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Patents

Patent Issued For Podcasting 150

Posted by kdawson from the next-a-patent-on-the-eardrum dept.
pickens writes "The EFF is reaching out for help after a company called Volomedia got the Patent Office to grant them exclusive rights to 'a method for providing episodic media' that could threaten the community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners. 'It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years,' writes Rebecca Jeschke. 'Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners.' To bust this patent, EFF is looking for additional 'prior art' — evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use (PDF) before November 19, 2003. 'In particular, we're looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes.'"
Space

Spider Missing After Trip To Space Station 507

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lost-in-space dept.
Garabito writes "A spider that had been sent to the International Space Station for a school science program was lost. Two arachnids were sent in order to know if spiders can survive and make webs in space, but now only one spider can be seen in the container. NASA isn't sure where the other spider could have gone. I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords."
Windows

Submission + - Creating history for Patch and Server changes

Submitted by
dos2
dos2 writes: "I am trying to find the best approach to keep a history of changes made to servers. This would include any patches installed. Also any services that may have been added or moved (as in our case between the old and new domain). I'd like to have someone that others can reference if something stops working. What methods do other network admins use to keep track?"
Programming

Submission + - P = NP Finally Proved?

Submitted by Yosi
Yosi writes: Ashay Dharwadker claims to have proved that P = NP. In a paper he publishes on his website he claims to have found a polynomial algorithm for finding maximal independent sets in a graph and provides actual source code implementation of the proposed algorithm. If this is indeed true, I guess a lot of professors will start looking for a new job.
Programming

Submission + - An Overview of Parallelism

Submitted by Mortimer.CA
Mortimer.CA writes: Hello,

Tim Bray points out a recently released report from Berkley entitled "The Landscape of Parallel Computing Research: A View from Berkeley".

Generally they conclude that the 'evolutionary approach to parallel hardware and software may work from 2 or 8 processor systems, but is likely to face diminishing returns as 16 and 32 processor systems are realized, just as returns fell with greater instruction-level parallelism.' This assumes things stay "evolutionary" and that programming stays more or less how it has done in previous years (though languages like Erlang can probably help to change this view).

Some of the 'conventional wisdowms', and their replacements, that they list are:
    • Old CW: Power is free, but transistors are expensive.
    • New CW is the "Power wall": Power is expensive, but transistors are "free". That is, we can put more transistors on a chip than we have the power to turn on.
    • Old CW: Monolithic uniprocessors in silicon are reliable internally, with errors occurring only at the pins.
    • New CW: As chips drop below 65 nm feature sizes, they will have high soft and hard error rates.
    • Old CW: Multiply is slow, but load and store is fast.
    • New CW is the "Memory wall" [Wulf and McKee 1995]: Load and store is slow, but multiply is fast. [...]
    • Old CW: Don't bother parallelizing your application, as you can just wait a little while and run it on a much faster sequential computer.
    • New CW: It will be a very long wait for a faster sequential computer (see above).
Space

Submission + - Pluto Probe Snaps Jupiter Pictures

Submitted by
sighted
sighted writes: "The New Horizons probe, on its way to Pluto and beyond, is now speeding toward Jupiter. Today the team released some of the early data and pictures, which are the first close-range shots of the giant planet since the robotic Cassini spacecraft passed that way in 2001."
Television

Submission + - Savage Myth Busted

Submitted by
8g
8g writes: "Mythbusting Adam Savage gave a candid interview about science, safety, and sci-fi. He didn't mince words about his passion and gift for problem-solving and the scientific method, the flattery of Slashdot lovin', and the pre-pubescent power of Legos."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Linux KVM Virtualization Performance

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine is one of the features that will be introduced with the Linux 2.6.20 kernel. KVM (unlike Xen in para-virtualization mode) supports full virtualization on supported Intel and AMD processors so it does not require any modifications to the guest operating system. KVM also supports running Microsoft Windows XP 32-bit "out of the box". Phoronix has taken a look at the Linux virtualization performance as they compare the Kernel-based Virtual Machine to Xen 3.0.3 and QEMU with its binary-only kqemu accelerator.
The Almighty Buck

Gates Foundation To Spend All Its Assets 319

Posted by kdawson from the limited-lifespan dept.
El Lobo writes "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has said it will spend all its assets within 50 years of both of them dying. The foundation focuses on improving health and economic development globally, and improving education and increasing access to technology. It also focuses on fighting diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. The Seattle-based foundation plans to increase spending to about $3.5 billion a year beginning in 2009 and continuing through the next decade, up from about $1.75 billion this year." The Wall Street Journal (excerpted at the link above) called the foundation's decision "a decisive move in a continuing debate in philanthropy about whether such groups should live on forever."
Businesses

Submission + - Where should new graduates look for work in 2007?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: So, I plan on graduating from my university this May with a degree in Computer Science. My job search is already well under way with a variety of resources, and I've done two internships with a big company that have given me a foot in the door, but I'm still wondering: What sort of companies would Slashdot recommend for new graduates to apply to? Are there any cool places that are often overlooked? And, on a related note, are there any companies one ought to avoid like the plague? Or any other advice for the new CS graduate today?

I know a lot of people will say this depends on other things and "what I want", so: my CS background is somewhat theoretical in nature, I have a slight preference for the east coast and the northeast, but I'm not glued to it or anything, and I have very little experience with Microsoft stuff like .NET (and would slightly prefer to keep it that way; Linux- and OSS-friendly places would be great.)
Censorship

Submission + - Gracenote Founder Rewriting History at Wikipedia

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Gracenote founder Steve Scherf is busy again in his attempts to rewrite history after his recent interview at Wired. This time he around he is aggressively deleting or seeking removal of any content on Wikipedia which discuss the controversy behind the commercialization of the formerly GPL'd cddb. Slashdotters may remember when joined the Bad Patent Club back in 2000. It followed up by starting lawsuits against its customers for trying to switch to freedb and for alleged patent violations. Are there any Slashdotters out there who know the facts about Gracenote — its history, its business practices, its lawsuits? Wikipedia needs your help.
Caldera

Submission + - Novell Files New Summary Judgement Motion

Submitted by rm69990
rm69990 writes: Yet another piece of SCO news this week. Novell has filed a new motion for Partial Summary Judgment, asking the court to declare that Novell is entitled to direct SCO to waive its claims against IBM, that Novell has the right to take these actions on SCO's behalf if SCO refuses to comply and that SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver. Since SCO's case against IBM is primarily a contract case, this issue affects the IBM case far more than the ongoing copyright issue between Novell and SCO. This bad week for SCO just got even worse.

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