Comment Classic (Score 1) 1
I have always though OSS has had a culture of 'someone elses fault' ie OSS is never wrong, the blame lies elsewhere but this takes it to a whole new level.
Submission + - Richard Stallman says No to Mono. (fsf.org) 4
twitter writes: "There's been a lot of fuss about mono lately. After SCO and M$ suing over FAT patents, you would think avoiding anything M$ would be a matter of common sense. RMS now steps into the fray to warn against a serious mistake.
"Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.
.... This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. ... [writing and using applications in mono] is taking a gratuitous risk.
Submission + - The Truth Behind the Death of Linux on the Netbook (groklaw.net)
eldavojohn writes: "Groklaw brings us news of Microsoft holding the smoking gun in regards to the death of Linux on netbooks. You see, the question of Linux on netbooks in Taiwan was put forth to the Taiwan Trade Authority director who replied, 'In our association we operate as a consortium, like the open source consortium. They want to promote open source and Linux. But if you begin from the PC you are afraid of Microsoft. They try to go to the smart phone or PDA to start again.' It's simple, fear will keep them in line. PJ points out 'So next time you hear Microsoft bragging that people *prefer* their software to Linux on netbooks, you'll know better. If they really believed that, they'd let the market speak, on a level playing field. If I say my horse is faster than yours, and you says yours is faster, and we let our horses race around the track, that establishes the point. But if you shoot my horse, that leaves questions in the air. Is your horse *really* faster? If so, why shoot my horse?'"
Submission + - Google Docs support to ODF is ridiculous (garza.eu)
GARZA writes: "Google says they support ODF on their Google Docs and they even say you can upload ODT and ODS files, but they really don't. Apparently their support to ODF is more political than technical. Go and check a complete report on this."
Submission + - Open source assignments accused of cheating (arstechnica.com)
Death Metal writes: "When San Jose State University student Kyle Brady published the source code of his completed homework assignments after finishing a computer science class, his professor vigorously objected. The professor insisted that publication of the source code constituted a violation of the school's academic integrity policy because it would enable future students to cheat."
Submission + - SPAM: Oracle Beware: Google Tests Cloud-Based Database
narramissic writes: "On Tuesday, the same day Google held a press event to launch its Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, the company quietly announced in its research team blog a new online database called Fusion Tables. Under the hood of Fusion Tables is data-spaces technology, which would 'allow Google to add to the conventional two-dimensional database tables a third coordinate with elements like product reviews, blog posts, Twitter messages and the like, as well as a fourth dimension of real-time updates,' according to Stephen E. Arnold, a technology and financial analyst who is president of Arnold Information Technology. 'So now we have an n-cube, a four-dimensional space, and in that space we can now do new kinds of queries which create new kinds of products and new market opportunities,' said Arnold, whose research about this topic includes a study done for IDC last August. 'If you're IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, your worst nightmare is now visible.'"
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Submission + - The End Of IE's Stranglehold On The Corporate PC? (infoworld.com) 1
snydeq writes: "Competition for consumer browser use has not yet carried over to the enterprise, with Internet Explorer — in large part due to legacy enterprise app dependencies on IE6 — remaining the de facto browser standard for corporate use. But recent developments at Mozilla and Google, as well as IT's desire to migrate older Web apps beyond IE6, may soon change all that, just as antitrust pressures have caused Microsoft to ship Windows 7 in Europe without IE8. Mozilla's Build Your Own Browser program, which enables organizations to customize certain browser functions and 'skin' Mozilla with company logos via Personas, may help Firefox ride its cross-platform popularity into the enterprise, just as group policy controls added to Google Update will allow admins to apply polices to Chrome across all computers on a particular domain. Analysts also believe Google's powerful position could help it strike deals with PC makers in Europe to distribute Chrome on Windows 7, now that Microsoft is taking IE8 out of the OS."
Submission + - Best Buy Plans Windows 7 Blitz (channelinsider.com)
dasButcher writes: "If you don't think PC resellers are dying for Windows 7 to come out, think again. Carolyn April uncovered an internal Best Buy memo (http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Microsoft/Internal-Best-Buy-Memo-Details-Presales-Plans-for-Windows-7-208784/) detailing its plans to push the new OS when it comes out this fall. Presales start in July."
