JMemmert - Slashdot User

Submission + - MSNBot "MSIE 7.0" UserAgent legitimacy? 10

Submitted by

sinthetek

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @11:43PM

sinthetek writes: "I noticed today that recently (around 02:56:18 EST on New Years Eve at least by my logs) MSNBot UserAgent strings started to indicate that it's requests are coming from a an IE 7 browser rather than it's usual/previous 'msnbot' useragent string. I went through several years of logs to confirm that it has always previously been some variation of "msnbot".

My question is whether there is likely a legitimate reason for using this string (ie a mistake due to shared code etc) or if there is a more sinister agenda to corrupt web statistics in an attempt to rally more support/development for MSIE7 with the seeming obviousness as potential 'plausible deniability' escape hatch?"

Submission + - How the mighty mainframe has morphed into 2008 (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @07:20PM

coondoggie writes: "Here it is 2008 and we have some very interesting facts about the Big Iron chugging away in many corporate businesses. First and foremost, while tons of corporate date resides on a mainframe, it is largely locked there and a huge data integration effort will be required to unlock it. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. A survey of Share's members to be released this month by Share, the largest independent IBM users group found: 1. At least 70% of the world's mission-critical business information is stored on mainframes. 2. Most mainframe data is still locked up, and most integration efforts are still done with hand coded scripting. There are proactive efforts underway to better integrate mainframe data with more distributed data environments, and to be able to deliver this data in real time, meaning within seconds. 3. Mainframes store and manage much of an organization's enterprise data. However, most of this data remains inaccessible in these environments. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23488"

Submission + - Nine Inch Nails post result of "Free or Pay

Submitted by Rovent on Thursday January 03, 2008 @06:57PM

Rovent writes: Back on November 1st, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails convinced Saul Williams to release his latest album, "The Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust", for free or $5, you decide. After a two month run, Trent posted the results of this experiment on the Nine Inch Nails homepage. On it, he breaks down how many people downloaded the album, who came back and paid for it, and his insight on the whole affair.

Submission + - Nations and Organizations that Adopted ODF in 2007 (odfalliance.org)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @06:51PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "The ODF Alliance has released a report on 3 January 2008 detailing the state of global adoption of ODF as a governmental policy and in deployments of software applications. The 15-page report (PDF warning) says that 2007 'ended on a high note,' with the Netherlands and South Africa joining 10 other nations that had already adopted the ODF standard, formally known as ISO/IEC 26300:2006. There are now 40 software apps supporting ODF, with dozens of those coming in September and October alone. The ODF Alliance itself now claims just under 500 member organizations in 53 countries."

Submission + - Bulgaria Beats US in respecting privacy (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03, 2008 @06:47PM

An anonymous reader writes: http://blogs.computerworld.com/u_s_at_the_bottom_of_the_barrel_when_it_comes_to_privacy Yes, Privacy International Rate the old US of A as one of the most intrusive and least respectful governments in the world. The fact that Bulgaria respects the privacy of its citizens more that the US does is sad. In fact we rank alongside China, who thoughtfully censors internet content for its citizens. Don't shake your head about that, because H.R 1955 aka the "Thought Crime" bill finds that the internet is a constant source of terrorist propaganda bombarding the helpless American citizens. In the testimony for this bill, horrifying terrorist propaganda websites, such as http://911truth.org/ were held as prime examples of this campaign of terror that threatens the American citizen. Funny, I just thought the website talked about inconsistency in the Government's explaination of the 9/11 attack on the Word Trade Center. I guess the government thinks anyone who challenges their explanation of this incident must be a terrorist. Historically speaking, 9/11 reminds me of another incident. The German Parliament building was burned down, and the Chancellor Hitler accused Communist terrorists of destroying the building, despite evidence that Hitler's goons set the fire. Soon Hitler got laws passed erasing the rights of German citizens. Result, 6 Million Jews murdered and 50 or 60 million dead in a world war. But that couldn't happen here in America, I mean would we pass a law creating a secret police that could torture people and hold them without trial? http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955

Submission + - Citrix, Microsoft and VMware: Comparing strategies (techtarget.com)

Submitted by

virtualization_dork

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @03:36PM

virtualization_dork writes: "Many people look at product reviews and research reports when choosing IT platforms. They want a quick "Consumer Reports" answer. Yet when choosing core products, a critical step in evaluating vendors is examining their strategies and approaches, not specific products. So, in this comparison of three virtualization heavyweights, VMware, Citrix and Microsoft, expert Steve Shah looks at their positions more than their products. In the end, buyers should understand the vendors' take on the virtualization market, its direction and the priorities chosen to achieve their goals.

