." ----- Posted by [151]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 01:09 PM from the nothing-says-i'm-sorry-like-cold-hard-cash dept. [152]Microsoft [153]theodp writes to tell us that New York Magazine has an interesting editorial stating that [154]no one is afraid of Microsoft anymore. The article argues that Microsoft has noticeably been adrift in the wake of Gates' philanthropy, which some cynics suspect is a Rockefeller-like attempt to 'fumigate his fortune' as he makes a play for the history books. From the article: "Like the robber barons, Bill Gates has moved from trying to take over the world to trying to save it." ----- Posted by [159]CmdrTaco on Sun Jan 08, '06 12:12 PM from the still-waiting-for-review-units dept. [160]Displays [161]bling..bling writes "Apple is not the only company selling 30" flat panel monitors. Dell is now offering a 30" flat panel display that has a native resolution of 2560x1600 and sells for $2,199. Just like the apple 30" display you do need a dual link DVI video card to drive this massive beast. This monitor also sports four USB ports and a media card reader. I've been waiting for Dell or someone else to release a 30" display and hopefully bring the prices down. I'm tired of the dual monitor thing, I want one display device on my desk, just make it a very large device. See the details on Dell's web site on the new [162]Dell 3007WFP 30-inch widescreen digital flat panel monitor." ----- Posted by [167]CmdrTaco on Sun Jan 08, '06 11:20 AM from the because-you-can dept. [168]Technology [169]John H. Doe writes "This student was bored one day, so he decided to see what the world looked like from the bottom of his [170]optical mouse. He jury rigged a few wires to his parallel port and wrote a program to take a look. And seeing as how one thing a mouse does is to detect motion, made it into a ghetto b&w handscanner. " ----- Posted by [175]CmdrTaco on Sun Jan 08, '06 10:22 AM from the rule-one:-must-be-sexy dept. [176]Space [177]AsiNisiMasa writes "The BBC reports that the United States Federal Aviation Administration has drafted a report proposing some [178]regulations regarding space tourism. Among the rules is a set of guidelines to prevent terrorists from gaining access to the space ships in order to use them as weapons. Many of the other regulations are similar to those regarding regular commercial flights, including safety advice precluding the flights. From the article: 'Space tourists should also be given pre-flight training to handle emergency situations such as a loss of cabin pressure or fire. However, the FAA has so far left any medical requirements in the hands of the tourist, who should decide themselves if they are fit to fly.' The final report will affect enterprises such as Sir Richard Branson's [179]SpaceShipOne." ----- Posted by [185]CmdrTaco on Sun Jan 08, '06 09:34 AM from the because-you-can dept. [186]Hardware Hacking [187]Steve from Hexus writes "Trying to lure more people into watercooling their PCs, Corsair have created the Nautilus 500. It consists primarily of an external unit housing the radiator, reservoir and pump, which sits atop the PC's case. Installed inside the PC is the CPU water-block, which can be fitted without removing the motherboard. At HEXUS we've got pictures from CES of [188]a system with the cooler installed." ----- Posted by [195]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 07:36 AM from the electronic-sabot dept. [196]Microsoft An anonymous reader writes "PCSIntel is reporting that the new VCast music system by Verizon may [197]not be quite as positive as users were led to believe. Claims were made that the new software for this service would disable the ability to play MP3s on these phones. It turns out that the ability to play MP3s still exists but only because the software first converts it to the WMA format. This conversion, however, is not available for phones on Mac or Linux, leaving these customers unable to play MP3s." ----- Posted by [202]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 05:21 AM from the superman-not-available-for-comment dept. [203]Technology Juha-Matti Laurio writes "DefenseLINK News is reporting that 'troops conducting urban operations soon will have the capabilities of superheroes, being able to [204]sense through 12 inches of concrete to determine if someone is inside a building.' By simply holding the portable, handheld device named a "Radar Scope" up to a wall, users will be able to detect movements as small as breathing. The Radar Scope hopes to eventually give troops the ability to see up to 50 feet beyond a concrete wall to decrease losses in urban combat." ----- Posted by [212]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 03:33 AM from the with-a-light-chianti dept. [213]News An anonymous reader writes "ScienceNOW is reporting that a team of scientists led by Geneticist Jaume Bertranpetit has called into question findings from an earlier [214]study of human prion diseases. The first study, led by John Collinge of University College London, stated that the existence of a gene that codes for prions was a result of a "balancing act" that had kept it in the gene pool for so long. The balancing act was supposedly due to widespread cannibalistic practices in human history. The new report suggests that their results were skewed because of low frequency variations known as 'ascertainment bias.'" ----- Posted by [220]ScuttleMonkey on Sun Jan 08, '06 01:22 AM from the fewer-moving-parts-to-break dept. [221]Data Storage skaet writes "CNet is reporting that manufacturers of NAND flash memory are [222]expanding the market for their chips - over the next few years - to eventually replace current methods of storage in media capture devices, mobile phones and even some notebooks as well as car navigation systems and large data storage at corporations and government agencies. From the article: 'The average notebook has 30GB (of hard drive storage). How long is it before the notebook has solid state memory? Five or six years,' according to Steve Appleton, CEO of Micron Technology, one of the world's largest memory makers. 'I'm not saying drives will go away. There will always be a need for storage, but when was the last time you tapped out a drive?'" ----- Posted by [230]ScuttleMonkey on Sat Jan 07, '06 11:37 PM from the now-take-a-look-at-performance-tuning dept. [231]Microsoft [232]Michael writes "Microsoft Corp.'s Linux and open-source lab on the Redmond campus has been running some interesting tests of late, one of which was looking at how well the latest Windows client software [233]runs on legacy hardware in comparison to its Linux competitors. The tests, which found that Windows performed as well as Linux on legacy hardware when installed and run out-of-the-box, were done in part to give Microsoft the data it needed to effectively 'put to rest the myth that Linux can run on anything.'" ----- Posted by [103]CowboyNeal on Thu Jan 12, '06 11:45 PM from the gov't-approved dept. [104]Databases [105]comforteagle writes "MySQL has won a [106]five year contract with the US General Services Administration office putting it in yet another government office on top of NASA, the Dept. of Def., Los Alamos National Labs & the Census Bureau. This additional win allows around 70 Government customers to purchase and deploy MySQL." ----- Posted by [113]CowboyNeal on Thu Jan 12, '06 10:22 PM from the solidly-stated dept. [114]Data Storage [115]Skal Tura writes "[116]Samsung will start producing 16 gigabit Nand Flash chips this year, nudging the memory technology towards use in notebook PCs and maybe even edging out hard drives in some products in the next few years." ----- Posted by [122]Cliff on Thu Jan 12, '06 09:05 PM from the don't-lose-the-master-keyring dept. [123]Security [124]punkrokk asks: "I am doing an Independent study of the feasibility of a Microsoft Certificate Services PKI in a distributed company. So far, it appears from my research that MS has the best supported implementation of a X.509 based PKI solution, for the Windows environment. While there are a few major weaknesses in a X.509 Public Key Infrastructure, one of which being Certificate Revocation Lists, using one is better than nothing. You do get a tangible security benefit, in addition to doing switch port authentication, and VPN quarantines. The problem is the cost of implementation is pretty steep, from the planning side. What do you guys do for dual factor authentication? Has anyone had Verisign sign their Certificate Authority? If you have implemented a MS Certificate Service infrastructure, I would appreciate your comments." ----- Posted by [134]CowboyNeal on Thu Jan 12, '06 07:45 PM from the each-one-like-crying-babies dept. [135]Technology twitter writes "The BBC is reporting results of a poll by [136]UK charity Developing Patient Partnerships that [137]shows crashing computers to be one of the most common stresses and that it's actually killing people by driving them to drink and smoke. The quoted list has: 1. IT problems - 30%, 2. Change in financial status/personal injury - 24%, 3. Commuting - 20%. I've seen people take a smoke break when their computer pops a window and they lose an hour or two of work and admins taking their break straight from the bottle." ----- Posted by [143]CowboyNeal on Thu Jan 12, '06 06:50 PM from the tiny-powerhouses dept. [144]Technology zigziggityzoo writes "According to this article, The University of Michigan has [145]created the first Quantum Microchip, which could eventually lead to the first instance of Quantum Computing ever." The bad news? We won't be seeing any notebooks or handhelds with quantum chips in the near future. ----- Posted by [153]CmdrTaco on Thu Jan 12, '06 06:06 PM from the my-inbox-tells-a-different-tale dept. [154]Spam Vainglorious Coward writes "Two years on from Bill Gates' [155]promise to eradicate spam, an article in The Observer claims that [156]spam has passed its peak and is now declining. Is it just me that hasn't noticed this?" I got almost a third more spam in 05 than 04. I guess I exist outside the bell curve on this one. ----- Posted by [163]CmdrTaco on Thu Jan 12, '06 05:13 PM from the everyone-fake-your-accent-to-celebrate dept. [164]Sci-Fi [165]Karl J. Smith writes "Dr. Who will be airing on the Sci-Fi Channel in [166]March The DVD release has been moved from February 14th to July 4th (although it's still Feb 14th in [167]Canada). Be sure to check out the hilarous [168]announcement from the BBC." ----- Posted by [173]CmdrTaco on Thu Jan 12, '06 04:15 PM from the still-waitin-for-mine dept. [174]Hardware Hacking An anonymous reader writes "While home theater PC hardware was once limited to a few specialized companies, those days are long gone and [175]home theater computing is now big business. At this year's CES every hardware company, no matter their size or area of interest, brought a some cool new products too and no one forgot about the burgeoning home theater market. This fervor for home theater PCs was evident all over the show, but it mainly manifested itself in computer cases. This article goes over an extensive list of the products seen there." ----- Posted by [181]CmdrTaco on Thu Jan 12, '06 03:30 PM from the genius-at-work dept. [182]Google [183]mcho writes "The Economist has a story about Google's co-founder, Larry Page, who " [184]always wanted to change the world". The article attempts to make an arguement about the company's true intentions, amid all the rumors about potential Google products. "Google is already working on a massive and global computing grid. Eventually, says Mr Saffo, 'they're trying to build the machine that will pass the Turing test' -- in other words, an artificial intelligence that can pass as a human in written conversations. Wisely or not, Google wants to be a new sort of deus ex machina."" ----- Posted by [190]CmdrTaco on Thu Jan 12, '06 02:44 PM from the case-modders-rejoice dept. [191]Power An anonymous reader writes "This year at CES members of the press got to grab a glimpse of the [192]world's tiniest power supply. Well actually it is the world's tiniest 12V snap-in ATX DC-to-DC power supply, but you get the idea. This unit produces 120W of power and is about the size of two AA batteries. It is specifically designed for use with Mini-ITX motherboards, but can be used in many other applications." ----- Posted by [200]CmdrTaco on Thu Jan 12, '06 02:00 PM from the well-their-laptops-are-very-shiny dept. [201]Media (Apple) conq writes "BusinessWeek reports: "It's the first time in my memory that a product announcement by Steve Jobs has caused the AP to send an alert -- especially since this development was fully expected. And it says a lot about the [202]intensity of media attention Apple generates. When is the last time a NewsAlert went out based on the words of Michael Dell or Bill Gates? Clearly, the AP's editors determined this news was important enough to warrant such action." ----- Posted by [210]CmdrTaco on Thu Jan 12, '06 01:21 PM from the waiting-for-the-torrent dept. [211]Television Nigsy writes "The Register reports that "A new sitcom - [212]set among IT workers in the dingy basement of a glamorous company - is due to arrive on the UK's Channel 4 next month. The IT Crowd, written by Graham Linehan (the scribe behind Father Ted, Black Books), will debut on the internet on 27 January, a week before its terrestrial broadcast on Friday, 3 February at 9.30pm."" Here's hoping that they have a consultant on the show to make it technically accurate. ----- Posted by [220]Zonk on Thu Jan 12, '06 12:46 PM from the because-your-day-wasn't-distopean-enough dept. [221]Biotech ScentCone writes "Transgenic pigs (and other critters) are [222]valuable research tools because of their utility in studying human diseases. Tracking changes in some developing tissues is going to be easier, [223]say a Taiwanese team that has introduced fluorescent, green proteins into the breeding. Said one of the researchers: 'There are partially fluorescent green pigs elsewhere, but ours are the only ones in the world that are green from inside out. Even their hearts and internal organs are green.' Do you like green eggs and ham?" ----- Posted by [231]Zonk on Thu Jan 12, '06 12:09 PM from the will-they-or-won't-they dept. [232]Microsoft With the announcement of the [233]Intel chip based MacBook, the door is now open for running the Windows OS on Macintosh hardware, right? [234]jaypatrick writes "BetaNews reports that along with the announcement of the first Intel based Macs yesterday, many users have rejoiced in being able to dual-boot both Mac OS X and Windows. Unfortunately, this is not the case; due to Apple's use of the extensible firmware interface (EFI) rather than BIOS, [235]current Windows releases will not run on the systems." I guess not. But, wait... Big Z writes "Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice-president of worldwide product marketing, said in an interview Tuesday that the company won't sell or support Windows itself, but also [236]hasn't done anything to preclude people from loading Windows onto the machines themselves." I think someone actually trying it out is the only way this is going to get straightened out. ----- Posted by [242]Zonk on Thu Jan 12, '06 11:22 AM from the harmless-fruit dept. [243]Media (Apple) [244]daveschroeder writes "According to [245]MacWorld and [246]BoingBoing: 'An Apple spokesman (reliable word has it that it was Steve Jobs himself) told MacWorld that Apple discards the personal information that the iTunes Ministore transmits to Apple while you use iTunes. [...] Apple tells us that the information is not actually being collected. The data sent is used to update the MiniStore and then discarded.' Apple also has a [247]knowledge base article, which apparently was available the day iTunes 6.0.2 was introduced, explaining the MiniStore behavior and how to disable it: 'iTunes sends data about the song selected in your library to the iTunes Music Store to provide relevant recommendations. When the MiniStore is hidden, this data is not sent to the iTunes Music Store.'" The discussion about this topic was [248]fast and furious yesterday. ----- Posted by [254]Zonk on Thu Jan 12, '06 10:47 AM from the dodge-the-pig dept. [255]Spam [256]Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Some states have [257]moved to shield children from email peddling porn, alcohol and other adults-only products, the Wall Street Journal reports. Critics say the laws, which establish a registry of kids' email addresses, are unfair to marketers and could create security risks. The debate echoes earlier discussion about a proposed do-not-spam national registry that the Can-Spam Law urged, but which the FTC nixed. This time, though, the registries are moving forward on a state-by-state basis, and facing court challenges from the adult entertainment industry." From the article: "Few email addresses have been placed on the state registries so far. Earlier this week, Utah's registry had 1,992 addresses, and 62 schools had registered their domain names to block emails to student accounts. About 160 companies had submitted their email lists for screening. In Michigan, 3,658 email addresses have been registered, along with 41 school domains. About 170 marketers had applied for screening." ----- Posted by [263]Zonk on Thu Jan 12, '06 10:04 AM from the getting-friendly dept. [264]Sun Microsystems [265]Firmafest writes "The Register is running a story about [266]Sun and Apple almost merging on three separate occasions. The information was revealed at a Computer History Museum event, where Sun's four co-founders spoke about the history of the Sun company. Bill Joy said that the two comp anies almost teamed on three different projects, including sharing a user interface and the SPARC architecture." From the article: "'As far as I know we also almost bought Apple once,' Joy said. 'We almost merged with Apple two other times.' Many Silicon Valley observers have long seen links between Sun and Apple. Both companies make slick, pricey hardware and are counter-punchers in their respective markets. They also have charismatic CEO figures and strong anti-Microsoft streaks" ----- Posted by [272]Zonk on Thu Jan 12, '06 09:26 AM from the i'm-helping-i'm-helping dept. [273]Security [274]GenieGenieGenie writes "eWeek reports a [275]rootkit-like 'feature' in Symantec's Norton Systemworks, discovered by the Mark Russinovich, who was also responsible for [276]blowing the whistle on Sony's DRM rootkit. The cloaked directory is intended to prevent users from accidentally deleting important files, but could compromise a system by serving as a hiding place for malware, as was the case with Sony's rootkit. Russinovich says Symantec had good intentions, but they were right to post an update to fix this hole." ----- Posted by [281]Zonk on Thu Jan 12, '06 08:45 AM from the fresh-from-their-brains-to-your-door dept. [282]Mozilla [283]Tech Support writes "[284]Thunderbird 1.5 is here! It's ready to download, so get going. Finally, Firefox 1.5 has its counterpart. [285]New features included automatic updates, anti-phishing protection, inline spellchecking, saved search folders, podcasting, RSS improvements, the ability to delete attachments from messages, and a whole lot more." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thu Jan 12, '06 08:03 AM from the speak-directly-into-the-plant dept. [290]Communications [291]Kagu writes "ABC News is running a short piece about an interview with former NSA Employee Russell Tice and his allegations that the [292]NSA wiretaps are more pervasive than believed and used in ways he believes violated the law. " ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thu Jan 12, '06 05:58 AM from the take-off-the-sleep-goggles dept. [297]News [298]Ant writes "CNN reports that "sleep inertia" leaves some people so [299]groggy, after they wake up, they might as well be drunk, researchers said on Tuesday. "For a short period, at least, the effects of sleep inertia may be as bad as or worse than being legally drunk," said researcher Kenneth Wright of the University of Colorado at Boulder." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thu Jan 12, '06 03:33 AM from the assisted-parking dept. [308]Technology [309]Nick writes "What happens when you take a bunch of average drivers, put them in a car with no high-tech systems like anti-lock brakes and traction control, and ask them to drive on a safety test track? [310]360-degree spins, of course. And not only do today's drivers need ABS and traction control to keep their cars under control, it also turns out most drivers can't even name the high tech safety systems that are continually saving their butts. And to make matters worse, carmakers plan to install automatic radar-based [311]blind-spot checkers so motorists can avoid looking over their shoulders while changing lanes. Even geeks find some of these technologies scary, including Wired's Bruce Gain, who drove Mercedes' S-Class with [312]automatic braking." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thu Jan 12, '06 12:17 AM from the wired-reflexes-2 dept. [321]Biotech [322]Neopallium writes "A joint research effort between researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, CA, and a team from Japan (Iwate University, Osaka City University, Gifu University, Iwate Medical University) has [323]discovered a novel way to treat stroke and neurodegenerative disorders. This approach works by inducing nerve cells in the brain and the spine to release natural antioxidants that protect nerve cells from stress and free radicals that lead to neurodegenerative diseases." ----- Posted by [103]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jan 16, '06 11:26 PM from the things-you-have-been-dying-to-ask dept. [104]The Internet penciling_in writes "Over at CircleID, Vint Cerf is [105]taking question from the community Slashdot-style with regards to top level domains. 'As most readers are no doubt aware, when it comes to the topic of Top-Level Domains (TLDs), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) takes center stage. From the existing .com and .net TLDs to the newly introduced and future releases, in the past years we witnessed the increasing level of discussions around Top-Level Domains painted -- ever so often -- with political, legal and technical debates. Vint Cerf, Google's VP and Chief Internet Evangelist, who has served as chairman of the board of ICANN since the November of 1999 has accepted CircleID's invitation to directly respond to your questions on the topic. This is your opportunity to have your Top-Level Domain related questions responded by Vint Cerf.'" ----- Posted by [110]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jan 16, '06 09:38 PM from the looking-into-the-future dept. [111]Biotech [112]Roland Piquepaille writes "A new U.S. research center, the National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors, has been opened to promote new ideas in the field of nanomedicine. For example, a team of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is developing a nano-size battery to be [113]implanted in the eye to power artificial retina. But this center will also design and build 'nanomedical devices based on natural and synthetic ion transporters -- proteins that control ion motion across the membranes of every living cell.'" ----- Posted by [119]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jan 16, '06 07:32 PM from the where-is-the-hidden-agenda dept. [120]Media [121]earthlingpink writes "We're used to reading articles about new and creative ways in which DRM and other such technologies can be used to prevent us from doing whatever we like with our media. The BBC offers us a glimmer of hope with a story about how the National Consumer Council (NCC) has made a report to a parliamentary inquiry in which it has [122]highlighted the issues faced by many of us. From the article: 'Consumers face security risks to their equipment, limitations on their use of products, poor information when purchasing products and unfair contract terms.'" ----- Posted by [128]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jan 16, '06 06:29 PM from the what-happens-online-stays-online dept. [129]Privacy [130]The Hosting Guy writes "Wired is running an article about a live CD that makes [131]anonymous browsing easy enough for everyone. 'So easy to use you can hand it to your grandmother and send her off on her own to the local Starbucks.' [132]Anonym.OS makes extensive use of Tor, the onion routing network that relies on an array of servers passing encrypted traffic to permit untraceable surfing." ----- Posted by [140]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jan 16, '06 05:44 PM from the the-next-space-race dept. [141]Technology [142]WoodenKnight writes "India's ISRO Chairman, G Madhavan Nair recently gave a brief description of a fully-reusable [143]2-stage satellite launch vehicle that is being planned at ISRO. From the article: 'This is in its initial stages of vehicle configuration and the first stage is configured as a winged body configuration, which will attain an altitude of around 100 km and deliver nearly half the orbital velocity. This stage after burnout will re-enter and will be made to land horizontally on the runway, like an aircraft. The second stage after delivering the payload in the orbit will be made to re-enter the atmosphere and will be recovered using airbags either in the sea or land. This is only in its conceptual stage.'" ----- Posted by [151]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jan 16, '06 05:01 PM from the forward-progress dept. [152]GNU is Not Unix njan writes "The [153]first draft of version three of the GNU General Public License was released to the public this afternoon. Major improvements touted in version three include changes designed to mitigate the damage posed by new threats to free software such as software patents. One individual stated about the release: 'It is changes in law, not computer technology, that pose the principal challenges to the free software community. Chief among these changes has been the unwise and ill-considered application of patent law to software. Software patents threaten every free software project, just as they threaten proprietary software and custom software. Any program can be destroyed or crippled by a software patent belonging to someone who has no other connection to the program.'" ----- Posted by [159]CmdrTaco on Mon Jan 16, '06 04:14 PM from the what-do-you-recommend dept. [160]Data Storage It happened again- a machine on my home network died. Taking with it tons of data. It's mostly backed up. No huge loss. But I finally think it's time to get some sort of network raid disk. A unified place to safely store data accessible to the numerous machines on my home lan. So now I pose to Slashdot readers- what are your recommendations? I'm looking for something with RAID and SMB sharing. At least a quarter TB, probably a half, but with some room to grow. What have you used? What works? What fails? ----- Posted by [168]Roblimo on Mon Jan 16, '06 03:27 PM from the sometimes-the-amateurs-outdo-the-professionals dept. [169]Editorial What initially struck me about [170]Freecycle was that it was the first useful thing on the Internet I learned about by [171]reading a newspaper instead of through the leading-edge online news sources I follow. The next thing I noticed about Freecycle was that, unlike Craigslist, Flickr, and other "Social Internet" phenomena, it wasn't centered on major cities but had local groups all over the place, even in towns like [172]Apache Junction, Arizona, and [173]Bradenton, Florida. And then, when I actually used my local Freecycle group, I discovered something else: A high percentage of users were over 50, female, or both. ----- Posted by samzenpus on Mon Jan 16, '06 02:43 PM from the I-cast-magic-missle-at-the-darkness dept. [179]Role Playing (Games) [180]ajs writes "[181]Monte Cook Presents: Iron Heroes is an advanced role playing rule book, based on Wizards of the Coast's d20 System (the rules that underpin the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons). What's unusual about it is that it presents both a setting and rules for "low magic" fantasy that doesn't sacrifice high adventure to get its gritty action." Read the rest of Aaron's review. ----- Posted by [190]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jan 16, '06 02:04 PM from the searching-for-answers dept. [191]The Internet William Robinson writes "Digital Media is reporting that French President Jacques Chirac is making plans for a [192]European search engine called "Quaero" to rival US internet companies such as Yahoo and Google. From the article: 'Those involved in the Quaero project, including Thomson, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, have said that it will be much more than a typical search engine. It will provide an array of multimedia tools for identifying and indexing images, sound and text. Quaero will also reportedly include a powerful translating tool which will be able to 'understand' audio as well as text. The developers plan to make Quaero available on all platforms, including PCs, mobile devices and digital TVs.'" ----- Posted by [200]Hemos on Mon Jan 16, '06 01:19 PM from the the-two-shall-meet dept. [201]Intel mister_tim writes "While we'll have to wait till someone actually tries it to get absolute confirmation, [202]news coming from Intel in Australia, reported here by Dan Warne in the Australian Personal Computer magazine, is that the new Intel-based Macs may be able to load and boot Windows XP after all. [203]Several of the early stories after the announcement of the MacBook Pro and the Intel-based iMac assumed that Windows XP would not boot on Intel Macs, since XP doesn't support EFI (replacing BIOS in the new Macs), and Apple's statement that they wouldn't prevent the use of XP on Apple hardware didn't really give people much assurance either way. This statement from Intel implies that there is really no issue." ----- Posted by [208]Hemos on Mon Jan 16, '06 12:46 PM from the the-question-many-ask dept. [209]Patents [210]Glyn Moody writes "C|Net has a surprising [211]story about a seminar given by a top judge at the U.K.'s Court of Appeal who specializes in intellectual-property law. According to the article, he has "questioned whether software patents should be granted, and has criticized the U.S. for allowing "anything under the sun" to be patented." Is the tide turning?" ----- Posted by [219]Hemos on Mon Jan 16, '06 12:15 PM from the and-here-without-my-book dept. [220]News [221]Boccaccio writes "James Lovelock, the planetary scientist famous for his [222]Gaia Theory, writes in today's [223]Independent of his belief that it is already too late to divert an environmental catastrophe which will see much of human civilisation destroyed. Fearing it too late to be green, he instead suggests communities plan for survival in a [224]Mad Max type world with limited resources ruled by violent warlords. "We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can." He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper containing "the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity."" ----- Posted by [232]Hemos on Mon Jan 16, '06 11:34 AM from the build-your-own dept. [233]Privacy 99luftballon writes "If, like me, you're more than a little concerned about the privacy aspects of RFID there's a useful [234]enthusiast's web page on making your own RFID-blocking wallet. OK, it's never going to win any prizes for beauty or garner fashion awards but should be effective and seems perfectly practical. " ----- Posted by [240]Hemos on Mon Jan 16, '06 09:54 AM from the rip-it-to-shreds dept. [241]Hardware Hacking [242]wild_berry writes "Found, via [243]Ars Technica's [244]Apple journal, Infinite Loop, a Japanese site [245]disassembling Intel Core Duo iMac. Clint, from the Ars blog, [246]points out that the Core Duo processor is socket-mounted, allowing for possible upgrades, unlike the IBM chips which were soldered to the PCB's. Please use the - [247]cached [248]pages." ----- Posted by [254]Hemos on Mon Jan 16, '06 09:14 AM from the the-problem-of-a-monoculture dept. [255]Security wild_berry writes "[256]Bill Thompson, one of the BBC's technology commentators and presenter of [257]Go Digital on the [258]BBC World Service, expresses his concerns that Mac users assume their safety in the face of trojans, worms, keyloggers and other malware. As a Mac user he is most concerned about the lack of herd immunity that is needed to stop a few infections becoming an epidemic, fully explained in [259]his column week for the BBC technology site. Is he right, and what actual products exist for OS X that would protect against infections?" ----- Posted by [269]Zonk on Mon Jan 16, '06 08:27 AM from the getting-old-anyway dept. [270]Intel [271]Devistater writes "After [272]changing their logo from 'Intel Inside' to 'Leap Ahead,' (and [273]attempting to explain why 2006 is a leap year), Intel has now decided to [274]drop the Pentium brand. Instead of an 'Intel Pentium 4 Dual core' you will be now be purchasing an 'Intel D 840.' You can see the intial steps of this move on [275]Dell's desktop lineup. On the heels of the news of AMD outselling Intel in Desktop Retail sales for [276]two [277]consecutive months, is it really wise to change the logo to something that has no inherent brand identification, and to drop the incredibly recognizable 'Pentium'?" ----- Posted by [282]Hemos on Mon Jan 16, '06 08:00 AM from the most-likely-not-binding dept. [283]Microsoft [284]linumax writes "Taiwan's parliament has voted to [285]end its dependence on Microsoft software, demanding that the government reduce purchases from the software giant by 25 percent this year. The resolution, passed on Friday, is an attempt by the island's law-making body to end the near monopoly Microsoft has with local government offices, a legislative aide said. Local newspaper Commercial Times said however that the resolution may not be binding because it runs against fair trade regulations in Taiwan. Officials at Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission declined to comment." ----- Posted by [290]Zonk on Mon Jan 16, '06 07:34 AM from the not-intentional dept. [291]Windows [292]beuges writes "In an entry on the Microsoft Security Response Center Blog, Stephen Toulouse explains [293]exactly how the WMF flaw could be triggered. BetaNews has an [294]overview of the company's response." From the BetaNews article: "This code exists on every version of Windows since version 3.0, security firms have said. When this functionality was introduced, Toulouse said the security landscape differed from what it is now and metafile records were completely trusted by the operating system. Gibson claimed that the flaw could be exploited only by using a byte size of 1 in the metafile record, which Toulouse says is incorrect. He surmised that Gibson's tests had the offending function as the last entry in the metafile, which caused only incorrect sizes to trigger the flaw." We've previous reported on the [295]backdoor claim. ----- Posted by [300]Zonk on Mon Jan 16, '06 04:40 AM from the who-doesn't-like-cybershells dept. [301]Anime [302]Lawrence Person writes "Given how the series itself touches on so many topics near and dear to the hearts of Slashdotters everywhere, I thought [303]my review of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (first season) at Locus Online would be of interest. It is longer and more in-depth than the average review, and touches on GitS:SAC's relationship to obvious cyberpunk and [304]postcyberpunk source material, the elements that make it unique among anime science fiction, the role of P2P networks in popularizing anime, and how GitS:SAC compares to the other great science fiction TV show currently on the air right now, Battlestar Galactica." ----- Posted by [309]Zonk on Mon Jan 16, '06 02:42 AM from the tell-me-of-this-baseball-you-speak-of dept. [310]The Internet [311]Class Act Dynamo writes "A sports fantasy league company has asked a federal court to decided [312]whether baseball statistics belong in the public domain as history or are the property of major league baseball. Basically, they had been licensing the statistics for nine cents (US) per gross from the Major League Baseball Players Association. But MLB recently bought the rights to be the sole licensor and has refused to renew the license of the fantasy league company. From the article: 'Major League Baseball has claimed that intellectual property law makes it illegal for fantasy league operators to commercially exploit the identities and statistical profiles of big league players.' What does the Slashdot community think? Shoud Barry Bonds' record 73 single season homeruns be in the public domain, or should I worry about having to pay royalties for the first part of this compound sentence?" ----- Posted by [318]Zonk on Mon Jan 16, '06 12:57 AM from the quick-learners dept. [319]The Internet [320]Ant writes "This Nature.com news article reports that potential readers can [321]make snap decisions in just 50 milliseconds: 'Like the look of our website? Whatever the answer, the chances are you made your mind up within the first twentieth of a second. A study by researchers in Canada has shown that the snap decisions Internet users make about the quality of a web page have a lasting impact on their opinions...'" ----- Posted by [104]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 10:47 PM from the burning-brother dept. [105]Space [106]0xC2 writes "The Binary Companion or 'Nemesis' theory asserts that a yet-to-be discovered companion to our Sun may actually exist. [107]Recent observations of two nearby stars (assumed companions) show debris disks 'strikingly like the Kuiper Belt int the outer part of our Solar System'. The [108]Binary Research Institute site is devoted to the theory, and presents a concise introduction, list of evidence, and sample calculations in support of the theory. A fascinating read, although the physics and related calculations are not trivial." Has the 'unique theory on the internet' vibe to it, but interesting nonetheless. ----- Posted by [116]Cliff on Fri Jan 20, '06 09:30 PM from the limited-resources-and-hard-decisions dept. [117]Programming [118]hahafaha asks: "I am currently working on a website for a small organization. We (I am not alone in this) have a beta version ready, and are currently testing the site on browsers. We have tried all of the big browsers (Firefox, IE, opera), as well as other browsers, such as lynx, links, w3m and even NetFront. So, when can one decide that they will stop supporting a system. Obviously, going (for example) down to IE 1 is crazy, but is IE 3 crazy? This is not only relevant to web design but to any programming at all. When, for example, can you say that I will *not* support a certain version of Windows. Can you say that now about Windows 98? How about 95?" ----- Posted by [124]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 08:21 PM from the shocking dept. [125]Music [126]gollum123 wrote to mention a BBC report that [127]despite numerous court cases, litigation does not appear to be reducing the amount of file-sharing. From the article: "The level of file-sharing has remained the same for two years despite 20,000 legal cases in 17 countries. