Emerssso - Slashdot User

Submission + - Terrorists use Google Earth to target missiles (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by

arikb

on Thursday October 25, 2007 @05:24AM

arikb writes: "Seems like terrorists are using Google Earth to target their missiles more accurately at civilian targets. "We obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city centre and sensitive areas," Khaled Jaabari, the group's commander in Gaza who is known as Abu Walid, told the Guardian""

Submission + - Anti file-sharing laws consider in the UK

Submitted by Phil Ware on Thursday October 25, 2007 @05:22AM

Phil Ware writes: The UK government could legislate to crack down on illegal file-sharers, a senior politician has told the BBC's iPM programme.

Lord Triesman, the parliamentary Under Secretary for Innovation, Universities and Skills, said intellectual property theft would not be tolerated. "If we can't get voluntary arrangements we will legislate," he said.

The comments could prove controversial with privacy advocates and internet service providers.
Lord Triesman called on internet service providers to take a "more activist role" in the problem of illegal file-sharing.
Get the news here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7059881.stm

So, what happens when you use https instead of http???

Submission + - South Africa adopts ODF as a government standard (tectonic.co.za)

Submitted by ais523 on Thursday October 25, 2007 @05:20AM

ais523 writes: As reported by Tectonic, South Africa's new Mininimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in government (MIOS) explain the new rules for which data formats will be used by the government; according to that document, all people working for the South African government must be able to read OpenDocument Format documents by March, and the government aims to use one of its three approved document formats (UTF-8 or ASCII plain text, CSV, or ODF) for all its published documents by the end of 2008. A definition of 'open standard' is also included that appears to rule out OOXML at present (requiring 'multiple implementations', among other things that may also rule it out).

Submission + - Drugs That can Crush the Defenses of Tuberculosis

Submitted by PennySillin on Thursday October 25, 2007 @04:55AM

PennySillin writes: One of the reasons that tuberculosis is hard to defeat because it produces an enzyme that can destroy many antibiotics. To solve that problem, some doctors have turned to drugs that gum up the protective molecule — leaving the deadly bacterium defenseless. Several of these medications are already on the market to treat other infections, but until now, it was not clear how they work or which ones are best. Using an instrument called a mass spectrometer, researchers showed that the FDA-approved medication clavulanate becomes permanently bonded to BlaC, an enzyme that chops up antibiotics from the penicillin family. Enzyme kinetics experiments, tests that measure how quickly a protein does work and how effectively chemicals can bring it to a halt, showed that two other drugs, sulbactam and tazobactam, only have temporary effects.

Submission + - IBM Backpedals on No-Business-Method-Patent Pledge

Submitted by

theodp

on Thursday October 25, 2007 @02:54AM

theodp writes: "IBM positioned itself as quite the patent reformer as it dropped a pure-PR-poison claim for a US patent on offshoring US jobs. But the AP reports that Big Blue has no intention of giving up its claim for a patent on profiting from patents. An IBM spokesman acknowledged that 'Extracting Value From a Portfolio of Assets' does indeed describe a business method patent, which Big Blue publicly professes to loathe, but argued that it passes IBM's significant technical merit smell-test for patents. Take a whiff and judge for yourself!"

Submission + - Vista vs. the Gibbon 4

Submitted by ricegf on Monday October 22, 2007 @12:04AM

ricegf writes: If you had 7 computers running various versions of Windows and Linux, on which machine would you choose to do most of your work? Rupert Goodwins describes his experience thus: 'So here's the funny thing. I've used Windows since 1.0. I've lived through the bad times of Windows/386 and ME, and the good times of NT 3.51 and 2K. I know XP if not backwards, then with a degree of familiarity that only middle-aged co-dependents can afford each other. Then how come I'm so much more at home with Ubuntu than Vista?'

Submission + - Canadians blocked from comedycentral.com (digg.com) 1

Submitted by Syn on Sunday October 21, 2007 @11:33PM

Syn writes: Any Canadian attempting to access Comedy Central's website will be redirected to The Comedy Network's site, the Canadian equivalent of Comedy Central, and vice versa. The only way to bypass the block is through a proxy. Since both website hosts many videos of their shows, they might have been forced to establish the block because of airing rights to US and Canadian viewers. I have long shunned conventional TV for the freedom of choice the internet offers, but is the liberty we enjoy now destined to disappear?

Submission + - The sixty-five dollar click (nytimes.com) 2

Submitted by PessimisticLitigator on Sunday October 21, 2007 @09:29PM

PessimisticLitigator writes: Adam Liptak wrote a great article, in the New York Times, on how competition in the legal field is driving the cost per click of Google ad to remarkable levels Phrases such as "Oakland personal injury lawyer," "Asbestos attorney," and "mesothelioma attorney Texas" are bringing in between $58 and $66 per click. Is this an example of commonsense left at the door, or is it a brilliant use of technology? It seems like the prior to me.

