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Censorship

Submission + - Scientology critic arrested after 6 years

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "Friday police arrested 64-year-old Keith Henson. In 2000 after picketing a Scientology complex, he was arrested as a threat because of a joke Usenet post about "Tom Cruise Missiles." He fled to Canada after being found guilty of "interfering" with a religion, and spent the next 6 years living as a fugitive. Besides being a digital encryption and free speech advocate, he's one of the original Burr-Brown/Texas Instruments researchers and a co-founder of the Space Colony movement."
Censorship

Submission + - Google censors blog posts for NZ Government

Submitted by ESarge
ESarge writes: Google has removed some posts from a blog at the request of the New Zealand Government. The blog, CYFSWatch, purports to name and shame the actions of social workers working for Child, Youth & Family Service (CYFS), the national child protection agency. The blog has been controversial because it asks people to post addresses and personal details of individual social workers. For editor only: I suggest that the URL not be posted. The blog is at http://cyfswatch.blogspot.com/. Actual post is at http://cyfswatch.blogspot.com/2007/02/google-moves -on-behalf-of-new-zealand.html. This is being reported on Radio New Zealand National — the equivalent of NPR.
Linux

Linux Kernel 2.6.20 Released 240

Posted by Zonk from the enjoy-your-new-penguin dept.
diegocgteleline.es writes "After two months of development, Linux 2.6.20 has been released. This release includes two different virtualization implementations: KVM: full-virtualization capabilities using Intel/AMD virtualization extensions and a paravirtualization implementation usable by different hypervisors. Additionally, 2.6.20 includes PS3 support, a fault injection debugging feature, UDP-lite support, better per-process IO accounting, relative atime, relocatable x86 kernel, some x86 microoptimizations, lockless radix-tree readside, shared pagetables for hugetbl, and many other things. Read the list of changes for more details."
Data Storage

Submission + - Database file system - do any useful ones exist?

Submitted by
sammyp42
sammyp42 writes: "I did a very basic and preliminary search for database file systems. I saw a lot of articles and postings about the benefits and advantages of DBFS's, but I couldn't find any projects that were trying to implement a DBFS. I am very interested in either: a) starting my own open source project to implement a DBFS, or b) get invovled with some existing project. My goal here is to create something that will ultimately have an advanced file explorer view on top that will help people sort, store and archive their files and data (data including RAW data, not just application data) more easily; basic application support (Office, Media apps, etc...) is essential, but not the primary focus for initial deployment. Making my parents, relatives and friends computing lives easier is my primary goal. WinFS seems to be headed in this direction, but it's too proprietary for my taste, plus I don't work for MS (or any other corporate entities developing such FS's). I think the OSI model is the way to go here. Anyone here can point me to anything worthwhile? If you have similar interests, let me know and maybe we can organize something together."
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 95 and Vista: Why 2007 Won't Be Like 1995

Submitted by DECS
DECS writes: What if Microsoft threw a party, and nobody came? Despite its best efforts to create excitement for Windows Vista at release parties held in a variety of retail stores this last week, nobody seems to care about the product. Windows 95 and Vista: Why 2007 Won't Be Like 1995 explains why — just over a decade ago — things went very differently at the release of Windows 95, and what's killing Microsoft's party this time around.
Media

Submission + - Scientific Journals Say Access Equals Censorship

Submitted by
bcrowell
bcrowell writes: "Nature is reporting on e-mails leaked from the Association of American Publishers, which considers itself "under siege" because of NIH and congressional efforts to get all NIH-funded scientific papers posted for free on PubMed Central. The AAP has hired a PR firm, which is advising them to spread the message that "Public access equals government censorship," and that traditional for-profit print publishing is the same thing as peer peer review."
Networking

Submission + - Open Source Uses for Extra Bandwidth?