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) said it was 'containing" the problem and more people were connecting to broadband." ----- Posted by [137]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 06:05 PM from the yay-for-dust! dept. [138]Space mknewman wrote to mention a New York Times report that [139]the Stardust project has exceeded NASA scientist's expectations. From the article: "While they had expected mostly microscopic samples, the researchers said, a surprising number of the particles were large enough to be seen with the naked eye ... The cargo in the Stardust's sample container, which was opened Tuesday, 'was an ancient cosmic treasure from the very edge of the solar system,' Dr. Brownlee said. Scientists believe that these particles are the pristine remains of the material that formed the planets and other bodies some 4.6 billion years ago." ----- Posted by [147]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 05:24 PM from the popular-penguins dept. [148]Software [149]segphault writes "Ars Technica takes [150]a look at the results of two different surveys about open source software adoption." From the article: "The survey also addresses the most important question: what motivates organizations to adopt open source software? According to Optaros, cost savings is one of the most significant factors. Optaros says that companies with over US$1 billion annual revenue reported average savings of $3.3 million in 2004 as a result of open source technology, and companies with annual revenue between $50 million and $1 billion reported an average savings of $1.1 million." ----- Posted by [158]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 04:46 PM from the crafty-steve-jobs dept. [159]Music An anonymous reader writes "Chris Seibold over at Apple Matters, has written up an [160]interesting analysis on Steve Jobs' [161]suggestion that Microsoft make their own mp3 player. He argues that it is more bait than business plan, a deft move by Steve Jobs to lure Microsoft into a can't-win war. The key, according to the article, is the licensing of FairPlay." From the article: "The folks who stick with Microsoft get to fight over, roughly, twenty percent of the market. The folks that go with Apple would be aligning themselves with what has become the industry standard. The players that license FairPlay would have access to the iTunes store, backwards compatibility with the songs consumers have already purchased, and a chance to compete on a perfectly level playing field with the iPod. It doesn't take a Stanford MBA to deduce that the potential rewards of opting to use FairPlay far outstrip the rewards of going with PlaysForSure." ----- Posted by [168]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 04:02 PM from the sounds-familiar dept. [169]News [170]Billosaur writes "C|Net has an article by Katharine Q. Seelye of The New York Times, which indicates that the Washington Post is [171]having to close one of its blogs, due to 'too many personal attacks, profanity and hate mail directed at the paper's ombudsman.' It seems that Deborah Howell, the newspaper's ombudsman, wrote an article on the [172]Jack Abramoff scandal which elicited a storm of protest and led to readers using profanity and making unprintable comments, which the paper had to take extra care in removing. This was apparently more based on the issue at hand, as the Post's other blogs have not experienced similar problems." What kind of precedent does this set for other mainstream news sites? What we'd consider a normal day around here has to look fairly intimidating to the average newspaper editor. Will this dissuade news sites from blogging in the future? ----- Posted by [177]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 03:24 PM from the wherefor-will-apple-go? dept. [178]Movies [179]mikeisme77 writes "According to the Washington Post, [180]Pixar Studios is in discussions with Disney for a possible merger/buy out. Disney would own Pixar in exchange for $6.7 billion worth of stock in the Walt Disney Corp. Speculation has also arisen that such a deal may lead to Steve Jobs earning a position on Disney's board of directors. He would likely become Disney's largest individual share holder. Further speculation sees Jobs using his new found power to leverage Disney into releasing more content to the iTunes media service." Details also available from the [181]Time Magazine site. We touched on this issue [182]near the end of last year as well. ----- Posted by samzenpus on Fri Jan 20, '06 02:43 PM from the number-five-is-alive dept. [190]John David Funge writes "In Dr David Ellerman's book [191]Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life there are a number of interesting essays. But there is one particular essay, entitled "The Semantics Differentiation of Minds and Machines," that caught my attention and which should be of interest to Slashdot readers. In that essay Dr Ellerman claims that "after several decades of debate, a definitive differentiation between minds and machines seems to be emerging into view." In particular, Dr Ellerman argues that the distinction between minds and machines is that while machines (i.e., computers) make excellent symbol manipulation devices, only minds have the additional capacity to ascribe semantics to symbols." Read the rest of John's review. ----- Posted by [200]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 02:09 PM from the my-rss-reader-is-unhappy dept. [201]Privacy An anonymous reader writes "Brian Krebs of the Washington Post has written [202]about the recent spate of hijackings at Six Apart's popular LiveJournal service. Hundreds of journals have now been taken over by a notorious group called 'Bantown' using a series of complicated cross-site-scripting vulnerabilities. Krebs details the recent security changes made by LiveJournal in response to the takeovers." From the article: "It is unclear whether LiveJournal has managed to close the security holes that the hackers claim to have used. The company says it has, but the hackers insist there are still at least 16 other similar JavaScript flaws on the LiveJournal site that could be used conduct the same attack. [Bantown] group members said they plan to turn their attention to looking for similar flaws at another large social-networking site. " ----- Posted by [208]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 01:21 PM from the objective-looks dept. [209]Apple [210]Barry Norton writes "Steve Jobs, at the MacWorld tradeshow, boasted: 'the new iMac [with] Intel processor is two to three times faster than the iMac G5.' MacWorld (the publication) has been [211]putting the iMacs through their paces. The results are a good deal less impressive than Steve's boast, showing an average performance increase of 10 to 25 per cent while performing a series of everyday tasks with software specially designed for the new systems." Ars Technica had [212]another perspective on the new systems earlier this week. ----- Posted by [218]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 12:45 PM from the watch-out-for-that-tree dept. [219]Space [220]Ant wrote to mention a National Geographic article [221]looking at the cluttered nature of Near-Earth Orbit. From the article: "Since the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik I satellite in 1957, humans have been generating space junk. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network is currently tracking over 13,000 human-made objects larger than four inches (ten centimeters) in diameter orbiting the Earth. These include both operational spacecraft and debris such as derelict rocket bodies. 'Of the 13,000 objects, over 40 percent came from breakups of both spacecraft and rocket bodies,'Johnson said." ----- Posted by [229]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 12:04 PM from the that's-a-pricy-meatball dept. [230]Security JamesAlfaro wrote to mention a C|Net article [231]putting a pricetag on computer crime. From the article: "The FBI calculated the price tag by extrapolating results from a survey of 2,066 organizations. The survey, released Thursday, found that 1,324 respondents, or 64 percent, suffered a financial loss from computer security incidents over a 12-month period. The average cost per company was more than $24,000, with the total cost reaching $32 million for those surveyed. Often survey results can be skewed, because poll respondents are more likely to answer when they have experienced a problem. So, when extrapolating the survey results to estimate the national cost, the FBI reduced the estimated number of affected organizations from 64 percent to a more conservative 20 percent. " ----- Posted by [237]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 11:24 AM from the watch-where-you're-putting-those-tags dept. [238]The Internet [239]Barry Norton writes "VNUNet reports that the Photocasting feature in Apple's [240]iPhoto application [241]violates core XML and RSS standards. Perhaps the worst part is that, in many cases, this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong. Dave Winer, essentially the creator of RSS, says, 'It's pretty bad. There are lots of errors, the date formats are wrong, there are elements that are not in RSS that aren't in a namespace.'" ----- Posted by [247]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 10:48 AM from the varieties-of-mice-that-nature-forgot-to-make dept. [248]United States [249]Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "'The crisis in "translational science," or turning basic discoveries into therapies, has been brewing for years, but it hit a depressing nadir in 2005, when just 20 new drugs won approval from the Food and Drug Administration,' Sharon Begley writes in the Wall Street Journal. Concerned researchers and foundations are [250]pushing for more sharing of data between basic scientists and clinical investigators, and Stanford is launching a program to train doctoral students in bench-to-bedside research." ----- Posted by [258]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 10:07 AM from the so-few-places-are-safe-now dept. [259]Communications [260]Luke PiWalker wrote to mention a CNN article discussing a [261]bid process for offering cell phone service to NYC subway stations. The contract is only to wire up stations; moving trains will not have service. Those New Yorkers will also be safe from their phones, as the BBC reports on a study indicating [262]cell phones don't cause cancer. From that article, submitted to us by [263]Dan Hope: "She acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone. The team, however, did not put this down to a causal link, because almost exactly the same decreased risk was seen on the other side of the head, leaving no overall increase risk of tumours for mobile phone users. Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on." ----- Posted by [269]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 09:27 AM from the how-to-talk-to-the-eather dept. [270]Wireless Networking JamesAlfaro writes "After much wrangling between opposing interests among the members of the IEEE, a [271]first draft for the Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11n specification received approval in a Thursday meeting. Final ratification of the standard is not expected until next year." Relatedly, [272]judgecorp writes "The IEEE has [273]disbanded its working group on ultrawideband. They are leaving the marketplace to decide between two competing approaches." From the article: "Freescale, first to the market with UWB products, believes its headstart will give it a long-term victory, while WiMedia, with the backing of industry heavyweights including Intel and Microsoft, reckons its punch will eventually win through, even without a formal IEEE standard." ----- Posted by [278]Zonk on Fri Jan 20, '06 08:49 AM from the year-of-the-ipod dept. [279]Music [280]Luke PiWalker writes "The [281]market for digital music hit $1.1 billion in 2005, more than triple 2004 sales. But the industry, wanting to wring the maximum profit out of the consumer, remains fixated on piracy." From the article: "The IFPI also called on ISPs to join the fight against music piracy, which it claims severely erodes the profits of its 1,450 member record companies across the globe. The IFPI added that the legitimate music business was gradually gaining ground on digital piracy. It said research showed that in Europe's two biggest digital markets -- Britain and Germany -- more music fans are now legally downloading music than illegally file-swapping." ----- Posted by [286]CowboyNeal on Fri Jan 20, '06 07:49 AM from the jumping-to-conclusions dept. [287]Windows koro666 writes "In a blog post, Mark Russinovich from SysInternals responded to the [288]allegations made by Steve Gibson labeling the flaw as an intentional backdoor. It seems that the hype was about Steve's discovery that the code would only be executed if the size of the metafile record was deliberately tampered with, which is not the case. The [289]technical details are explained in his post." ----- Posted by [298]CowboyNeal on Fri Jan 20, '06 05:36 AM from the back-in-the-saddle dept. [299]Sci-Fi [300]Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that [301]George Takei has agreed to play Hikaru Sulu in an upcoming episode of the fan series [302]Star Trek: New Voyages. He's the second actor from the original Star Trek series to come onboard; another episode will feature Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov. And here's what really makes this news great: Takei's episode will be written by none other than David Gerrold, the SF writer who also brought us Star Trek's [303]Tribbles." ----- Posted by [310]CowboyNeal on Fri Jan 20, '06 03:09 AM from the looking-good dept. [311]The Internet [312]Andy King writes "Web designers have [313]as little as 50 milliseconds to capture the interest of potential customers, according a new report by researchers at Carleton University. Through the halo effect, first impressions can influence subsequent judgments of website credibility and buying decisions." ----- Posted by [321]CowboyNeal on Fri Jan 20, '06 12:28 AM from the spreading-the-news dept. [322]Worms [323]Tuxedo Jack writes "The Register reports that [324]twenty years ago today (19 January 1986), the first computer virus, Brain, was discovered. By modern standards, [325]this was a minor virus, and it spread by floppy disks, which is a far cry from the network-aware worms of today. Still, though, it was the first noted virus, and we've had twenty years of pain and annoyance from it and its successors. Happy birthday, Brain, you and all your little virus friends - just know we're doing our damndest to keep you from having more." ----- Posted by [104]Cliff on Tue Jan 24, '06 10:11 PM from the extra-work-for-extra-responsibility dept. [105]Education [106]r0wan asks: "I'm currently working as a Microsoft Systems Administrator. Through a series of bungled management decisions, have found myself responsible for a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory network, that I know nothing about (the person who was sent for training was: not the Microsoft point person, as I was; and left the company, soon after the domain upgrade). It doesn't look as though training will be forthcoming, and I've just been moved from the lab, where I was training myself while simultaneously handling the domain. I've got the MCSA/MCSE Training Kit, but recently I've found numerous errors, so many that I was sent a free Press Kit book, for submitting all of the errors I had found. Between management's reluctance to shell out for training, and being moved from the lab, I'm getting the distinct sense that training is something I'm expected to take care of, on my own time. Is this the de-facto standard within IT, and for all jobs within IT? If so, how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?" ----- Posted by [115]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Jan 24, '06 07:57 PM from the preying-on-mixed-opinions-about-flash dept. [116]Microsoft [117]Charmless1 writes to tell us eWeek is reporting that Microsoft has release new previews of their [118]upcoming developer tools. Some have even dubbed these new tools as "Flash killers". From the article: "Microsoft's Expression Suite consists of the Expression Graphic Designer, Expression Interactive Designer and the Expression Web Designer. Microsoft has yet to release a CTP for the Web Designer, also known by its codename Quartz." Slashdot also covered some of the [119]pre-release sentiments back in September. ----- Posted by [125]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Jan 24, '06 06:08 PM from the fingers-in-a-few-more-pies dept. [126]Software worb writes "The tiny mobile browser [127]Opera Mini was officially released worldwide today. Opera is known for its PC and mobile browsers, but even the cell phone version Opera require more memory than most phones today are capable of. Opera Mini works by passing pages through Opera's servers to strip them down before they are displayed on the phone. Also, the Register has a story on how this actually means that Opera now offers a [128]reason not to buy a smartphone, a market Opera currently has a strong foothold in." ----- Posted by [133]Zonk on Tue Jan 24, '06 05:01 PM from the i-would-be-too-with-those-options dept. [134]Google [135]DarkClown writes "ZDNet is on the one hand reporting that [136]Google execs will keep their $1 salaries again this year, and on the other hand is reporting that the executives [137]cashed in more than $160 million worth of stock last month." From the stock article: "Since the search giant went public in August 2004, Brin has sold about 6.5 million shares at a market value of $1.68 billion. Page has sold about 5.8 million shares at a market value of $1.4 billion, according to calculations from Thomson Financial. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, who was brought in to run the company before it went public, has sold more than 2.1 million shares, worth more than $502 million." They could be getting a multi-million dollar salary *and* the stock money. Good faith efforts go a long way in my book. ----- Posted by [144]Zonk on Tue Jan 24, '06 04:30 PM from the my-pod-my-rules dept. [145]Media (Apple) [146]jaredmauch writes "USA Today is reporting on a [147]trend of selling iPods on eBay which are preloaded with music and movies. This raises interesting questions about the legality of the files, including those that offer seemingly legitimate services of transcoding DVDs for the iPod video (while selling you the DVD disc as well)." An example from the article: "A 60-gigabyte video iPod loaded with 11,800 songs, with a starting bid of $799. The iPod alone would cost about $400. 'I don't see how it's different than selling a used CD,' seller Steve Brinn, a Cincinnati pediatrician, wrote in an e-mail to USA TODAY. 'If the music industry asked me not to do it, I just wouldn't do it.'" ----- Posted by [154]Zonk on Tue Jan 24, '06 04:04 PM from the invisible-fastness dept. [155]The Internet [156]Jason Jardine wrote to mention a C|Net article describing a new [157]Dell deal with Vodafone to provide high-speed wireless access. From the article: "Dell said Tuesday that it plans to embed Vodafone's High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology into laptops built to order and sold in Europe. The technology will be backwards compatible with earlier 3G, or third-generation, wireless technologies including UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), the company said." ----- Posted by [162]Zonk on Tue Jan 24, '06 03:37 PM from the who-needs-checks-and-balances dept. [163]Privacy [164]tommcb writes "The State of Alaska Division of Elections has [165]denied a request by the Alaska Democratic Party for the raw file format used to tabulate voting results by citing that the data is in a proprietary format that is owned by Diebold. The ADP says 'The official vote results from the last general election are riddled with discrepancies and impossible for the public to make sense of'. The article contains some good quotes from Jim March of Black Box Voting: 'Copies of these kinds of files have been sitting on the Internet for over two years, with Diebold's knowledge.'" ----- Posted by [173]Zonk on Tue Jan 24, '06 03:04 PM from the sad-state dept. [174]Technology JSBiff writes "Peter Quinn, former CIO of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has given an [175]interview to Pamela Jones over at Groklaw, regarding the people, companies, and events surrounding his resignation. He spins an interesting tale of Microsoft, money, and the politics of technology." From the article: "Now the folks that have say here do not know me from a hole in the wall and the funds were for projects that were totally unrelated to ITD. I clearly had set the priorities for the Bond but this funding is for projects like a new Taxpayers System, new Registry of Motor Vehicles system, etc., all projects desperately needed by the citizens of the Commonwealth. Eric Kriss and I always had a goal of making IT 'a'political and now it was rapidily becoming a political football of the highest magnitude. I took this job in the hopes of making meaningful and institutionalized IT reform. All the previous efforts were about to be for naught as political payback." We discussed [176]Quinn's resignation last month. ----- Posted by [182]Zonk on Tue Jan 24, '06 02:03 PM from the pot-i-would-like-you-to-meet-kettle dept. [183]Movies An anonymous reader writes "There's a story on ArsTechnica about how the [184]MPAA has admitted that they made unauthorized copies of a movie. That in itself is a bit of tasty hypocrisy, but if it turns out that they ripped a DVD, then the MPAA could find themselves in violation of the DMCA." From the article: "According to Mark Lemley, a professor at the Stanford Law School, the MPAA may have been within its rights to make copies of the film. Given that the MPAA's intent isn't financial gain and that the whole situation may rise above the level of trading barbs through the media into legal action, making a copy may be justified. Personally, I can't see any justification for an organization such as the MPAA ignoring a directive from a copyright owner, but IANAL." Update: 01/24 19:52 GMT by [185]Z : Made title more accurate. ----- Posted by [190]Zonk on Tue Jan 24, '06 01:24 PM from the bowing-out dept. [191]Yahoo! [192]Unsichtbarer_Mensch wrote to mention a Seattle PI story in which Yahoo! CFO Susan Decker states that they're [193]not aiming to be the No. 1 Search engine. From the article: "Yahoo!'s comments underline the difficulties any Internet company faces in trying to challenge Google's dominance of the Web search industry. Google has at least double the market share of Yahoo! and Microsoft Corp. in Internet search, the largest and most profitable segment of online advertising. 'In some countries, it's already game over in search, with Google the clear victor,' said RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan in New York. 'Google's product development pipeline runs at such a fast rate that it's very difficult for any company, Microsoft or Yahoo! to catch up.'" ----- Posted by [198]Zonk on Tue Jan 24, '06 01:05 PM from the new-tricks-for-an-old-dog dept. [199]Internet Explorer Ruliz Galaxor writes "IEBlog posts that [200]Internet Explorer 7 will support a native XMLHTTPRequest object as [201]many [202]other [203]browsers currently do. This will mean no more ActiveX MSXML objects to implement AJAX functionality. It looks like Microsoft is seriously trying to make the lives of us web developers easier. Of course you'll still need to use the Microsoft.XMLHTTP ActiveX object if you want to support IE6 and older." ----- Posted by [209]Zonk on Tue Jan 24, '06 12:35 PM from the there-are-better-ways-to-make-a-buck dept. [210]Worms spge writes "Now that [211]Jeanson James Ancheta has plead guilty to spamming, computer misuse and fraud, it might be worth scanning through the [212]original indictment document, which includes a step-by-step account of how someone goes about setting up an adware business, manages botnets and (thankfully) gets caught." From the BBC article: "'Mr Ancheta was responsible for a particularly insidious string of crimes,' said a spokesman for the US attorney's office in Los Angeles, Thom Mrozek. 'He hijacked somewhere in the area of half a million computer systems. This not only affected computers like the one in your home, but it allowed him and others to orchestrate large-scale attacks.'" We discussed [213]Ancheta's arrest back in October of last year. ----- Posted by [220]CmdrTaco on Tue Jan 24, '06 12:17 PM from the it-didn't-need-to-blink dept. [221]It's funny. Laugh. An anonymous reader submitted a link to what they claim is the [222]the internet's first banner ad. It comes from 1994 HotWired, paid for by AT&T. It's ugly, but no animation, no popups. It makes me a little nostalgic. ----- Posted by [231]CmdrTaco on Tue Jan 24, '06 11:26 AM from the what-am-i-designing-this-now dept. [232]Intel [233]Pray_4_Mojo writes "Geek.com is reporting that Intel's errata (bug) documentation shows that the Intel Core Duo chip has [234]34 known issues found in the 20 days since the launch of the iMac Core Duo. (you can read [235]the list) with only plans to fix one of them. While bugs in hardware is nothing new (the P4 has 64 known issues, at this time Intel does not plan to fix a single one) this marks one of the first times that Intel released a processor with known bugs, and some of the bugs are of higher severity than in the past. Also alarming is the rate the flaws have been found, at one and half per day since the launch of the iMac Core Duo." ----- Posted by [244]CmdrTaco on Tue Jan 24, '06 11:02 AM from the that-took-some-doing dept. [245]Google [246]Aqws writes "As of 1/23/2006 [247]Google News is no longer in Beta. It was in Beta for three years and four months. Here's the [248]blog of Google News creator, Krishna Bharat, on the subject." ----- Posted by [258]CmdrTaco on Tue Jan 24, '06 10:00 AM from the because-you-can dept. [259]Movies [260]JohnGrahamCumming writes "The LA Times reports on a company's use of [261]Bayesian filtering to predict the winners at the Sundance Film Festival. They use a modified POPFile email filter and claim an 81% success rate." ----- Posted by [267]CmdrTaco on Tue Jan 24, '06 09:26 AM from the because-you-can dept. [268]It's funny. Laugh. SKicker writes "This site [269]gives your IP a score based on how interesting it is. Its silly and pointless but fun." Thank god my IP is a full house. Wonder which one of you has the royal flush and prime number IP! ----- Posted by [276]CmdrTaco on Tue Jan 24, '06 08:58 AM from the what-a-waste dept. [277]Operating Systems An anonymous reader writes "The race is on. You can try to get the [278]bounty for booting Windows XP on iMac. At this moment there is $2773 waiting for the winner. However several people have [279]brickified their iMacs when playing with EFI." I imagine those tech support calls are hysterical ;) ----- Posted by [285]CmdrTaco on Tue Jan 24, '06 08:25 AM from the pixels-and-polygons-and-processors-oh-my dept. [286]Graphics [287]Steve from HEXUS writes "ATI have done [288]more than just boost clock speeds for their latest GPU; they've concentrated on boosting particular aspects of the GPU. This doesn't necessarily mean a boost in performance in all apps, however. HEXUS has a review: 'Even current synthetic benchmarks designed to show off theoretical rates in 3D hardware can have a hard time exploiting the tripling in fragment processing ability. That's not to say the performance increases at the same clocks as R520 are invisible. Clearly they're not without increases, especially at the higher resolutions, of up to 30% in the games we tested, clock-for-clock.'" ----- Posted by [294]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Jan 24, '06 04:41 AM from the little-dose-of-humor dept. [295]It's funny. Laugh. An anonymous reader writes "Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade recently gave a talk at MIT. One attendee recorded the event and has made available a [296]transcript of the talk, in which the guys talk about the comic and various related topics. The Penny Arcade crew always puts on a good show with their own brand of witty humor and disarming personalities and this is certainly no exception. If you have never seen them talk in person it may lose a little in the translation from speech to text, but still a funny read in any case." ----- Posted by [301]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Jan 24, '06 02:29 AM from the world-needs-ditchdiggers-too dept. [302]Editorial fnord_ix writes "Paul Graham has another interesting essay talking about [303]How to Do What You Love. He talks about the lies that adults tell kids about what work is, and how work is equal to pain." From the article: "I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want. They may have to be made to work on certain things. But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later. " ----- Posted by [308]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Jan 24, '06 12:34 AM from the average-joe-in-a-clean-room dept. [309]Security Lam1969 writes "Jack Gold says IT shops may have a huge problem on their hands, and probably don't know even know about it. The [310]problem is USB flash drives, which he predicts will probably reach 10 GB in capacity in three years, and the lack of policies to guide use of them by employees. From the article: 'With more and more employees using flash drives, smart phones with Secure Digital memory cards, portable hard drives, etc., the likelihood of companies actually knowing about all instances of data loss is declining rapidly. And as a result, the possibility of companies breaking laws, whether for data-loss disclosure or regulatory compliance, is growing dramatically.' Gold predicts 'at least one publicized major case of unencrypted data loss from a portable device' in the next year, which will result in many companies banning these kinds of devices." ----- Posted by [104]Zonk on Sat Jan 28, '06 10:47 PM from the on-the-up-and-up dept. [105]United States [106]Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Internet companies have long been dwarfed in Washington by the lobbying might of telecoms. But now [107]some firms are beefing up their D.C. operations, the Wall Street Journal reports, partly in an effort to push legislation that would prevent telephone companies from [108]charging Internet companies for guaranteed fast delivery of Internet content. A telecom lawyer hired by Google last summer to build the company's Washington office tells the WSJ, 'Carrier control over Internet activity is bad for consumers. ... We're not worried consumers won't be able to reach Google. The real threat is to the next Google and to the services that are important for consumers.'" ----- Posted by [116]Zonk on Sat Jan 28, '06 08:34 PM from the /salute dept. [117]Space Patchw0rk F0g writes "On this, the anniversary of the Challenger disaster, Jay Barbree has [118]a moving and in-depth piece on this international disaster." From the article: "During several earlier shuttle missions, disaster did everything it could to crawl into the shuttle launch system and turn it into tumbling flaming wreckage. The primary O-rings on those flights suffered severe erosion from superheated gases, sometimes accompanied by lesser erosion. And the erosion had occurred after launch temperatures much higher than on this freezing Florida day -- 53 degrees was the lowest launch-time temperature up to that time. The booster engineers felt helpless. For months, they had been studying the O-ring seal problem. They knew a disaster was coming, but no one stepped forward and said, 'Stop this train until it's fixed.'" ----- Posted by [125]Zonk on Sat Jan 28, '06 06:27 PM from the you-can-never-go-home-again dept. [126]Netscape [127]Juha-Matti Laurio writes "After years of official separation, Mozilla is just now [128]shaking off some of the last vestiges of its parental association with Netscape. From the article: 'Mozilla's Usenet public newsgroups have been moved from netscape.public.mozilla.