There is an interesting side note where the article calls Google a middle aged technology, and it cites the historically slow adaptation of technology by attorneys as evidence.

Submission + - Music Industry Brain Damage - The 1

Submitted by mrneutron2003 on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @05:44AM

mrneutron2003 writes: Just when you thought stupid ideas had become an endangered species, the RIAA presses forward and shows us how naive we were. The RIAA has officially backed a move by the recording industry to reintroduce the CD single. Populated with two songs and a "ringtone", this brilliantly clueless idea is to be marketed as a "ringle", complete with an even more clueless retail price of $6-7 per CD. Apart from the fact the industry hasn't agreed on how the ringtone is to be redeemed (Sony BMG, the initial proponent of the idea...is this any suprise....is the exception here), the pricing puts it way out of the league of legitimate digital music downloads. http://www.fastsilicon.com/off-the-wall/music-industry-brain-damage-the-ringle.html?Itemid=60

Submission + - Radio Frequencies Release Hyrdogen in Salt Water (sfgate.com) 2

Submitted by SuperMallen on Monday September 10, 2007 @07:11PM

SuperMallen writes: According to this AP article, a cancer researcher in Erie, PN has made a discovery whereby firing certain radio frequencies into salt water causes the salt water gives up its hydrogen, which can then be burned. Considering that salt water is the most abundant resource on the planet, the long-term fuel implications are vast.

Submission + - German ISP blocks online pornography (heise.de)

Submitted by huha on Monday September 10, 2007 @06:54PM

huha writes: German ISP Arcor has recently begun blocking access to foreign online pornography pages. According to the German IT news portal Heise, this is a voluntary action taken due to legal actions from a German porn site operator. The blocks will be in effect until the legal dispute is settled. The dispute concerns having the ISP block sites not meeting German standards for age verification for viewing certain content, e.g. online pornography.

Submission + - Buzz Aldrin says Lisa Nowak should be admired

Submitted by

mcgrew (sm62704)

on Monday September 10, 2007 @04:15PM

mcgrew (sm62704) writes: "The AP is reporting that Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step foot on the moon, says that astronaut Lisa Nowak, arrested at Orlando International Airport on charges of attempted kidnapping, battery, attempted vehicle burglary with battery, and destruction of evidence should be admired, "but not excused".

They quote him as saying "I think Nowak should be admired for traveling across the country at night and not getting out of her car to put in gas or go to the restroom. It is not excusable, but it is understandable for an achiever to fall into a trap."

I'm glad I'm not an achiever..."

Submission + - Action figures vs. riot police in Singapore

Submitted by

reviewsbyp

on Monday September 10, 2007 @05:51AM

reviewsbyp writes: ""A protest action by a group of Singaporeans with Japanese anime figurines such as the 5-inch tall Ultramen, robots and monsters with placards met some real-life police in the city-state." (via Yahoo news). Check out photos of the protesting action figures (complete with mini-pickets!)

This was a protest because of the RIAA-style takedown of downloaders by anime distributor ODEX. Ironically, the Singapore courts have decided that ODEX has "no right of civil action" against illegal downloaders because they are neither the copyright holders nor exclusive licensees of the anime."

Submission + - AMD and Novel develops open source graphic drivers (amd.com)

Submitted by

Damien Merenne

on Monday September 10, 2007 @05:46AM

Damien Merenne writes: "AMD officially stated that they will develop open source graphic drivers and that they will partner with Novel for doing so. Hardware specs for some ATI Radeon models and a development framework are expected to be released this week:

The week of September 10th, AMD plans to provide an open source information and development package supporting the ATI Radeon(TM) HD 2000 series as well as ATI Radeon(TM) X1000 series of graphics processing units (GPU) on Linux desktops. To accelerate this initiative, AMD partnered with Novell's SuSE Linux engineering team. The initial release includes source code and hardware specifications to engage the Open Source community for collaboration on 2D graphics drivers. Over the following months, AMD will work with the community to enable 2D, 3D and video playback acceleration to provide the best possible experience on the Linux desktop. This strategy complements and enhances AMD's existing support of the Linux community through its regularly released high performance Catalyst driver.
"

Submission + - Today's OS User Interfaces: All Fluff, No Function (osweekly.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10, 2007 @05:17AM

An anonymous reader writes: OSWeekly.com brings forth a good point. Today's operating systems are all focusing on user interfaces and how to one up each other, while blatantly ignoring functionality. Why? The article continues with: "I think there needs to be a balance here. To some degree, developers and users alike must learn to place less importance on the appearance of an OS and a little more on new and improved ways of making sure painfully obvious flaws are being dealt with. To be fair, this has generally been done with some success, but lately it feels like this has been falling further and further by the wayside.

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