Submission + - IE8 Dev Tools Don't Suck 1
BaileDelPepino writes: IE finally has developer tools that don't suck! With every other release of IE, development was a pain and debugging was a nightmare. Now IE has some decent tools--in fact, the IE includes lots of the best features of Firebug.
I'm giving IE8 and its dev tools a spin today, and I have to say I'm impressed. Now, I'm not planning on abandoning Firefox+Firebug for general development purposes just yet, but I still found a couple of compelling new features in IE, including the integrated javascript debugger, javascript profiler and the (really killer) "trace styles" feature.
Even if you're like me and are loath to give up your favorite web development tool combo, I think we can still all celebrate the fact that we finally have decent baked-in tools for debugging those nasty IE-only problems.
I should also point out that version 8 includes a version 7 compatibility mode, so there's very little reason not to upgrade if you can.
I'm giving IE8 and its dev tools a spin today, and I have to say I'm impressed. Now, I'm not planning on abandoning Firefox+Firebug for general development purposes just yet, but I still found a couple of compelling new features in IE, including the integrated javascript debugger, javascript profiler and the (really killer) "trace styles" feature.
Even if you're like me and are loath to give up your favorite web development tool combo, I think we can still all celebrate the fact that we finally have decent baked-in tools for debugging those nasty IE-only problems.
I should also point out that version 8 includes a version 7 compatibility mode, so there's very little reason not to upgrade if you can.
Submission + - China chooses FreeBSD as basis for secure OS 2
dnaumov writes: "A report by the Washington Post claims China is equipping all of its government and military PCs with a version of the Kylin (site in Chinese) operating system to make hacking attempts by foreign intelligence services more difficult. The information about the highly secure operating system was made public during a US China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing in late April. In addition to the secure operating system, the computers will also contain a special microprocessor to prevent attacks. The Kylin (Chinese page link) operating system was developed by China's University of Science and Technology for National Defence, and although it appears the system is claimed to be proprietary, an analysis of the code (site in Chinese) in the kernel indicates that it is in fact a hardened version of FreeBSD 5.3.
Kylin"
Submission + - Small Tablet from a Pocket PC? 1
Phoghat writes: "I read a lot and I use a Dell X51 with Windows Mobile 5 running MobiPocket reader (not available for Linux). I like the Kindle but it's a one trick pony and my device, though having a small screen, just does more. What I'd like to do is hack into it and use a 7 inch touchscreen using the rest of my hardware. Can it be done? I've searched and can't find any info."
Submission + - A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul 1
theodp writes: "What if an aeronautics engineer couldn't reconcile his elegant design for a state-of-the-art jumbo jet with Newton's second law of motion and decided to tweak the equation to fit his design? In a way, Newsweek reports, this is what's happened in quantitative finance, which is in desperate need of reform. And 49-year-old Oxford-trained mathematician Paul Wilmott — arguably the most influential quant today — thinks he knows where to start. With his CQF program, Wilmott is out to save the quants from themselves and the rest of us from their future destruction. 'We need to get back to testing models rather than revering them,' says Wilmott. 'That's hard work, but this idea that there are these great principles governing finance and that correlations can just be plucked out of the air is totally false.'"
Submission + - How Perl Saved the Human Genome Project (dobbscodetalk.com)
viyh writes: "The human genome project was inaugurated at the beginning of the decade as an ambitious international effort to determine the complete DNA sequence of human beings and several experimental animals. The justification for this undertaking is both scientific and medical. By understanding the genetic makeup of an organism in excruciating detail, we hope to better understand how organisms develop from single eggs into complex multicellular beings, how food is metabolized and transformed into the constituents of the body, and how the nervous system assembles itself into a smoothly functioning ensemble. From the medical point of view, the wealth of knowledge that will come from knowing the complete DNA sequence will greatly accelerate the process of finding the causes of, and potential cures for, human diseases.
From the beginning, researchers realized that informatics would have to play a large role in the genome project. An informatics core formed an integral part of every genome center that was created. The mission of this core was twofold: to provide computer support and database services for their affiliated laboratories, and to develop data analysis and management software for use by the genome community as a whole.