* to just mozilla.*. The renaming officially ends Mozilla's public Netscape news legacy after more than 8 years of active use. Most of the approximately 63 different newsgroups that began with the old moniker have now been officially abandoned.' Related: Earlier this week Netscape Communications [129]released [130]version 8.1 of its Netscape Browser." ----- Posted by [137]Zonk on Sat Jan 28, '06 05:33 PM from the shush dept. [138]Politics [139]Lucre Lucifer writes "The top climate scientist at NASA, James E. Hansen, says that the [140]Bush Administration tried to silence him(NY Times) after he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth 'a different planet.' The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions." ----- Posted by [146]Zonk on Sat Jan 28, '06 04:40 PM from the that's-kind-of-a-stretch dept. [147]The Courts An anonymous reader writes "An appeals court has upheld the prosecution of a Michigan man who was charged with [148]production of child pornography after downloading and burning pornographic pictures from the Internet. The pictures were created by a Russian website that the man was not affiliated with in any form. From the [149]court decision (PDF): 'After reviewing the dictionary definition of the word make, the circuit court stated that the bottom line was that, following the mechanical and technical act of burning images onto the CD-Rs, something new was created or made that did not previously exist.' Is this simply a court's overreaction to a scumbag pedophile? And how does this affect the lawsuits by the BSA, RIAA, and MPAA?" ----- Posted by [157]Zonk on Sat Jan 28, '06 03:31 PM from the paladins-mount-up dept. [158]Role Playing (Games) GrandGranini writes "The New York Times has an [159]interview with World Of Warcraft Lead Game Designer Jeff Kaplan (Tigole), in which he talks about the next raid dungeon after Ahn'Quiraj, the necropolis Naxxramas." From the article: "Naxxramas is going to be the most difficult thing in the game until the expansion pack comes out. It will be the pinnacle, and it's absolutely massive. You'll see this big necropolis floating above Eastern Plaguelands. It's a 40-man raid zone, and it's bigger than the Undercity [one of the main cities in the game]. Things could change, but we're up to something like 18 bosses in there, and they are really cool, too. But it's going to be hard. Really hard. We're hoping to release it in the spring." If you told me two years ago that I'd be reading about an upcoming instance in the sport section of the NYT, I'd have called you a damn dirty liar. May you live in interesting times, indeed. ----- Posted by [164]Zonk on Sat Jan 28, '06 02:41 PM from the you-want-some-toast? dept. [165]Technology [166]prostoalex writes "PC Magazine is running [167]an interview with two of the research leaders in IBM's speech recognition group, Dr. David Nahamoo, manager of Human Language Technologies, and Dr. Roberto Sicconi, manager of Multimodal Conversational Solutions. They mainly discuss the status quo of speech technologies, which prototypes exist in IBM Labs today, and where the industry is headed." From the article: "There has to be a good reason to use speech, maybe you're hands are full [like in the case of driving a car]. ... Speech has to be important enough to justify the adoption. I'd like to go back to one of your original questions. You were saying, 'What's wrong with speech recognition today?' One of the things I see missing is feedback. In most cases, conversations are one-way. When you talk to a device, it's like talking to a 1 or 2 year old child. He can't tell you what's wrong, and you just wait for the time when he can tell you what he wants or what he needs." ----- Posted by [172]Zonk on Sat Jan 28, '06 02:22 PM from the over-and-over-and-over-again dept. [173]Games The Guardian Gamesblog kicked off a great discussion on their site, talking about [174]games that just keep pulling you back in. Games that, even if you've played through them once, you just have to pick them up again. [175]eToyChest and [176]Kotaku both have related threads. So, what about you? What are some videogames that, even years later, you just have to play through one more time? ----- Posted by [183]Zonk on Sat Jan 28, '06 01:17 PM from the make-you-an-offer dept. [184]It's funny. Laugh. [185]theodp writes "[186]Upgrade or keep crashing was the tagline when Windows XP was introduced. So how will Windows Vista be marketed? 'I'd hate to see something bad happen to your PC,' seems to be one pitch. Even if new features won't get you to upgrade to Vista, [187]you should buy Vista for the security, urged Windows Chief Jim Allchin. Are commercials featuring Tony Soprano next? Bada Bing!" ----- Posted by [192]CowboyNeal on Sat Jan 28, '06 11:10 AM from the more-like-ring-master dept. [193]Businesses conq writes "BusinessWeek has a nice piece on [194]how Steve Jobs is redefining the job of being a CEO. From the story: 'Just over a decade ago, Steve Jobs was considered washed-up, a has-been whose singular achievement was co-founding Apple Computer back in the 1970s. Now, given the astounding success of Apple and Pixar, he's setting a new bar for how to manage a Digital Age corporation.'" ----- Posted by [200]CowboyNeal on Sat Jan 28, '06 10:12 AM from the chink-in-the-armor dept. [201]Bug Critical_ writes "Tom's Hardware recently [202]discovered a bug in Microsoft's ACPI driver implementation under Windows XP SP2 that causes a loss of more than one hour of battery time when connecting any USB 2.0 device to an Intel Core Duo based system. Apparently Microsoft, Intel and ODMs have known of this problem under a confidentiality agreement since July 12, 2005 via (a still private) Knowledge Base article KB899179. The bug lies in the asynchronous scheduler component inadvertently being left running causing Windows' internal task scheduler (ITS) to treat it as a running process involving the attached device. This in turn prevents the ITS from powering down the processor into one of the ACPI sleep states causing the system to use more battery power. At this time there seems to be no fix. Strangely, single-core systems and AMD systems are not affected. This leads one to wonder if it is truely a software problem or if there a much larger hardware problem that may affect Core Duo equipped Apple systems." ----- Posted by [208]CowboyNeal on Sat Jan 28, '06 09:22 AM from the quarks-and-stuff dept. [209]News [210]Izeickl writes "PhysOrg.com is reporting that scientists working at a neutrino detector nicknamed AMANDA at the South Pole report that [211]evidence for string theory may soon be coming. Extra dimensions predicted by string theory may affect observed numbers of certain neutrinos and this is what the scientists will be looking for. The article further states 'No more than a dozen high-energy neutrinos have been detected so far. However, the current detection rate and energy range indicate that AMANDA's larger successor, called IceCube, now under construction, could provide the first evidence for string theory and other theories that attempt to build upon our current understanding of the universe.'" ----- Posted by [216]Zonk on Sat Jan 28, '06 01:40 AM from the customer-service? dept. [217]Businesses chibbie writes "Best Buy is finally working towards [218]ending mail-in rebates by 2007. Rebates will still be around, but you will be able to file them online, and receive your check much quicker. I guess this means Best Buy doesn't [219]hate their customers after all." ----- Posted by [223]Zonk on Fri Jan 27, '06 11:27 PM from the dear-fridge-please-restock-soda dept. [224]The Internet [225]Roland Piquepaille writes "After 12 years of development and with the help of NASA's Embedded Web Technology software, the TMIO company is delivering its first smart ovens. You can monitor these refrigerator-ovens from any Internet connection. For example, you can adjust and control the oven settings from your cell phone and be sure that [226]dinner is ready when you get home. But cooking from your office or your car won't come cheap: these ovens carry a price tag of $8,699. Right now, they're only available in North America, but I bet there soon will be distributors in other parts of the world. Read more for [227]additional details about these smart ovens." ----- Posted by [232]Zonk on Fri Jan 27, '06 09:47 PM from the not-as-cool-as-you-think dept. [233]Science [234]Apostata writes "As reported by the CBC, 'Salmon researchers working on the Brooks Peninsula [British Columbia] were shocked last November when [235]an octopus attacked their expensive and sensitive equipment.' Apparently it was caught on video, but no word on when/where it will be available. Apparently this is the first documented attack." Obviously the start of something bigger. ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Feb 01, '06 11:32 PM from the what-could-go-wrong dept. [104]Robotics An anonymous reader writes "Linux powers a new autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that learns routes by following along behind foot-soldiers, after which it can retrace the route solo, avoiding obstacles. [105]iRobot's "R-Gator" UGV is based on John Deere's 658cc, diesel-powered [106]M-Gator military utility vehicle platform, with control, navigation, and object-avoidance systems based on BlueCat Linux from LynuxWorks. I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?" ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Feb 01, '06 09:21 PM from the 100-monkeys-with-typewriters dept. [114]Technology Strolls writes "In an release which conjures images of avian borg, a press release tells of plans to [115]release pigeons equipped with cellphones and GPS so that they can "blog" air pollution data. The plan is the brainchild of Beatriz da Costa of the University of California Digital Arts Research Network and is scheduled as part of the [116]inter-Society for Electronic Arts' annual symposium in San Jose in August. Da Costa has previously been involved with [117]RFID roaches." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Feb 01, '06 08:16 PM from the they-don't-look-like-pirates dept. [123]The Internet [124]Brainsur writes " A federal grand jury has [125]indicted 19 people on charges they used the Internet to pirate more than $6.5 million worth of copyrighted computer software, games and movies.The indictment outlines an alleged plot by defendants from nine states, Australia and Barbados to illegally distribute newly released titles, including movies like "The Incredibles" and "The Aviator," and games like "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005." ----- Posted by [132]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 01, '06 06:59 PM from the where-are-my-flying-cars dept. [133]Slashback Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Record Label civil war, more big-business software getting tossed into open source, US Government says 2008 IPv6 still on track, EU Warned Microsoft source code not enough, RIM celebrates a victory in Germany, 10th planet a reality, and looking forward to the year 2001 -- Read on for details. ----- Posted by [140]Cliff on Wed Feb 01, '06 05:30 PM from the fight-the-inertia dept. [141]Businesses Nedry57 asks: "I am in the somewhat unique position of being a technology worker, who lives outside of the IT department in my company (a very large organization in the US). By far, the biggest challenge I face is getting anything done due to the bureaucracy that exists, within IT. There are certain tasks (i.e. anything that happens in the data centers) that I don't have the access to do. Even a simple task, like installing more memory in a non-production server, can take nine months and massive mountains of paperwork (no exaggeration), thus costing many times more than it should. The lack of agility is maddening, because I know we are missing significant business opportunities. My management is extremely supportive and despite our excellent track record of success in creating robust/secure applications--our work has passed audit numerous times with flying colors--we get no support from IT. Even senior management can't break through the barrier. I am very interested in hearing the experiences Slashdot readers have had in similar situations." How do you get your technology work done, when your IT department is more hindrance than help? ----- Posted by [147]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 01, '06 04:43 PM from the defining-reverse-engineer dept. [148]Software reub2000 writes to tell us that in response to talk of "tainted" code within ReactOS Steven Edwards, ReactOS and Wine developer, has called for a complete [149]audit of the entire source tree in addition to procedure and policy changes. From the article: "One final note, this audit of the code is going to take a long time. It could take years, but it will happen, this project will come out better than it was before. I don't believe anything anyone has done while working on this project was really wrong. Every decision has three possibilities, being moral, ethical and or legal. Sometimes the law in itself is unethical and immoral. If people made mistakes and there was a violation of the law, I question the justice of the law and or anyone that would try to prosecute any of the developers who just want the freedom to learn and create a more free system." ----- Posted by [159]CmdrTaco on Wed Feb 01, '06 03:58 PM from the god-schmod-i-want-my-monkey-man dept. [160]Biotech At last night's State of the Union, the president said "Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos." Jamie happened onto a link today which humorously and insightfully [161]addresses this bit from the speech. It's worth your time. Relatedly segphault writes "Ars Technica has an interesting look at [162]scientific research and technology proposals included in Bush's State of the Union address." ----- Posted by [170]Zonk on Wed Feb 01, '06 03:27 PM from the phish-wrap dept. [171]Privacy [172]Buzzy's Roast Beef writes "The Boston Globe reports that bundles of newspapers in Worcester, MA were [173]distributed wrapped in paper which contained subscriber credit card information for 240,000 customers. Those of you paying by check needn't worry; account and routing details for 1,100 customers paying by check were also given out like candy." From the article: "Larkin said the newspapers were first notified of the security breach on Monday by a clerk at a Cumberland Farms store. It took until late Monday for officials to confirm the data on the back of the paper were credit and debit card numbers. Senior management learned of the security breach yesterday morning, Larkin said. The company put out a news release late yesterday afternoon." ----- Posted by [180]CmdrTaco on Wed Feb 01, '06 02:54 PM from the hover-car-for-sergey dept. [181]Google [182]Lester67 writes "Business 2 put a bunch of big brains together to give us [183]a peek at Google from 2015 to 2105. "Will it succumb to hubris and flame out like so many of its predecessors? Or will it grow into an omnipresent, omnipotent force--not just on Wall Street or the Web, but in society? We put the question to scientists, consultants, former Google employees, and tech visionaries like Ray Kurzweil and Stephen Wolfram. They responded with well-argued, richly detailed, and sometimes scary visions of a Google future." " ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Feb 01, '06 02:33 PM from the to-infinity dept. [188]Java [189]Anml4ixoye writes "I recently got sent a copy of [190]Bruce Tate's newest book Beyond Java - A Glimpse at the Future of Programming Languages. Having read Bruce's Bitter Java and Better, Faster, Lighter Java, I was intrigued to see what he would have to say about moving beyond Java. In short: If you're a hard-core Java (or to a lesser extent, C#) developer who thinks Ruby is something that goes on a ring, Pythons will bite you, and Smalltalk is something you have to do at parties, you are in for a rude awakening." Read the rest of Cory's review. ----- Posted by [199]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 01, '06 01:49 PM from the ok-not-quite dept. [200]Technology pmenefee writes "Japanese car manufacturer Honda has launched a [201]new self-driven car. Dubbed Honda Accord ADAS, the vehicle can change gears and steer itself around bends. While the auto-pilot function will currently only operate on motorways and dual carriageways, officials at Honda believe that future ADAS models will tackle all roads." ----- Posted by [209]jamie on Wed Feb 01, '06 01:00 PM from the theory-of-the-mobius dept. [210]Science The [211]Whorf hypothesis claims that one's native language influences perception and thought. Researchers at UC-Berkeley and U-Chicago reasoned that, since language is predominantly processed in the left hemisphere of the brain, any effect on perception should have an effect predominantly on the right visual field, which is also processed on the left. After [212]comparing reaction times for hues of blue-green -- colors with distinct names in one language but not another -- they concluded, in a just-published [213]paper, that the Whorf hypothesis holds for the right visual field, but not the left. ----- Posted by [221]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 01, '06 12:21 PM from the protecting-corporate-interest dept. [222]Software [223]dchallender writes to tell us that Inga Chernyak, recently featured in a VillageVoice piece entitled "[224]Code Warriors", has been [225]fired from an IP firm in NYC for having "incompatible views". From the article: "I was, and still am, a student interested in the scope of copyright law, and determined to pursue a career in the field. I wanted to gain an understanding both of the theory of copyright, which my work with FC provided, and its practice. The firm exposed me to the day to day operations of an IP lawyer, and I was nothing if not receptive to these lessons. I was baffled that someone saw fit to fire me over an expression of dissenting views. Doesn't the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged?" ----- Posted by [233]Zonk on Wed Feb 01, '06 11:35 AM from the i-object? dept. [234]Microsoft techmuse writes "According to an article in Information Week, Microsoft is aware that the 'Kama Sutra/Blackworm/MyWife' worm will hit on Friday, overwriting office documents, but [235]will not release a patch until its regular monthly patch release on February 14th. Unless, that is, you subscribe to one of Microsoft's pay security services, in which case your machine will have the worm removed in advance." From the article: "The blog offered no explanation why the tool wouldn't be updated earlier, nor did Microsoft immediately respond to questions. Each month, Microsoft pushes a revised tool to Windows users who have Automatic Update enabled for Windows Update or Microsoft Update. The Redmond, Wash.-based company has released the Malicious Software Removal Tool off-schedule once before, in August 2005, shortly after the Zotob worm began striking Windows 2000 systems." ----- Posted by [245]Zonk on Wed Feb 01, '06 10:54 AM from the don't-tread-on-me dept. [246]Privacy [247]Anonymous Coward writes "A librarian at Brandeis University [248]forced the FBI to obtain a warrant to seize computers used to send threats. From the article: 'Federal Bureau of Investigation agents tried to seize 30 of the library's computers without a warrant, saying someone had used the library's Internet connection to send the threat to Brandeis. But the library director, Kathy Glick-Weil, told the agents they could not take the machines unless they got a warrant first. Newton's mayor, David Cohen, backed Ms. Glick-Weil up. After a brief standoff, FBI officials relented and sought a warrant from a judge.'" ----- Posted by [256]CmdrTaco on Wed Feb 01, '06 10:36 AM from the essential-survival-toold-for-tokyo dept. [257]Sony [258]jonerik writes "Sony has released software for its popular PSP handheld gaming device called [259]TalkMan. In development for some time now, the program currently stores about 3,000 conversation patterns in English, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. 'A user may speak the words "Koko-wa-dokodesuka?" (Where is this?) in Japanese, for example, into the device's microphone, upon which a cartoon bird acting as an interpreter will pop up and start talking in the user's language. The bird is also able to translate the reply into Japanese.' A European release for TalkMan is expected in the spring." ----- Posted by [264]CmdrTaco on Wed Feb 01, '06 10:08 AM from the oh-to-have-his-troubles dept. [265]Microsoft NightWulf writes "News AU claims Bill Gates said in an interview, his fortune is so big, that [266]the IRS needs a special computer, because a normal one can't handle the numbers. The IRS must have had to switch from PC's to Macs just for Gates." ----- Posted by [271]CmdrTaco on Wed Feb 01, '06 08:53 AM from the now-isn't-that-cute dept. [272]Input Devices Zugok writes "We all remember the [273]Optimus Keyboard from last year. Now Art Lebedev and his team have designed the [274]Optimus Mini Three keyboard. The 'Mini Three' builds on the idea of those extraneous keys on modern Logitech and Microsoft Keyboards but like the Optimus Keyboard utilises OLED technology for visual customisation of keys. This is not vapourware, [275]pre-orders are being take now with a cut price until April 2nd. This is just a step closer to the Optimus Keyboard. They also have a [276]mailing list for those who want to keep up with developments of the Optimus Keyboard. Happy salivating!" This is a far cry from the full keyboard, but it's still pretty nifty. Assuming it actually does ship. ----- Posted by [281]CmdrTaco on Wed Feb 01, '06 08:49 AM from the what-did-they-break-this-time dept. [282]Internet Explorer Hans W. Smith writes "Microsoft has [283]unveiled Internet Explorer 7, releasing the new "preview" version of its Web browser to the general public for testing. The latest version works only with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and includes many of the features Microsoft has been touting for months such as: privacy protection,tabbed browsing and a search box similar to Firefox. They tried to outdo Firefox tab browsing with a feature call Quick tab which [284]shows thumbnail view of all open tabs in a single window." Yup, [285]you saw it yesterday. Posting before coffee never works. ----- Posted by [289]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 01, '06 06:42 AM from the tell-me-what-i-like dept. [290]Music An anonymous reader writes "Blogger Steve Krause takes an interesting look at [291]how music recommenders Pandora and Last.fm work, including some algorithmic strengths and weaknesses. Although he seems to think Last.fm is better now, his punchline is that a combination of their approaches will eventually be the real winner and for that, Pandora can more easily become like Last.fm than the other way around." ----- Posted by [296]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 01, '06 03:33 AM from the papers-papers-please dept. [297]Politics An anonymous reader writes "News.com is reporting that in Australia, recent attempts by a photo club to [298]take pictures of industrial installations was met with police resistance. From the article: 'Club member Hans Kawitski was told not to photograph industrial installations and was ordered to inform members of the camera club to follow his lead. Liberty Victoria said its advice to photographers would be to ignore the directive. "The police have got no place making such warnings," president Brian Walters SC said.'" ----- Posted by [304]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 01, '06 12:27 AM from the you-are-what-you-eat dept. [305]News An anonymous reader writes to tell us LiveScience is reporting that Archaeologists may have found the [306]oldest remains of slaves brought from Africa to the New World. From the article: "The African origin of the slaves was determined by studying a chemical in their tooth enamel that reveals plant and rock types of their native land. The chemical enters the body through the food chain as nutrients pass from bedrock through soil and water to plants and animals. It is an indelible signature of birthplace, the researchers said, because it can be directly linked to the bedrock of specific locales." ----- Posted by [104]Cliff on Sat Feb 04, '06 10:35 PM from the failure-minimization dept. [105]Programming null_functor asks: "I need to create an ultra-stable, crash-free application in C++. Sadly, the programming language cannot be changed due to reasons of efficiency and availability of core libraries. The application can be naturally divided into several modules, such as GUI, core data structures, a persistent object storage mechanism, a distributed communication module and several core algorithms. Basically, it allows users to crunch a god-awful amount of data over several computing nodes. The application is meant to primarily run on Linux, but should be portable to Windows without much difficulty." While there's more to this, what strategies should a developer take to insure that the resulting program is as crash-free as possible? ----- Posted by [114]ScuttleMonkey on Sat Feb 04, '06 08:33 PM from the high-time-to-check-it-out dept. [115]Math [116]sciencenews writes to tell us that a physicist at Stanford has just recently published a peer review website for several physics lectures focusing on a single underlying idea that "[117]time is not a single dimension of spacetime but rather a local geometric distinction in spacetime." The science is presented quite clearly and originally uses GPS systems as a point of focus. From the article: "Not too long ago, people thought the Earth was flat, which meant they thought that gravity pointed in the same direction everywhere. Today, we think of that as a silly idea, but at the same time, most people today (including most scientists) still think of spacetime as if it were a big box with 3 space dimensions and 1 time dimension. So, like gravity for a flat Earth, the single time dimension for the 'big box universe' points in one direction, from the Big-Bang into the future. A lot of lip service is given to the idea of "curved spacetime", but the simplistic 3+1 'box' remains the dominant concept of what cosmic spacetime is like." ----- Posted by [125]ScuttleMonkey on Sat Feb 04, '06 06:29 PM from the candy-inside dept. [126]Biotech [127]Roland Piquepaille writes "No, I'm not talking about a computer virus here, but about a real one, the Epsilon 15, which attacks the bacterium Salmonella. By writing a few lines of computer code, biologists from Purdue University have found a way to control a high-resolution microscope. This allowed them to [128]look inside a virus. While previous teams were able to visualize the highly symmetric outer shell of other viruses, these researchers were able to see the whole structure of Epsilon 15, including its tail, its genome and even its core. This better knowledge of viruses which attack bacteria could lead to great advances in medicine, especially when antibiotics become inefficient because of bacteria resisting them." ----- Posted by [133]ScuttleMonkey on Sat Feb 04, '06 05:37 PM from the site-abuse-the-same-the-world-over dept. [134]The Internet rufey writes "In the coming months, [135]Craigslist will begin charging fees for some of its listings. New York City real estate listings will be the first to get the fees. Starting on March 1st, it will cost $10 to list real estate on Craigslist for New York City. The fees may not be limited to New York real estate however. Job postings may see fees imposed for various parts of the country. The fees have been proposed as a way to combat the problem of people posting the same thing several times a day to keep their listing near the top of the list." ----- Posted by [142]ScuttleMonkey on Sat Feb 04, '06 04:24 PM from the clearer-picture-from-clearer-pictures dept. [143]Technology [144]adminsr writes to tell us the Discovery Channel is reporting that an Egyptian-led research team claims to have found compelling new evidence relating to the [145]cause of death of King Tutankhamen From the article: "According to the Italian doctors, it was likely that King Tut suffered a violent blow, most likely by a sword. The blow would have lodged gold fragments from the decorations of the Pharaoh's armour or dress into the knee." ----- Posted by [153]ScuttleMonkey on Sat Feb 04, '06 03:32 PM from the keeping-me-poor dept. [154]Graphics An anonymous reader writes "ViperLair is currently running a closer look at ATI's newly released [155]All-In-Wonder X1900 PCIe graphics card. The clock speeds and memory are pretty comparable to other cards available but the reviewer warns that 'clock speeds do not always tell the whole story.' The review tests performance in Doom 3, UT 2004, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, and the 3DMark06 benchmarking tool." This release comes relatively quickly after the X1800 series which was release just last October. ----- Posted by [161]ScuttleMonkey on Sat Feb 04, '06 02:28 PM from the rose-colored-denial dept. [162]News [163]PeterAitch writes "Nature is reporting that expecting the worst - emotional cushioning - does not usually make you feel any better when you flunk or flop. The reported study indicates that you are [164]just making yourself miserable. On the flip-side, people who are anxious are more likely to motivate themselves better to prepare for the forthcoming ordeal - defensive pessimists. Those with a generally sunny outlook on life expect to succeed and tend to deny responsibility when they perform badly." ----- Posted by [169]ScuttleMonkey on Sat Feb 04, '06 01:34 PM from the rednecks-of-the-sky dept. [170]Technology [171]quad4b writes to tell us Wired is reporting that the Rocket Racing League (RRL), launched last October by Granger Whitelaw and Peter Diamandis of Ansari X Prize fame, has its [172]first official team. "Leading Edge Rocket Racing" was launched by entrepreneurs and former F-16 pilots Don "Dagger" Grantham and Robert "Bobaloo" Rickard who see this as the "next great flying experience." ----- Posted by [177]ScuttleMonkey on Sat Feb 04, '06 12:22 PM from the make-them-200-feet-tall-and-you-have-a-movie dept. [178]News [179]TheUploader writes "The story leaves nothing to embellish: The wasp, Ampulex compressa, has evolved to inject a toxin into a specific part of a roach's brain, [180]turning it into a zombie. The wasp then leads the zombie roach into the wasp's nest, lays eggs inside it, and waits for its young to hatch, who will then go on to do the same to more roaches." ----- Posted by [186]CowboyNeal on Sat Feb 04, '06 11:15 AM from the watching-the-watchmen dept. [187]Privacy Kesch writes "Zdnet has a posted a [188]FAQ describing the storage of personal information done by the search engines of AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and, of course, Google. They describe what information is stored, how it is stored, what laws protect it (none), how you can attempt to protect your privacy, and what Congress is doing with regards to the issue." ----- Posted by [194]CowboyNeal on Sat Feb 04, '06 10:19 AM from the save-what's-left-of-detroit dept. [195]Wireless Networking Lam1969 writes "[196]Members of the Michigan National Guard will be at the Super Bowl on Sunday to deploy 'sensor fusion', a real-time, IP-based wireless technology that combines readings from portable and fixed devices that can potentially detect terrorist threats. While sensors capable of detecting chemical, biological, or radiological threats have been used at previous Super Bowls, the readings had to be communicated by radio between different security personnel. Sensor fusion automatically takes readings from the devices and uploads them to a central, secure Web server, where security staff anywhere can monitor conditions at the event. From the article: 'The software uses open standards and is open-source, based on the OSGi Service Platform, which is a standardized, component-oriented computing environment for networked services. OSGi allows networked devices to be managed from anywhere in the world, while allowing software to be installed, updated or removed on the fly while the device is operating.'" ----- Posted by [202]CowboyNeal on Sat Feb 04, '06 09:33 AM from the back-to-the-drawing-board dept. [203]Space [204]Hulboy writes "According to the SuitSat website, [205]things aren't going well for the makeshift satellite in it's first few hours. 'Reports of nothing heard from Israel, Turkey, South Africa, and two negative reports from Japan as well as the weak report below. JH3XCU reports signal only heard in SSB mode, TX cycle and doppler detectable, but no modulation... this is not looking good.' ----- Posted by [211]Zonk on Sat Feb 04, '06 07:36 AM from the cha-ching dept. [212]Microsoft GT_Alias writes "CNN Money is reporting that [213].Net programmers are one of the top 5 most in-demand jobs. Of the positions where recent surveys have indicated a labor shortage, .Net developers and QA analysts are the two that fell under the 'technology' category. According to CNN Money, .Net developers can make between $75-85K starting out in major cities, with the potential to make 15% more if they have a particular proficiency. Additionally, QA workers can make $65-75K a year with the ability to negotiate a 10-15% pay jump if they switch jobs. How does this information compare with the Slashdot crowd's real-world experience?" ----- Posted by [218]Zonk on Sat Feb 04, '06 05:33 AM from the he's-in-a-meeting dept. [219]It's funny. Laugh. [220]Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Hard-driving homeowners have converted their loos into [221]virtual satellite workspaces, with retractable desks or waterproof touch-screen monitors, the Wall Street Journal reports. Among the features: showerproof computers and mirrors with stock quotes. But beware the accidental 'BlackBerry dunk' in the toilet or sink. 