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Programming

Submission + - Facebook releases open source Web server (cio.com.au)

Submitted by Dan Jones
Dan Jones writes: Ah the irony. The week Facebook is being asked to cough up source code to satisfy an alleged patent infringement, the company releases an open source Web server. The Web server framework that Facebook will offer as open source is called Tornado, was written in the Python language and is designed for quickly processing thousands of simultaneous connections. Tornado is a core piece of infrastructure that powers FriendFeed's real-time functionality, which Facebook maintains. While Tornado is similar to existing Web-frameworks in Python, it focuses on speed and handling large amounts of simultaneous traffic.
Transportation

Submission + - First Algae Car Attempts to Cross US on 25 Gallons (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by
Mike
Mike writes: "San Francisco recently saw the unveiling of the world's first algae fuel-powered vehicle, dubbed the Algaeus. The plug-in hybrid car, which is a Prius tricked out with a nickel metal hydride battery and a plug, runs on green crude from Sapphire Energy — no modifications to the gasoline engine necessary. The set-up is so effective, according to FUEL producer Rebecca Harrell, that the Algaeus can cross the US on approximately 25 gallons — a figure which is currently being tested on a coast-to-coast road trip."
Privacy

Submission + - Would you trust an insurance company's "drive- (teensafedriver.com)

Submitted by ramen99
ramen99 writes: Our new car insurance company offered us discounts for our teenage driver if we agree to install a "drive-cam" that records driving habits and wirelessly transmits video footage to a "neutral driving coach" for evaluation and comment. While this might be great to monitor a new teen driver, it will also monitor other adult drivers. The insurance company claims that they would NEVER use any information obtained to consider changes in insurance rates, but that really sounds unbelievable. Would you give up your privacy to save some dough? Installation is free, and the camera mounts just under the rear-view mirror, but something seems fishy about this...
Programming

Submission + - Alan Turing gets an apology from Prime Minister

Submitted by
99luftballon
99luftballon writes: "The British government has officially apologised for the treatment of Alan Turing in the post war era. An online petition got more than enough signatures to force an official statement and Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued a lengthy apology. "Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him." "So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better.""
Government

Submission + - British Gov't Apologises For Treatment of Turing (number10.gov.uk)

Submitted by BertieBaggio
BertieBaggio writes: The British Government has apologised for the treatment of Alan Turing, convicted of 'gross indecency' and sentenced to chemical castration under anti-homosexuality laws in 1952. In a statement responding to a petition (discussed previously) on the Prime Minister's website, Gordon Brown has recognised that the action taken against Turing was "inhumane" and "appalling", and that he [Turing] should be remembered for his contributions to the Allied war effort and to humanity:

It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. [...] But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind's darkest hour. [...] It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present.
Portables

Submission + - Which filesystem do you use on portable media? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Most people use MS filesystems on Disk-On-Keys, and portable hard drives, as these are readable from most machines. But this way you loose the files' permission information, which many times is very inconvenient(you must agree that having Ubuntu asking you whether to execute or display every text file or image you open from a DOK is annoying). Using "regular" Linux filesystems like ext keeps the permissions, but may require using the superuser when switching machines (as the UIDs are different). So does any of you slashdotters have a creative solution for this problem?
AMD

Submission + - AMD's DX11 Radeons can drive six 30" displays (techreport.com)

Submitted by J. Dzhugashvili
J. Dzhugashvili writes: Eat your heart out, Matrox. Whereas most current graphics cards can only drive a pair of displays, AMD has put some special sauce in its next-generation DirectX 11 GPUs to enable support for a whopping six monitors. There's no catch about supported resolutions, either. At an event yesterday, AMD demonstrated a single next-gen Radeon driving six 30" Dell monitors, each with a resolution of 2560x1600, hooked up via DisplayPort. Total resolution: 7680x3200 (or 24.6 megapixels). AMD's drivers present this setup as a single monitor to Windows, so in theory, games don't need to be updated to support it. AMD showed off Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, World of Warcraft, and DiRT 2 running at playable frame rates on the six displays.
Social Networks

Submission + - Pedophile Social Networking Site Goes Online

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Billing itself as the "first-ever child-love social network" ToyBOX purports to allow pedophiles to seek each other out to share "that wonderful affection for the littler ones" by way of blogs, forums and chat groups. With all the recent discussion over the Illinois prohibition of Sex Offenders from participating in social networking sites, is this the beginnings of a constitutional challenge in the making? Or is it a sign of something more sinister?

How will it be possible to know whether these pedophiles are simply talking about the latest child actor or plotting to commit the next Jaycee Lee Dugard attack? Are there some groups who simply should not be allowed access to social networking? Not even the pedophiles themselves think the site will last--a sign of danger on the horizon?
Microsoft

Microsoft Launches Its Own Open Source Foundation 344

Posted by timothy from the said-the-spider-to-the-fly dept.
darthcamaro writes "Microsoft already had its own open source (OSI-approved) licenses, its own open source project hosting site and now it's adding its own non-profit open source foundation. That's right, the company that is still banging the patent drum against open source now has its own 501(c)(6) open source foundation. Officially called the CodePlex Foundation, it's a separate effort from the CodePlex site and is aimed at helping to get more commercial developers involved in open source. Considering how they continue to attack Linux and open source, will anyone take them seriously?"
Image

Pigeon Turns Out To Be Faster Than S. African Net Screenshot-sm 406

Posted by samzenpus from the fast-and-pigeon-fast dept.
inject_hotmail.com writes "The results are in: it's faster to send your data via an airborne carrier than it is through the pipes. As discussed Tuesday, a company in South Africa called Unlimited IT, frustrated by terribly slow Internet speeds, decided to prove their point by sending an actual homing pigeon with a "data card" strapped to its leg from one of their offices to another while at the same time uploading the same amount of data to the same destination via their ISPs data lines. The media outlet reporting this triumph said that it took the pigeon just over 1 hour to make the 80km/50mile flight, whereas it took over 2 hours to transfer just 4% of that data."

Comment Re:Looks Like a Duck (Score 1) 410

by ericn32 (#28120023) Attached to: Zune HD Unveiled, Set For Fall Release

While Microsoft has never made anything "cool" on their first try, they have made some really nice stuff, especially for developers. While people say that Vista and Win7 are copied from OSX, it's kinda true- but there are things like jump lists and other new Win7 Aero things (which have a practical purpose) that no one's implemented before.

And at least they don't shove people into a DRM-locked walled garden of media and limited phones.

Microsoft products are infinitely more open and flexible than Apple's eye-candy-yet-in-all-honesty-not-very-useful devices. Sure Apple stuff looks nice and feels intuitive, but I love my Windows phone's functionality, even if the UI looks like puke.

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