Consider the steps that may be performed on a bit of newly sequenced DNA. First, there's a basic quality check on the sequence: Is it long enough, and are the number of ambiguous letters below the maximum limit? Then, there's the "vector check." For technical reasons, the human DNA must be passed through a bacterium before it can be sequenced (this is the process of "cloning"). Not infrequently, the human DNA gets lost somewhere in the process, and the sequence that's read consists entirely of the bacterial vector. The vector check ensures that only human DNA gets into the database.
Next, there's a check for repetitive sequences. Human DNA is full of repetitive elements that make fitting the sequencing jigsaw puzzle together challenging. The repetitive-sequence check tries to match the new sequence against a library of known repetitive elements. The penultimate step is to attempt to match the new sequence against other sequences in a large community database of DNA sequences. Often, a match at this point will provide a clue to the function of the new DNA sequence. After performing all these checks, the sequence (along with the information that's been gathered about it along the way) is loaded into the local laboratory database.
The process of passing a DNA sequence through these independent, analytic steps looks like a pipeline, and we realized that a UNIX pipe could handle the job. We developed a simple Perl-based data-exchange format called "boulderio" that allowed loosely coupled programs to add information to a pipe-based I/O stream. Boulderio is based on tag/value pairs. A Perl module makes it easy for programs to reach into the input stream, pull out only the tags it is interested in, do something with them, and drop new tags into the output stream. Tags that the program isn't interested in are just passed through to standard output so that other programs in the pipeline can get to them."
From the beginning, researchers realized that informatics would have to play a large role in the genome project. An informatics core formed an integral part of every genome center that was created. The mission of this core was twofold: to provide computer support and database services for their affiliated laboratories, and to develop data analysis and management software for use by the genome community as a whole.
Consider the steps that may be performed on a bit of newly sequenced DNA. First, there's a basic quality check on the sequence: Is it long enough, and are the number of ambiguous letters below the maximum limit? Then, there's the "vector check." For technical reasons, the human DNA must be passed through a bacterium before it can be sequenced (this is the process of "cloning"). Not infrequently, the human DNA gets lost somewhere in the process, and the sequence that's read consists entirely of the bacterial vector. The vector check ensures that only human DNA gets into the database.
Next, there's a check for repetitive sequences. Human DNA is full of repetitive elements that make fitting the sequencing jigsaw puzzle together challenging. The repetitive-sequence check tries to match the new sequence against a library of known repetitive elements. The penultimate step is to attempt to match the new sequence against other sequences in a large community database of DNA sequences. Often, a match at this point will provide a clue to the function of the new DNA sequence. After performing all these checks, the sequence (along with the information that's been gathered about it along the way) is loaded into the local laboratory database.
The process of passing a DNA sequence through these independent, analytic steps looks like a pipeline, and we realized that a UNIX pipe could handle the job. We developed a simple Perl-based data-exchange format called "boulderio" that allowed loosely coupled programs to add information to a pipe-based I/O stream. Boulderio is based on tag/value pairs. A Perl module makes it easy for programs to reach into the input stream, pull out only the tags it is interested in, do something with them, and drop new tags into the output stream. Tags that the program isn't interested in are just passed through to standard output so that other programs in the pipeline can get to them."
Submission + - Microsoft Sabotaging Firefox With Sneaky Add-Ons 4
Slashdot writes: The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1, unleashed in February, forces an undisclosed Firefox extension on Windows users, which not only injects a serious security vulnerability into Firefox (also present in Internet Explorer), but it disables the uninstall button, meaning the only way to get rid of it, is to edit the Windows registry.
**you may wish to remove this extension with all due haste**
http://startupearth.com/2009/05/31/microsoft-sabotaging-firefox-with-sneaky-net-updates/
**you may wish to remove this extension with all due haste**
http://startupearth.com/2009/05/31/microsoft-sabotaging-firefox-with-sneaky-net-updates/
Comment Re:Switzerland not in EU (Score 2, Insightful) 245
Way to go. Drag in a populist /. rara argument to support your bias.
Are you privy to the requirements of th Swiss govt? Do you have any evidence or logic for that matter to prove your opinion?
