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Music

Submission + - Amazon DRM-Less Music Store goes Beta 2

Submitted by LowSNR
LowSNR writes: Amazon this morning moved their DRM-Free music store into open beta. According to the release, "Since all our digital music downloads are DRM-free, you can play them on anything that plays mp3s including PCs, Macs(TM), iPods(TM), Zunes(TM), Zens(TM), iPhones(TM), RAZRs(TM), and BlackBerrys. Plus, our Amazon MP3 Downloader application makes it easy to add your downloads to iTunes(TM) and Windows Media Player(TM), so you can sync up your devices or burn your music to CD hassle-free." Not to mention Linux.
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - First U.S. GPL lawsuit filed (linux-watch.com)

Submitted by angryfirelord
angryfirelord writes: For the first time in the U.S., a company and software vendor, Monsoon Multimedia, is being taken to court for a GPL violation. Previously, alleged GPL violations have all been settled by letters from the FSF (Free Software Foundation) or other open-source organizations, pointing out the violation.

The SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) announced on Sept. 20 that it had just filed the first ever U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit based on a violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) on behalf of its clients. The group's clients are the two principal developers of BusyBox. BusyBox is a small-footprint application that implements a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities. It is commonly used in embedded systems, and is open-source software licensed under the GPL version 2.
GNOME

Submission + - GNOME 2.20 officially released (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Gimli
Gimli writes: GNOME 2.20 has been officially released. There are a number of enhancements and improvements to things such as power management, Evince (the GNOME document view), Totem (the video player), and note-taking application Tomboy. There are also some changes to GNOME's configuration utilities with an eye towards streamlining them. The timing is impeccable, too: 'This release coincides with the tenth anniversary of GNOME's existence. The project has evolved considerably since its earliest incarnation and has become a global phenomenon. Used as the default environment in popular Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, GNOME is widely used by Linux desktop users and is supported by a growing community of companies and independent developers. GNOME 2.20 will be included in the next major releases of many mainstream Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 7.10, which is scheduled for release next month. Users who wish to try it now can use the latest Ubuntu 7.10 live CD images, or the latest build of Foresight Linux. You can also check out the release notes.
Biotech

Submission + - An Aerosol Spray to Identify Bombing Suspects (wired.com) 1

Submitted by RedHanded
RedHanded writes: Forensic chemists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a color-changing spray that can identify people suspected of making or planting bombs. The chemical turns from yellow to bright red when it comes into contact with urea nitrate, an explosive residue that may be left behind on the hands of someone who has handled an improvised device.
Security

Submission + - Purdue to test huge crisis text messaging system (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Purdue University will next Monday conduct what it calls the first large-scale, real-world test of using text messaging to issue emergency alerts. The test, which will begin on Monday, Sept. 24, will involve more than 7,200 volunteers who will accept the test messages and respond so that researchers can track the actual time it takes to deliver messages to a mass audience. The idea of using text messaging to bolster emergency services is not a new one. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is wrapping up work on key components of its next-generation emergency communications system by year-end. The new system will support voice calls, text messages and images sent over the Internet. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19680"
Data Storage

Submission + - Facebook quietly offers storage to developers (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "Facebook has quietly started offering beta testers access to the latest version of a new storage service, according to Computerworld's Brian Fonseca. The wiki does warn users that the page is still in development and that users should make sure that data used in testing the service is properly backed up. Nick O'Neill, creator of the blogsite AllFacebook.com, said it would be "revolutionary" if the service is free."
Space

Submission + - GPS Transitions to new Control System

Submitted by gsfprez
gsfprez writes: It took us a long time, but the Air Force has finally moved off of the 1970's mainframe GPS control system and is now running on a new Unix-based Control System called AEP — Architecture Evolution Plan (its not a very good name is it? /Zoot). Its important to remember that current GPS satellites are pretty Miss South Carolina as far as satellites go. They're bascially solar powered iPod shuffles with atomic clocks that simply playback whatever we upload into them at a precise rate. They don't actually have any idea where they are — its the control system here at Schriever that does. So, the benefits of a modern, easy-to-maintain control system are legion — especially to US taxpayers. First of all, we hire 20 & 30-somethings like me instead of having to hire TRON-somethings at 4 times the price to operate and mantain the systems because we've actually heard of Solaris (wtf is jovial?) and the storage devices we now use aren't just 60's b-movie sci-fi props. (Yes, the old system actually uses 9-tracks.) Also, the new system will be a lot cheaper to support and modify since Sun stocks things like SATA drives while diging up Saturday Night Fever-era DASDs isn't as simple as a trip to newegg.com. AEP will also allow us to be ahead of the curve: we're basically good to go to fly the new IIF birds. There's other goodness as well, like redundancy, yada, yada, but I like my job, and don't want to get fired because i said something i'm not supposed to.
Handhelds

