jugglerjon - Slashdot User

Submission + - Sony silently drops PS3 linux support. (ps2dev.org) 4

Submitted by

t0qer

on Wednesday December 19, 2007 @06:33PM

t0qer writes: "Up until this week, hackers at the PS2dev.org forums have been hot on the trail of writing a hardware accellerated driver for the PS3 RSX chip until Sony released thier new firmware. Now it seems that updating to the new 2.10 version of PS3 firmware not only blocks RSX access completely, but breaks linux installs as well. This is a harsh blow to the PS3 linux community."

Submission + - New York judge grabs all Brooklyn RIAA cases

Submitted by

newtley

on Wednesday December 19, 2007 @06:15PM

newtley writes: ""I wonder how many of the defendants think the settlements were 'equitable'?" That's Recording Industry vs The People on news that a New York judge has decided only he and another judge should preside over Brooklyn cases. Judge J. Trager, "has denied the motions by the defendants in two Brooklyn cases, Maverick v Chowdhury and Elektra v Torres, for random judicial assignment of RIAA cases," it says. Trager holds, "the cases should all continue to be assigned just to himself and Magistrate Judge Levy". In this decision denying the defendants' motion, "Judge Trager said that (a) many of the defendants have retained the same attorneys, (b) there have been approximately 350 RIAA cases in the Eastern District of New York, and (c) Magistrate Levy has brought about 'equitable settlements'," says RIvTP's Ray Beckerman."

Submission + - Is Gardasil HPV Vaccine Based on Scientific Fraud? (newstarget.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Cow

on Wednesday December 19, 2007 @07:46AM

Anonymous Cow writes: "Archived documents discovered at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's website reveal the agency knew in 2003 that HPV infections did not cause cervical cancer. Despite that knowledge, the FDA has continued to support the use of the Gardasil vaccine in compulsory vaccinations programs like the one announced in Texas earlier this year. Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, an independent consumer health advocate who opposes compulsory vaccinations, has unleashed a volley of multimedia files designed to expose the scientific fraud behind Gardasil vaccines while educating the public about the real health risks that may be associated with HPV vaccinations. His special report, "The Great HPV Vaccination Hoax Exposed" is available here. Adams has also created a 10-minute YouTube video highlighting the scientific fraud behind HPV vaccinations."

Submission + - Your worst IT workshop?

Submitted by suntory on Wednesday December 19, 2007 @06:17AM

suntory writes: I am a lecturer at a Spanish university. This week had to attend a workshop on "Advanced HTML and CSS" for the university staff. Some of the ideas that the presenter (a fellow lecturer) shared with us:

IE is the only browser that follows standards. You can see it clearly because it works for all sites, whereas Firefox and other browsers have problems displaying some of them.

Frames and tables are the best way to organize your website.

You can view the source for most CSS, Javascript and HTML files, so you can freely copy and paste what you feel like — the Internet is so free, you know.

Same applies for images. If you can see them in Google Images Search, then you can use them for your projects.

Of course, the workshop turned out to be a complete disaster and a waste of time. So I was wondering what other similar experiences you have had, and what was your worst IT workshop...

Submission + - Nanowires boost laptop battery life to 20 hours

Submitted by brianmed on Wednesday December 19, 2007 @12:16AM

brianmed writes: Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, cell phones, MP3 players and other portable devices. The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces up to 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion batteries.

Submission + - Microsoft making it hard to virtualize

Submitted by

kullnd

on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @08:41PM

kullnd writes: "While Microsoft has not been my favorite company for some time, I have never been one to blame them for making a buck when they can, until now.

While researching some options for an IT refresh for a company I excited about what seemed like the perfect solution for this particular company. I was going to recommend thin clients using virtual desktops Windows XP running on VMWare ESX servers.

It looked like a great plan, the testing was very promising, and then I realized that to license this 200 workstation solution I was going to have to pay an extra $40,000 in licensing fee's in adition to the standard OS Licenses!

VMWare is well aware of the damage caused by Microsoft and their licensing models and has published some white papers about the problem one of which can be found here and there is a discussion about this that can be found here.

Microsoft has determined that unless you are the one primary user of a Windwos XP instance, or unless you have a fully licensed copy of XP Pro for the local client (which a thin client would not), you must get a Remote Desktop License (RDL), which cost about $200 per user or device, to connect remotely to another Windows XP Machine. Spread that out over a corporate network and that number adds up very quickly.

To further limit and attempt to derail the work from companies such as VMWare, server software is licensed to run on one physical machine, whether it be running in a virutal environment or not, and the software can not be moved more than one time every 90 days. This completely negates technology that has been developed such as VMWare's VMotion which allows you to balance loads accross multiple physical servers or move virtual machines for maintenance etc. The only way around this is to license the software on all physical machines that it may be executed on.

All of this is very cost prohibitive for medium size companies that could really benifit from some of the breakthrough's that have been developed by 3rd party companies, and Microsoft should be ashamed."

Submission + - Nintendo : No More Wii For Australia Until 2008 (xuecast.com) 1

Submitted by

XueCast

on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @06:52PM

XueCast writes: "http://www.xuecast.com/?p=386, According to Nintendo Australia, there will be no more Wii video game console shipments to Australia until somewhere in the year 2008. Right now, the Kangaroo continent is extremely low in Nintendo Wii console units and once the retailers had sold them out, the Australians might have to wait for several months before they will get a new Nintendo Wii shipment."