Submitted by
yourexhalekiss
yourexhalekiss writes: "I recently signed up for a website hosting plan from a relatively well-known host. After about a month or so of use, I've discovered that I'm using approximately 0.5 gigabyte of bandwidth per month, or 0.5% of my total monthly allowance. Are there open source projects out there that could benefit from my donated bandwidth? I know everyone needs mirrors for one thing or another, but how do I know who needs content mirrored, and what's the best way to get in touch with them? Is there some sort of online clearinghouse for donated bandwidth, or open source projects that rely on donated bandwidth to operate?"
Supercomputing

Submission + - Where are all the cool cell processor hacks?

Submitted by
edarmoc
edarmoc writes: "I chose to file this "ask-slashdot" under the category "supercomputing" because essentially that is what the cell processor is capable of becoming. It has already been demonstrated that linux is capable of running on the PS3 [video]. That itself is pretty pretty cool, and IBM is doing their own fun stuff with the blade server. So from what I understand, the cell is designed such that the PS3, Blade server, and even a cellphone with a cell processor could all link and act as one "super" computer. I'm guessing that the cell cellphone is a few years away, but with linux already running on PS3s in the wild, why haven't I heard about more cool stuff being done with the cell processor?"
Google

Google Sought To Hide Political Dealmaking 283

Posted by Zonk from the they're-slipping-to-true-neutral dept.
A blog entry by Michael Kanellos at ZDNet links to and expands upon an article in the Charlotte Observer. Last year Google was apparently throwing its weight around in North Carolina, seeking tax breaks from state and local legislators. When the company didn't get what it wanted pressure was brought to bear on legislative aides, journalists, and politicians. The search giant was especially touchy about keeping the negotiations secret: "Executives didn't want anybody even to mention the company's name for fear that competitors could learn of its plans. Most involved with the negotiations were required to sign nondisclosure agreements ... That posed challenges for elected officials, charged with conducting the public's business in the open. As the tax measure wended its way through the legislature, some lawmakers began linking it to Google." The results of this deal are extremely lucrative for both sides. Google brought some $600 million in investment and as many as 200 jobs to the state, and legislation enacted with Google's help is projected to save the company some $89 million in taxes over 30 years.
Programming

Submission + - A new way to find code

Submitted by tabandmountaindew
tabandmountaindew writes: Too much time is wasted re-implementing code that someone else has already done, for the sole reason its faster than finding the other code. Previous source code search engine, such as google codesearch and krugle, only considered individual files on there own, leading to poor quality results; making them only useful when the amount of time to re-implement was extremely high.According to a recent newsforge article a fledgling source-code search engine All The Code is aiming to change all of this. By looking at code, not just on its own, but also how it is used, it is able to return more relevant results. This seems like just what we need to unify the open-source community, leading to an actual common repository of unique code, and ending the cycle of unnecessary reimplementing.
OS X

Submission + - Apple has Daylight Saving wrong in parts of Canada

Submitted by unrulymob
unrulymob writes: Mac OS X 10.4.8 has the start of Daylight Saving wrong in some Canadian timezones — Pacifc and Mountain at least. Linux distros (RedHat anyway), Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have all released patches that correct for the earlier start of Daylight Saving Time in Canada/Pacific and Canada/Mountain — but Apple thinks it got timezones correct last year. "zdump -v Canada/Pacific|grep 2007" shows PDT starting on April 1st — but it starts 3 weeks earlier — on March 11th. I called them under my MacBook 90 days of free support — but got a little bit of condescension from the support guy (and no updated zoneinfo files to date). I could chose to run under America/Los_Angeles and it would work. Maybe if I'd bucked up for AppleCare they would have listened?
Space

Submission + - The sun is made of iron.

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: There is growing evidence from the field of heliosiesmology that the sun possesses a significant stratification layer at a very shallow depth from the top of the photosphere. This new data suggests that the stratified iron surface is covered by a relatively thin veneer of plasma layers. http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/
Security

Submission + - Dolphin Stadium Site Compromised to Deliver Trojan

Submitted by
MrQuentin
MrQuentin writes: "ExtremeTech reports that the website of Dolphin Stadium (where the Superbowl will take place on Sunday) has been compromised. The homepage will execute malicious Javascript code that delivers a remote exploit to Microsoft Windows users, according to findings by Websense Security Labs."

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