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OS X

Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update Brings Welcome Fixes 433

Posted by kdawson from the service-pack-1 dept.
jetpack writes to make sure we're aware that Apple's OS X 10.5.2 update is available and that it contains plenty of improvements and fixes that users have been asking for. Macworld enumerates some of the big ones, saying that the update "shows Apple listens to users" (sometimes). A couple of the new features simply restore Tiger (10.4) capabilities that Leopard (10.5) had inexplicably withdrawn. You can now shut off the much-maligned transparency of the menu bar, and organize your Dock stacks hierarchically and display them as folders. And Apple has provided welcome access to common Time Machine functions in the menu bar.
Media

Submission + - Somebody's repackaging Slashdot with their own ads (freehostia.com)

Submitted by
joel.neely
joel.neely writes: "This isn't really a story submission, but it's the quickest way I could find to get the information to you. This morning I googled a term which I'd also seen a few minutes ago on one of your morning news items. One of the hits was to http://easycomputer.freehostia.com/ where the headlines and content looked amazingly familiar! ;-)"
Windows

Submission + - Vista crippled by content protection

Submitted by Serpentegena
Serpentegena writes: PC users around the globe may find driver software is stopped from working by Vista if it detects unauthorized content access. Peter Guttman, a security engineering researcher at New Zealand's university of Auckland, has written A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection. He reckons Vista is trying to achieve the impossible by protecting access to premium content. Users will find their PCs' compromised by the persistent and continuous content access checks carried out by Vista.

http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?ne wsID=7675

Way back when, MS developers claimed Vista was going to be the Windows version known for its above-average security features. However, they forgot to specify for whom those features will be put to work.
Space

Submission + - Giant Ice Shelf Snaps

Submitted by
Popo
Popo writes: "Sattelite images have revealed that an ancient 66 square-kilometer ice shelf, the size of 11,000 football fields, has snapped off from an island in Canada's arctic. The Ayles Ice Shelf was one of 6 major shelves remaining in Canada's arctic and is estimated to be over 3000 years old. The collapse was so powerful that earthquake monitors 250 km away picked up tremors. Scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in 30 years and point their fingers at climate change as a major contributing factor."
Quake

Submission + - Snakes are magic, can predict earthquakes

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Independent (UK) is again reminding us how truly awesome snakes are. This time around, the news is on their ability to detect & even predict earthquakes at least 5 days prior to the event. From the article:
"Of all the creatures on the Earth, snakes are perhaps the most sensitive to earthquakes," Jiang Weisong, director of the earthquake bureau in Nanning, in southern Guangxi province, told The China Daily. Serpents can sense a coming earthquake from 120km (75 miles) away, up to five days before it happens. They respond by behaving extremely erratically. "When an earthquake is about to occur, snakes will move out of their nests, even in the cold of winter. If the earthquake is a big one, the snakes will even smash into walls while trying to escape," he said.
The Internet

Submission + - AT&T Yields To Neutrality, Sets Major Preceden

Submitted by
Mediacitizen
Mediacitizen writes: "AT&T's concession to adhere to a neutral network as part of its BellSouth merger sets a major precedence that exposes as myth previous company talking points that Net Neutrality is 1. undefinable, 2. untenable and 3. bad for business. AT&T's agreement last night to honor neutrality proves that it's not. It also shifts the debate on Capitol Hill from whether Net Neutrality should become the law to how and when Congress will act."
Software

Submission + - Join the Screening of Open Sourced Java

Submitted by
madmak
madmak writes: "On the eve of the New Year everybody wants to share and to participate. So do we. After the Sun TM made its official open source licensing announcement, SourceKibitzer — the portal where you can find metrics of Open Source projects written in Java — has dared to kibitz the Sun's implementation of Java. We started with Java Compiler from OpenJDK community. See the results here .

What next? We invite everybody to discuss the most effective ways of using metrics for development and growth of the Open Sourced Java. Every industrial analyst, blogger, journalist, and researcher is welcome to analyse and use "kibitzed" numbers and facts. We are also ready to provide interested persons with more in-depth information. The best extracts will be published on the SourceKibitzer portal.

Created four months ago, SourceKibitzer collects and measures programming metrics from open source Java projects all over the web in order to get an idea about code quality and inside information of the projects. The essential difference of the SourceKibitzer is speed: professional authors promise to give you assessment and feedback after one day of the request. After that your project will be regularly monitored and analyzed without additional inquiries."
Announcements

Submission + - Apple Clears Jobs, Finds Phony Records

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes: Apple has filed reports with the SEC which found, as some reports said earlier, evidence that phony documents were created to cover for stock options backdating at the company. But Apple's board — and Al Gore and Jerry York specifically — say Steve Jobs did nothing wrong and they are still backing him as the company's leader.
Programming

Submission + - What are your free software classics?

Submitted by
Statecraftsman
Statecraftsman writes: "In literature, the classics are well-known and widely studied. As a perpetually aspiring programmer, I wonder from which free software projects programmers have learned the most. What project's code do you most admire? If you were starting fresh today, what project would you use as a model of great design and implementation?"
Businesses

Submission + - Verizon to Allow Ads on Its Mobile Phones

Submitted by
srizah
srizah writes: "http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/business/media/2 6adco.html?_r=2&ref=technology&oref=slogin&oref=sl ogin Verizon plans to monetize its content. Will bring in some moolah to the opco. Sprint does it already. If used for targeted campaigns like major launches and big promotions, this would be a nice feature. Will Verizon give users an option to opt out of ads? This has to be seen when the ads do get on to the content."
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun Remakes Its Sale Force

Submitted by
Carl Bialik from WSJ
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes: "Sun Microsystems is retraining its 17,000 sales and services people to focus more on customers' needs over the long term, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Brian Orvis, a Sun sales executive since late 2000, says he and other salespeople used to make repeated calls to customers haphazardly. He would regurgitate geeky data about whichever Sun computer he was trying to sell, without focusing on what technology might help customers build their businesses. "The type of server [the customer] needed was determined before we got to the customer," he says. ... Sun now assigns one main salesperson to lead a company's account so customers no longer have to deal with several Sun salespeople at the same time. The company also has cut its number of standardized sales pitches delivered to customers to five from 31 and revamped sales commissions to emphasize a broader portfolio of products.'"
OS X

Submission + - Month of Apple bugs coming

Submitted by El Lobo
El Lobo writes: Two security researchers have made an early New Year's resolution, promising to release information on a security bug in Apple's software every day for a month, most likely January. The security researchers — Kevin Finisterre of Digital Munition and the person behind the Month of Kernel Bugs, known only by his initials, L.M.H. — have discovered enough flaws in Apple's Mac OS X and other Apple software to release 31 vulnerabilities, Finisterre said in an interview with SecurityFocus.

"OS X users still think their system is bulletproof, and some people are interested on making it look that way," LMH of the MoKB project told the Washington Post.

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/387

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