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Submission + - FSF 25 years October 3, 1985 (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 25 years of the Free Software Foundation. On this day, 25 years ago, Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation. He had been the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Lab. Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgement or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation. The original license was written by Stallman. Stallman had subsequently written a large number of GNU tools, but the license was his most important contribution.
Businesses

Submission + - What Steve Jobs Learned in the Wilderness

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "According to the mythology surrounding Steve Jobs, he’s the prodigal who returned to Apple in 1997, righted a listing ship and built it into one of the most valuable companies in the world but as Randall Stross writes in the NY Times, after he left Apple in 1985 Steve Jobs spent twelve years in the wilderness and without the lessons Jobs learned during his twelve years of failure at Next, Apple might never have arrived at the pinnacle it has reached today. "The Steve Jobs who returned to Apple was a much more capable leader — precisely because he had been badly banged up," writes Stross. "He had spent 12 tumultuous, painful years failing to find a way to make the new company profitable." For example, Jobs has always been able to attract great talent but one thing he learned before returning to Apple was the necessity of retaining it. In 1992-93, seven of nine Next vice presidents were shown the door or left on their own while one aspect of Apple’s recent story is the stability of the executive team — no curb filled with dumped managers. Another thing Jobs learned from Next was not to try to do everything himself. “He’s the same Steve in his passion for excellence," says Kevin Compton. "but a new Steve in his understanding of how to empower a large company to realize his vision.” Stross concludes that it took 12 dispiriting years, "much bruising, and perspective gained from exile" but if Jobs had stayed at Apple in 1985, his huge success at Apple since 1997 would probably never have happened."
Space

Submission + - U.S. Lab Models Galaxy Cluster Merger (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "The scales are mind-boggling and the physics is cutting edge, so how do you go about simulating the collision of two galactic clusters? Using some of the most powerful computers in the world, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, the Flash Center at the University of Chicago and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have done just that."
Space

Submission + - Brooklyn Father, Son Launch Homemade Spacecraft (wpix.com)

Submitted by Adair
Adair writes: A father and son team from Brooklyn successfully launched a homemade spacecraft nearly 19 miles (around 100,000 feet) above the Earth's surface. The craft was a 19-inch helium-filled weather balloon attached to a Styrofoam capsule that housed an HD video camera and an iPhone. The camera recorded video of its ascent into the stratosphere, its apogee where the balloon reached its breaking point, and its descent back to earth. They rigged a parachute to the capsule to aid in its return to Earth, and the iPhone broadcast its GPS coordinates so they could track it down. The craft landed a mere 30 miles from its launch point in Newburgh, NY, due to a quick ascent and two differing wind patterns. The pair spent 8 months researching and test-flying the craft before launching it in August. Columbia University Professor of Astronomy Marcel Aguera said, "They were very good but also very lucky."
Microsoft

Submission + - USITC could ban Motorola Droid within 18 months (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by FlorianMueller
FlorianMueller writes: In addition to suing Motorola in a district court, Microsoft also lodged a complaint with the US International Trade Commission. The USITC provides a fast track to an injunction: while court cases most often take years, the USITC could ban imports of Motorola Droid phones within about 18 months. Apple's complaint against HTC was also filed with the USITC in addition to a court. Oracle could complain against vendors of Android-based phones to step up pressure on Google. At any rate, Android is caught in a formidable crossfire of patents covering a wide range of technologies.
Iphone

Submission + - Plane Finder iPhone app - aid to terrorist ? (ndtv.com) 1

Submitted by ProgramErgoSum
ProgramErgoSum writes: The Plane Finder AR application, developed by a British firm for the Apple iPhone and Google's Android, allows users to point their phone at the sky and see the position, height and speed of nearby aircraft. It also shows the airline, flight number, departure point, destination and even the likely course-the features which could be used to target an aircraft with a surface-to-air missile, or to direct another plane on to a collision course, the 'Daily Mail' reported. The programme, sold for just 1.79 pounds in the online Apple store, has now been labelled an 'aid to terrorists' by security experts and the US Department of Homeland Security is also examining how to protect airliners.

The new application works by intercepting the so-called Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcasts (ADS-B) transmitted by most passenger aircraft to a new satellite tracking system that supplements or, in some countries, replaces radar.
Education

Submission + - IBM High School to Churn Out IT Pros 2

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: This week, NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the City University of New York and IBM are creating a computer science-focused school in the city that will span grades 9-14 (students leave with an associate's degree). Graduates who pass muster will reportedly be first in line for jobs at IBM. 'The idea is to create a new [educational] model for science, technology, engineering, and math -areas where companies are aggressively hiring,' explained IBM's Stanley Litow.' If you look at hiring requirements, you won't see a huge amount of difference in a lot of entry-level IT jobs.' No word yet on the school colors or whether a uniform will be required. IBM is giving the city $250,000 to create the school, which might have looked pretty generous if that Zuckerberg kid hadn't upped the ante with his $100,000,000 donation.
Crime

Submission + - What's the state of the art of anonymous browsing? 7

Submitted by enter your name
enter your name writes: Most techies have a basic idea of how to stay anonymous when surfing websites. But what should you do when your life may depend on being able to hide your identity and location from the website operators? My mundane sysadmin job has taken a very strange turn recently (which I will not go into, for obvious reasons) and I need to be really, really sure that I can never be identified by the server or content owners of certain websites. I thought I knew what I was doing, using anonymous http proxy websites, google cache, etc. But recently a popup ad appeared on a site and the ad was customized for my exact city. Cookies? Or maybe my browser is somehow telling more than I think it is? And what about embedded content that comes from a different server? Not all anonymous http proxies I've seen can deliver all the content on today's complex websites. So you get either broken web content or links that are not safe to click on.

