i_am_socket - Slashdot User

Submission + - Time for IBM to set Lotus Notes Free (lotus.com)

Submitted by

hydra

on Saturday December 15, 2007 @12:45PM

hydra writes: "Ok, upon seeing the call for IBM to set OS/2 free, we thought we'd jump on the bandwagon and ask IBM to go Open Source with Lotus Notes/Domino. Ever since they acquired Lotus Inc and Notes they have marginalised its potential, choosing rather to chop the brand about so it fits in with the exclusive, yet uncool blue and white stripes. Notes was once a ferocious monster waiting to be unleashed, but without Ray Ozzie & co for direction it became a shadow of its real potential — "A real Microsoft Killer", was hung out to dry. So we say, unleash the monster IBM and let the open source community feed its hunger and make this Linux Demon "A real Microsoft Killler" again..."

Submission + - Giant black holes power highest-energy cosmic rays

Submitted by

mcgrew (sm62704)

on Friday November 09, 2007 @03:22PM

mcgrew (sm62704) writes: "New Scientist says

The finding, from a telescope array 10 times the size of Paris, solves a long-standing mystery about the origins of the most energetic cosmic rays that strike the Earth's atmosphere....

[T]he origins of the highest-energy particles, which travel within a whisker of the speed of light, have been puzzling. A single proton can have as much energy as a tennis ball served at 100 kilometres per hour.

Astronomers found it difficult to explain how particles are accelerated to such enormous speeds.
The article says these new findings herald "the beginning of cosmic ray astronomy"."

Submission + - Russia to Build New Spacecraft by 2020 (techluver.com)

Submitted by

Tech.Luver

on Friday November 09, 2007 @01:26PM

Tech.Luver writes: "Russia has launched a project to create a new generation of spacecraft and boosters, the head of national space administration said on Friday, making clear that they would not appear on orbit before 2020. "A tender to design a new booster and spaceship has been announced," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov as saying. Leadership in space exploration was an issue of national pride in the Soviet Union, which was the first to launch a satellite and a human into space. Although badly hit in the years of post-Soviet political and economic turmoil, the space sector remains one of a few where Russia remains competitive and on which it pins hopes to diversify its economy heavily reliant on oil and gas exports. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/09/russia-to-build-new-spacecraft-by-2020/ )"

Submission + - Apocalypse Soon? Naval Group to Discuss Extinction 2

Submitted by Maria Williams on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @06:47AM

Maria Williams writes: Wired says Should the U.S. military be thinking more about asteroid shields, lifeshield bunkers and antimatter weapon shields? Oh, and an alien shield.

If these defensive systems/catastrophic scenarios are something you feel the Navy should be pondering, visit the Lifeboat Foundation's plea for donations. Lifeboat Foundation is dedicated "to helping humanity survive existential risks." The Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group contacted the foundation because it wants its future leaders to have the "opportunity to gain insights into the activities of the Lifeboat Foundation and have discussion about different programs you have to help 'safeguard humanity'."

Submission + - CAPTCHA broken - thanks to a virtual stripper (bbc.co.uk) 3

Submitted by

Dynamoo

on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @05:27AM

Dynamoo writes: "A few months ago there was some speculation that spammers had managed to break the security CAPTCHA for many webmail systems and were using them to spread viruses and junk email. The problem was that no-one could actually demonstrate a mechanism to defeat the security code.

However, an novel approach has been documented by the BBC, suggesting that a virtual stripper application may be partly to blame. The woman in the application progressively undresses if the user types in the correct CAPTCHA code.. a code that is actually being generated by the Yahoo! mail security check. The application itself is a trojan, dubbed TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A by Trend."

Submission + - New brushless generator for wind turbines (physorg.com)

Submitted by

sterlingda

on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @01:00AM

sterlingda writes: "A research team from the University of Cambridge have developed a new generator technology for the wind turbine industry to the point of commercial exploitation, for application in a wide spectrum of wind turbines ranging from multi-megawatt systems for wind farms down to domestic micro turbines."

Submission + - How to Dodge the Chinese Internet Censor (eweek.com)

Submitted by

eweekhickins

on Wednesday October 17, 2007 @10:44AM

eweekhickins writes: "A report written by a tech worker in China describes the pervasive censorship, abetted by ample manpower and funding estimated at $27 billion in U.S. dollars. The author, Mr. Tao, also writes that plenty of Chinese are finding ways to resist censorship, and offers tips on how to keep evading Big GeGe (that's older brother). Not surprisingly, self-censorship is very prevalent. Also not surprisingly, the authorities are starting to catch on to things like RSS feeds. It's another race for survival between the tiny mammals and the lumbering dinosaurs."

