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Education

Submission + - Open Source Music Instruction Pays Off

Submitted by
Patrick Costello
Patrick Costello writes: "The Back Porch News posted a short article the other day about my efforts to teach the five-string banjo and folk guitar in an open-source context.
http://www.backporchnews.net/archive/2007/03/new-v ideos-from-patrick-costello/

The bit about using Creative Commons working for us commercially is true. Making our books and video freely available online has has an amazing impact on hard-copy sales."
Media

Submission + - Real-time P2P monitoring

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apparently someone is running global BitTorrent P2P network monitoring. There is impressive view on http://www.p2p-monitor.com/?rt — currently representing downloads of Borat movie across all Internet. Each peer is geolocated, and information about download progress and client used is included.
Privacy

Submission + - FBI in Cohoots with Verizon, AT&T, MCI

Submitted by
mrbluze
mrbluze writes: "In the ongoing FBI probe, Wired News confirms that the FBI did enter into contracts with telephone companies to "harvest" telephone records.



"The contract essentially pays for the man hours or the personnel cost for the people who have to do the work," said FBI Assistant Director John Miller in an interview with Wired News last night. "We want dedicated people who handle our requests or do nothing else."


I have read elsewhere that security organizations have deals with operating system and other software manufacturers to provide back-doors to PC's. How widespread is all of this privacy invasion in reality?"
Music

Submission + - Judge: Pattis Santangelo Has Right to Day in Court

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Judge Colleen McMahon in Elektra v. Santangelo, in White Plains, NY, federal court has rejected the RIAA's attempt to dismiss "without prejudice", ruling instead that she is "entitled to have her legal status resolved one way or the other." (pdf). The judge ordered the RIAA to dismiss with prejudice by April 1st, or be ready to go ahead with a plan for the trial on April 13th. The judge rejected the RIAA's claim that Ms. Santangelo had defrauded the court, ruling that "Nothing in any papers filed by plaintiffs suggests IN THE SLIGHTEST that Mrs. Santangelo has ever perpetrated any fraud on this court." (capitals in the original)."
The Internet

Web Censorship on the Increase 132

Posted by Zonk from the xxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxx-xxxxxx dept.
mid-devonian writes "Close on the heels of the temporary blocking of YouTube by a Turkish judge, a group of academics has published research showing that Web censorship is on the increase worldwide. As many as two dozen countries are blocking content using a variety of techniques. Distressingly, the most censor-heavy countries (which includes China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Burma and Uzbekistan) seem to be passing on their technologically sophisticated techniques to other areas of the world. 'New censorship techniques include the periodic barring of complete applications, such as China's block on Wikipedia or Pakistan's ban on Google's blogging service, and the use of more advanced technologies such as 'keyword filtering', which is used to track down material by identifying sensitive words.'"
Communications

Submission + - Cingular/ATT, Sprint, Quest Block Conference Calls

Submitted by
IAmTheDave
IAmTheDave writes: "Cingular/AT&T has blocked calling access to a free conference calling service, FreeConference.com, with varying stories as to why. With Sprint and Quest following Cingular/AT&T shortly thereafter, the CEO of FreeConference.com claims that the service carriers are blocking the free conference calling service to illegally stifle competitors of their similar pay-for services. An email mailed out to my employer — users of FreeConference.com — state that "This appears to be a coordinated effort to force you to use the paid services they provide, eliminating competition and blocking your right to use the conferencing services that work best for you." The email urges users to contact the FCC, state Attorney Generals, and their providers directly. On the flip side, Quest Communications filed a lawsuit in Iowa claiming that several companies in Iowa, FreeConference.com being one, (along with sister companies hotlivesexchat.com and callchinaforfree.com) are fraudulently and illegally routing calls that end up holding the carrier responsible for long distance fees. AT&T filed suit shortly thereafter as well."
Science