Read his review at SearchServerVirtualization.com."

Submission + - California sues US over emissions

Submitted by

gollum123

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @02:14PM

gollum123 writes: "California is suing the US federal government, in an attempt to force car makers to conform to tougher cuts in greenhouse gas emissions ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7169200.stm ). The lawsuit comes after the federal Environmental Protection Agency denied California a waiver from US law needed to enact its own efficiency targets. Fifteen other states or state agencies are set to join the action. It challenged the Epa's denial of California's request to implement its own emissions law — which would require a 30% reduction in motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions by 2016 by improving fuel efficiency standards. For years, California has been allowed to set its own environmental targets in recognition of the "compelling and extraordinary conditions" the state faces — and the Epa has never before denied California a waiver request. The other states joining the fight are: Massachusetts, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington."

Submission + - Cassini's Best Images (ciclops.org)

Submitted by CheshireCatCO on Monday December 31, 2007 @05:29PM

CheshireCatCO writes: The winners of the best images from the Cassini spacecraft (taken since Cassini images of Saturn were first acquired in February 2004) have been announced. The winner of best color image is In Saturn's Shadow, the stunning, high-phase portrait of Saturn from opposite the Sun. Winners of best black-and-white and best movie (both categories resulted in ties) are also available.

Submission + - Microsoft Paid Novell $356 Million in '07

Submitted by Anonymous on Monday December 31, 2007 @03:28PM

Anonymous writes: At the end of this piece at Channelweb.com, it's reported that Microsoft paid Novell $355.6 million last year as part of their "interoperability" deal. It's no small wonder, then, that Novell executives are saying the deal has been a huge success so far.

Submission + - Free software FPS games compared (linux-gamers.net)

Submitted by

on Sunday December 30, 2007 @03:07PM

An anonymous reader writes: Linux-gamers.net has posted a well-encompassing, although harsh, comparison of free software shooters. While lengthy, it compares seven open source shooter games. Although the article can be a bit hard to follow at times, few have gone to compare and carefully examine the genre before. The author ranks the games in the following order (best to worst): Warsow, Tremulous, World of Padman, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, OpenArena, and Sauerbraten. In making these choices, it claims claims to use gameplay, design, innovation and presentation as criteria and includes a short history of free software shooters in the introduction.

Submission + - Sony rootkit - the return? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 30, 2007 @02:02PM

An anonymous reader writes: This christmas, I bought an mp3 player for my sister, a SONY NW-E015. I learnt, but too late, that I had to use the SonicStage software to upload music to it, and that apparently, it ain't that great. But the license of that program was even more troublesome. Beh, I have nothing to hide anyway.

Submission + - Porting GPL Code? 3

Submitted by ripnet on Sunday December 30, 2007 @08:00AM

ripnet writes: If someone ports a GPL application to another language (say from c++ to c#), with reference to the original source code, is the new work covered by the GPL?

Submission + - Should Wikipedia Allow Mathematical Proofs? (wikipedia.org) 4

Submitted by

Beetle B.

on Saturday December 15, 2007 @08:07PM

Beetle B. writes: "An argument has arisen over whether Wikipedia should allow pages that provide proofs for mathematical theorems (such as this one).

On the one hand, Wikipedia is a useful source of information and people can benefit from these proofs. On the other hand, how does one choose which proofs to include and which not to? Should Wikipedia just become a textbook that teaches mathematics? Should it just state the bare results of theorems and not provide proofs (except as external links)? Or should they take an intermediate approach and formulate a criterion for which proofs to include and which to exclude?"

Submission + - Gmail offers AIM Chat ability through Open AIM (google.com)

Submitted by

protobion

on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @11:04PM

protobion writes: "Gmail chat now offers the option to sign in to your AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) account to chat with your AIM buddies from Gmail. Your AIM buddies will populate your Contacts list, and are searchable just like your Google Talk contacts.Chatting with your AIM buddies is easy — just click on a name in your chat list, and start typing. Note that an AIM account is required to use this feature. AIM in Gmail is not a Google Talk and AIM federation; it's the ability to sign in to your AIM messaging account from Gmail. Gmail uses Open AIM to provide this feature."

Submission + - Skype ignoring performance bug

Submitted by nodrama on Wednesday December 05, 2007 @08:33PM

nodrama writes: Skype introduced a bug in version 3.5.0.229 that sucks 2-3% of CPU when Skype is idle! It is doing some crazy number of page faults. This affects Vista and XP and the bug was introduced five versions ago, but it still remains. Here is Skype's bug report and here is a great summary of the bug's progress by amature1 from the Skype forums.

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