'Audio One says about all of the 30 home-automation systems it's installed near its Miami head office in the past year--prices can reach $200,000--have featured TVs in the bathroom. "It's become a given," says company engineer David Sussman. "There's not much sanctity left." '" ----- Posted by [226]Zonk on Sat Feb 04, '06 03:24 AM from the doesn't-pick-up-after-itself dept. [227]Worms [228]azav wrote to mention the New Scientist story detailing [229]the computer virus that brought down the Russian Stock Exchange. From the article: "As the world waited for one computer virus to strike on Friday, another wriggled its way into the Russian stock exchange and knocked it offline. Computer experts had warned that 3 February could bring gloom for many as a computer virus called Nyxem was scheduled to start deleting files on machines it had infected." ----- Posted by [235]Zonk on Sat Feb 04, '06 01:49 AM from the don't-wash-them dept. [236]Technology [237]theodp writes "All 120 Super Bowl XL footballs will be [238]marked with a drop of synthetic DNA to thwart potential counterfeiters (free reg. required to read) who might be tempted to sell phony game-used Super Bowl footballs, which can be worth thousands of dollars. Exposed to a specific laser frequency, the DNA glows to a bright green. 'The chance of replicating this exact DNA sequence is one in 33 trillion,' said the president of [239]PSA/DNA Authentication Services." ----- Posted by [106]Cliff on Wed Feb 08, '06 11:20 PM from the one-language-to-bind-them dept. [107]Businesses RMX asks: "In our company, we're currently going through the debate of standardizing on a computer language for our next set of products. The pro-standardization guys say that a single language (like Java) will save everyone time. The anti-standardization guys are advocating a mixed environment (of languages like Python, Ruby, and C#), and argue that the whole discussion is as silly as a manufacturing firm standardizing on screwdrivers for all their screw/nail/glue fastening needs. Have any of your companies standardized on a language? How well did it go?" ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Feb 08, '06 09:36 PM from the never-coming-down dept. [117]Technology [118]nsasch writes "The Global Flyer just wasn't enough for Steve Fossett. He's going again, this time to make the world's longest (in length) flight, ever. He is currently over the Atlantic ocean and can be [119]tracked online. He will be flying for 3 days with 18000 pounds of fuel (~8164 kilograms). More information, tracking, Microsoft Flight Simulator models, and background images are available from [120]Virgin Atlantic." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Feb 08, '06 08:09 PM from the voip-stock dept. [128]News [129]mesowarny writes "The street writes: Vonage Holdings, moved to become the first major Internet telephony player to [130]go public by filing Wednesday to raise up to $250 million via an initial offering of stock and named a Tyco International executive as CEO. Our revenues were $18.7million in 2003, $79.7million in 2004, and $174.0 million for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2005," the company's prospectus says."While our revenues have grown rapidly, we have experienced increasing net losses, primarily driven by our increase in marketing expenses. From the period of inception through Sept.30, 2005, our cumulative net loss was $310 million. Our net loss for the nine months ended Sept.30, 2005, was $189.6million. During the same nine-month period, our marketing expenses were $176.3million." ----- Posted by [135]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 06:59 PM from the down-but-not-defeated dept. [136]Slashback Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Sutor's response to OpenOffice control, Google forgives BMW, SunComm vows to make right their DRM debacle, SuitSat-1 still transmitting, and Defense of Google Book Search -- Read on for details. ----- Posted by [143]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 05:19 PM [144]Moon [145]soldeed writes "Space.com is reporting the beginning of construction on the [146]Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Which is scheduled for launch in late fall of 2008. It will orbit the moon at fifty kilometers and image the entire surface at high resolution. A far Ultraviolet instrument will enable it to see into areas permanently in shadow and see if there is indeed ice there. LRO will count craters and image American and Soviet landing sites." ----- Posted by [152]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 04:39 PM from the drm-on-everyone's-back dept. [153]Linux turnitover writes "Even though Linus has said 'The Linux kernel has always been under the GPL v2. Nothing else has ever been valid,' LinuxWatch is reporting that Richard Stallman has said it's ultimately [154]up to the developers. And those on the LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List) are going back and forth about whether to move to GPL3. The sticking point, not surprisingly, is the issue of DRM." In response to the DRM issue Linus wrote: "I personally think that the anti-DRM clause is much more sensible in the context of the Creative Commons licenses, than in software licenses. If you create valuable and useful content that other people want to be able to use (catchy tunes, funny animation, good icons), I would suggest you protect that _content_ by saying that it cannot be used in any content-protection schemes." ----- Posted by [159]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 03:56 PM from the climbing-the-ladder dept. [160]Software An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices has an [161]interview with Jon S. von Tetzchner, co-founder and CEO of Opera Software, on the growing importance of device computing, Linux in the device space, browsers as an interface platform for Linux devices, and how future WHAT standards like WebForms 2.0 and Canvas will make the Web more usable on mobile computing devices of tomorrow." ----- Posted by [166]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 03:11 PM from the something-to-sort-your-mother's-photo-albums dept. [167]Technology [168]Roland Piquepaille writes "This image processor is not your typical digital camera. It took 6 years, 20 people, and $6 million to build the '[169]Regional Calorimeter Trigger' (RCT) which will be a component of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, one of the detectors on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The RCT will fill several racks of space in order to process 4 trillion bits of information per second while analyzing a billion proton collisions per second. The camera is currently being tested at the University of Wisconsin at Madison before being shipped to Geneva in June to participate in the first experiments in 2007." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Feb 08, '06 02:27 PM from the build-a-better-skynet dept. [179]Microsoft [180]Scott Forsyth writes "'Building Intelligent .NET Applications' is an excellent primer book into the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the business world, specifically related to Microsoft technologies. It is an introduction to the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for .NET programmers. It is the first book I have seen that shows professional .NET developers how to incorporate AI into their daily programming. In this accessible guide, developers learn how to enhance new and existing .NET applications with intelligent agents, data mining, rule-based systems, and speech processing." Read the rest of Scott's review. ----- Posted by [189]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 01:43 PM from the thinking-out-of-the-box dept. [190]SuSE [191]Jane Walker writes "The push for a virtual data center and utility computing continued this week as Novell announced that SuSE Linux would have [192]support for Virtual Iron out of the box." Novell has also guaranteed that 'that all existing independent software vendor (ISV) certifications will not be affected.' From the article: "'The applications certification [component] is huge,' said Novell director of data center applications Justin Steinman. 'Customers want to know that their existing applications are not going to break when they deploy their technology [on a virtual server].'" ----- Posted by [202]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 01:06 PM from the stem-cells-au-naturale dept. [203]News [204]Itninja writes "NPR reported this morning on some interesting findings regarding mothers and their children. From the article: 'Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and [205]protects her for the rest of her life. That's because a baby's cells linger in its mom's body for decades and -- like stem cells -- may help to repair damage when she gets sick. It's such an enticing idea that even the scientists who came up with the idea worry that it may be too beautiful to be true.'" ----- Posted by [212]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 12:24 PM from the free-as-a-bird dept. [213]Software [214]fr1kk writes to tell us that with the recent advent of a preview version for the new [215]open source response to iTunes, Songbird, BoingBoing has taken a few minutes to interview team lead Rob Lord. While this program may be a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes and Windows Media Player platforms it is still only a Windows release. The good news is that by being open source that will (hopefully) not last very long. The Songbird site appears to be swamped right now, but there are [216]several different [217]mirrors available to download the client. ----- Posted by [224]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 11:37 AM from the all-their-slimey-lawyers-on-loan-to-riaa dept. [225]The Courts [226]nietsch writes "The Register is reporting that a french Kazaa user that had been sued by the SCPP (the french equivalent of the RIAA) [227]has been acquitted by the courts in his county. 'The Judges decided that these acts of downloading and uploading qualified as private copying' Ars Technica has [228]more coverage on the subject, or you can read it in english from the organization that [229]lead the defense." ----- Posted by [235]CmdrTaco on Wed Feb 08, '06 10:58 AM from the i-can't-imagine-why dept. [236]Handhelds [237]JFlex writes "According to a story over at Personal Computer World 'Speculation that [238]Apple plans to buy handheld maker Palm has been revived by a call from two leading Palm investors for the company to be put up for sale, according to the local paper of both companies.'" ----- Posted by [244]CmdrTaco on Wed Feb 08, '06 10:16 AM from the still-waiting-for-x-ray-specs dept. [245]Biotech lil_nohreaga writes "Wired is reporting that several companies are developing [246]electronically controlled lenses to provide enhanced vision. From the article: Thanks to technologies created for astronomical telescopes and spy satellites, aberrometers can map a person's eye with extreme accuracy. Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball, and structures in the eye scatter the resulting beam of light." ----- Posted by [252]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 09:10 AM from the really-suave-looking-sharks dept. [253]News An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the University of Florida are claiming that certain genes found in sharks that give them their 'sixth sense' and allow them to detect electrical signals could also be [254]responsible for the development of the head and facial features in humans. From the article: 'The researchers examined embryos of the lesser spotted catshark. Using molecular tests, they found two independent genetic markers of neural crest cells in the sharks' electroreceptors. Neural crest cells are embryonic cells that pinch off early in development to form a variety of structures. In humans, these cells contribute to the formation of facial bones and teeth, among other things.'" ----- Posted by [262]jamie on Wed Feb 08, '06 08:27 AM from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept. [263]NASA [264]belmolis writes "George C. Deutsch, who tried to muzzle top NASA climate scientist James Hansen and ordered NASA web designers to add the word 'theory' to every mention of the Big Bang, has resigned. The New York Times [265]reports that NASA declines to discuss the reasons for his resignation, but that it came the same day that Texas A&M University, from which Deutsch claimed on his resume to have graduated, revealed that he had attended the university but did not complete his degree." The New York Times reports it today, but as of yesterday, it was the Times that had unquestioningly passed along the falsehood of Deutsch's graduation, and it was the blog [266]Scientific Activist whose investigation revealed he'd left before graduating to work on the Bush reelection campaign. For more on the 24-year-old political appointee's interesting viewpoints, see [267]World O' Crap; on Monday, we covered the anger over his [268]attempts to squelch science -- something that, sadly, Jim Hansen has [269]gotten used to. ----- Posted by [275]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 06:38 AM from the set-my-people-free dept. [276]Sun Microsystems inc_x writes "Developers from OpenOffice.org are urging Sun to set the project free and [277]bring it under a foundation. Sun's dominance over the project makes other companies such as IBM, Redhat and Novell reluctant to contribute more. Both Mozilla and Eclipse managed to attract an increasing number of developers after the projects were moved over to an independent foundation." ----- Posted by [283]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 04:25 AM from the robbing-einstein-to-pay-feynman dept. [284]NASA FleaPlus writes "Although overall NASA funding is expected to increase next year, NASA has announced plans to [285]divert money from its science program to help pay for the expected cost overruns for flying the Space Shuttle safely until its retirement in 2010. A number of science projects are being canceled or delayed indefinitely." ----- Posted by [291]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 02:31 AM from the walking-the-walk dept. [292]Novell hamfactorial writes "Novell has announced the [293]public availability of the Xgl code, an openGL accelerated X server layer. Available binaries ought to be coming soon for distributions running the modular X.org 7.0 release (possibly 6.9, though unconfirmed). A [294]temporary page for Xgl information is up at the openSUSE website. This is the same code that was running in the Novell Linux Desktop 10 preview videos as seen earlier. [295]Further information is also available at Miguel De Icaza's blog." ----- Posted by [302]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 08, '06 12:28 AM from the new-shiny-toys dept. [303]Software [304]ZarK writes "Technical Preview 2 of the upcoming [305]Opera 9.0 browser is now available for download. In addition to the general bugfix and rendering improvements there's also new features, like x-platform type widgets, improved content blocking, bittorrent support, thumbnail preview of tabs and more. Improved functionality also comes in the fact that a good lot of the scripts from [306]userscripts.org will now work, advanced settings have improved in opera:config, and more browser customization is available at [307]the opera community. However, some clear indications that this is still an alpha release is the experimental support for NTLM which breaks the proxy functionality for some users, and the fact that widgets are always on top." ----- Posted by [104]Zonk on Sun Feb 12, '06 08:22 PM from the not-what-the-internet-is-for dept. [105]The Internet [106]darkmonkeh writes "The number of Japanese who [107]killed themselves in online suicide pacts rose sharply last year, according to the BBC. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and the pacts may appeal to those scared to die alone. These [108]Japanese internet 'suicide clubs' accounted for at least 26 deaths in the last 2 months." ----- Posted by [114]Zonk on Sun Feb 12, '06 06:19 PM from the we-love-you-unca-darwin dept. [115]Science [116]kthejoker writes "Today is the 197th anniversary of the great biologist Charles Darwin's birth. In response, some [117]450 Christian churches are celebrating Darwin's birth, saying, 'Darwin`s theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science.' There's also an [118]interesting perspective on Darwinism and Christianity in the San Jose Mercury News." ----- Posted by [124]Zonk on Sun Feb 12, '06 05:57 PM from the your-sunday-project dept. [125]Television slummy writes "After much anticipation, MythTV 0.19 has been released. The [126]release notes outline the new features and bug fixes, and [127]the official announcement for this release is available on the MythTV site." From the release notes: "The major changes in this release [include]: LiveTV rewritten to support saving buffered content while watching. Signal Monitoring for DVB and pcHDTV recorders. Ending times may be changed while recordings are in progress. Playgroups allow for default playback options on recordings. Channel changes can be made across tuners without changing tuners manually first. New popup keyboard simplifies setup using remote. Preview schedule changes when making adjustments to recording schedules. Added ability to control MythFrontend through a telnet socket." ----- Posted by [133]Zonk on Sun Feb 12, '06 04:25 PM from the look-for-this-soon-near-you dept. [134]Television [135]caffeination writes "Here in Britain, anything capable of receiving live or virtually live broadcasts is [136]considered TV receiving equipment. Because the detector vans can't actually 'catch' people watching such broadcasts on their computers, the BBC is [137]proposing a blanket tax on PCs instead. They received several thousand [138]responses to this green paper, ranging from the insightful to the unprintable." ----- Posted by [143]Zonk on Sun Feb 12, '06 03:23 PM from the you-get-porn-and-free-music dept. [144]The Internet [145]Bemmu writes "According to the San Francisco Chronicle: 'Yahoo Inc. is considering offering free music downloads, discounts on DVD rentals and frequent-flier miles to users who [146]make the Web site their primary search engine.'" More from the article: "Offering rewards to search engine users isn't new. During the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, a number of companies including AllAdvantage.com and MyPoints.com gave cash, prizes and loyalty points to users, although many of the companies eventually went out of business or were sold at fire sale prices. That's not to say the model never works. One exception is iWon.com, a Web portal that offers cash prizes for using the site. After some success during the boom, iWon is now owned by Ask Jeeves and its parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp. " Update: 02/12 21:07 GMT by [147]Z : Headline changed for accuracy. ----- Posted by [151]Zonk on Sun Feb 12, '06 01:28 PM from the not-much-of-an-argument-here dept. [152]The Internet [153]Dino wrote to mention a BBC opinion piece on why [154]tiered Internet setups are a bad idea. From the article: "What is being proposed is more like building two roads into every town and up to every house, one smooth and well-maintained tarmac and the other a dirt track, and then letting Tesco and Waitrose bid for the right to use the good road. This issue just the latest round of a long-running debate about how much government - of whatever type, in whatever country - should be involved in the growth and development of the internet." ----- Posted by [159]CmdrTaco on Sun Feb 12, '06 12:09 PM from the guess-who-is-to-blame dept. [160]Security [161]Bemmu writes "[162]Mainichi Daily News and BBC News are reporting that the 'Cyber Storm' operation, for testing how prepared America is for fending off cyber attacks, [163]has now concluded. Apparently they even used bloggers as part of the operation, as relayers of misinformation!" ----- Posted by [169]CmdrTaco on Sun Feb 12, '06 10:39 AM from the did-he-flip-me-off-in-there dept. [170]Robotics [171]mshiltonj writes "This is a video of [172]real robot tranforming from a vehicle to a biped and back to a vehicle. It's some Japanese technology demonstration." Rumor is the next version will be a red semi + trailor and will be much more than meets the eye. ----- Posted by [178]CmdrTaco on Sun Feb 12, '06 09:46 AM from the something-to-read dept. [179]Security [180]Dylan Knight Rogers writes "Applications are constantly being ported for usage on the Internet - either for a viable escape from expensive software, or because it's often helpful to have an app that you can access from anywhere. Operating systems that run from the Web will be [181]a different story." ----- Posted by [187]Zonk on Sun Feb 12, '06 08:46 AM from the that's-not-cool-man dept. [188]The Courts aricusmaximus writes "A California student is now facing felony conspiracy charges after [189]unleashing a botnet attack that shut down the network of a Seattle hospital intensive care unit. This indictment comes a few weeks after another California man [190]pled guilty to similar charges. Both attacks were attempts to make money off of [191]adware affiliate programs. So who's really at fault here? The students? The hospital for not securing their computers and network? Or the adware companies for providing the incentive?" ----- Posted by [197]Zonk on Sun Feb 12, '06 04:28 AM from the it's-in-me-mind! dept. [198]Sci-Fi iiii writes "According to a Yahoo News story, [199]half of the world's human population is infected with Toxoplasma, a parasite shown to alter the brain function of rats, inducing them into behavior that benefits the parasite but is suicidal for the rat. So what affect does it have on humans? Article comes complete with Heinlein 'Puppet Masters' reference. I call dibs on using Toxoplasma as a name for my rock band." ----- Posted by [205]Zonk on Sun Feb 12, '06 02:49 AM from the i-shall-live-forever! dept. [206]Games [207]Ant wrote to mention a Globe and Mail article stating that [208]videogames keep the mind young and help in quick focusing on different tasks. "A body of research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. Just as people fluent in two languages learn to suppress one language while speaking the other, so too are gamers adept at shutting out distractions to swiftly switch attention between different tasks. A new study of 100 university undergraduates in Toronto has found that video gamers consistently outperform their non-playing peers in a series of tricky mental tests. If they also happened to be bilingual, they were unbeatable." ----- Posted by [218]Zonk on Sat Feb 11, '06 10:30 PM from the one-way-to-make-sure-we're-working dept. [219]Security [220]user24 writes "Security focus reports that [221]RFID injections are now required for access to the datacenter of a Cincinnati company. From the article 'In the past, employees accessed the room with an RFID tag which hung from their keychains, however under the new regulations an implantable, glass encapsulated RFID tag from VeriChip must be injected into the bicep to gain access ... although the company does not require the microchips be implanted to maintain employment.'" ----- Posted by [229]Zonk on Sat Feb 11, '06 08:18 PM from the more-is-better dept. [230]AMD lubricated writes "According to the San Fransisco Chronicle, in an effort to one-up AMD, Intel will be coming out with [231]4 core cpu's in 2007." From the article: "Chips with two cores have been the latest rage, with both Intel and AMD selling those microprocessors as their high-end offering. Apple Computer Inc.'s new iMac, which started selling last month, uses the dual-core chip ... Not to be outdone, Randy Allen, AMD's corporate vice president of server and workstation division, said Friday that his firm is working its own quad-core processor for release next year." ----- Posted by [237]Zonk on Sat Feb 11, '06 06:32 PM from the that's-a-big-oops dept. [238]Security An anonymous reader writes "According to a story over at Washingtonpost.com, the latest definitions file for Microsoft's Anti-Spyware beta [239]flags Symantec's Norton Antivirus products as a password-stealing trojan and prompts users to delete portions of the program. Users who follow the instructions hose their installation of Norton, requiring delicate Windows registry edits and a complete removal/reinstall of Norton. Microsoft's [240]support forum is quickly filling up with complaints about this problem, many from businesses that have been pretty hard hit. This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments." ----- Posted by [248]Zonk on Sat Feb 11, '06 05:21 PM from the fun-and-learning-like-pb-and-j dept. [249]Math [250]markmcb writes "OmniNerd once again digs into the math behind iTunes. The 5-star ratings in iTunes are actually stored in a variable allowing values from 0 to 100, with 20 = 1-star, 40 = 2-star, etc. Known to few, if you set a rating to 30 (manually), it will show up as 1 1/2 stars in the program's GUI. Matt Schinckel provides interesting [251]statistical evidence showing that not only do non-whole, non-half values (e.g., 47) not increase the amount a song will play, but neither do the half-star ratings (with the exception of .5 star)." ----- Posted by [104]CowboyNeal on Thu Feb 16, '06 10:40 PM from the peta-unavailable-for-comment dept. [105]Data Storage Angry_Admin writes "Rather than spend millions of dollars for an [106]array of hard drives when you can have all that storage on just one drive? A story at P2P.net US inventor Michael Thomas, owner of [107]Colossal Storage, says he's the first person to solve non-contact optical spintronics which will in turn [108]ultimately result in the creation of 3.5-inch discs with a million times the capacity of any hard drive - 1.2 petabytes of storage, to be exact. According to the article, In the past, data storage has only been able to orient the direction a field of electrons as they move around a molecule, Thomas said. "But now there's a way to rotate or spin the individual electrons that make up, or surround, the molecule," he says. He expects a finished product to be on the market in about four to five years, adding the cost would probably be in the range of $750 each." ----- Posted by [117]CowboyNeal on Thu Feb 16, '06 09:05 PM from the scratch-and-win dept. [118]Microsoft [119]BertieBaggio writes "Remember the long-running e-mail hoax that had Bill Gates testing an "e-mail tracing program" and offering to pay recipients big bucks if they passed his test e-mail along to all their friends? Well, the offer is true, sort of. Microsoft [120]wants you to use its search engine, and it's got $1 million worth of prizes up for grabs for those who nibble at the offer. Following Yahoo's [121]recent consideration of offering prizes to searchers, is this another tactic to lure users away from Google with candy and [122]other shiny things?" ----- Posted by [127]Cliff on Thu Feb 16, '06 08:30 PM from the a-directory-full-o-files dept. [128]Programming [129]Asmor asks: "I'm a novice programmer who is largely self-taught. It's never been too much trouble for me to reinvent the wheel constantly before, but now as my ambitions get loftier I'm finding that I could really benefit from maintaining some oft-used code that can easily be reused. The problem is, I really don't have any experience with this and I'm not really sure how I should organize things, how the code should be stored, how it should be implemented, etc. I think this is what people mean when they talk about libraries and/or APIs, but not really sure. I'm specifically curious about PHP and JavaScript, but advice for other programming languages is also helpful! How do you store and maintain your most frequently used code?" ----- Posted by [137]CowboyNeal on Thu Feb 16, '06 07:44 PM from the in-a-perfect-world dept. [138]Movies MrPerfekt writes "In this week's Cringely column, [139]another one of his hypothesizing sessions actually seems plausible. Blockbuster's retail outlets make good sense for Apple to partner with them for video iPod content distribution. From the article: 'Take your Video-out iPod to Blockbuster, drop it in a kiosk dock then download from the local xServe your choice of 50,000 movies. You can rent the movie or buy it and you can even choose the resolution, which may or may not affect the final price. Take the iPod home, drop it in the dock attached to your TV and watch the movie. H.264 decoding takes place in the iPod in hardware.'" ----- Posted by [151]CowboyNeal on Thu Feb 16, '06 06:17 PM from the other-biathlons dept. [152]Security Remy writes "Seems that Australian gold medal mogulist Dale Begg-Smith is [153]also a spyware entrepreneur. According to a report at Spam Kings, [154]Begg-Smith has supported himself in style as president of a company responsible for generating 20,000,000 pop-ups per day, thanks to drive-by installs of spyware. I know the concept of Olympians being amateurs is outdated, but shouldn't they be barred from competition for this sort of thing?" ----- Posted by [162]CmdrTaco on Thu Feb 16, '06 05:09 PM from the one-way-to-do-it dept. [163]Hardware [164]DigitalDame2 writes "PC Magazine's Loyd Case explains [165]how to build a Media Center PC of your own, how to choose the parts for a custom project, and tips for the Motherboard." I imagine you guys might have some other opinions on what parts and tools to use for the task... ----- Posted by [171]CmdrTaco on Thu Feb 16, '06 04:15 PM from the because-you-can dept. [172]iMac [173]Ctrl+Alt+De1337 writes "The Mactel-Linux folks have now [174]successfully booted Linux on a 17" Core Duo iMac. They used the elilo bootloader, a modified kernel, and a hacked vesafb to boot from a USB drive. No GUI pictures for now, just white text on a black background. The distro of choice was Gentoo, and instructions and patches are promised this weekend." ----- Posted by [180]CmdrTaco on Thu Feb 16, '06 03:29 PM from the well-isn't-that-clever dept. [181]Music [182]Sandy Cheeks writes "The [183]Saitek A-250 Wireless 2.1 Speaker System made a stong impression when showcased at this year's CES with its sleek styling and rather impressive performance... The compact boomerang shaped device can provide 2.1 stereo sound up to 30 meters away from a source PC, and can alternatively be used hard wired to any other audio source with an 1/8" stereo jack output." ----- Posted by [191]CmdrTaco on Thu Feb 16, '06 03:15 PM from the rolling-in-the-benjamins dept. [192]Security An anonymous reader writes "iDefense, a Verisign company, is offering $10,000 to any researchers who find and report to it information on a previously unknown Windows flaw for which Microsoft later issues a "critical" advisory, [193]according to a story over at Washingtonpost.com. Not really surprising, considering that Russian hacking groups are now [194]paying thousands of dollars for exploits that attack unpatched holes in Windows. From the article: "Details of the flaw must be submitted exclusively to iDefense by March 31. There is no limit on the number of prizes that can be paid: if five researchers find and report five different Windows flaws for which Microsoft later issues critical advisories, all five will get paid...iDefense will change the focus of the challenge with each quarter -- the next challenge may focus on another vendor, or it may just center on particular class of vulnerabilities."" ----- Posted by [202]CmdrTaco on Thu Feb 16, '06 02:52 PM from the something-to-think-about dept. [203]Displays [204]mikemuch writes "DisplayMate founder Ray Soniera has revealed the results of his [205]LCoS HDTV Shoot-Out. He puts five HDTV's through a slew of test pattern measurements, and then lets 34 real people, including home-theater lay people and experts, conduct jury tests and make comments. There was one case where the experts gave low marks to a display that the lay people loved. From the article: 'We spent some time trying to understand why the consumer panelists rated the JVC Consumer unit so highly. It had the lowest objective on-screen resolution of all of the units, because of internal signal processing, but a number of consumer panelists commented on how sharp it looked. The copious artifacts and significant edge enhancement produced so much artificial texture in the image that some panelists interpreted it as superior sharpness. All of the Video Experts recognized this effect and gave the unit the lowest score.'" ----- Posted by [211]CmdrTaco on Thu Feb 16, '06 02:00 PM from the we-all-scoffed-at-an-intel-move-too dept. [212]Operating Systems [213]JFlex writes "PC Mags writer John C. Dvorak discusses the idea that [214]Apple may dump OS X and 'switch' to running Windows in a recent column: "The idea that Apple would ditch its own OS for Microsoft Windows came to me from Yakov Epstein, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University, who wrote to me convinced that the process had already begun. I was amused, but after mulling over various coincidences, I'm convinced he may be right. This would be the most phenomenal turnabout in the history of desktop computing."" ----- Posted by [223]Zonk on Thu Feb 16, '06 12:06 PM from the new-clippy-friends dept. [224]Microsoft [225]rfunches writes "MSNBC reports that Microsoft's next version of Office, now known as Office 2007 (previously code-named Office 12), will continue targeting the corporate audience through [226]multiple versions of Office 2007. Versions announced include 'Office Professional Plus 2007' and 'Office Enterprise 2007.' From the article: '[Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007] will integrate capabilities of SharePoint, a collaboration program and Web portal that is designed to run over corporate networks and the Internet...and also incorporate Microsoft Office Communicator, a corporate instant messaging service.'" ----- Posted by [232]Zonk on Thu Feb 16, '06 11:36 AM from the i-live-here-so-i-wouldn't-know dept. [233]The Internet [234]Ant writes "CNET News.com reports that nearly [235]one-third of American Internet users go online just for fun." From the article: "A survey of 1,931 Internet users conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project in late November and December 2005 found 30 percent of respondents said they went online "for no particular reason" on the previous day. That was up from 21 percent in a November 2004 survey. The survey also showed that 34 percent of online men were surfing for fun on an average day in December, compared with 26 percent of women." ----- Posted by [241]Zonk on Thu Feb 16, '06 10:40 AM from the don't-kill-the-penguin dept. [242]Software Rob wrote to mention a Computer Business Review Online article which posits that [243]immature open source software is doomed in an enterprise environment nowadays. From the article: "Open-source startups and relative newcomers must target a new breed of CIOs, which Graf dubs chief process innovation officers. Rather than old-school CIOs who focus on a company's data management, these guys design processes with the company's network. "If you want to become strategic to the company, you need to deal with business processors. 'The key question for open source is, Which open source technologies are mature enough to survive the consolidation that's coming?' Graf said. 