Yellowstone Supervolcano Making Strange Rumblings 411

Posted by Zonk from the if-you-need-me-i'll-be-in-the-netherlands dept.
Frosty Piss writes "Supervolcanoes can sleep for centuries or millennia before producing incredibly massive eruptions that can drop ash across an entire continent. One of the largest supervolcanoes in the world lies beneath Yellowstone National Park. Significant activity continues beneath the surface. And the activity has been increasing lately, scientists have discovered. In addition, the nearby Teton Range of mountains is somehow getting shorter. The findings, reported this month in the Journal of Journal of Geophysical Research, suggest that a slow and gradual movement of a volcano over time can shape a landscape more than a violent eruption."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Cancer stem cells in breast cancer challenged

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "A Dana-Farber Cancer Institute study challenges the hypothesis that "cancer stem cells" — a small number of self-renewing cells within a tumor — are responsible for breast cancer progression and recurrence, and that wiping out these cells alone could cure the disease. Read More"
The Internet

Researchers Scheming to Rebuild Internet From Scratch 254

Posted by Zonk from the can-i-have-the-old-one-when-you're-done-with-it dept.
BobB writes "Stanford University researchers have launched an initiative called the Clean Slate Design for the Internet. The project aims to make the network more secure, have higher throughput, and support better applications, all by essentially rebuilding the Internet from scratch. From the article: 'Among McKeown's cohorts on the effort is electrical engineering Professor Bernd Girod, a pioneer of Internet multimedia delivery. Vendors such as Cisco, Deutsche Telekom and NEC are also involved. The researchers already have projects underway to support their effort: Flow-level models for the future Internet; clean slate approach to wireless spectrum usage; fast dynamic optical light paths for the Internet core; and a clean slate approach to enterprise network security (Ethane).'"
Announcements

Submission + - Announcing the MetaBUG

Submitted by
Darrin Chandler
Darrin Chandler writes: "After starting the Capital Area BSD Users Group, founders Mike Erdely and Jason Dixon realized that other BUGs could benefit from the pooled resource and information sharing of user groups world-wide. They discussed their ideas with Darren Spruell and Darrin Chandler of the Phoenix BUG, and the MetaBUG began to take shape.

The goals of MetaBUG are:

        * Foster inter-BUG relations to increase unity in the BSD community
        * Increase awareness of user groups
        * Share resources, materials, and information to promote BSD
        * Distribute live feeds of speaker presentations
        * Assist in starting or growing local BUGs
        * Provide a BSD user group for users with no local BUG access

One of the most appealing features will be video streams of member presentations. Thanks to Brad Smith, we now have RTSP support for the VLC port in OpenBSD-current. This allows us to offer audio/video streams of live presentations to users around the globe, and for OpenBSD users to view it on their favorite desktop!

If your BSD user group is interested in collaborating with other BUGs, or you're a user without access to your own local group, join the talk@metabug.org mailing list. For more details, please visit http://metabug.org/ or send your questions to info@metabug.org."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Inside ReactOS

Submitted by
holden
holden writes: "NewsForge has an article on a recent talk given by Alex Ionescu (a lead ReactOS developer). He talks about the recent progress made with ReactOS, but he spends the majority of his talking about the technical details of the ReactOS kernel architecture. He also talks about some of the unique problems faced by trying to build a binary compatible kernel, looking at some of the difficulties with how some vendors such as nvidia optimize there drivers and how ReactOS presently handles them, as well as how they plan to in the future. His complete talk is available online in a number of different formats."
Space

Submission + - Mars Express gauges water around south pole

Submitted by thhamm
thhamm writes: Using it's radar instrument, ESA's Mars Express Probe gauged the water quantity around the martian south pole: 'The amount of water trapped in frozen layers over Mars' south polar region is equivalent to a liquid layer about 11 metres deep covering the planet. This new estimate comes from mapping the thickness of the dusty ice by the Mars Express radar instrument that has made more than 300 virtual slices through layered deposits covering the pole.'
Space

Submission + - Kuiper Belt Collision Found; Possible Comet Source

Submitted by siglercm
siglercm writes: Astronomers have detected the remnants of an ancient collision in the Kuiper Belt, the region of bodies found outside of our solar system. The massive impact between a nearly Pluto-sized body and one half as large created a "collisional family" of objects; this is the first such family identified in the Kuiper Belt. The largest body produced may cross Neptune's orbit in the distant future, but it's possible that smaller objects created by the smash-up have already fallen into the inner solar system as comets.

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