Submission + - Bill would let ID theft victims seek restitution (news.com)

Submitted by

verybadradio

on Wednesday October 17, 2007 @09:57AM

verybadradio writes: "A bipartisan bill that would let victims of identity theft seek restitution for money and time they spent repairing their credit history was introduced on Tuesday in the Senate.

The legislation would also give federal prosecutors more tools to combat identity theft and cybercrime, according to sponsors Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania."

Submission + - Technology's 10 most mortifying moments (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

jcatcw

on Wednesday October 17, 2007 @09:31AM

jcatcw writes: "Tech history is full of moments that make you say 'ouch.' Computerworld's top ten include three Microsoft mortifiers: Gates' presentation at Comdex Spring in 1998, Ballmer's dance routine, and Vista's speech recognition troubles. Other items include the Australian government's project to provide a so-called porn filter to parents that was cracked in an half hour by a 16-year-old (hormones plus brains creates a very powerful force) and Sony's rootkit debacle. So far, Gates and the BSOD is winning the reader poll."

Submission + - US PTO and Politics (ipww.com)

Submitted by

bizwriter

on Friday August 24, 2007 @08:56AM

bizwriter writes: "This is a story that I actually wrote for IP Law & Business. Many in the patent community are angry — some close to frothing at the mouth — because they contend that top management at the Patent and Trademark Office was chosen for political reasons and is actually unqualified under current US law. But the question is whether, given all the issues and restrictions facing the PTO, anyone could adequately do the job? Recently changes in patent rules has only exacerbated the controversy."

Submission + - Lunar Eclipse Next Tuesday Morning (space.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Friday August 24, 2007 @07:33AM

Raver32 writes: "Tuesday morning, Aug. 28 brings us the second total lunar eclipse of 2007. Those living in the Western Hemisphere and eastern Asia will be able to partake in at least some of this sky show. The very best viewing region for viewing this eclipse will fall across the Pacific Rim, including the West Coast of the United States and Canada, as well as Alaska, Hawaii, New Zealand and eastern Australia. All these places will be able to see the complete eclipse from start to finish. Europeans will miss out on the entire show, as the Moon will be below the horizon during their mid and late morning hours."

Submission + - Invasion of the jivin' nano-shrooms (arxivblog.com)

Submitted by

KentuckyFC

on Friday August 24, 2007 @05:24AM

KentuckyFC writes: "A pendulum converts the constant force of gravity into an oscillation — a useful trick by anyone's standards. But nanotechnologists have yet to match it — they just haven't been able to build nano-oscillators. Now arxivblog.com reports that a group at the University of the Madison have made mushroom-shaped nanopillars that oscillate in a constant DC field, like metronomes."

Submission + - New Rules Released by the United States Patent Off

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24, 2007 @03:50AM

An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Federal Register of August 21, 2007 published the new rules in a 129-page fine-print document:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/sol/notices/7 2fr46716.pdf

Even the "high-level summary" is over 100 pages of PowerPoint slides:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/dapp/opla/pre sentation/ccfrslides.pdf

Submission + - India shows thumbs-down to Microsoft's OOXML (indiatimes.com)

Submitted by

kdrlx

on Thursday August 23, 2007 @10:05PM

kdrlx writes: "India on Thursday gave Microsoft a thumbs-down in the war of standards for office documents. "We unanimously agree on the disapproval of OOXML with comments. The same will be submitted to ISO," National Informatics Centre head and BIS technical committee chairperson Nita Verma said after a marathon meeting that lasted over six hours.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/War_of_formats _India_shows_thumbs-down_to_Microsoft/articleshow/ 2305780.cms"

Submission + - Release of Universal Address Enhanced Google Earth (nacgeo.com)

Submitted by

Lixin Zhou

on Thursday August 16, 2007 @04:29PM

Lixin Zhou writes: "NAC Enhanced Google Earth Flies You to Natural Wonders with Universal Addresses August 20, 2007, Toronto, Canada, NAC Geographic Products Inc. announced the release of the NAC Enhanced Google Earth (NAC Earth) with a new user interface to bridge Natural Area Codes (NAC) and Google Earth through Google Earth's COM APIs to provide a truely language-independent, geographic coverage complete and highly efficient way for users to fly around, search nearby businesses and get driving directions on Google Earth no matter a destination is a famous museum with street address or a newly found natural wonder without steet address.

Virtual sightseeing on Google Earth has become popular and there are many websites which publish KML files to show tourist attractions on Google Earth. It's a great experience that users can fly to and enjoy all famous and spectacular sceneries instantly, economically and environment-friendly. However, all main stream media (televisions, radios, newspapers and magazines) without hyperlink capabilities are rarely active in publishing the exact location information for all these natural wonders and historical sites due to the inefficiency of the longitude/latitude coordinates — the only way currently supported on Google Earth to represent any given location on the earth.