I'd really like to hear what Slashdot users think are the best practices for anonymous web browsing.
Google

Submission + - Oracle v. Google: All-Out War or Awkward Flirting?

Submitted by msmoriarty
msmoriarty writes: It's about 24 hours after the news of Oracle suing Google broke, so the Web is now filled with follow-up coverage: Google responded by calling the lawsuit "baseless" and vowing to fight; James Gosling, who left Oracle earlier this year, hinted on his blog that he saw this coming; and it seems that everyone (except Simon Phipps) is commenting on everything from what might happen with the lawsuit to what this might mean for the future of Java as a whole, as well as how it could help Microsoft. So is the lawsuit an all-out attack on open source software? Or is Oracle, as a Forbes blogger put it, just an awkward teenager who doesn't quite know how to flirt with Google?
Cellphones

Submission + - magicJack moving to smartphones (businessweek.com)

Submitted by robo45h
robo45h writes: The late night infomercial VoIP company magicJack is moving into the smartphone space. The competition there is really going to be interesting. We have the likes of Skype and other VoIP companies competing against the wireless carriers still selling over-priced voice calls. It's such a big battle that the recent Verizon / Google Proposal specifically excludes (provides a loop-hole for) wireless. This has been brewing since cell phones added data capabilities, but it's coming to a head now.
Censorship

Submission + - Splunk: Worst EULA ever (hacker.dk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Splunk, the loganalyzer tool praised by many in the unix world, seems to have a pretty bad EULA.
Since no one every reads the EULA, they can just stick anything in there and have you sign away basic rights. (like the right to your soul.)
The EULA prohibits publication of benchmarks or even "your evaluation of the software". You must let "auditors" (or as the article says, "Gestapo") into your company and (without them paying for your time) humor them as they go through anything they need.

All that and more can be found in the Splunk EULA, or highlights here: http://blog.hacker.dk/2010/08/splunk-license-review-at-what-price-do-you-run-this-syslog-analyzer/

Submission + - Narco-blogger beats Mexico drug war news blackout (nwsource.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An anonymous, twentysomething blogger is giving Mexicans what they can't get elsewhere — an inside view of their country's raging drug war. Operating from behind a thick curtain of computer security, Blog del Narco in less than six months has become Mexico's go-to Internet site at a time when mainstream media are feeling pressure and threats to stay away from the story. Many postings, including warnings and a beheading, appear to come directly from drug traffickers. Others depict crime scenes accessible only to military or police.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Best Android Phone for Handheld GPS? 1

Submitted by imblum
imblum writes: So my dad's antique handheld GPS unit just went toes up and I was considering replacing it for him with an old Android Smartphone. All he really needs it for is hunting and camping (no navigation), so I don't want to pay for cell or data service. I found the program 'Mobile Atlas Creator' ( http://mobac.dnsalias.org/ ) to download map files onto the SD card, and an app called 'Maverick Lite' to view them. Now all I need is to decide on an Android phone. I was considering a Samsung Behold II ($100~$200 on craigslist), but thought it would be nice to get some input from the slashdot community. It seems like I can get a lot more functionality for the money out of an old Android than I could from a big name handheld GPS. Does this plan sound reasonable? Is there anything I'm overlooking?
The Internet

Submission + - Carriers Fight to Exempt Wireless from Net Neutral (cnn.com)

Submitted by pickens
pickens writes: Fortune Magazine reports that when Google and Verizon brokered a compromise on the definition — or at least, their definition — of net neutrality, there was one glaring carve-out: wireless traffic, which was not covered by the agreement because unlike cable, which is built with high-capacity fiber, a wireless network is built on the theory that just 10% of subscribers will be using the spectrum at the same time and while it only takes a minute for one anime-over-Android addict in a neighborhood to bring down everyone's cell service, it takes three years in some cities for a new cell tower to get approved. "Someone gave a very good example," says Craig Moffett. "'My mother just got a pacemaker that will wirelessly contact the hospital if she suffers from cardiac arrhythmia. Are you telling me it would be illegal to prioritize that traffic over a video of a squirrel on waterskis?" Eventually the carriers will have to make improvements â½Ââ if they have any chance of staying competitive but it won't be cheap and they'll fight any data-increasing net neutrality mandate with every lobbying dollar they have."

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