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Submission + - WikiLeaks: Bradley Manning faces 22 new charges (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Bradley Manning, the US Army private accused of passing military secrets to WikiLeaks, faces 22 new charges including the capital offence of 'aiding the enemy'.

The charge of 'aiding the enemy' carries a potential death sentence under military law, although prosecutors maintain they will 'only' seek life imprisonment for 23-year-old pfc Manning.
Programming

Submission + - Punk Rock Programming Languages (pragprog.com)

Submitted by andrea.sartori
andrea.sartori writes: Chris Adamson posted a very interesting article on pragprog.com, defining C a "punk rock language". The musical analogy is developed and used to compare different types of programming languages. Pickup line: 'One of the defining traits of punk is the do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic, a rejection of the need to buy products or use existing systems, and instead to attend to your own needs. This attitude clearly suits C programming as well.' And: 'Any idiot with a Slashdot handle can talk crap about anything. It’s when you piss off the smart developers that you know you’re working with something interesting.'
Open Source

Submission + - Tomcat 7 finalized (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: The volunteer developers behind Apache Tomcat have released version 7.0.6 http://tomcat.apache.org/download-70.cgi of the open-source Java servlet container.

"This is the first stable release of the Tomcat 7 branch," developer Mark Thomas wrote in an e-mail announcing the release on various Tomcat developer mailing lists.

While not a full application server, Tomcat implements the functionality described in the Java Enterprise Edition Web profile specifications. Most notably, it supports version 3.0 of the Servlet API (application programming interface) and version 2.2 of JavaServer Pages, both part of the recently ratified JEE 6. A servlet container manages Java-based applications that can be accessed from a Web browser.

One big area of improvement is in configuration management for Web applications. Previous versions required all Web app configuration changes to be entered in a central file called web.xml, a process that led to unwieldy web.xml files as well as security risks.
Security

Submission + - Wikileaks loses DNS

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: EveryDNS has terminated Wikileaks' DNS access, citing multiple massive DDOS attacks that interfere with their other customers. Wikileaks is still available via IP address for the moment, although that could get hairy if they lose another hosting provider. You will remember that Amazon terminated Wikileaks' account after pressure from Congress, denying "post hoc, ergo proctor hoc" by pointing to their terms of service.

Submission + - What kind of content is acceptable in the cloud?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Amazon's censure of Wikileaks not only raises significant First Amendment issues, but also raises questions of what kind of content is and isn't acceptable in the cloud, as PC World discusses. Businesses migrating to the cloud need to think long and hard about this. From the article: "For example, law firms frequently have to deal with extremely unpleasant materials as part of their work. Could they store horrific images and videos on a cloud service? Could they store potentially libellous materials? Are cloud companies going to start making a distinction between storing materials that have a genuine business need (OK), and those that are stored solely for enjoyment (not OK)?"

Comment Think Bigger (Score 2, Interesting) 365

by jovetoo (#31042256) Attached to: Physicists Discover How To Teleport Energy

How about a few thousand solar satellites in orbit around the sun, transmitting energy directly to power stations on earth where the energy gets redistributed?

How about no more batteries?

Driving cars that get their energy straight from the sun?

Cellphones that do not just get their energy through an entangled pair, but also their 'net connection?

Or why not just dump one of those entangled particles into the sun? Or, if we're feeling particularly paranoid, into a neighboring star?

Comment Re:Consistent Histories? (Score 4, Informative) 365

by jovetoo (#31042194) Attached to: Physicists Discover How To Teleport Energy
No. It has to do with the impedance of the cables. Since there is a lot of empty space around the powerlines in the air, there is very little loss from the electromagnetic field that is generated around the conductors by the power flowing through it. If you bury the cables, there is a lot more electrically conductive material near the power lines creating more loss of power. In effect, the power cables would lose a lot of power heating the ground around it. At least, if I remember my classes correctly.

Comment Re:Doing it wrong (Score 1) 409

by jovetoo (#29878481) Attached to: What is the Current State of Home Automation?
If you're cooking YOU'RE IN THE DAMNED KITCHEN! Why in hell would you want to access your kitchen appliances from a telephone or a videogame?

So you can cook WITHOUT being in the damned kitchen? I would love to have a gkrell like app monitoring the temperature and humidity in my pots, maybe include some video.

It would have saved me a shitload of broken nails trying to get the burned black bits out of my cooking pots...

Comment Atom 330 Desktop/Server (Score 3, Informative) 697

by jovetoo (#29867127) Attached to: Low-Power Home Linux Server?
I am running a system based on an Atom 330 motherboard from Intel. It has 2GB of memory and a 320GB harddisk. I payed about 300 euros for the complete system, but you can probably get it cheaper. The motherboard with cpu was 70 euro.

I like it because it is powerful enough to do most of my daily computing. It runs an apache, a mailserver and serves as my desktop machine. I use a 1680x1050 Gnome desktop, fullscreen video, browser and email client. It has, in practise, completely replaced my normal (1300 euro) desktop. After I replaced the crappy fan that came with the motherboard it is now perfectly silent.

The whole system, under load, uses 28Watt.

Comment Re:ebay maybe? (Score 1) 546

by jovetoo (#27148017) Attached to: What To Do With Old USB Keys, Low-Capacity Hard Drives?
If you make an image of your platter with an electron microscope you can measure the actual magnetisation of the bit (which is an analog value) on the harddrive and have a good idea of what previous values were. Add to that the error correction mechanisms on every harddrive and you have a good chance to find the data on it before you put all zeroes over it.

Comment Weird metric (Score 1) 187

by jovetoo (#26824335) Attached to: The Hairy State of Linux Filesystems
I have no idea of the real code behind those file systems but I find "external calls" a bit of an weird metric. The more "common code" used by the file systems, the more "external calls" would be seen, while this would actually be a Good Thing.
Patents

Bilski Patent Case Appealed To Supreme Court 175

Posted by kdawson from the settling-it-once-and-for-all dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The landmark ruling of a few months ago that limited patents to inventions which include a machine or which transform physical matter has been appealed up to the Supreme Court. 'On the one side of this controversy... are those... who argue that patents must be available to encourage innovation in devising new ways to conduct business in the global information-based economy, including encouragement for new ways of digitizing business methods. On the other side are consumer advocacy groups and free-market devotees who worry that patent monopolies could tie up methods of creative thought processes, including teaching, judging, creative writing, making medical judgments, or picking juries (some current, real examples of claims).' The Bilski decision has already had an impact on potential software and biotech patents, in addition to the obvious limitations on business method patents. The petition (PDF) argues that the 'machine-or-transformation' test conflicts with the broad language of the patent statute and with congressional intent. It's entirely within the Supreme Court's discretion to take the case or not, but for now it looks like the issue is far from decided."

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