Now NAC Earth has solved this problem, and users can simply input a short Universal Address (such as H5Q2 R48Q) to get to any scene in the world (such as Eiffel Tower in Paris) as they want immediately on the NAC Enhanced Google Earth. A Universal Address is an eight or ten character NAC which can be used to represent both an area and a location anywhere in the world. A two character NAC can specify any area about 1000 km in length and width like a province, a four character NAC represents a 30 km long and wide area like a city approximately, a six character NAC is roughly equivalent to any square kilometer area on the earth, an eight character NAC can uniquely identify every house or building in the world, and a ten character NAC can pinpoint any location in the world to the resolution of one meter.

With the Natural Area Codes, people can easily represent any areas and locations, from countries, provinces, national conservation parks, cities, stadiums, museums, universities, hospitals, shopping malls, railway stations and docks to hotels, restaurants, post offices, street lights, fire hydrants, sewage exits, electric wirepoles and trees, and from locations of crimes scenes, accidents, pollutions, underwater wreckages and news events to locations of your dating benches, BBQ tables, camping sites and fishing spots. There are already many NAC enhanced products and services available such as:

Locamagic — a NAC enhanced GPS cellphone application providing positioning, locating, navigating, local business searching, real-time tracking and real-time monitoring services.

Universal Addresses Lookup Service and Free Geocoding Service providing Universal Addresses for any locations in the world.

NAC Enhanced Google Maps mapping Universal Addresses of any locations in the world on high resolution satellite images.

NAC Enhanced Google Local displaying the Universal Addresses of all nearby businesses of any location.

NAC Enhanced Google Driving Directions providing driving directions between the Universal Addresses of any locations.

NAC Smart Tag DLL automatically highlighting all the Universal Addresses on Outlook emails, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and Access databases and linking them to their corresponding detail satellite images.

With the Universal Addresses and NAC Earth, all main stream media (televisions, radios, newspapers and magazines) now can easily participate the discussion of tourist attractions, natural disasters and other important events anywhere in the world as effectively as online websites by publishing their Universal Addresses together with the reviews and reports to make their audience or readers able to get to the "scenes" instantly on NAC Earth. They can also publish hot virtual sightseeing destinations gracefully on their travel sections daily or weekly thanks to the efficiency and beauty of the Universal Addresses. Here are some examples of Universal Addresses:
Point of Interest Universal Address Acropolis, GreeceJZ9G P9TP Arch of TriumphH5SX R497 Arecibo Observatory9F3J L1PL Buckingham PalaceGZM7 RKH3 CACTUS site57WF NSBR CN Tower, Toronto8CHX Q86D Colosseum, RomeJ16W PZFH Eiffel Tower, ParisH5Q2 R48Q Forbidden City, BeijingSNZ PMK Point of Interest Universal Address Great Wall at BadalingSN0H PPR4 The Millennium DomeH00 RKH Mount EverestQ797 MMVR Niagara Falls8D9 Q5C Saint Peter's Basilica and SquareJ148 PZHB Statue of Liberty8SVM PRFC Sydney Opera HouseWL13 9BPG Versailles Palace, FranceH592 R40N Washington Monument8KDB PGFD NAC Earth can also help police officers, journalists, road inspectors, environment monitors, sales professionals, real estate agents and school teachers to efficiently navigate in the virturl world provided by Google Earth.

NAC Earth can be downloaded here and installed on all computers with Windows OS free of charge.

About NAC Geographic Products Inc.
Incorporated in 1995 in Toronto, Canada, NAC Geographic Products Inc. is a world's leading company in geographic information technologies. In addition to the Natural Area Coding System, the company has developed many important GIS software products and provides real-time geo-services (geocoding, reverse-geocoding, mapping, driving directions, nearby business searching and traffic information) for web applications and wireless location based services.

CONTACT
Lixin Zhou
PR Manager
Tel: +1 416 496 6110
Email: lzhou@nacgeo.com
Web: www.nacgeo.com

Keywords
Universal Address, NAC, Google Earth, Driving Directions, Google Maps, Google Local Search, Google, Navigation, Driving Directions, Search Engine, Mapping, GIS, WEBGIS, Geocode, Geocoding, LBS, GPS, Location Based Service, Navigation, Locating, Tracking, Searching, Wireless, Cellphone, Map Grid, Geography, Geographic Technology, Geographic Coordinates, Longitude, Latitude, Property Identifier, E-911"

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