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Networking

Microsoft Working For Samba Interoperability 221

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this'll-end-well dept.
JP writes "Andrew Bartlett of Samba fame has written a document describing their recent collaboration with Microsoft's Active Directory team. In brief, it would seem that the sky is falling, as Microsoft's engineers seem to be really committed to making Samba fully interoperable with AD. They have organized interoperability fests and have knowledgeable engineers answering technical questions without legal or marketing drones getting in the way. However according to Andrew the Samba AD team is currently very short on manpower, so if you have network experience, now is the time to get coding."
Google

Google To Fund Ideas That Will Change the World 165

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the we-should-all-become-deities-the-end dept.
Peace Corps Online writes "This week, as part of their tenth birthday celebration, Google announced the launch of project ten to the 100th, a project designed to inspire and fund the development of ideas that will help to change the world. They have called on members of the public to share their ideas for solutions that will help as many people as possible in the global community, offering a $10 million prize pool to back the development of those chosen as winners. 'We know there are countless brilliant ideas that need funding and support to come to fruition,' says Bethany Poole, Project Marketing Manager for Google. 'These ideas can be big or small, technology-driven or brilliantly simple — but they need to have impact.' The project's website asks entrants to classify their ideas into one of eight categories listed as Community, Opportunity, Energy, Environment, Health, Education, Shelter and Everything Else. Members of the public have until October 20th to submit their ideas by completing a simple form and answering a few short questions about their idea."

Comment Re:What about a Comparison Matrix (Score 1) 415

by arcanumas (#24801917) Attached to: The State of Scripting Languages
You are wrong. There are scripting languages with dynamic but strong typing like Python for example.
You cannot change types in Python variables implicitly. You have to do type conversions.
you can't do:

print "some string" + some_integer

You have to convert it:

print "some string" + str(some_integer)

Nice troll though...
Encryption

Submission + - Spore Creature Creator uses steganography in PNG. (nedbatchelder.com)

Submitted by
arcanumas
arcanumas writes: "It seems that Spore Creature Creator allows you to save images of creatures in PNG format, that you can later import and get your creature back. Ned Batchelder did some digging using Python and PIL, and discovered that Creature Creator uses steganography to embed creature data within the PNG file. According to Ned:

"These pixels are part of the black transparent edge of the image, except it isn't truly black and it isn't truly transparent. There's one bit of information being encoded in each channel, or four bits per pixel."

The article also raises some questions on why they used this method instead of tEXT records (supported by PNG), but it is a cool hack nevertheless."

What Programming Languages Should You Learn Next? 759

Posted by Zonk from the anything-but-haskell dept.
simoniker writes "Over at Dobbs Code Talk, Chris Diggins has been discussing programming languages beyond C++ or Java, suggesting options such as Ruby ('does a great job of showing how powerful a dynamic language can be, and leverages powerful ideas from Smalltalk, Perl, and Lisp') but suggesting Scala as a first choice ('Very accessible to programmers from different backgrounds.') What would your choice be for programmers extending beyond their normal boundaries?"
Input Devices

Use Your Cellphone as a 3D Mouse 77

Posted by Zonk from the remember-when-they-weighed-like-twenty-pounds dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "In recent years, we've started to use our cellphones not only for placing calls or exchanging messages. Now, we take pictures, read our e-mails, listen to music or watch TV. But, according to New Scientist, UK researchers are going further with a prototype software that turns your cellphone into a 3-D mouse. The phone is connected to your computer via Bluetooth. And you control the image on the screen by rotating or moving your phone. As says one of the researchers, 'it feels like a much more natural way to interact and exchange data.' The technology might first be used in shopping malls to buy movie tickets or to interact with advertising displays."
Unix

Submission + - End of 32 Bit Time Problem 1

Submitted by
georgetirebiter
georgetirebiter writes: "At least one large, very successful financial services organization in the last few days fell victim to the Unix year 2038 problem when trying to create a standard 30 year risk contract in their proprietary financial software. The problem occurred when trying to make a standard time call in sql. I wonder how many other programmers have had to try to solve this problem in legacy systems? What solutions did they use? Is this really an incipient and perhaps more serious successor to the Y2K bug?"
Censorship

Chinese Government Sued Over Dog Height Censorship 259

Posted by Zonk from the truly-an-epic-civil-rights-fight dept.
Googling Yourself writes "More than 30,000 censors are employed in China to monitor the Internet, so it was no surprise when censors deleted a posting by Chen Yuhua protesting Beijing municipal government's regulations barring any dog over 14 inches high and restricting each family to only one dog. The surprise (reports the Washington Post) was when Chen studied China's civil code and marched into court with a lawsuit, only the second time that a Chinese citizen has gone to court over party censorship. 'I was very careful to follow the correct procedure,' Chen said in an interview, while pointing at the official legal manual on his dining room table. On December 14 Chen was told by clerks that the district court, after referring to higher-level judges for advice, had decided to reject the case. The next step, Chen said, is an appeal to the Supreme Court."
Intel