Submission + - Don't Call. Ever. (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @06:04PM

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Now that both the House and Senate have passed updated versions of the Do Not Call list, it appears that we may soon have a Do Not Call — Ever list. Phone numbers that have been previously registered will not have to be registered again unless removed by the owner, disconnected, or reassigned. At this rate, the only people who seem likely to get left out are those who registered right when the list first went into effect and forgot to renew."

Submission + - General Motors turns down the heat, saves millions (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @12:20PM

coondoggie writes: "Looking to save potentially millions of dollars in energy bills, General Motors is turning down the heat and encouraging employees to help find other energy inefficiencies in its 60+ US factories. The auto giant is tapping the United Auto Workers, to help get workers to turn off lights and computers, alert managers to window leaks and other energy inefficiencies and make small changes that can amount to big savings. Published reports said some of GM's plants and offices are kept at 55 degrees. Each plant's energy bills are transferred automatically into a central data system tracked closely by the company, GM said. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23147"

Submission + - Gates foundation deathly side-effects (latimes.com) 3

Submitted by HuguesT on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @06:45AM

HuguesT writes: An long and detailed article from the L.A. Times points out severe, unintended side effects of the health policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. This foundation has given away almost 2 billions US$ to the fight against AIDS, TB and Malaria worldwide. Thanks in no small measure to this effort, the death toll from AIDS in most of Africa are finally levelling off. However, the money from the foundation is earmarked to the fight against these three diseases, to the detriment of global health. Sick people can also be hungry and not able to ingest healing drugs. Doctors in these countries prefer to be well paid working against AIDS than poorly working against all the other health problems, which creates a brain drain. Numerous children also suffer from diarrhea or asphyxia due to lack of basic care. The paradox is that countries where the foundation has invested most have seen their mortality rate increase, whereas it has improved in countries where the foundation was least involved.

Submission + - Microsoft puts its money on HD-DVD (blorge.com)

Submitted by thefickler on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @01:22AM

thefickler writes: With the PS3's popularity picking up and the millionth Blu-Ray disc already out to market, you'd think Toshiba's HD-DVD days are numbered. But never fear, Microsoft is here! The software giant has released an HD-DVD emulator that will allow content creators to test their HD-DVD media in ways other than costly 'trial-and-error'.

Submission + - Intergfalactic particle beam spotted

Submitted by sm62704 (mcgrew) on Monday December 17, 2007 @05:53PM

sm62704 (mcgrew) writes: New scientist lightheartedly reports:

A new weapon of intergalactic war has been found. A jet of hot gas and high-energy particles is shooting out from the core of a galaxy called 3C321 and hitting a neighbour, a new study reveals.

Galaxies have been known to ram into each other, but this is the first known example of attack by particle beam
It goes on with less jocularity to explain this phenomena. And before any of you quip 'that was no moon', actually it was a black hole.

Submission + - Judge:Man can't be forced to divulge passphrase (news.com) 2

Submitted by

mytrip

on Monday December 17, 2007 @01:47PM

mytrip writes: "A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.

Niedermeier tossed out a grand jury's subpoena that directed Sebastien Boucher to provide "any passwords" used with his Alienware laptop. "Compelling Boucher to enter the password forces him to produce evidence that could be used to incriminate him," the judge wrote in an order dated November 29 that went unnoticed until this week. "Producing the password, as if it were a key to a locked container, forces Boucher to produce the contents of his laptop."

Especially if this ruling is appealed, U.S. v. Boucher could become a landmark case. The question of whether a criminal defendant can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review articles for the last decade arguing the merits of either approach. (A U.S. Justice Department attorney wrote an article in 1996, for instance, titled "Compelled Production of Plaintext and Keys.")"

Submission + - Student given detention for using Firefox 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 17, 2007 @12:05PM

An anonymous reader writes: Several sites are reporting that a student has been given detention for using "Firefox.exe" to do his classwork. No, really. The student was in class, working on an assignment that necessitated using a browser. The teacher instructed him to stop using Firefox and to do his classwork, to which the student responded that he was doing his classwork using a "better" browser (it is unclear whether the computer was the student's own computer or not). The clueless teacher (who called the rogue program "Firefox.exe") ordered him to detention.

Submission + - Schools turn leftover meals to Biofuel

Submitted by

SK

on Monday December 17, 2007 @09:28AM

SK writes: "Leftover school lunches will not go to waste in a joint experiment to be held in a Tokyo ward to turn the food into biofuel. Between 30 and 50 kilograms of food is left over daily at each of Tokyo's 65 municipally run primary and middle schools. This waste is then incinerated. Tokyo Gas will spend about 100 million yen on the building and operation of the facilities for the experiment inside an office provided by the ward government. The firm plans to use a daily total of about 200 kilograms of waste collected from five or six local schools. To create the biofuels, enzymes are first added to the waste to saccharize it and separate solids from liquids. Bioethanol is extracted by alcoholic fermentation and distillation of the liquid."

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