'Linux? Definitely. Eclipse? Definitely. Mozilla? Most likely.'" ----- Posted by [251]Zonk on Thu Feb 16, '06 10:19 AM from the testify dept. [252]Google [253]nmccart writes "[254]Google gave testimony on Friday to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations. They discussed their decision to build google.cn in China. Elliot Schrage, the vice president for global communications and public affairs at Google describes how these China-based servers fit in to Google's mantra of 'Don't be evil.' Google hopes to use this as an opportunity to help bring global censorship into the spotlight of American politics. Will it work?" ----- Posted by [262]Zonk on Thu Feb 16, '06 09:48 AM from the watch-those-tractor-beams dept. [263]Databases i_frame writes "CNet is reporting on a recent [264]Oracle bid for open-source database MySQL. They were unsuccessful." From the article: "'It all comes back to the question of cannibalizing an existing business,' O'Grady said. 'If you determine that to some extent it's inevitable, wouldn't you prefer that you do it, instead of your competitors?' O'Grady said Oracle could benefit from MySQL in the way that IBM has from its acquisition of Gluecode, a company that commercializes the open-source Geronimo Java application server software and competed with IBM's own proprietary WebSphere product." ----- Posted by [270]Zonk on Thu Feb 16, '06 09:33 AM from the gimp-!=-photoshop dept. [271]Software An anonymous reader writes "As a result of over 14,000 votes since the beginning of January, Adobe Photoshop, Autocad, Dreamweaver, iTunes, and Macromedia Flash are currently the top 5 'most wanted' Windows/MacOS-only applications in Novell's [272]online survey. From comments made by the survey participants, Novell has also listed [273]suggested substitutes for each of the five. What do readers think of these suggestions?" ----- Posted by [279]Zonk on Thu Feb 16, '06 09:14 AM from the bringing-the-star-destroyers-around-for-a-broadside dept. [280]Music [281]theodp writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that [282]Amazon is in advanced talks with the four global music companies about a digital-music service that could be launched as soon as this summer. It would feature Amazon-branded portable music players, designed and built for the retailer, and a subscription service that would deeply discount and preload those devices with songs." ----- Posted by [288]Zonk on Thu Feb 16, '06 08:41 AM from the is-nothing-sacred dept. [289]Security bubba451 writes "MacRumors reports on what may be [290]the first virus to affect Mac OS X, disguised as screenshots for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. From the report: 'The resultant file decompresses into what appears to be a standard JPEG icon in Mac OS X but was actually a compiled Unix executable in disguise. An initial disassembly reveals evidence that the application is a virus or was designed to give that impression.' The virus is said to also spread via Bonjour instant messaging." Update: 02/17 00:09 GMT by [291]P : This is not a virus, it is a simple Trojan Horse: it requires manual user interaction to launch the executable. See [292]Andrew Welch's dissection. ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thu Feb 16, '06 07:53 AM from the buy-another-copy dept. [297]The Courts [298]dotpavan writes "EFF has this article about RIAA saying that [299]ripping CDs and backing them up does not come under Fair use. Ars Technica also [300]reports on this, by quoting, "The [submitted arguments in favor of granting exemptions to the DMCA] provide no arguments or legal authority that making back up copies of CDs is a noninfringing use. In addition, the submissions provide no evidence that access controls are currently preventing them from making back up copies of CDs or that they are likely to do so in the future. Myriad online downloading services are available and offer varying types of digital rights management alternatives. For example, the Apple FairPlay technology allows users to make a limited number of copies for personal use. Presumably, consumers concerned with the ability to make back up copies would choose to purchase music from a service that allowed such copying. Even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices. Similar to the motion picture industry, the recording industry has faced, in online piracy, a direct attack on its ability to enjoy its copyrights."" ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thu Feb 16, '06 03:25 AM from the think-of-the-children dept. [306]Censorship afaik_ianal writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that 'Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure' [307]has been banned in Australia. The game involves battling the authorities to overthrow corrupt officials using only street fighting skills and graffiti. From the article, "The decision was endorsed last night by the Federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, who had asked the board to review of the game's MA15+ classification after local councils and state governments voiced concerns that the game would promote graffiti."" ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thu Feb 16, '06 12:59 AM from the the-sky-is-falling dept. [313]News [314]dido writes "Princeton University geology Professor Kenneth Deffeyes has been studying world petroleum production data and has come to the conclusion that [315]the world hit peak oil last December 16, 2005. If he is correct, total world oil production will never surpass what was produced last December. From the article: 'Compared to 2004, world oil production was up 0.8 percent in 2005, nowhere near enough to compensate for a demand rise of roughly 3 percent. The high prices did not bring much additional oil out of the ground. Most oil-producing countries are in decline." ----- Posted by [104]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 10:36 PM from the it's-gonna-be-a-photo-finish dept. [105]AMD [106]Knight Thrasher writes to tell us that Tom's Hardware has an interesting first look at [107]AMD's AM2 platform. From the article: "While Intel will be answering later this year with its Merom/Conroe processors, AMD officially says that the introduction of its AM2 platform and DDR2 memory support in the second quarter of this year will be able to maintain its current lead. Unofficially, we know that AMD will launch six dual-core and two single-core AM2 processors on June 6 - later than initially expected but well in time for Intel's Conroe, which will be introduced in September. Tom's Hardware got its hands on a stable engineering sample of an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ for Socket AM2 and will publish benchmark results as first as a first impression of the new Socket and processors tomorrow." ----- Posted by [117]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 08:43 PM from the magnets-and-fusion-but-can-they-fit-in-my-laptop dept. [118]Power [119]McOSEN writes "Your Server Cabinet could have a 100% [120]self sustained power source. It's called Parallel Path Technology and it's being coined as a revolution in the magnetic motor industry. From Segways to Vacuum cleaners to Server Cabinets. The article talks about the technology but doesn't exactly lay out specifics." ----- Posted by [126]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 06:37 PM from the get-fans-and-make-em-pay dept. [127]Media James Draven writes "For the last year, people have been wondering - how to make money off podcasts? Some have dabbled with advertising, some with user donations, but now the most popular podcast on [128]iTunes is moving to a subscription model. Bit-Tech is reporting that the Ricky Gervais Show will cost $7 a month starting next week." ----- Posted by [134]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 05:25 PM from the made-up-words dept. [135]Editorial An anonymous reader writes "An article by James Boyle in the FT argues that we are (slowly) moving towards a '[136]cultural environmentalism' that tries to protect the public domain in the way that the environmental movement tries to protect the natural ecology. Apparently there will be a (free) [137]conference at Stanford on the subject soon, organized by Larry Lessig's Center there." ----- Posted by [143]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 04:48 PM from the pretty-new-toys dept. [144]GNOME An anonymous reader writes "Gnome has a nice [145]preview of their newest version 2.14 posted which should be hitting the streets around the 15th of March. From the article: "As well as new features and more polish, developers have been working around the clock to squeeze more performance out of the most commonly used applications and libraries. This is a review of some of the most shiny work that has gone into the upcoming GNOME release." ----- Posted by [151]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 04:04 PM from the stiff-breeze-of-progress dept. [152]NASA [153]abkaiser writes "I had the opportunity to interview a supervisor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The JPL is putting together several missions utilizing solar sail technology. The interview and article detail where NASA and the JPL are in using [154]solar sails for applications and research.You can read the article or skip ahead to the cool pictures of [155]prototype and proposed solar sails. The article addresses NASA's JPL solar sail missions, but not other commercial or private projects like [156]Cosmos 1." ----- Posted by [162]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 03:15 PM from the internet-tower-of-babel dept. [163]Handhelds [164]Roger Whittaker writes to tell us Engadget reports that Mobileglu is offering an interesting new service that gives users the ability to read RSS feeds, flickr, del.icio.us, and other sources of content in a [165]mobile friendly format. Think this will lead to smarter content developers making their own sites more mobile friendly, or just a few lawsuits? ----- Posted by samzenpus on Mon Feb 20, '06 02:36 PM from the read-all-about-it dept. [171]Programming [172]Simon P. Chappell writes "This is an unusual book in a good way. It covers a subject normally the preserve of geeks while being targeted at designers. Not a common approach, but one that Jeremy Keith pulls off rather handily. Mr. Keith is an active member of the [173]Web Standards Project's [174]Scripting Task Force; he not only knows how to script web pages, but he knows how to use that scripting to enhance the page's conformance to standards and even increase a site's accessibility. If you are like me, and have put off working with JavaScript because of the standards issues, then this book is our notification that those days are behind us. If you are a web designer who is interested in using dynamic techniques to enhance your site, but had feared the wrath of the standards police, this book is for you." Read the rest of Simon's review. ----- Posted by [180]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 01:49 PM from the instant-gratification-generation dept. [181]The Internet [182]dsandler writes "Researchers at Rice University have just [183]released version 0.7 of [184]FeedTree, a peer-to-peer system for distributing Web feeds faster. Instead of polling feeds independently, FeedTree users [185]cooperate to share news updates using multicast in [186]Pastry, a scalable p2p overlay network. FeedTree reduces the update delay for existing RSS and Atom feeds to a few minutes without putting extra stress on the webserver (anyone who's ever been temporarily banned by Slashdot's RSS feed knows this is a real concern). Feed publishers can also choose to [187]push digitally signed updates for immediate, tamper-proof delivery to subscribers. The client software ([188]download) runs on Linux, OS X, and Windows, and works with any desktop feed reader." ----- Posted by [195]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 01:06 PM from the not-the-bastard-child-of-languages-anymore dept. [196]PHP Five-Oh writes to tell us that IBM DeveloperWorks has an interesting article about the OO advantages of PHP V's new features. From the article: "PHP V5's new object-oriented programming features have raised the level of functionality in this popular language significantly. Learn how to use the [197]dynamic features of PHP V5 to create objects that bend to fit your needs." ----- Posted by [204]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 12:17 PM from the never-ending-duel dept. [205]Microsoft Rob writes to tell us that at the recent Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco Microsoft's director of platform technology strategy, Bill Hilf, outlined why [206]Microsoft is staying involved with open source. From the article: "Challenges of working [coopetively] in the open-source space include the balance between competing and cooperating with a rival, he said. Perception also is a 'big' challenge for the software giant. 'In many regards, the Microsoft open-source story lends itself to a great metaphor of David and Goliath,' he said. 'That is a challenge over perception.'" ----- Posted by [210]Hemos on Mon Feb 20, '06 11:37 AM from the uphill-battle dept. [211]Software A reader writes: "[212]Unipage recently released a beta version of its Unipage Unifier. The Unipage encoding is a way to encode a full page with its images, CSS, Javascript, Flash, and whatnot, into just one HTML file. The 'Unipage Unifier' program instantly turns any online or local page into a 'Unipage' that can be viewed directly in a browser. It saves the mess of files when you normally save a complete web page, but maybe the bigger scoop is that now people can use 'Unipages' to send content rich documents instead of PDF. But Unipages are superior to PDF in their ability to hold functionality (Javascript), Flash animations and practically anything normally possible in a web page. Together with any program that can export into HTML you can get fully styled, dynamic, portable documents instantly. And it's free." Good luck taking down the installed base of PDF. ----- Posted by [221]Hemos on Mon Feb 20, '06 11:00 AM from the "technology"-applications dept. [222]It's funny. Laugh. A reader writes: "TechEBlog lists the [223]top 10 strangest MP3 players ever, with pictures. From the article: "CURE-alpha is an MP3 player that supposedly emits alpha waves which calm and rejuvinate the brain. They are transmitted at very low frequencies while listening to MP3/WMA files." ----- Posted by [229]Hemos on Mon Feb 20, '06 10:36 AM from the the-changing-world dept. [230]Databases [231]mAriuZ writes "I've recently written two articles on this topic for Database Journal, the earlier, written after the InnoDB purchase, entitled [232]Oracle's purchase of InnoDB, their release of Oracle Express, and the effect on MySQL, and the most recent, just after the Sleepycat purchase, entitled [233]Pressure on MySQL increases as Oracle purchases Sleepycat, with more to come. Since I only do a monthly column for Database Journal, and things change quite quickly, I thought I'd post a few [234]more thoughts on the topic." ----- Posted by [240]Hemos on Mon Feb 20, '06 10:02 AM from the end-of-the-line dept. [241]NASA [242]SirBruce writes "As reported by [243]Space.com, [244]Spaceflight Now, and elsewhere, NASA is now planning to retire the Space Shuttle Atlantis by 2008, after just 5 more flghts. By doing so, they would avoid a costly and time consuming scheduled overhaul, and could still fly the remaining 12 missions (17 total) with Discovery and Endeavour, which are just now completing their ODMPs (orbiter maintenance down period). Atlantis would be kept for spare parts to keep Discovery and Endeavour flying until the shuttle program is shut down in 2010." ----- Posted by [250]Hemos on Mon Feb 20, '06 09:29 AM from the there's-plenty-of-room-at-the-bottom dept. [251]IBM jeffsenter writes "The NYTimes has the story on IBM with JSR Micro [252]advancing photolithograhy research to allow 30nm chips. Good news for Intel, AMD, Moore's Law and [253]overclockers. The IBM researchers' technology advance allows for the same deep ultraviolet rays used to make chips today to be used at 30nm. Intel's newest CPUs are [254]manufactured at 65nm and present technology tapped out soon after that. This buys [255]Moore's Law a few more years." ----- Posted by [263]Hemos on Mon Feb 20, '06 09:07 AM from the building-it-out dept. [264]AMD [265]Toasty16 writes "[266]SPCR has an overview of [267]using an AMD Turion 64 mobile processor in a desktop system. There's a good bit of info about motherboard compatibility and power consumption as compared to a Pentium M processor. There's also links to articles from the [268]Techreport and [269]LaptopLogic on the same topic. If you've been thinking about building a low power HTPC or file server, mobile processor on desktop is an interesting option." ----- Posted by [275]Hemos on Mon Feb 20, '06 08:23 AM from the build-it-and-they-might-use-it dept. [276]Mozilla TeachingMachines writes "A stable developer preview release of XULRunner 1.8.0.1 is [277]now available. Based on the Firefox 1.5.0.1 codebase, it is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. From the Mozilla Developer Center (beta): "XULRunner is a Mozilla runtime package that can be used to bootstrap XUL+XPCOM applications that are as rich as Firefox and Thunderbird. It will provide mechanisms for installing, upgrading, and uninstalling these applications. XULRunner will also provide libxul, a solution which allows the embedding of Mozilla technologies in other projects and products." Help with programming with XUL and its related technologies can be found at [278]XULPlanet. Beginning programmers will benefit especially from the [279]XUL Tutorial. Also check out the [280]XUL Element Reference to get an idea of what's available. " ----- Posted by [287]Hemos on Mon Feb 20, '06 07:22 AM from the whither-the-courts dept. [288]The Courts [289]cunamara writes "Patently-O has posted a [290]discussion of Aharonian v. Gonzales . Aharonian is trying to build a database of source code as a repository of prior art. The interesting thing is in part of the decision, which is that "Conversely, if plaintiff independently creates software that is functionally identical to other software, he does not infringe any copyright on the other software's source code, even if his independently created source code is nearly identical to the copyrighted source code." Interesting. But how does one defend "nearly identical" independently created source code from a copyright infringement lawsuit?" I'm actually not as interested in the copyright side of things as I am in the notion of using something like that for prior art of software patents. The argument that source code is uncopyrightable, with some extensions could be applied to almost all, say, fiction stories since no one's written a truly new story in like five thousand years. ----- Posted by [298]Hemos on Mon Feb 20, '06 06:16 AM from the excellent-move dept. [299]Communications Strudelkugel writes "[300]The Business Online reports: MICROSOFT has developed a Skype-style [301]free internet voice service for mobile phones that City analysts believe could wipe billions off the market value of operators such as Vodafone.The service is included in a mobile version of Microsoft Office Communicator due to be released this year. It will take the form of a voice-over internet protocol (VoIP) application that allows Office users to make free voice calls over wi-fi enabled phones running Windows Mobile software. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer dropped his bombshell at the mobile operators' annual 3GSM show in Barcelona last week. The significance of his remarks was missed because of his effusive and eccentric delivery..." That is huge; I would hope to see the same thing coming out on the Symbian and other devices. The hard part will be getting these to market; since almost all mobile phones are sold thru the mobile telcom companies. ----- Posted by [307]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 04:31 AM from the how-many-yarks-in-a-mile dept. [308]Handhelds An anonymous reader writes "PalmInfoCenter is reporting that Handango has released their 2005 Year End edition of the [309]Handango Yarkstick. This is a general report on the mobile content industry including specifics from five of the top mobile operating systems; Blackberry, Palm OS, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone. The site also offers a comparison and look back at 2004's numbers for comparison. A copy of the [310]original report [PDF] can be found on Handago's website." ----- Posted by [316]Hemos on Mon Feb 20, '06 02:29 AM from the the-battle-smolders-on dept. [317]Censorship wormnet.org writes "An article has been posted on The Observer reporting that [318]Google has been targeted by the group "Students For A Free Tibet" because of the internet company's relationship with the Chinese government. The article states: "... more than 50,000 letters have been sent to Google bosses in recent days protesting at the company's decision to censor searches on its google.cn website in line with Beijing's wishes. Protesters have also staged public 'break-ups' with Google at demonstrations outside many of its offices around the world."" ----- Posted by [324]ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, '06 12:26 AM from the someone-out-there-is-going-to-outlaw-ipods-now dept. [325]IT [326]Zoner12 writes "CNet is reporting that Abe Usher has created an application that allows an [327]iPod to scan corporate networks for files likely to contain sensitive business data and download them, potentially stealing 100 megabytes in a few minutes. An insider threat would only need to plug the iPod into a computer's USB port." ----- Posted by [104]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 10:44 PM from the drm-ftw dept. [105]Media (Apple) [106]Thomas Hawk writes "Apple is out hyping their one billionth iTunes download today, but is building your music library in [107]a format that could be obsolete in the future really the best strategy? Will the consumer once again have to someday replace their iTunes track just like they had to replace their LP, cassette, and CD only to get their music on their hot new non Apple mp3 phone of the future? " ----- Posted by [113]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 08:43 PM from the internet-in-your-pants dept. [114]Wireless Networking [115]Dekortage writes "David Pogue reviews several [116]portable wi-fi access points in the New York Times. If you have cellular Internet access, you can plug the PC card into the wi-fi box and presto, you've got Wi-Fi from wherever you are." From the article: "The card provides the Internet connection, courtesy of those companies' 3G ("third generation") high-speed cellular data networks. The box just rebroadcasts that connection as a Wi-Fi signal so that all nearby computers -- not just one privileged laptop -- can go online. With those PC cards, you can go online anywhere there's a cellular signal: in a taxi, on a bus, in a waiting room or wherever. In major cities, the speed is delightful, like a D.S.L. or slowish cable modem (400 to 700 kilobits a second)." ----- Posted by [122]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 06:46 PM from the so-shiny-and-useable dept. [123]Programming Fennie writes "Designtechnica has published their [124]2006 Best of Web 2.0 list. Some of the sites include [125]Flickr.com, [126]Vimeo.com and [127]Writeboard.com. From the piece: 'The next generation of the web is here! With new kinds of desktop-like applications being released left and right, how will you know where to go and what to use? That's why we're here: To show you the best of Web 2.0 sites that you can get the most out of. No matter the task, video, audio, or photos, we have a site that works great for what you want to do and uses all the great features of Web 2.0 technology.'" ----- Posted by [133]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 05:33 PM from the another-go-at-a-cheap-system dept. [134]The Almighty Buck Some nice Friday afternoon reading for you; Ars Technica has another go at [135]the Ultimate Budget Box, a cheap no-frills PC for minimum cash output. From the article: "Look around inside most corporate offices, where most computers need to handle a few Office documents and light Internet use. They don't need to be able to burn CDs or handle 3D-intensive games, but they do need to be reliable and affordable. Lots of consumers out there probably want a similar box--an appliance that lets them get onto the Internet, take care of e-mail, and create a few documents. For them, being able to burn a CD-RW would probably be nice, but anything beyond that is an extra. Low-cost, reliability, and quality are key. That is what the Ultimate Budget Box is about: not skimping on components, but not loading it up with features either." The final price? US$525.46 ----- Posted by [147]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 04:52 PM from the i-expect-you-to-die-mr.-bond dept. [148]Privacy Anonymous Cowpat writes "The BBC is reporting that the UK Government, or rather their six month presidency of the EU, has been awarded the [149]Internet Villain of the Year award by the [150]Internet Service Providers Association for being the driving force behind [151]the new EU data retention laws. These require that ISPs and other telecomms providers keep records of the time\date & recipient of every communication made by their subscribers." ----- Posted by [157]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 04:14 PM from the extremely-well-designed-storm dept. [158]Media (Apple) conq writes "BusinessWeek reports on the [159]soaring popularity of the iPod in Japan. From the article: 'iPod mania is alive and well in Japan -- one of the most competitive consumer-electronics markets on the planet. Despite an array of well-entrenched Japanese rivals, such as Sony and Matsushita, the iPod had cornered 51.3% of the digital-music player market as of the end of 2005, up from about 32% in 2004, according to research firm BCN. Sony was a distant second with 16.2%, while Panasonic grabbed just 8.2% of the market.'" ----- Posted by [165]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 03:41 PM from the chalk-one-up-for-not-dumbness dept. [166]Patents Astin writes "The PTO has [167]rejected the last of the NTP patents against Research in Motion. On top of this, Judge Spencer has decided that Blackberry service won't be shut down today, but he will issue a decision on the injunction [168]'as soon as reasonably possible.' RIM CEO Jim Balsillie just said on CNBC that it's 'quite possible' that NTP won't see any settlement from RIM at all now." ----- Posted by [173]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 03:12 PM from the everything-else-to-be-destroyed dept. [174]Google [175]Anil Kandangath writes "Google today announced their pilot program to [176]digitize the entire video content of the National Archives and make it globally accessible for free on [177]Google Video. The history of the world should be universally accessible and this is definitely a great step towards making sure that our history is not lost, and that everyone has equal and easy access towards such information. Google has provided some sample videos from the National Archives, such as the [178]1969 moon landing." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Fri Feb 24, '06 02:31 PM from the welcome-to-the-future dept. [185]Technology [186]jsuda writes "The authors of Inescapable Data share their excitement about what they see as a rapidly-developing convergence of digital technologies having enormous significance for business and culture. This convergence, in their view, is inescapable, life-altering for both good and bad, and presents a frame-shattering paradigm-shift which is mostly unrecognized, and much less examined critically. Inescapable Data is a thought-provoking book meant to describe the new technologies and to examine the special values which arguably will emerge from the convergence." Read the rest of John's review. ----- Posted by [193]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 01:54 PM from the friday-fan-fiction dept. [194]Microsoft An anonymous reader writes "Rumors are running around the web about a new Microsoft gadget [195]codenamed Origami that will be unveiled on March 2nd. Speculation can be found on [196]Designtastesgood, [197]Scobleizer, and [198]Thatedeguy, and WindowsForDevices has a description and photos of a [199]prototype Origami device built by National Semiconductor 2001. Anybody out there know more about this new device?" ----- Posted by [204]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 01:21 PM from the blogging-it-up-when-i'm-blogging-down dept. [205]The Internet conq writes "BusinessWeek has an interesting interview with Six Apart, the company behind LiveJournal and Movable Type, about [206]the future of blogging and the role of the blogger. From the article: 'I think blog tools can get easier to use. Putting together a blog should be as easy as sending an e-mail. I foresee the next versions of blog tools as focusing less on features that appeal to early adopters. They'll be easier for people to incorporate more media and maybe mobile capabilities. This will be important, because many more mainstream users will come to blogging. I believe the interest in blogging is just starting.'" ----- Posted by [213]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 12:38 PM from the pinch-me dept. [214]Music [215]AWhiteFlame writes "Dave Goldberg of Yahoo [216]spoke against DRM on media files last Thursday at the [217]Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles. From the article: 'According to attendees, Goldberg pointed to the experience of eMusic, which offers its subscribers access to MP3 files without any digital rights management attached. Rights management restrictions have created a barrier for consumers, he said, making it a hurdle to transfer music to portable devices, and creating incompatibility between music services and MP3 players ... A Yahoo spokeswoman said that Goldberg was 'basically trying to move the industry forward,' and wanted to prompt industry-wide discussion about what the consumer experience is." ----- Posted by [225]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 12:15 PM from the what-was-this-all-about dept. [226]Microsoft [227]mjdroner writes "ZDNet is reporting that Microsoft has [228]posted confidential documents used in its defense of European Commission antitrust practices related to server software. Explaining the posting of the documents, which the EC considers confidential, a Microsoft rep said, 'Transparency is vitally important in what can be a very opaque process in Brussels.'" ----- Posted by [234]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 11:47 AM from the need-anti-virus-to-stop-telemarketers dept. [235]Communications [236]coastin writes "Are cell phones and handheld devices the [237]next big market for anti-virus software vendors? While there have been more than 150 cell phone viruses discovered since 2004, compared to over 150,000 Windows PC viruses the count seems low at this time. Marketing researcher Gartner suggests a [238]widespread attack could surface by the end of next year. With the number of cellular devices sold in 2005 far beyond that of Windows PCs and no choice of anti-virus protection for most cellular device customers, should the cell carriers listen more closely to the anti-virus vendors?" ----- Posted by [248]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 11:18 AM from the back-and-forth-up-and-down dept. [249]PS2 (Games) Chris Morris, on the CNN Game Over column, points out that even if Merrill Lynch's suggestion that the delayed initial launch of the PS3 is true, that's [250]unlikely to affect the U.S. launch of the console. From the article: "Logic sometimes isn't enough, though. To get additional perspective on the situation, I spoke with several of Sony's partners (who are in regular contact with the company) and competitors (who keep a close eye on the PS3's launch window) about the report. No one was willing to talk on the record for fear of reprisal, but the consensus was nearly universal. The promised spring launch (which was expected in Japan, but not North America) will likely be pushed back, they said. The North American launch, which was always expected to occur later this year (November is the consensus), is not expected to change. Europe may well not see the PS3 until next year." The price tag reported, though, is still probably accurate. C|Net has a [251]breakdown of the PlayStation 3's components. ----- Posted by [257]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 10:41 AM from the sign-me-up-when-i-can-have-a-nanobot-swarm dept. [258]Biotech dylanduck writes "New Scientist reports the creation of [259]an enzyme-based computer that performs AND and XOR calculations, and combinations of the two, based on the presence or absence of specific chemicals. If they can be engineered inside living cells, they could measure a patient's metabolism and deliver just the right amount of drug at just the right spot, the researchers reckon. I'm worried about the viruses." Ba-dump *chink*. ----- Posted by [267]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 10:15 AM from the kaboooooom dept. [268]Space starexplorer2001 writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA has detected [269]a 'totally new' mystery explosion near our galaxy." From the article: "The event, detected Feb. 18, looks something like a gamma-ray burst (GRB), scientists said. But it is much closer--about 440 million light-years away--than others. And it lasted about 33 minutes. Most GRBs are billions of light-years away and last less than a second or just a few seconds." ----- Posted by [275]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 09:42 AM from the they-wouldn't-have-it-any-other-way dept. [276]Media orionware writes "Apparently the folks who designed the Advanced Access Content System (AACS)for the new HD DVD formats have decided to [277]stick it to the early HDTV adopters. If your set used the older component video, expect to watch your new HD DVD at a quarter of the resolutions. To thwart piracy of course." From the article: "AACS says the new players won't output a full-HD signal from their component-video connections, since those jacks are analog instead of digital and thus have no copy protection. The 'down-rezzed' signals will be limited to a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels -- exactly one-quarter the 1,920 x 1,080 pixels that you'll get through the copy-protected digital connectors on the players. The potentially huge problem with this strategy is that the only HD inputs on a lot of older HDTVs are component video." ----- Posted by [283]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 09:18 AM from the please-do-not-be-shocked dept. [284]Security [285]boot1780 writes "Having 'successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 presidential election,' Black Box Voting reports that the 'internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.' Besides the date discrepancies, they claim to have [286]discovered countless other errors and anomalies, including a case of one voting machine being 'powered down 128 times during the election'." Given the findings here, can we have a do-over? ----- Posted by [294]Zonk on Fri Feb 24, '06 08:53 AM from the unless-you-work-on-the-intertron dept. [295]Businesses [296]Ant wrote to mention a C|Net article exploring U.S. workers' productivity. People say they [297]actually accomplish less now than they did a decade ago. Research blames technology as the culprit. From the article: "Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically ... We never concentrate on one task anymore. You take a little chip out of it, and then you're on to the next thing ... It's harder to feel like you're accomplishing something.'" ----- Posted by [303]CowboyNeal on Fri Feb 24, '06 07:34 AM from the hitting-the-bigtime dept. [304]Media (Apple) [305]SirWraith writes "In case anyone hasn't realized Apple has had a counter going up to a billion for a few weeks now. Apparently last night, they [306]hit the mark. From ABC News: 'Apple says Alex Ostrovsky from West Bloomfield, Mich., was the lucky audiophile who downloaded "Speed of Sound" by Brit pop band Coldplay, giving the Cupertino, Calif., company bragging rights to the 10-figure milestone. Thanks to a generous prize package from Apple, Ostrovsky will now use a $10,000 iTunes music card to keep those downloads flowing on his new 20-inch iMac computer, and listen to his favorite tunes on one of the 10 60GB iPods.'" ----- Posted by [314]CowboyNeal on Fri Feb 24, '06 03:40 AM from the not-so-fast dept. [315]The Courts [316]diverge_s writes "Slyck news reports on a [317]new wave of lawsuits the MPAA has filed against major Bit Torrent search sites including: Torrentspy, Isohunt, Torrentbox, Niteshadow and Bthub. From the article: '"Website operators who abuse technology to facilitate infringements of copyrighted works by millions of people are not anonymous - they can and will be stopped," said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA. "Disabling these powerful networks of illegal file distribution is a significant step in stemming the tide of piracy on the Internet."'" ----- Posted by [325]CowboyNeal on Fri Feb 24, '06 12:44 AM from the adventure-capitalists dept. [326]Space furnk writes "PayPal founder Elon Musk [327]muses about his plans to send rockets to space and his eventual hopes for making life 'multi-planetary.' 