Submission + - Study: Frequent cell phone use slows brain

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: Frequent mobile phone users have demonstrated slowed brain function in a recent European-Australian study. The brain activity from frequent mobile phone users shows more slow activity (increased Delta and Theta) and a slowing of the Alpha Peak Frequency, interpreted as a general slowing of brain activity.
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Apple Blesses 3rd-Party iPhone Software - Sort Of (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
StarKruzr
StarKruzr writes: "Ars Technica is reporting that Apple's Greg Joswiak has said the company is officially taking a "neutral stance" on third-party binary applications for their mobile phone product. This means that while the iPhone community developers will get no help from Cupertino with respect to 3rd-party apps, Apple doesn't intend to do anything to prevent them from going nuts with whatever they want to write. Future Software Updates may break the hacks in one way or another, but it will be incidental rather than intentional. This is pretty great news for geeks who want a UNIX cell phone with a great interface. The iPhone software development community's progress has been accelerating rapidly, and this announcement can only mean that it will speed up even faster now that there is a measure of assurance from Apple that the phone will be "allowed" to be a platform rather than just a pretty device."
Security

Submission + - BIND 8 EOL due to a security flaw discovered

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: PC-World reports that BIND 8, once the #1 DNS server on the Internet, and now still a popular DNS software, was demoted to "end-of-life" status following a discovery of a serious security flaw. The flaw, predictability of the DNS transaction IDs produced by BIND 8, was discovered by Trusteer's CTO, Amit Klein, and reported to BugTraq on the same time with ISC's EOL announcement
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - HSBC U-Turn following facebook protest (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by ddrichardson
ddrichardson writes: A facebook protest concerning HSBC's plan to charge graduate students interest on overdrafts has resulted in a u-turn by the bank, from the article:

A student campaign using the social networking website Facebook has forced an international bank into a U-turn over charges. HSBC is to abandon plans to scrap interest-free overdrafts for students leaving university this summer.

The HSBC bank said it was not too big to listen to its customers.
Spam

Submission + - Storm Hits Blogger Network

Submitted by ancientribe
ancientribe writes: Researchers have discovered the Storm Trojan nestled in hundreds of blog sites in Google's Blogger network, according to an article in Dark Reading. And this isn't simple comment spam, but actual blogs that post spam, and now, Storm executable files. A researcher who's been tracking the Storm-infested blog sites says he's working with Google to clean up this latest appearance of Storm.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=132 793&WT.svl=news1_1
Supercomputing

Submission + - Student and professor build budget supercomputer (calvin.edu)

Submitted by Luke
Luke writes: This past winter Calvin College professor Joel Adams and then Calvin senior Tim Brom built Microwulf, a portable supercomputer with 26.25 gigaflops peak performance, cost less than $2,500 to construct, becoming the most cost-efficient supercomputer anywhere that Adams knows of. "It's small enough to check on an airplane or fit next to a desk," said Brom. Instead of a bunch of researchers having to share a single Beowulf cluster supercomputer, now each researcher can have their own. What would you do with a personal supercomputer?
Networking

Submission + - Internet growing too large for current hardware?

Submitted by
rkohutek
rkohutek writes: "There has been a very interesting discussion happening on the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) mailling list about the scalability of today's Internet routers. A vast quantity of those routers support only 256,000 unique networks. According to the CIDR-Report, there are ~233,216 routes on the Internet, and at the current rate of 3,500 additional routes per month, we are going to be bumping into those hardware limits very quickly. Not many people are aware of the situation, and even fewer are prepared to perform the expensive upgrades. Has anybody already dealt with this and have solutions?"

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