Intel Set To Demo PRAM 83

Posted by kdawson from the flashier dept.
xavatarx writes "Intel's chief technology officer Justin Rattner is set to give the first public demonstration of the company's PRAM (phase-change RAM) technology at this week's Intel Developer Forum conference. 'Intel and other companies are counting on PRAM to replace both NOR and NAND flash memory to generate the demand required to produce the new memory chips in volume, and drive down costs,' the article says."
Censorship

Submission + - BBC World report on WTC 7 collapse 23 mins early.

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "World Trade Center building 7, aka the Salomon Bro's building, collapsed around 5:20pm EDT (10:20pm BST) supposedley due to weakening and fire damage caused by the collapse of the twin towers WTC1 and WTC2.

The BBC however reported the collapse at 4:57pm (9:57pm BST) EDT, apparently recieving this information from a newsfeed.

How can this be? Was the destruction of building 7 scheduled? And why have google removed the video clips as soon as they go up? Also, the BBC is now saying that they have lost all of the 9/11 tapes from that day.

If building 7 had a scheduled demolition, what does that mean for the events of the entire day?

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february200 7/260207building7.htm

and the BBC response:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/02/part _of_the_conspiracy.html#commentsanchor"
Security

Scientists Make Quantum Encryption Breakthrough 156

Posted by samzenpus from the completely-secure-for-at-least-a-few-days dept.
Madas writes "Scientists working in Cambridge have managed to make quantum encryption completely secure (registration required) by putting decoy pulses in the key transmission stream. According to the story this paves the way for safe, encrypted high-speed data links. Could this allow completely private transmission of data away from snooping eyes and ears? Or will it mean film studios can stop movies from being copied when traveling on the internet?"
Media

Submission + - Reading a DVD with VLC is illegal in France

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Starting December 31st 2006, reading a DVD protected with CSS (as most DVD are) is illegal in France when it is done with software allowing to circumvent the protection, such as VLC or mplayer which can both use the libdvdcss library. This Journal Officiel (where laws and executive orders are published) says that you may be fined 135 (around $180) for doing so. This includes watching any DVD that you have legally purchased.
The Media

Submission + - Second Life land owner challenges press freedom

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Citing the DMCA, Second Life's biggest land owner, Anshe Chung Studios, has challenged the right for users (including members of the press) to publish 'screen shots' from the game that they claim would infringe on their copyright. The issue has surfaced after the avatar Anshe Chung (real name Ailin Graef) was attacked by animated flying penises during a virtual interview with CNET news, conducted in their Second Life bureau last month. A video of the attack surfaced on YouTube, and was then taken town after Anshe Chung Studios filed a DMCA complaint. The Sydney Morning Herald and the blog BoingBoing have also received similar notices.
Science

Penguins Disappearing From Southern Hemisphere 218

Posted by Zonk from the space-penguins-gotta-be dept.
The Scotsman is running a piece looking at the mysterious disappearance of penguins from all around the world. A biologist who studies the rockhopper penguin characterizes the population crash as 'sinister', as scientists are still baffled as to why almost 30% of the birds have vanished. From the article: "Grant Munro, the director of Falklands Conservation, said there were fears that rockhoppers might become extinct. 'If the present situation were to carry on then it's not a particularly great forecast. It doesn't look like they are suddenly going to start increasing in numbers ... In the Falklands, they are part of everyday life. If you head down to the beach you are going to see penguins.'"

Microsoft Formally Releases Robotics Software 173

Posted by Zonk from the i-am-the-atomic-microsoft-robot-please-give-my-best-wishes-to-everybody dept.
futuresheet writes "Microsoft formally released its robotics software yesterday, giving would-be robot builders a new tool to make them do the things they do. The license for the software is $399, and the 'standard' Pioneer P3DX robot that's made for home use is $40,000. Just the same, if you want to give it a try, it is downloadable for free for non-commercial use, and includes a simulator to try things out on your computer." From the article: "It represents a new effort for the company that has Chairman Bill Gates raving about potential growth in a robotics industry that's already worth an estimated $11 billion a year or more. '[A]s I look at the trends that are now starting to converge, I can envision a future in which robotic devices will become a nearly ubiquitous part of our day-to-day lives,' Gates writes in the January issue of Scientific American. Microsoft is not making robots. Its Robotics Studio is software designed to program the devices to collect data from an array of sensors and perform all manner of functions."

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