'I said I wanted to take a large fortune and make it a small one, so I started a rocket business,' Musk said. SpaceX is not new, but in a speech at Virginia Tech, Musk talked about the company's troubles and its lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed as he tries to get a slice of the valuable Air Force contracts." ----- Posted by [104]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Feb 28, '06 10:24 PM from the hard-hardware-design-made-easy dept. [105]Software An anonymous reader writes "AScribe is reporting that mechanical engineers from Purdue University have developed software they claim will [106]increase the efficiency of creating a wide range of industrial parts. From the article: 'The new approach integrates the design and analysis processes, which are now carried out separately. Currently, the geometry of a part is first created using computer-aided design, or CAD, software. This geometry is then converted into a mesh of simple shapes, such as triangles or rectangles, which, when analyzed using a computer, indicates the part's strength and other characteristics. The painstaking procedure, called finite-element analysis, is extensively used in industry.'" ----- Posted by [112]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Feb 28, '06 08:39 PM from the everyone-has-an-angle dept. [113]Privacy [114]doginthewoods writes to tell us the ThinkProgress blog is reporting that the Minnesota Republican Party has been [115]distributing a new CD about a recent proposed amendment. The CD poses questions about some of the hot-button issues like abortion, gun control, and illegal immigration. The problem with this CD, however, is that it "phones home" to the Minnesota GOP, without making it clear that your name is attached. So, if you take a look at the CD and take time to answer the questions, beware. Once you are finished they will know not only who you are, but where you stand on the issues at hand. ----- Posted by [124]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Feb 28, '06 06:32 PM from the time-to-close-the-doors-and-start-over dept. [125]Businesses [126]Devistater writes "Yesterday, SCO announced a new MLM called "Me Inc." [127]using the EdgeClick platform in an attempt to boost sales. One of the apps on the Edgeclick site does mass text messages to cell phones. From the article: 'Becoming a Me Inc. Sales Agent requires no technical skills or training and no investment other than a smart phone and a subscription to Me Inc. digital services. With these two simple things, a sales agent can earn up to hundreds or thousands of dollars per sale in commissions and subscription annuities generated by each account they sign up.' Watch out for an increase in spam, SCO style. In the same [128]press release [PDF], SCO also trademarks 'Me.' Groklaw also has a [129]few details on their site." ----- Posted by [134]Zonk on Tue Feb 28, '06 05:48 PM from the that's-a-lot-of-fart-jokes dept. [135]The Almighty Buck Next Generation reports that Telltale games, the current developer of the Sam and Max sequel, has been [136]given $825,000 in a new round of funding. From the article: "Telltale CEO Dan Connors said, 'With our first titles based on Jeff Smith's popular comic books [Bone], Telltale is releasing accessible, innovative, interactive stories for the masses. This expansion funding gives us the ability to move even more aggressively in key areas of our business and further accelerate our company's strategy and growth.'" ----- Posted by [142]Zonk on Tue Feb 28, '06 05:03 PM from the it's-alive dept. [143]Biotech steveha writes "The cover story for this month's Discover magazine tells of a recently discovered gigantic virus, Mimivirus, that has blurred the lines between viruses and bacteria, and spurred speculation that [144]viruses could be the reason life evolved past single-celled organisms." From the article: "This is striking news, especially at a moment when the basic facts of origins and evolution seem to have fallen under a shroud. In the discussions of intelligent design, one hears a yearning for an old-fashioned creation story, in which some singular, inchoate entity stepped in to give rise to complex life-forms--humans in particular. " ----- Posted by [151]Zonk on Tue Feb 28, '06 04:39 PM from the i-like-the-look dept. [152]Windows creativity writes "ExtremeTech is running an article on [153]the new features of Windows Vista and why it is a must upgrade for all Windows users. They take apart the marketing hype and tell you what exactly to expect in Windows Vista. They specifically pick out less-hyped features like a kernel which has new Heap Management and details on SuperFetch, which is Vista's application cache." ----- Posted by [160]Zonk on Tue Feb 28, '06 03:32 PM from the moving-on-up dept. [161]Media [162]yermoungder writes "Reuters is reporting that 'Sony Pictures on Tuesday said it aims to [163]deliver its new Blu-ray DVD format to U.S. stores on May 23 to coincide with the entry of compatible disc players, a new step in an industry war for control of home movie viewing.'" ----- Posted by [171]Zonk on Tue Feb 28, '06 03:10 PM from the that's-a-lot-of-monkeys-and-a-lot-of-typewriters dept. [172]Programming ploose writes "Apache co-founder and CollabNet CTO Brian Behlendorf says that [173]programming should be opened out to non-developers. Bring them into a development community with proper feedback forums and bad code will get flamed anyway, so it doesn't matter what they write. From the interview: 'Mashups are really Excel macros 2.0 - with the rise of Web services, the more vehicles that are out there that expose data through programmable APIs, with Office 12.0 and Firefox with AJAX, the more people you'll see create applications. The line between hardcore developers and the average Joe will start to get very fuzzy.'" ----- Posted by [181]Zonk on Tue Feb 28, '06 02:23 PM from the where-does-he-get-them dept. [182]Music [183]XMilkProject writes "[184]Apple just released 5 new products, all of which should show up on the Apple Store within minutes. You can already see the most interesting new product, the [185]iPod Hi-Fi, a supposed high fidelity boombox for your iPod. Other new products are an [186]iPod Leather Case and three new media-center-style Intel Mac minis which will hit the Apple Store within the hour." ----- Posted by [192]Zonk on Tue Feb 28, '06 01:56 PM from the sanity-reigns dept. [193]Education [194]NewbieV writes "An article in Tuesday's New York Times notes that proposed legislation which would have 'stress[ed] that not all scientists agree on which theory regarding the origins of life, or the origins or present state of the human race, is correct;' has [195]failed by a 46-28 vote in a Republican-controlled state House of Representatives." ----- Posted by [202]Zonk on Tue Feb 28, '06 01:18 PM from the this-is-what-being-smart-gets-you dept. [203]Communications dots and loops wrote to mention an eWeek article that's something of a life lesson: Don't be too smart for your own good. The article tells the tale of a college student who cleverly chose null@vtext.com as his cellphone email address. He's been getting [204]thousands of wayward emails and text messages since 2001. From the article: "Initially, the content of the messages was innocuous, he said. It was things like don't forget to drop the car off at baker's and to call mom at 781-XXX-XXXX, stuff like that, Bubrouski wrote. The problem worsened in mid-2002, when Bubrouski's phone began channeling what he claims were dozens of messages from an e-mail address used by General Motors' then-new "OnStar" system. The messages quickly filled up the memory on his cell phone and contained diagnostic response to tests on a beta version of OnStar. 'Basically, peoples' cars were sending messages to my phone, Bubrouski wrote. " ----- Posted by [209]Zonk on Tue Feb 28, '06 12:39 PM from the good-a-reason-as-any dept. [210]Privacy [211]gbobeck writes "Yahoo News is reporting that the [212]New York Times has filed suit against the U.S. Defense Department. The suit is seeking the release of all relevant documents and a list of people targeted by the NSA domestic spying program. As stated in the article: 'The Times had requested the documents in December under the Freedom of Information Act but sued upon being unsatisfied with the Pentagon's response that the request was being processed as quickly as possible, according to the six-page suit filed at federal court in New York.'" ----- Posted by [220]Zonk on Tue Feb 28, '06 12:09 PM from the aided-by-google-no-doubt dept. [221]The Internet [222]Netfree writes "The Chinese government has announced plans to [223]launch an alternate Internet root system with new Chinese character domains for dot-com and dot-net. This may mean that [224]Chinese Internet users will no longer rely on ICANN, the U.S.-backed domain name administrator, and, as one commentator notes, [225]could be the beginning of the end of the globally interoperable Internet." ----- Posted by [231]CmdrTaco on Tue Feb 28, '06 11:32 AM from the this-will-be-good dept. [232]GNU is Not Unix [233]H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "Last Saturday - the first day of [234]FOSDEM, Richard Stallman gave what seems to have been his first public talk about the draft GPLv3. Ciaran O'Riordan of Free Software Foundation Europe was there and, after recording with his digital camera, has published [235]a transcript of RMS's GPLv3 talk. O'Riordan previously made [236]a transcript of the January 16th first presentation on the GPLv3 which consists of 70 minutes of Eben Moglen, with 20 minutes worth of interruptions from Stallman." ----- Posted by [244]Roblimo on Tue Feb 28, '06 11:00 AM from the get-the-local-scoop-by-talking-to-the-locals dept. [245]Linux Isam Bayazidi is about as far from the current U.S. media stereotype of an Arab as you can get. He's worked on the [246]Arabeyes (Unix/Linux in Arabic) project, helped start the [247]Arabic Wikipedia, co-founded the [248]Jordan LUG, is a Red Hat Certified Engineer ([249]RHCE), works as a senior software developer for [250]Maktoob, an online community that boasts more than four million members, and created [251]Jordan Planet, a blogging community whose members have many different religious and political viewpoints. Isam is also a long-time Slashdot reader, so he's the perfect person to ask what's going on in the Arab (cyber)world today. One question per post please. Isam will answer 12 of the highest-moderated questions. We'll run his answers verbatim as soon as he gets them back to us. ----- Posted by [261]CmdrTaco on Tue Feb 28, '06 10:30 AM from the we're-going-to-have-to-ask-you-to-come-with-us dept. [262]Spam An anonymous reader writes "Adam Vitale, aka Batch1 aka Baxter, 25, of Boynton Beach, FL, and his partner Todd Moeller, aka M3rk, of New Jersey, are [263]accused of sending nearly 50,000 pieces of spam e-mail to more than 1.2 million AOL subscribers. US Secret Service agents used a confidential informant to hire Moeller and Vitale to deliver spam, which advertised a computer security product." ----- Posted by [269]CmdrTaco on Tue Feb 28, '06 09:50 AM from the where's-the-orbiting-ball-boy-target dept. [270]Space [271]deeptrace writes "Tentatively scheduled for a spacewalk this summer, a Russian cosmonaut will take his trusty six iron and a special weightless-friendly tee and [272]put a golf ball into orbit from outside the International Space Station. The golf ball has an embedded transmitter so that it can be tracked as it orbits. It is expected to orbit for 3 to 4 years before burning up on re-entry. The golf shot is the result of promotional fees paid to the Russian space agency by a Canadian golf club manufacturer." ----- Posted by [278]CmdrTaco on Tue Feb 28, '06 09:20 AM from the soemthing-to-think-about dept. [279]Linux Business Brian McCoy writes "In this article, Steven Vaughn-Nichols proclaims "Last Thursday, when I wrote about [280]Dell's new Linux desktop, was one of the most frustrating days of my professional life. My eWEEK colleague John Spooner and I tried our best to [281]get Dell to confess that they really had released an honest-to-God [282]Linux desktop."" ----- Posted by [287]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Feb 28, '06 08:33 AM from the dodging-the-fud dept. [288]The Media An anonymous reader writes "Wired takes a hard look at all the hype about MySpace being a danger to teens, and concludes it's just another [289]backlash against technology and youth culture. The most damning evidence against MySpace are the recent cases of men arrested for dating underage girls they met through the site, but statistically these cases are a drop in the bucket. From the article: 'In fact, with a reported population of 57 million users, MySpace is arguably safer from such crime than other communities that haven't been the subject of the same scrutiny. One example: California, which averaged 62 statutory rape convictions per month in the late 90s, in a state population of 33 million.'" ----- Posted by [294]Cliff on Tue Feb 28, '06 07:45 AM from the licensing-fees-or-lack-of-educational-software dept. [295]Education Fiachra06 writes "I am involved in helping to maintain the computer systems in the local school (200 ~ 250 pupils) in my home village. The children range in age from 4 to 12. The 14 PC's are running either Windows 95, Windows 98, and XP Home Edition and I find this rather abhorrent. The licensing fees to upgrade all the capable machines to XP pro is unreasonable for such a small school. What would the esteemed Slashdot readers think of shifting all these machines to a Linux distro (probably Ubuntu). I have no doubt the children will have no problem adapting to the new OS (although the teachers might), the main concerns are the availability of educational software for them to use, and practicality of maintenance for people who are new to the OS given that I am not there regularly enough to be a full time sys admin. Preferably I wouldn't like to running too much through Wine but it is still an option." ----- Posted by [301]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Feb 28, '06 06:22 AM from the big-pictures-that-ever-your-manager-can-understand dept. [302]Programming [303]bonch writes "Apple has noticed the high amount of Mac usage in the Ruby on Rails community and has posted an illustrated [304]Ruby on Rails tutorial. The document goes into more concise detail in getting new users up to speed, from database schema to moving beyond scaffolding, all done with the favored Rails editor, [305]Textmate." ----- Posted by [311]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Feb 28, '06 04:34 AM from the anything-to-stop-getting-gouged dept. [312]Businesses gbobeck writes "Yahoo News is running a story looking at [313]smaller brands in the marketplace. The article discusses the increase of numbers of people who are choosing to purchase lesser known brands of electronics. The bottom line is the major electronics makers still dominate the market, but collective presence of lesser-known brands has helped keep prices down while boosting product choices." ----- Posted by [321]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Feb 28, '06 02:26 AM from the get-rich-quick-schemes dept. [322]Software [323]Natales writes "VMware has announced that they will be supplying $200,000 in prizes for what they call The [324]Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge. Big industry names such as Tim O'Reilly and Mark Shuttleworth are among the judges." From the article: "Using open source or freely distributable components and/or your own code, create the most inventive and useful virtual appliance and win the $100,000 first prize! The Challenge is open to anyone worldwide and will be judged by a panel of industry experts with input from the community." ----- Posted by [330]ScuttleMonkey on Tue Feb 28, '06 12:32 AM from the slowly-coming-around dept. [331]Linux Business [332]SilentBob4 writes "Mad Penguin has published an exclusive [333]interview with the CIO of California's ARB (Air Resources Board), Bill Welty." From the article: " Massachusetts might have been the FOSS shot heard 'round the world, but California may be quietly building pressure for an open source earthquake of its own. On the face of it, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) is not setting the world on fire with its well-documented adoption of free open source software. It is using FOSS primarily in the back office, just like so many other governmental agencies and businesses. But if you dig just a little deeper, as shown in this Mad Penguin(TM) interview of the ARB staffers responsible for moving ARB toward a more FOSSy future, you can see that the seeds of more profound change gradually developing. " ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 01, @11:48PM from the friggin-laser-beams-not-included dept. [104]Science dylanduck writes ""Imagine getting [105]inside the mind of a shark: swimming silently through the ocean, sensing faint electrical fields, homing in on the trace of a scent." That's what the Pentagon wants to do, says New Scientist. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements using a newly designed neural implant, the military hope to transform the animals into stealth spies." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 01, @10:23PM from the dare-to-dream dept. [111]Space Lonesome Squash writes "The BBC are reporting that a new fuel tank is due to arrive on Wednesday that fixes the well-known problems with insulation loss. According to the article, administrators are hopeful that they will be able to "[112]squeeze in three launches" this year. I guess they've lowered the bar enough that even the Shuttle program can slither over it. I can only be grateful that I'm not the poor chump who has to write their press releases." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 01, @09:18PM from the but-does-it-know-orcish dept. [119]Communications [120]saskboy writes "[121]Translations of medical questions posed by doctors to their patients were provided by a new Canadian designed computer called MedBridge. "Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Portuguese, French, and Russian," are some of the languages the MedBridge can work with. CBC reports, "If a patient is deaf, the system can also translate into American Sign Language using video. The MedBridge system is already in use at hospitals in New York, Toronto and Halifax." Pretranslated questions are stored in the computer and the doctor chooses from the list of questions to ask. It's not quite a Universal Translator, but it should improve doctor-patient communication." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 01, @08:04PM from the where-were-you-when dept. [126]The Internet [127]AndrewRUK writes "At 23:09 UTC, the [128]one-millionth article was created in the English-language Wikipedia. The milestone was reached with the creation of an article about [129]Jordanhill railway station in Scotland. Congratulations to all the Wikipedians, especially [130]Nach0king who wrote the millionth article and [131]Mészáros András who in November 2004 [132]correctly predicted that it would be created today." ----- Posted by [137]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 06:59 PM from the congressional-decisions-are-merely-suggestions dept. [138]Slashback Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Enigma security concerns, German ISP targets net companies "free lunch", Total Information Awareness program lives on, Higgins takes on Microsoft, Google answers analyst concerns, Patriot Act provision not just for terrorists, and Java 4K game contest submissions available -- Read on for details. ----- Posted by [147]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 05:48 PM from the fewer-restrictions-for-corrupt-corporations dept. [148]Biotech An anonymous reader writes "Forbes has a story listing the [149]six most dangerous bacteria (one's actually a fungus, but it kills people who get it half the time) that have afflicted athletes, soldiers, and hospital patients. Some scientists worry that even with a bunch of new antibiotics hitting the market, there still aren't enough and they want legislation to make it easier for companies to develop them." ----- Posted by [155]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 05:06 PM from the help-spread-the-infection dept. [156]Software [157]Andrew Stellman writes to tell us that an article he co-authored with Jennifer Greene is currently being run at ONLamp. The article takes a look at how the most successful open source projects do a great job of putting important software [158]project management principles in practice, using techniques that can (and should) be adopted by corporate IT project teams. ----- Posted by [164]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 04:29 PM from the who-didn't-see-this-coming dept. [165]AMD [166]I_am_Rambi writes "AMD has issued a [167]subpoena to Skype in the battle of the anti-trust case against Intel. From the article: 'AMD is now focusing on a [168]feature in Skype 2.0 that enables the ability to make 10-person conference calls only with Intel dual-core processors. Users with AMD dual-core chips or single-core chips are restricted to hosting five-person conference calls because only Intel's chips offer the performance necessary to host the 10-way call, according to Skype. [...] Skype's software is using a function called "GetCPUID" to permit 10-way conference calls only when that function detects an Intel dual-core processor on start-up.'" ----- Posted by [174]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 03:46 PM from the applications-flooding-in-for-the-school-of-loose-screws dept. [175]Security [176]mrowton writes "A professor at an undisclosed university recently assigned a practical for his computer-security class. The practical, which is worth 15 percent of the students final grade, requires students to [177]perform reconnaissance on an internet server using tools available in the public domain. While the university is allowing the practical to continue it has also stated that the techniques should not be performed on their own web servers. If students are caught performing any scans against university computers then it would prompt: "Disabling their student account and referring them to the Student Dean of Corrections." The assignment was enough for SANS to dub him 'Professor Packetslinger of the School of Loose Screws.'" ----- Posted by [183]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 03:03 PM from the right-hand-meet-left-hand dept. [184]NASA [185]Roland Piquepaille writes "With a new photographic laser device developed to check damages on the Space Shuttle, [186]NASA is going to help the FBI to investigate crime scenes. The Laser Scaling and Measurement Device for Photographic Images (LSMDPI) was designed to provide a non-intrusive means of adding a scale to a photograph, which is very useful when looking at an object in space when there is no size reference. But the LSMDPI, which weighs only a half-pound and can be attached directly to a camera's tripod, will also be used on Earth in crime and accident scene investigations. It also could be used for oil and chemical tank monitoring or aerial photography." ----- Posted by [192]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 02:19 PM from the even-mainstream-media-has-trolls dept. [193]The Media Lave writes "A journalist at the BBC is replying to complaints about its recent Newsnight show, where it stated that using Bittorrent to download copyrighted material is theft. It's a very frank and honest account about the perceived [194]realities of the internet and how traditional media represents it. From the article: '[One] answer is that we're totally scared of new media, because new media is railways and we're canals, and you all just know how that's going to end. So we seek to equate the internet with all bad things to scare you off it. At some corporate Freudian level, there's some truth to that accusation.'" ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wed Mar 01, '06 01:41 PM from the clean-programming dept. [200]Programming [201]Craig Maloney writes "You've no doubt heard about Ajax. Practically every new and exciting application on the web uses some form of Ajax. Google's suite of applications (GMail, Google Maps, etc.), Amazon's A9 search engine, and Netflix use Ajax interfaces to give the user a better browsing experience. By using some pretty basic innovations to current technology, browsers can now deliver content in ways unimaginable only a few short years ago. Foundations of Ajax provides developers who haven't taken the time to look into Ajax a hands-on guide for quickly leveraging these technologies in their own applications." Read on for Craig's review. ----- Posted by [208]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 01:02 PM from the special-hell-for-people-who-talk-at-the-theater dept. [209]Communications Kozar_The_Malignant writes "Newsday is reporting on a [210]new nanotube paint that is able to block cell phone signals on demand. The nanotubes are filled with copper, suspended in paint, and can be applied to the walls and ceiling of places such as concert halls, churches, and classrooms." ----- Posted by [220]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 12:13 PM from the i'll-take-two dept. [221]Supercomputing [222]deman1985 writes "As reported by UPI, Japan has unveiled their [223]fastest supercomputer yet. Assembled from Hitachi and IBM components, the new system sports total performance around 59 trillion calculations per second and comes at a cool 5-year lease price of $30 million. [224]Pictures of the beast can be found at Mainichi Daily News." ----- Posted by [229]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 11:32 AM from the average-person-plus-anonymity-plus-audience dept. [230]The Internet [231]Carl Bialik writes to tell us the Wall Street Journal has an interesting look at how [232]search engines and original content are affecting the quality of the web. From the article: "If there is a topic in the news, people will be searching on it. If you can get those searchers to land on a seemingly authoritative page you've set up, you can make money from their arrival. Via ads, for instance. Then, to get your site ranked high in search engines, it's best to have "original content" about whatever the subject of your site happens to be. The content needs to include all the keywords that people might search for. But it can't be just an outright copy of what's on some other site; you get penalized for that by search engines." ----- Posted by [241]CmdrTaco on Wed Mar 01, '06 10:45 AM from the seems-like-a-good-idea-to-me dept. [242]Education An anonymous reader writes "Indiana State University will become the first public university in the state to [243]require all students to have notebook computers, beginning with incoming freshmen in fall 2007. Guess which laptop is the preferred one..." I started bringing laptops to class around my Junior year. I'm unconvinced that they helped me with my grades. ----- Posted by [250]CmdrTaco on Wed Mar 01, '06 10:17 AM from the telco-conspiracy-is-way-more-fun dept. [251]Communications 3x37 writes "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website reports a study by Cargenie Mellon University researchers found that [252]cell phones do interfere with airplane cockpit instruments. The researchers came to this takeaway conclusion: "devices like cell phones 'will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by interfering with critical cockpit instruments such as GPS receivers.'"" ----- Posted by [256]CmdrTaco on Wed Mar 01, '06 09:50 AM from the ridiculous-ways-to-lose-weight dept. [257]Microsoft writertype writes "Apparently Microsoft researchers are also DDR enthusiasts, for their [258]StepUI research project uses a dance pad to stamp out spam from email, scroll through photographs or perform other functions. 'People really like stomping with two feet to delete spam,' said Kevin Schofield, general manager of strategy and communications at Microsoft Research." Given my inbox, I'd be ready for the '08 Olympics. If only they would make Spam Stamping a sport. ----- Posted by [263]CmdrTaco on Wed Mar 01, '06 09:19 AM from the i'm-still-undecided dept. [264]America Online An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting that [265]opposition to AOL's proposed 'Email Tax' that would create a two tier email filtering system is growing. [266]DearAOL.com, representing such organisations as the EFF and Craigslist, has written an open letter to AOL asking them to reconsider. " ----- Posted by [271]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 08:36 AM from the spreading-the-infection dept. [272]Software [273]Gavo writes "Law firm Chapmann Tripp advises New Zealand State Services Commission that the New Zealand Government should be wary of using [274]'infectious' open source software. They claim 'While the use of open source software has many benefits, it brings with it a number of legal risks not posed by proprietary or commercial software.'" ----- Posted by [281]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 06:22 AM from the still-a-key-just-much-bigger-and-more-expensive dept. [282]Science Erica Campbell writes to tell us IsraCast is reporting that E-lock has developed a [283]new kind of lock technology designed to open a door based on a "knock code." From the article: "This innovation is based on patented technology which uses a series of quick knocking sounds. The discrete mechanical knocks open the lock and are produced by a small device that can be carried by any authorized person. The device which opens the lock needs to touch the door (which can be made out of any material such as metal, wood, plastic or glass) to cause the lock mechanism to open. Since there is no keyhole or contact point on the door, this unique mechanism offers a significantly higher level of security then existing technology." ----- Posted by [288]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 04:38 AM from the quick-distract-them-and-i'll-grab-the-cash dept. [289]Music An anonymous reader writes "AustralianIT is reporting that Napster has blamed their inability to compete with Apple's iTunes on technical [290]glitches from Microsoft. From the article: '"There is no question that their execution has been less than brilliant over the last 12 months," Napster chairman and chief executive Chris Gorog said at a New York conference. "Our business does rely on Microsoft's digital rights management software and our business model also relies on Microsoft's ecosystem of device manufacturers."'" ----- Posted by [297]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 02:27 AM from the real-estate-still-unreasonable dept. [298]Programming [299]Carl Bialik writes to tell us the Wall Street Journal is reporting that five years after the dot-com burst, [300]job growth is finally returning to Silicon Valley. From the article: "Doug Henton, an economist and co-author of the report, says with the growth in these creative engineering jobs, a new face of Silicon Valley is emerging. 'Ten years ago, this was an engineering Valley that pumped out chips and computers,' he says. 'Now it's all about creative tech and staying on the cutting edge.'" ----- Posted by [306]ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, '06 12:36 AM from the why-give-up-a-cash-cow dept. [307]Power [308]Sterling D. Allan writes "High school students from West Philadelphia High School have [309]designed a sports car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon on soy bean oil. CBS News reports that this unlikely car was the star last week at the Philadelphia Auto Show. Once again, are we seeing the fabled instance of revolutionary technology coming not from the big corporations, but from some unlikely garage. Maybe these guys will open source their design." ----- Posted by [104]ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 04, @11:27PM from the conservative-estimates dept. [105]Security OnFour writes "The MIT-backed startup behind SiteAdvisor has slapped a red "X" warning label on approximately 5 percent of all Web traffic and warned that there are roughly [106]one billion monthly visits to Web pages that aren't safe for surfing. About 2 percent of all Web traffic was given the "yellow" caution rating." A more general SiteAdvisor [107]blog entry overview was covered earlier on Slashdot. ----- Posted by [113]ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 04, @09:41PM from the can't-go-if-the-money-isn't-there dept. [114]NASA [115]jd writes "Barely a day after NASA chief Dr. Griffen swore blind that projects might be frozen but not cancelled due to the new priorities and budget constraints, news comes of a new [116]asteroid mission that has been cancelled due to the new priorities and budget constraints - something Dr. Griffin did not mention in his earlier comments. The visit to two asteroids, short about $90 million, was completely abandoned according to NASA, with no possibility of revival. In consequence, smaller missions are reportedly feeling at much greater risk." ----- Posted by [122]ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 04, @07:32PM from the crossover-tech dept. [123]Technology [124]Roland Piquepaille writes "Several technologies used to design the space suits protecting astronauts are now being adapted to protect workers facing extremely hot and dangerous conditions. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), these [125]'space-cooled' jackets are using three different technologies: special 3D-textile structure, cooling apparatus derived from astronauts' suits, and a special water-binding polymer acting as a coating. Even if these protective clothes are primarily intended for firefighters or steel workers, several applications are possible, such as in sportswear or in cars as parts of air conditioning systems. Read more for [126]additional details and pictures." ----- Posted by [132]ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 04, @05:21PM from the sky-is-falling dept. [133]Privacy [134]andy753421 writes "Wired is running an article featuring Katherine Albrecht who, with her new book 'The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance', is warning that [135]RFID tags may in fact be the "mark of the beast". Among her arguments are that in a futuristic world anyone who wishes to buy and sell goods would be compelled "to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads," as is foretold in the book Revelation. Others are skeptical saying that many new technologies, such as the printing press, bar-codes, and [136]several others, have also created fears about the beginning of the end." ----- Posted by [142]ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 04, @03:47PM from the celebrating-people-who-deserve-it dept. [143]Programming An anonymous reader writes "The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has [144]named Peter Naur the winner of the 2005 A.M. Turing Award. The award is for Dr. Naur's fundamental contributions to programming language design and the definition of Algol 60, to compiler design, and to the art and practice of computer programming. The Turing Award is considered to be the Nobel Prize of computing, and a well-deserved recognition of Dr. Naur's pioneering contributions to the field." ----- Posted by [150]ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 04, @02:18PM from the prefer-just-to-stay-off-of-dhs-radar dept. [151]Security [152]anadgouda writes "US Department of Homeland Security has released a [153]report on open source quality in an effort to study the security of open source. 31 popular open source packages were studied as part of this effort. From the article: 'Coverity's report, Stacking up the LAMP stack: a study of open source quality, was produced as part of a $1.24m, three-year DHS Science and Technology Directorate effort to evaluate and improve the security of open source.'" ----- Posted by [158]ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 04, @12:42PM from the isp's-take-a-while-to-figure-anything-out dept. [159]Software [160]Anonymous Coward writes "PBS has an interesting look at the [161]emerging commercialized P2P networks brought to light by Cringely. With the news of [162]Sky's default bundling of commercial P2P applications in its broadband software, many users seemed to be against the idea of getting nothing from providing Sky with their upstream bandwidth for free. Meanwhile, PeerImpact, seems to be rewarding users for their P2P system through [163]PeerCash, and GridNetworks is building an system called [164]PeerReward." ----- Posted by [168]CmdrTaco on Saturday March 04, @11:11AM from the well-isn't-that-unsurprising dept. [169]AMD BobPaul writes "It turns out when Skype limited 10 way calling to [170]Intel Processors only it really was arbitrary! Maxxus has [171]a patched version of Skype that allows 10-way calling regardless of the processor installed. There's also info about the patch: "The patch is the result of two phases: code analysis and design of the patch. The code analysis, or reverse engineering, reveals the relevant code block, which overrides Skype's limitation for Intel's dual-core CPUs. The patch design isolates the minimal set of instructions that need to be modified to cancel this limitation." Windows only so far." ----- Posted by [176]ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 04, @09:46AM from the good-customer-service-trumps-all dept. [177]Businesses Alien54 writes to tell us CNNMoney is reporting that outsourcing [178]may not be as big of a bargain as some might think. From the article: "With consumers enjoying more choice than ever before, evidence is growing that great service is essential for long-term customer retention. To cite just one example, a recent survey of pension policyholders in the United Kingdom found that 75 percent would leave their current provider if they experienced bad customer service." ----- Posted by [184]Zonk on Saturday March 04, @08:39AM from the everyone-becomes-the-man-eventually dept. [185]Linux Business conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at [186]the possible future of open source. The article's conclusion is that it might be grim. From the piece: 'Software giant Oracle Corp. has acquired two small open-source companies and is in negotiations to buy at least one more. Many experts believe this is the beginning of a broader trend in which established tech companies scoop up promising open-source startups. While the validation is thrilling it's also unsettling. Many young idealists who set out to create an alternative to the tech Establishment now find themselves becoming part of it.'" ----- Posted by [192]Zonk on Saturday March 04, @07:41AM from the inappropriate-comments-aplenty dept. [193]Microsoft [194]mytrip wrote to mention a C|Net article stating that [195]Vista will not have a security backdoor after all. From the article: "'The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted data,' Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft, wrote Thursday on a corporate blog. 'Over my dead body,' he wrote in his post titled Back-door nonsense." ----- Posted by [201]Zonk on Saturday March 04, @05:26AM from the something-stinks-about-this dept. [202]Power [203]McDrewbie writes "Yahoo! News has an article about Japanese researchers [204]extracting a small amount of gasoline from 3.5oz of cow dung. The process uses application of high heat and pressure. Hopefully, when more information is released, we can find out how much energy it takes to produce this gasoline and how energy efficient the process is." ----- Posted by [210]Zonk on Saturday March 04, @03:32AM from the i-heart-my-infosphere dept. [211]Communications An anonymous reader wrote to mention an opinion piece on CNet discussing the [212]realities of living in constant contact with the world at large. The author argues that the ability to connect actually creates time for us that we wouldn't have otherwise had. From the article: "... rather than obliterate our social lives, always-on connectivity and the increased flexibility it brings will allow us to break free from the office and actually socialise more. Sure, you'll be on call at unusual hours of the day, but think about how much more efficient you'll be -- particularly if your most productive hours aren't between 9am and 5:30pm! And besides, all newfangled technology comes with an 'off' switch should you find yourself needing some down time." ----- Posted by [218]Zonk on Saturday March 04, @01:48AM from the presents-for-planets dept. [219]Space [220]saskboy writes "The planet [221]Jupiter is growing a new red spot. Jupiter is already well known for its Great Red Spot storm which is visible through modest backyard telescopes, so it will be interesting if this newer spot sticks around and grows. From the article: 'The official name of this storm is Oval BA, but Red Jr. might be better. It's about half the size of the famous Great Red Spot and almost exactly the same color. Oval BA first appeared in the year 2000 when three smaller spots collided and merged. A similar merger centuries ago may have created the original Great Red Spot, a storm twice as wide as our planet and at least 300 years old.'" ----- Posted by [229]Zonk on Friday March 03, @11:20PM from the robo-horse dept. [230]Robotics moon_monkey writes "New Scientist has a story about [231]a nimble, four-legged robot that can recover its balance even after being given a hefty kick." From the article: "The project is sponsored by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), who want the robotic pack mule to assist soldiers in terrain too tough for vehicles. Ground-based soldiers often need to carry 40 kilograms of equipment. Raibert says the latest version of BigDog can handle slopes of 35 - a steeper gradient than one in two. The hydraulics are driven by a two-stroke single-cylinder petrol engine, and it can carry over 40 kg, about 30% of its bodyweight. The robot can follow a simple path on its own, or can be remotely controlled." ----- Posted by [237]Zonk on Friday March 03, @09:53PM from the that's-polar-bear-country dept. [238]NASA [239]deman1985 writes "A recently released NASA study has shown that [240]the Antarctic ice shelf is shrinking at an alarming rate of 36 cubic miles per year. The study, run from April 2002 to August 2005, indicates that the melting accounted for 1.2 millimeters of global sea level rise for the period. From the article: 'That is about how much water the United States consumes in three months and represents a change of about 0.4 millimeter (0.01575 inch) per year to global sea level rise, the study concluded. The study claims the majority of the melting to have occurred in the West Antarctic ice sheet." ----- Posted by [250]Zonk on Friday March 03, @07:01PM from the end-to-a-long-and-sordid-tale dept. [251]Patents [252]David Jao writes "[253]Research in Motion has agreed to pay 612.5 million dollars for a 'full and final settlement of all claims' resulting from the NTP patent lawsuit against the makers of BlackBerry. According to the article, the settlement is 'on the low end of expectations', perhaps because the patents in question had earlier been [254]preliminarily ruled invalid by the US Patents & Trademarks Office." Many article submitters characterize this move as 'giving in' to NTP's tactics. What do you think? ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 08, @11:53PM from the follow-the-money dept. [104]Privacy An anonymous reader writes "After a recent [105]Slashdot story detailing the errant investigation into a credit card holder's dept payment, comes this article from the Christian Science Monitor discussing the [106]commoditization of terrorism, its relationship to crime, and the difficulties encountered when trying to track "bad" money." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 08, @10:39PM from the download-your-shows dept. [112]Television [113]sg3000 writes "Fans of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, rejoice! Reuters is reporting that Apple will provide [114]monthly subscriptions to two of Comedy Central's most popular shows. One question, as TV shows become available for sale on the Internet, will this make it harder to share clips online, such as through Google Video? In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 08, @09:20PM from the pay-the-man dept. [122]Google Hitokiri writes "Google has agreed to [123]pay up to $90 million to settle a class action lawsuit 'Lane's Gifts v. Google'. The settlement stems from a lawsuit filed by Lane's Gifts earlier this year in an Arkansas state court and is designed to settle all outstanding claims against Google for fraud committed using its pay-per-click ad system back to 2002Google has made a statement on [124]their blog." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 08, @08:48PM from the hotter-than-the-sun dept. [130]Space starexplorer2001 writes "LiveScience is reporting how scientists at Sandia's Z laboratory have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of [131]3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit (2 billion kelvins). That's hotter than the interior of our sun, which is only 15 million degrees F. And they don't know how they did it. Do we want anything that hot on our planet?" ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 08, @08:08PM from the building-hearts-and-minds dept. [137]Biotech An anonymous reader writes "Liquid crystals, the same phase-shifting materials used to display information on cell phones, monitors and other electronic equipment, can also be used to [138]control the differentiation of embryonic stem cells, Wisconsin researchers say. By using the crystals to mechanically strain the cells, they can prevent the indiscriminate (and unwanted) differentiation common in embryonic stem cell research and therapy. So when you want a bone cell, say, you don't end up with one from the kidney." ----- Posted by [145]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @06:59PM from the dusting-off-the-old-tin-foil-hat dept. [146]Slashback Slashdot tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including some favorable results from the University of Wisconsin's Mac OS X Challenge, skeptics investigate cold fusion claims, more on DoD web filtering, AT&T cuts 10,000 jobs after BellSouth merger, more child-proofing efforts for MySpace, Why Windows Vista Will Suck: a rebuttal, Harvard Professor punished for reporting bugs, Assemblyman Biondi backpedals on NJ anonymous posting bill, and a followup on Chinese TLDs -- Read on for details. ----- Posted by [155]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @05:34PM from the foot-in-the-door dept. [156]Novell [157]truthsearch writes to tell us ITWire is reporting that Novell has just signed a [158]deal with the Australian government to become an approved supplier of Open Source software and solutions. This deal, believed to be the first of it's kind, "places Novell on the NSW government panel of preferred open source suppliers. This is the first panel contract of its kind by an Australian jurisdiction that contains provisions specific to open source software, giving government agencies and departments formal access to Linux solutions." ----- Posted by [165]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @04:52PM from the missing-the-days-of-notepad-and-mnt-dew dept. [166]Software tkajstura writes "New Scientist is reporting on 'a new tool [called [167]Boxxet that] offers to create websites on any subject, allowing web surfers to sit back, relax and watch a virtual space [168]automatically fill up with relevant news stories, blog posts, maps and photos.' It uses an algorithm based on unique word count to filter an index and integrate relevant subject information into the page, called a 'Boxxet.' The tool will first be available by invitation only, opening to the general public by the end of April 2006." ----- Posted by [173]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @04:10PM from the humanity-and-understanding-from-a-corporation dept. [174]Editorial [175]Paul Pareti writes "Doug Reilly has published an affecting, personal piece about [176]Surviving Cancer if you're a Programmer. You don't have to be a sufferer to benefit from reading it, especially his conclusions, including the perspective-lengthening advice: 'Make sure you are not indispensable!'" ----- Posted by [185]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @03:23PM from the finding-tasty-content-for-consumption dept. [186]The Internet [187]Thomas Hawk writes "Similicio.us is a [188]brand new search engine that matches up the database of del.icio.us with the power of the search engine EasyUtil.com The result is a new [189]blog finder tool that can help you discover new websites based upon what you currently like. Interesting to see a small time guy come up with a pretty cool tool like this while the major search players are spending millions trying to improve their own relevancy in blog search." ----- Posted by [196]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @02:42PM from the bugbot-crawling-its-way-to-the-top dept. [197]Robotics galactic grub writes "New Scientist's new Tech Blog has an article about a remarkable, if slightly creepy, [198]tree-climbing robot being developed by robotics experts from Carnegie Mellon and several other US Universities. The article comes complete with a video clip of it going up several different surfaces." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 08, @01:58PM from the power-to-the-people dept. [206]Politics [207]Michael Gracie writes "I picked up "Crashing The Gate - Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics" from the DailyKos website, albeit apprehensively. The Kos community has a "reputation," and some would suspect that any printed material associated with the site would parallel what is said there. Nevertheless, I was curious to hear what Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga would say, knowing they wouldn't have to deal with the instant (and often aggressive) feedback the "Kossacks" dispense. For the most part, I was pleasantly surprised." Read the rest of Michael's review. ----- Posted by [216]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @01:03PM from the who-am-i dept. [217]Security An anonymous reader writes "Net-Security is running an interesting article about some of the problems facing organizations when it comes to [218]identity theft. From the article: 'Identity theft is the major security concern facing organizations today. Indeed, for the banking industry, it is the number one security priority for 2006. Identity security has developed beyond the simplest form of authentication where one party issues and verifies identities within a closed group of users. While easy to do, this approach is extremely hard and costly to scale upwards and offers no interoperability with other authentication networks.'" ----- Posted by [226]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @12:24PM from the cuddly-fuzzy-dinner dept. [227]Science AviLazar writes "American-led divers discovered a [228]new type of Crustacean, that resembles a lobster but has it's claws covered in 'sinuous, hair-like strands'. This species is so different, from other Crustacean's that it was classified with a new Family name: Kiwaida. Unfortunately for the Kiwaida, the AP is already using this blind creature and a salad plate in the same sentence." ----- Posted by [236]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @11:46AM from the just-like-a-tasty-steak dept. [237]Science chaosmage42 writes "Scientists at the University of Dublin have found a way to [238]break down styrofoam, the bane of recyclers/composters everywhere. This could be a great step towards sustainability, but it does require the styrofoam to be heated first." ----- Posted by [248]CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 08, @10:57AM from the that-just-seems-strange dept. [249]IBM UltimaGuy writes "During a presentation on IBM's involvement with Open Source, Andreas Pleschek from IBM in Stuttgart, Germany, who heads open source and Linux technical sales across North East Europe for IBM made [250]a very interesting statement..."Andreas Pleschek also told that IBM has cancelled their contract with Microsoft as of October this year. That means that IBM will not use Windows Vista for their desktops. Beginning from July, IBM employees will begin using IBM Workplace on their new, Red Hat-based platform. Not all at once - some will keep using their present Windows versions for a while. But none will upgrade to Vista." " ----- Posted by [255]CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 08, @10:22AM from the when-giants-collide dept. [256]Microsoft novus ordo writes "Microsoft has [257]launched the [258]Windows Live Search. Among the [259]reports, Microsoft Search Senior Product Manager, Justin Osmer says that "The beta, and a revision expected in a few months, will challenge market leader Google."" I like the more dynamic image searching tool. It seems really slow- I'm not sure if that's the dynamicness (is that a word?) or just standard launch lag. ----- Posted by [264]CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 08, @09:38AM from the zomg-say-it-ain't-so dept. [265]Science perbert writes "Canadian researchers have published a [266]study in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicating that excess coffee drinking (4+ cups a day) could lead to an increased risk of heart disease if you have the wrong gene. In light of [267]other studies linking antioxidants in coffee to a reduction in heart disease, who is right? Or will they cancel out in a coffee death-match?" ----- Posted by [273]CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 08, @08:56AM [274]Linux Business An anonymous reader writes "Michael Dell [275]explains his company's Linux desktop strategy in an interview at DesktopLinux.com. He says that it's not practical for Dell (the company) to support numerous distributions due to their incompatibilities, but that he doesn't want alienate large segements of the Linux community by selecting a favorite Linux distro to standardize on (Ubuntu appears to be his favorite, at the moment, by the way.) What he'd really like to see, is for the popular Linux distros to converge on a common core platform, according to the article." ----- Posted by [281]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @08:33AM from the saving-money-and-ruling-the-world dept. [282]Linux Business [283]inkslinger77 writes "In a recent interview [284]Jon 'Maddog' Hall speaks with Computerworld Australia about his life, Linux, and the Linux world conference to be held this year in Sydney. He also talks about Linux International's new direction and the future of FOSS." ----- Posted by [290]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @06:47AM from the under-the-hood dept. [291]Intel DrFishstik writes "Anandtech has a few preliminary benchmarks on Intel's [292]new Conroe architecture. From the article: 'As far as we could tell, there was nothing fishy going on with the benchmarks or the install. Both systems [AMD 2.8Ghz OC and Conroe] were clean and used the latest versions of all of the drivers.'" ----- Posted by [298]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @04:22AM from the i-know-a-few-missing-links dept. [299]Biotech MediumFormat writes "The New York Times is running an article that discusses the [300]continuing evolution of human genes. From the article: 'The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function.' Darwin Awards aside, what made people think that evolution stopped with the modern era?" ----- Posted by [310]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @02:34AM from the language-midlife-crisis dept. [311]Programming An anonymous reader writes "Everyone knows that no programming language is a perfect fit for every job. This article launches a 'new series by Bruce Tate that looks at ways other languages solve major problems and what those solutions mean to Java developers. He first [312]explores Active Record, the persistence engine behind Ruby on Rails.'" ----- Posted by [320]ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, @12:26AM from the slippery-stockholder-slope dept. [321]SuSE [322]steveit_is writes to tell us CommentWire is reporting that the decline in NetWare and Open Enterprise sales is plummeting at a [323]much faster rate than their SUSE Linux sales are growing. It seems that the transition is proving to be every bit as difficult as Novell execs originally suspected. From the article: "When Novell last week announced its financial results for the fiscal first quarter ended January 31, the said that growth in its SUSE Linux and related products was decent, but that sales of its NetWare and Open Enterprise Server--a variant of NetWare that uses Linux as the operating system kernel that was announced last year--declined by 11%." ----- Posted by [105]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @08:35PM from the dna-certainly-is-curved dept. [106]Science An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has a piece today talking about [107]the possible connection between genetic evolution and history." From the article: "Trying to explain cultural traits is, of course, a sensitive issue. The descriptions of national character common in the works of 19th-century historians were based on little more than prejudice. Together with unfounded notions of racial superiority they lent support to disastrous policies. But like phrenology, a wrong idea that held a basic truth (the brain's functions are indeed localized), the concept of national character could turn out to be not entirely baseless, at least when applied to societies shaped by specific evolutionary pressures." ----- Posted by [113]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @05:20PM from the unsurprising-but-sad dept. [114]The Almighty Buck Kotaku has a feature up today written by James Wagner Au, formerly embedded reporter in the world of Second Life. He's now doing his own thing, and he's got a fairly cynical discussion over at the Kotaku site about [115]the real purpose behind game previews in industry rags. From the article: "For the thing of it is, game magazine previews are almost uniformly positive, even for the most undistinguished titles. So it unrolls thus: publisher makes mediocre game; press previews depict mediocre game as being good or at least worth a look; excited gamers read previews, foolishly believe them, start making pre-sale orders of mediocre game; driven by preview press and pre-sale numbers based on that press, retailers stock up on mediocre game; publisher makes money from mediocre game, keeps making more games like it." ----- Posted by [120]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @04:35PM from the not-just-for-making-lassos-anymore dept. [121]The Internet [122]Ant wrote to mention a ZDNet article about a new initive to get modern [123]high-speed net access into homes utilizing old coaxial cable lines. Right now Verizon digs up streets and lays out expensive fiber to get homes online, but new tech may let them accomplish that task for much less hassle and expense. From the article: "Later this year, it plans to use new technology from the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) , an industry group that promotes using coaxial cable installed for cable TV to transmit broadband around the home. The organization says that its technology supports speeds up to 270 megabits per second. Because most homes already have coaxial cable installed in several rooms, Verizon can significantly reduce its Fios installation costs by using existing cabling to connect home computers to its broadband service." ----- Posted by [127]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @03:21PM from the my-fridge-talks-to-me-at-night dept. [128]Technology [129]theodp writes "Despite lots of scars from earlier consumer craziness which included an [130]Internet-connected fridge, Newsweek reports [131]Cisco has set its sights on your living room, including videoconferencing which would let CEO John Chambers watch his beloved Duke basketball with far-away relatives. While recent acquisitions of Linksys and Scientific Atlanta make Cisco the only company that can come in on top of technology that's already inside homes, some skeptics say speaking to the consumer is simply not in Cisco's genes." ----- Posted by [136]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @02:39PM from the you're-on-my-list-sony dept. [137]Music An anonymous reader writes "'It's time for [138]music fans who bought Sony BMG CDs loaded with harmful XCP or MediaMax copy protection to claim their settlement benefits', says the EFF's Derek Slater in an awareness campaign that is urging those inflicted with one of Sony BMG's rootkit infected CDs [139]to collect what is due to them. [140]The compensation is a DRM-free version of the original CD, $7.50, and album downloads from iTunes, Sony Connect, and others." ----- Posted by [146]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @01:44PM from the playing-mario-as-therapy dept. [147]Science [148]deeptrace writes "USA today has an article about [149]a videogame based treatment for ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). It uses NASA derived technology to measure brainwave activity while playing videogames. Clinical psychologist Henry Owens says 'If they just play videogames on their own, they will zone out. When they play on this system, if they zone out [as detected by brainwave activity], the videogame doesn't respond any more' This is supposed to help the patient increase the ability to focus and concentrate." ----- Posted by [155]CmdrTaco on Sunday March 12, @10:06AM from the both-users-celebrate dept. [156]The Internet [157]Rytis writes "Opera has just become the second browser after Safari to be able to pass completely the famous ACID2 test. Mark Wilton-Jones is running a little article on [158]the history of the Opera and ACID tests. Of course, it includes a [159]screenshot of Opera 9 showing the nice happy face saying "Hello world!"." ----- Posted by [164]CmdrTaco on Sunday March 12, @09:34AM from the research-into-art dept. [165]Music Gary Franczyk writes "A band named Emerald Suspension has made an album named [166]Playing the Market that is, as they put it: "structured based on patterns created by the stock market, economic indicators, algorithms". They have some songs based off of the Fibonacci sequence, the misery and consumer confidence indices, and the national debt. " ----- Posted by [171]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @08:34AM from the double-think dept. [172]Security [173]chill writes "Last September security software vendor Symantec issued a report claiming [174]IE had fewer critical flaws than Firefox and thus was more secure. Well, it seem they have now [175]rethought that position. 'How we did it before wasn't a fair comparison,' said Oliver Friedrichs, the senior manager of Symantec's security response group. 'It wasn't an apples to apples comparison.' The key was vendor acknowledged critical vulnerabilities. Thus, if Microsoft (or the Mozilla Foundation) didn't agree it was critical, then it didn't get counted." ----- Posted by [181]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @06:26AM from the those-pesky-interwebs dept. [182]United States [183]GabrielF writes "In another blow to the reputation of the agency that just can't seem to get anything right, the Chicago Tribune used web searches and various commercial online databases to [184]uncover a treasure trove of information about the CIA. The Tribune found the identities of over 2600 CIA employees (including an undisclosed number of covert operatives) as well as the locations of over two dozen CIA facilities across the U.S., internal telephone numbers, and information on 17 aircraft." ----- Posted by [189]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @05:27AM from the movies-in-bits-and-bytes dept. [190]Movies An anonymous reader writes "A Reuters article explains how, in some ways, the [191]digital future of movie theatres isn't quite here yet. Despite the push for new technology in the projection booth, theaters have been slow to adopt the new and expensive gear." From the article: " Many in the movie industry hope digital cinema will help revive theater attendance, which fell 9 percent in 2005 in the United States. The studios stand to save about $1 billion a year in print distribution costs because they will be shipping digital movies via computer hard drives, satellite and broadband cable, versus old celluloid canisters. But digital deployment is expensive at about $100,000 per screen, and while the studios agreed to foot most of the bill, current equipment does not meet all the technology standards set by the industry." ----- Posted by [196]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @03:45AM from the it-sure-tastes-unixy dept. [197]Unix Lieutenant writes "Technology professionals have loosely used the term "UNIX" since the first person had to explain the difference between the Berkeley and AT&T flavors, so it's not surprising to find as many UNIX standards as there are versions of the operating system. Peter Seebach [198]wades through the wellspring of UNIX standards and sorts them out for you, concluding that the rumors of the death of UNIX are (as usual) greatly exaggerated." ----- Posted by [204]Zonk on Sunday March 12, @01:29AM from the to-the-moon-alice dept. [205]NASA [206]Interested reader writes "MSNBC has an article covering the recent Space Technology and Applications Forum in New Mexico, which included [207]a frontier physics session on hyperdrive, wormholes, and other blue sky ideas. The idea is a revival of NASA's long-dead (and heavily criticized) Advanced Propulsion Project." ----- Posted by [213]Zonk on Saturday March 11, @10:55PM from the eek-eek-brains-eek dept. [214]Science [215]gokulpod writes "Scientific American reports that a family of animals known as Diatomyidae thought to have been dead for 11 million years [216]has been discovered in Laos. From the article: 'Fossilized remnants of this group have been found throughout Asia with a distinctive jaw structure and molars. It represents a rare opportunity to compare assumptions derived from the fossil record and an actual living specimen to determine overall accuracy of the techniques involved. This discovery also provides a compelling argument for preservation efforts in Southeast Asia.'" ----- Posted by [221]Zonk on Saturday March 11, @08:40PM from the something-for-everyone dept. [222]Television [223]prostoalex writes "The New York Times runs the story on [224]the long tail of television, where the channels that would not be hits on the mainstream media are migrating to the Internet and finding interested audiences there. The article mentions [225]Sail.tv - TV programming for those into sailing and yachting, [226]TrioTV - the cornucopia of pop culture and music, [227]BrilliantButCancelled will rerun the reruns of old TV shows, and [228]OutZone will feature programming pertaining to gays and lesbians." ----- Posted by [233]Zonk on Saturday March 11, @06:35PM from the less-you-know dept. [234]United States nebaz writes "The AP has published an article [235]analyzing over 1000 laws passed by state legislatures since 9/11, and discovered a disturbing trend. More and more information is being made unavailable to the public. Some of this information may seem reasonable, dealing with national security and all, but there are other things, such as safety plans at schools, medication errors at nursing homes, and disciplinary actions against state employees, that are becoming restricted." From the article: "In statehouse battles, the issue has pitted advocates of government openness - including journalists and civil liberties groups - against lawmakers and others who worry that public information could be misused, whether it's by terrorists or by computer hackers hoping to use your credit cards. Security concerns typically won out." ----- Posted by [241]Zonk on Saturday March 11, @05:22PM from the slippery-slope dept. [242]The Courts eRondeau writes "In a precedent-setting ruling, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has [243]fined a hosting company for carrying 'objectionable content'. The material in question was White Supremacist postings. From the article: 'The ruling sends a very strong message that Internet servers, if they are aware there is hate content and don't take timely action to remove it, can be held liable,' said the Ottawa lawyer who filed the complaint in February 2002. The individual posters were fined thousands as well." ----- Posted by [251]Zonk on Saturday March 11, @04:41PM from the waiting-on-the-duck dept. [252]Linux [253]Beuno writes "Mark Shuttleworth has proposed on the ubuntu-art mailing list to [254]postpone the 'Dapper Drake' release by 6 weeks. He lays out the reasons pretty clearly: the delay should make the release a more user-friendly distro. He has also called up a community meeting in April 14th on IRC for community input. Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?" [255]Commentary on this also available from the Tectonic site. ----- Posted by [261]Zonk on Saturday March 11, @03:29PM from the my-6600-is-looking-kinda-flabby dept. [262]Graphics [263]SippinTea writes "ATI has also hastened to market with a launch of their own this week, with [264]a new Performance Mid-Range Graphics Card. The [265]Radeon X1800 GTO is a chopped-down version of the Radeon X1800 XL with 12 pixel pipelines and less expensive, lower speed GDDR3 DRAM on board. It compares well with the new [266]GeForce 7600GT but can it compete with a [267]GeForce 7900GT for only a few dollars more?" ----- Posted by [101]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @12:58PM from the but-i-like-big-things dept. [102]Businesses CthuluOverlord writes "CNET News.com is reporting that Nicholas Donofrio, Big Blue's executive vice president of innovation and technology, made a declaration on Tuesday in an interview with ZDNet Asia. 'The fact is that innovation was a little different in the 20th century. It's not easy (now) to come up with greater and different things. If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. [103]There's no such thing as the next big thing.'" Donofrio goes on to explain that he sees innovation as being services or social changes nowadays, rather than simply a better moustrap. What's the verdict? Is tech innovation dead? ----- Posted by [107]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @12:31PM from the meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss dept. [108]The Almighty Buck [109]hpcanswers writes "ICANN, the governing body for Internet domain names, recently gave VeriSign exclusive control of the top-level .com domain until 2012. Now, nineteen registrars, including GoDaddy and Network Solutions, have [110]petitioned ICANN to reconsider on the basis that VeriSign will most likely increase registration fees. A few of the registrars have also asked the US Department of Commerce to veto the deal." From the article: "The new deal permits VeriSign to increase the price of domain name registrations by 7 per cent in four of the next six years. In the two remaining years, VeriSign will only be able to raise prices if it can show the rises are necessary for security reasons. It also gives VeriSign a presumptive right to renewal of the .com registry, on the proviso that it complies with certain aspects of the agreement." ----- Posted by [115]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:56AM from the unique-is-an-understatement dept. [116]Input Devices [117]phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has reviewed the [118]AlphaGrip AG-5 handheld keyboard and mouse. From the article: 'After lots of research and five revisions, the perfectionists at AlphaGrip finally decided that they had a product worthy of marketing, and they released the long awaited AG-5. Although the AG-5 looks strange and intimidating, it is a unique and highly innovative product that deserves consideration, particularly by mobile computing enthusiasts. The AG-5 interfaces with computers via a single removable USB cable. It uses a simple chord-like keyboarding model and an integrated trackball to provide complete keyboard and mouse functionality in a unique form factor that looks a bit like a console gaming controller.'" ----- Posted by [125]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:26AM from the all-their-base-etc-etc dept. [126]Businesses kaufmanmoore writes "According to an MSNBC report, the head of Google's European arm has said that [127]Google wants to use Google Base for brick and mortar stores to submit lists of goods and prices in order to create an online presence." From the article: "Google would index and package the information into a consumer-friendly search engine, giving its users a virtual supermarket across a number of retail brands. Mr Arora said: 'Google Base is going to have a huge impact on retailers," adding that the move reflected internal research, which found many leading European retailers did not feel they were competitive enough online.' ----- Posted by [132]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:05AM from the thousands-of-hopeful-moneymakers-shut-down dept. [133]The Internet [134]matr0x_x writes "The U.S. has just moved one step closer to banning all Internet gambling sites when the US House of Representatives [135]cleared an anti-Internet gambling bill yesterday. The bill is against a World Trade Organization ruling last August that stated the US must not block online gambling sites based overseas." From the article: " The bill, cleared by voice vote in the House Financial Services Committee, would prohibit a gambling business from accepting credit cards, checks, wire transfers and electronic funds transfers in illegal gambling transactions. Unlawful gambling, under the legislation, would include placing bets on online poker sites, for example, and any other online wager made or received in a place where such a bet is illegal under federal or state law." ----- Posted by [143]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @10:28AM from the at-leat-they're-trying dept. [144]Portables QuietLagoon writes 'Reuters is reporting that Bill [145]Gates is making fun of the one laptop per child initiative to revolutionize how the world's children are educated. 'The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk ... and with a tiny little screen,' Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington. 'Hardware is a small part of the cost' of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support. 'If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type,' Gates said.' ----- Posted by [151]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @09:31AM from the hooray-for-shortiez dept. [152]GNOME [153]joe_bruin writes "Beware the Ides of March... the Gnome people have [154]announced the release of Gnome 2.14, right on time to meet their 6 month release schedule. See [155]what's new in this release, as well as the [156]release notes. New features include many more searching options, fast user switching, and speed increases to all the apps you know and love." From the release notes: "Just as you would tune your car, our skilled engineers have strived to tune many parts of GNOME to be as fast as possible. Several important components of the GNOME desktop are now measurably faster, including text rendering, memory allocation, and numerous individual applications. Faster font rendering and memory allocation benefit all GNOME and GTK+ based applications without the need for recompilation. Some applications have received special attention to make sure they are performing at their peak." ----- Posted by [162]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @08:57AM from the what-do-you-want-to-do-tonight-pinky dept. [163]OS X niemassacre writes "According to [164]winxponmac.com, the contest has been won - nearly $14k to narf2006 for submitting a working solution to dual-booting Windows XP and Mac OS X on an Intel-Powered mac. A thread on osx86project.org has [165]confirmations from several testers that the procedure works on the 17" iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. Many sets of pictures and videos (such as this installation video) are floating around (and mentioned in the thread). The solution itself should be posted soon." Poit! Congratulations to narf. ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @08:05AM from the it's-all-flowers-and-sausages dept. [173]The Internet [174]andyring writes "According to CNS News Service, the Democrat Party will have an agenda that [175]guarantees every American will have affordable access to broadband within five years as part of their 2006 election year agenda, according to Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader. Absent, of course, are any details as to how they will accomplish it when they are the party out of power in Congress." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @05:25AM from the good-job-team dept. [185]Security An anonymous reader writes "For the third straight year, the Department of Homeland Security -- which is charged with charting the federal government's cyber security agenda -- [186]earned a grade of "F" for computer security from a key congressional oversight committee, according to a story at Washingtonpost.com. Not only did the overall government-wide computer security grade remain flat (at a barely-passing "D+" but several agencies -- mostly those on the "front lines in the war on terror" -- actually managed to fare worse this year." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @12:20AM from the we're-taking-our-jets-and-going-home dept. [197]United States An anonymous reader writes ""The UK has warned America that [198]it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets" Lord Drayson, minister for defense procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 15, @11:03PM from the the-cyber-butterfly-effect dept. [203]Biotech [204]Security writes "The BBC writes "The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an [205]army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions. The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later. "." ----- Posted by [101]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @12:58PM from the but-i-like-big-things dept. [102]Businesses CthuluOverlord writes "CNET News.com is reporting that Nicholas Donofrio, Big Blue's executive vice president of innovation and technology, made a declaration on Tuesday in an interview with ZDNet Asia. 'The fact is that innovation was a little different in the 20th century. It's not easy (now) to come up with greater and different things. If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. [103]There's no such thing as the next big thing.'" Donofrio goes on to explain that he sees innovation as being services or social changes nowadays, rather than simply a better moustrap. What's the verdict? Is tech innovation dead? ----- Posted by [107]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @12:31PM from the meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss dept. [108]The Almighty Buck [109]hpcanswers writes "ICANN, the governing body for Internet domain names, recently gave VeriSign exclusive control of the top-level .com domain until 2012. Now, nineteen registrars, including GoDaddy and Network Solutions, have [110]petitioned ICANN to reconsider on the basis that VeriSign will most likely increase registration fees. A few of the registrars have also asked the US Department of Commerce to veto the deal." From the article: "The new deal permits VeriSign to increase the price of domain name registrations by 7 per cent in four of the next six years. In the two remaining years, VeriSign will only be able to raise prices if it can show the rises are necessary for security reasons. It also gives VeriSign a presumptive right to renewal of the .com registry, on the proviso that it complies with certain aspects of the agreement." ----- Posted by [115]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:56AM from the unique-is-an-understatement dept. [116]Input Devices [117]phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has reviewed the [118]AlphaGrip AG-5 handheld keyboard and mouse. From the article: 'After lots of research and five revisions, the perfectionists at AlphaGrip finally decided that they had a product worthy of marketing, and they released the long awaited AG-5. Although the AG-5 looks strange and intimidating, it is a unique and highly innovative product that deserves consideration, particularly by mobile computing enthusiasts. The AG-5 interfaces with computers via a single removable USB cable. It uses a simple chord-like keyboarding model and an integrated trackball to provide complete keyboard and mouse functionality in a unique form factor that looks a bit like a console gaming controller.'" ----- Posted by [125]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:26AM from the all-their-base-etc-etc dept. [126]Businesses kaufmanmoore writes "According to an MSNBC report, the head of Google's European arm has said that [127]Google wants to use Google Base for brick and mortar stores to submit lists of goods and prices in order to create an online presence." From the article: "Google would index and package the information into a consumer-friendly search engine, giving its users a virtual supermarket across a number of retail brands. Mr Arora said: 'Google Base is going to have a huge impact on retailers," adding that the move reflected internal research, which found many leading European retailers did not feel they were competitive enough online.' ----- Posted by [132]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:05AM from the thousands-of-hopeful-moneymakers-shut-down dept. [133]The Internet [134]matr0x_x writes "The U.S. has just moved one step closer to banning all Internet gambling sites when the US House of Representatives [135]cleared an anti-Internet gambling bill yesterday. The bill is against a World Trade Organization ruling last August that stated the US must not block online gambling sites based overseas." From the article: " The bill, cleared by voice vote in the House Financial Services Committee, would prohibit a gambling business from accepting credit cards, checks, wire transfers and electronic funds transfers in illegal gambling transactions. Unlawful gambling, under the legislation, would include placing bets on online poker sites, for example, and any other online wager made or received in a place where such a bet is illegal under federal or state law." ----- Posted by [143]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @10:28AM from the at-leat-they're-trying dept. [144]Portables QuietLagoon writes 'Reuters is reporting that Bill [145]Gates is making fun of the one laptop per child initiative to revolutionize how the world's children are educated. 'The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk ... and with a tiny little screen,' Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington. 'Hardware is a small part of the cost' of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support. 'If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type,' Gates said.' ----- Posted by [151]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @09:31AM from the hooray-for-shortiez dept. [152]GNOME [153]joe_bruin writes "Beware the Ides of March... the Gnome people have [154]announced the release of Gnome 2.14, right on time to meet their 6 month release schedule. See [155]what's new in this release, as well as the [156]release notes. New features include many more searching options, fast user switching, and speed increases to all the apps you know and love." From the release notes: "Just as you would tune your car, our skilled engineers have strived to tune many parts of GNOME to be as fast as possible. Several important components of the GNOME desktop are now measurably faster, including text rendering, memory allocation, and numerous individual applications. Faster font rendering and memory allocation benefit all GNOME and GTK+ based applications without the need for recompilation. Some applications have received special attention to make sure they are performing at their peak." ----- Posted by [162]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @08:57AM from the what-do-you-want-to-do-tonight-pinky dept. [163]OS X niemassacre writes "According to [164]winxponmac.com, the contest has been won - nearly $14k to narf2006 for submitting a working solution to dual-booting Windows XP and Mac OS X on an Intel-Powered mac. A thread on osx86project.org has [165]confirmations from several testers that the procedure works on the 17" iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. Many sets of pictures and videos (such as this installation video) are floating around (and mentioned in the thread). The solution itself should be posted soon." Poit! Congratulations to narf. ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @08:05AM from the it's-all-flowers-and-sausages dept. [173]The Internet [174]andyring writes "According to CNS News Service, the Democrat Party will have an agenda that [175]guarantees every American will have affordable access to broadband within five years as part of their 2006 election year agenda, according to Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader. Absent, of course, are any details as to how they will accomplish it when they are the party out of power in Congress." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @05:25AM from the good-job-team dept. [185]Security An anonymous reader writes "For the third straight year, the Department of Homeland Security -- which is charged with charting the federal government's cyber security agenda -- [186]earned a grade of "F" for computer security from a key congressional oversight committee, according to a story at Washingtonpost.com. Not only did the overall government-wide computer security grade remain flat (at a barely-passing "D+" but several agencies -- mostly those on the "front lines in the war on terror" -- actually managed to fare worse this year." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @12:20AM from the we're-taking-our-jets-and-going-home dept. [197]United States An anonymous reader writes ""The UK has warned America that [198]it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets" Lord Drayson, minister for defense procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 15, @11:03PM from the the-cyber-butterfly-effect dept. [203]Biotech [204]Security writes "The BBC writes "The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an [205]army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions. The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later. "." ----- Posted by [101]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @12:58PM from the but-i-like-big-things dept. [102]Businesses CthuluOverlord writes "CNET News.com is reporting that Nicholas Donofrio, Big Blue's executive vice president of innovation and technology, made a declaration on Tuesday in an interview with ZDNet Asia. 'The fact is that innovation was a little different in the 20th century. It's not easy (now) to come up with greater and different things. If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. [103]There's no such thing as the next big thing.'" Donofrio goes on to explain that he sees innovation as being services or social changes nowadays, rather than simply a better moustrap. What's the verdict? Is tech innovation dead? ----- Posted by [107]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @12:31PM from the meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss dept. [108]The Almighty Buck [109]hpcanswers writes "ICANN, the governing body for Internet domain names, recently gave VeriSign exclusive control of the top-level .com domain until 2012. Now, nineteen registrars, including GoDaddy and Network Solutions, have [110]petitioned ICANN to reconsider on the basis that VeriSign will most likely increase registration fees. A few of the registrars have also asked the US Department of Commerce to veto the deal." From the article: "The new deal permits VeriSign to increase the price of domain name registrations by 7 per cent in four of the next six years. In the two remaining years, VeriSign will only be able to raise prices if it can show the rises are necessary for security reasons. It also gives VeriSign a presumptive right to renewal of the .com registry, on the proviso that it complies with certain aspects of the agreement." ----- Posted by [115]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:56AM from the unique-is-an-understatement dept. [116]Input Devices [117]phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has reviewed the [118]AlphaGrip AG-5 handheld keyboard and mouse. From the article: 'After lots of research and five revisions, the perfectionists at AlphaGrip finally decided that they had a product worthy of marketing, and they released the long awaited AG-5. Although the AG-5 looks strange and intimidating, it is a unique and highly innovative product that deserves consideration, particularly by mobile computing enthusiasts. The AG-5 interfaces with computers via a single removable USB cable. It uses a simple chord-like keyboarding model and an integrated trackball to provide complete keyboard and mouse functionality in a unique form factor that looks a bit like a console gaming controller.'" ----- Posted by [125]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:26AM from the all-their-base-etc-etc dept. [126]Businesses kaufmanmoore writes "According to an MSNBC report, the head of Google's European arm has said that [127]Google wants to use Google Base for brick and mortar stores to submit lists of goods and prices in order to create an online presence." From the article: "Google would index and package the information into a consumer-friendly search engine, giving its users a virtual supermarket across a number of retail brands. Mr Arora said: 'Google Base is going to have a huge impact on retailers," adding that the move reflected internal research, which found many leading European retailers did not feel they were competitive enough online.' ----- Posted by [132]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:05AM from the thousands-of-hopeful-moneymakers-shut-down dept. [133]The Internet [134]matr0x_x writes "The U.S. has just moved one step closer to banning all Internet gambling sites when the US House of Representatives [135]cleared an anti-Internet gambling bill yesterday. The bill is against a World Trade Organization ruling last August that stated the US must not block online gambling sites based overseas." From the article: " The bill, cleared by voice vote in the House Financial Services Committee, would prohibit a gambling business from accepting credit cards, checks, wire transfers and electronic funds transfers in illegal gambling transactions. Unlawful gambling, under the legislation, would include placing bets on online poker sites, for example, and any other online wager made or received in a place where such a bet is illegal under federal or state law." ----- Posted by [143]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @10:28AM from the at-leat-they're-trying dept. [144]Portables QuietLagoon writes 'Reuters is reporting that Bill [145]Gates is making fun of the one laptop per child initiative to revolutionize how the world's children are educated. 'The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk ... and with a tiny little screen,' Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington. 'Hardware is a small part of the cost' of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support. 'If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type,' Gates said.' ----- Posted by [151]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @09:31AM from the hooray-for-shortiez dept. [152]GNOME [153]joe_bruin writes "Beware the Ides of March... the Gnome people have [154]announced the release of Gnome 2.14, right on time to meet their 6 month release schedule. See [155]what's new in this release, as well as the [156]release notes. New features include many more searching options, fast user switching, and speed increases to all the apps you know and love." From the release notes: "Just as you would tune your car, our skilled engineers have strived to tune many parts of GNOME to be as fast as possible. Several important components of the GNOME desktop are now measurably faster, including text rendering, memory allocation, and numerous individual applications. Faster font rendering and memory allocation benefit all GNOME and GTK+ based applications without the need for recompilation. Some applications have received special attention to make sure they are performing at their peak." ----- Posted by [162]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @08:57AM from the what-do-you-want-to-do-tonight-pinky dept. [163]OS X niemassacre writes "According to [164]winxponmac.com, the contest has been won - nearly $14k to narf2006 for submitting a working solution to dual-booting Windows XP and Mac OS X on an Intel-Powered mac. A thread on osx86project.org has [165]confirmations from several testers that the procedure works on the 17" iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. Many sets of pictures and videos (such as this installation video) are floating around (and mentioned in the thread). The solution itself should be posted soon." Poit! Congratulations to narf. ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @08:05AM from the it's-all-flowers-and-sausages dept. [173]The Internet [174]andyring writes "According to CNS News Service, the Democrat Party will have an agenda that [175]guarantees every American will have affordable access to broadband within five years as part of their 2006 election year agenda, according to Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader. Absent, of course, are any details as to how they will accomplish it when they are the party out of power in Congress." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @05:25AM from the good-job-team dept. [185]Security An anonymous reader writes "For the third straight year, the Department of Homeland Security -- which is charged with charting the federal government's cyber security agenda -- [186]earned a grade of "F" for computer security from a key congressional oversight committee, according to a story at Washingtonpost.com. Not only did the overall government-wide computer security grade remain flat (at a barely-passing "D+" but several agencies -- mostly those on the "front lines in the war on terror" -- actually managed to fare worse this year." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @12:20AM from the we're-taking-our-jets-and-going-home dept. [197]United States An anonymous reader writes ""The UK has warned America that [198]it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets" Lord Drayson, minister for defense procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 15, @11:03PM from the the-cyber-butterfly-effect dept. [203]Biotech [204]Security writes "The BBC writes "The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an [205]army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions. The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later. "." ----- Posted by [101]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @12:58PM from the but-i-like-big-things dept. [102]Businesses CthuluOverlord writes "CNET News.com is reporting that Nicholas Donofrio, Big Blue's executive vice president of innovation and technology, made a declaration on Tuesday in an interview with ZDNet Asia. 'The fact is that innovation was a little different in the 20th century. It's not easy (now) to come up with greater and different things. If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. [103]There's no such thing as the next big thing.'" Donofrio goes on to explain that he sees innovation as being services or social changes nowadays, rather than simply a better moustrap. What's the verdict? Is tech innovation dead? ----- Posted by [107]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @12:31PM from the meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss dept. [108]The Almighty Buck [109]hpcanswers writes "ICANN, the governing body for Internet domain names, recently gave VeriSign exclusive control of the top-level .com domain until 2012. Now, nineteen registrars, including GoDaddy and Network Solutions, have [110]petitioned ICANN to reconsider on the basis that VeriSign will most likely increase registration fees. A few of the registrars have also asked the US Department of Commerce to veto the deal." From the article: "The new deal permits VeriSign to increase the price of domain name registrations by 7 per cent in four of the next six years. In the two remaining years, VeriSign will only be able to raise prices if it can show the rises are necessary for security reasons. It also gives VeriSign a presumptive right to renewal of the .com registry, on the proviso that it complies with certain aspects of the agreement." ----- Posted by [115]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:56AM from the unique-is-an-understatement dept. [116]Input Devices [117]phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has reviewed the [118]AlphaGrip AG-5 handheld keyboard and mouse. From the article: 'After lots of research and five revisions, the perfectionists at AlphaGrip finally decided that they had a product worthy of marketing, and they released the long awaited AG-5. Although the AG-5 looks strange and intimidating, it is a unique and highly innovative product that deserves consideration, particularly by mobile computing enthusiasts. The AG-5 interfaces with computers via a single removable USB cable. It uses a simple chord-like keyboarding model and an integrated trackball to provide complete keyboard and mouse functionality in a unique form factor that looks a bit like a console gaming controller.'" ----- Posted by [125]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:26AM from the all-their-base-etc-etc dept. [126]Businesses kaufmanmoore writes "According to an MSNBC report, the head of Google's European arm has said that [127]Google wants to use Google Base for brick and mortar stores to submit lists of goods and prices in order to create an online presence." From the article: "Google would index and package the information into a consumer-friendly search engine, giving its users a virtual supermarket across a number of retail brands. Mr Arora said: 'Google Base is going to have a huge impact on retailers," adding that the move reflected internal research, which found many leading European retailers did not feel they were competitive enough online.' ----- Posted by [132]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @11:05AM from the thousands-of-hopeful-moneymakers-shut-down dept. [133]The Internet [134]matr0x_x writes "The U.S. has just moved one step closer to banning all Internet gambling sites when the US House of Representatives [135]cleared an anti-Internet gambling bill yesterday. The bill is against a World Trade Organization ruling last August that stated the US must not block online gambling sites based overseas." From the article: " The bill, cleared by voice vote in the House Financial Services Committee, would prohibit a gambling business from accepting credit cards, checks, wire transfers and electronic funds transfers in illegal gambling transactions. Unlawful gambling, under the legislation, would include placing bets on online poker sites, for example, and any other online wager made or received in a place where such a bet is illegal under federal or state law." ----- Posted by [143]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @10:28AM from the at-leat-they're-trying dept. [144]Portables QuietLagoon writes 'Reuters is reporting that Bill [145]Gates is making fun of the one laptop per child initiative to revolutionize how the world's children are educated. 'The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk ... and with a tiny little screen,' Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington. 'Hardware is a small part of the cost' of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support. 'If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type,' Gates said.' ----- Posted by [151]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @09:31AM from the hooray-for-shortiez dept. [152]GNOME [153]joe_bruin writes "Beware the Ides of March... the Gnome people have [154]announced the release of Gnome 2.14, right on time to meet their 6 month release schedule. See [155]what's new in this release, as well as the [156]release notes. New features include many more searching options, fast user switching, and speed increases to all the apps you know and love." From the release notes: "Just as you would tune your car, our skilled engineers have strived to tune many parts of GNOME to be as fast as possible. Several important components of the GNOME desktop are now measurably faster, including text rendering, memory allocation, and numerous individual applications. Faster font rendering and memory allocation benefit all GNOME and GTK+ based applications without the need for recompilation. Some applications have received special attention to make sure they are performing at their peak." ----- Posted by [162]Zonk on Thursday March 16, @08:57AM from the what-do-you-want-to-do-tonight-pinky dept. [163]OS X niemassacre writes "According to [164]winxponmac.com, the contest has been won - nearly $14k to narf2006 for submitting a working solution to dual-booting Windows XP and Mac OS X on an Intel-Powered mac. A thread on osx86project.org has [165]confirmations from several testers that the procedure works on the 17" iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. Many sets of pictures and videos (such as this installation video) are floating around (and mentioned in the thread). The solution itself should be posted soon." Poit! Congratulations to narf. ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @08:05AM from the it's-all-flowers-and-sausages dept. [173]The Internet [174]andyring writes "According to CNS News Service, the Democrat Party will have an agenda that [175]guarantees every American will have affordable access to broadband within five years as part of their 2006 election year agenda, according to Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader. Absent, of course, are any details as to how they will accomplish it when they are the party out of power in Congress." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @05:25AM from the good-job-team dept. [185]Security An anonymous reader writes "For the third straight year, the Department of Homeland Security -- which is charged with charting the federal government's cyber security agenda -- [186]earned a grade of "F" for computer security from a key congressional oversight committee, according to a story at Washingtonpost.com. Not only did the overall government-wide computer security grade remain flat (at a barely-passing "D+" but several agencies -- mostly those on the "front lines in the war on terror" -- actually managed to fare worse this year." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 16, @12:20AM from the we're-taking-our-jets-and-going-home dept. [197]United States An anonymous reader writes ""The UK has warned America that [198]it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets" Lord Drayson, minister for defense procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning." ----- Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 15, @11:03PM from the the-cyber-butterfly-effect dept. [203]Biotech [204]Security writes "The BBC writes "The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an [205]army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions. The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later. "."