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Software

Submission + - Windows 7 to sell in UK for half the US price (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the UK, full versions of Windows 7 Home Premium is going to cost less than the half price Americans have to pay for their full version, and in fact less than Americans have to pay just for the upgrade-only edition. Full details and prices were published in an article on Cnet, in which it was concluded that, at least for the time being, Microsoft is honoring the prices it set for the now-discontinued European version of Win7, which did not contain Internet Explorer 8 and was only available as a full-install edition.
Software

Submission + - URL shortener goes community-owned/FOSS (blog.tr.im)

Submitted by
Death Metal
Death Metal writes: "1. We will renounce all ownership interest in the tr.im domain name and donate it to the community. We will work out the legalities of this over the coming weeks, but it will ensure no one is ever able to hijack tr.im URLs in the future. They will always exist, period. Everyone can use tr.im with confidence.

2. We will release the source code used to implement tr.im for anyone to use, help develop, or privately extend as they like. We will release it under the MIT open-source license. It is our sincere hope that every URL shortener becomes as good or better than tr.im, or can learn from our architecture and feature set."
Security

Submission + - Australian Police database lacks root password (theage.com.au) 1

Submitted by Concerned Citizen
Concerned Citizen writes: The Australian Federal Police database has reportedly been hacked, although hacked might be too strong a word for what happens when someone gains access to a mysql database with no root password. Can you be charged with breaking and entering a house that has the door left wide open? Maybe digital trespassing is a better term for this situation.

Comment Re:I like standalone GPS (Score 1) 422

by cronostitan (#28636625) Attached to: Standalone GPS Receivers Going the Way of the Dodo

Nowadays no additional costs are involved for map data anymore - unless you want to spend it.
Have a look at the OpenStreetMap project - http://www.openstreetmap.org/ - there you can get the data (which is partially better than Garmin maps) for free. Routing data is just emerging but already possible. I uploaded the complete world map on my GARMIN GPS 60Cx a couple days ago (you will need a big memory card for that, though)

Comment Re:LaTeX (Score 2, Informative) 338

by cronostitan (#28569479) Attached to: HTML Tags For Academic Printing?

I recently had to implement a proper print-view with CSS covering several pages of print outpu. What I can tell is that it is a pain in the a** - since alot of print-specific CSS attributes are not supported by actual browser-version - Opera being the exception from the sad rule. For example most browser do not support the command to keep divs intact and do the pagebreak automatically before or after the div. We ended up having the user to decide when he needs a page break.

I honestly can understand that someone get frustrated and wants to use a 'better' way.

Submission + - LimeSurvey 1.85RC2 released (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by SF:c_schmitz
SF:c_schmitz writes: We had a great week and lots of feedback for the last RC version so we (the LimeSurvey team) were able to fix alot of important things (yay!) This new RC version is alot more stable and we even managed to implement a couple new things: * A redesigned template editor * Updated appearance of statistics * Caching for statistics graphs - this speeds up repeated statistics up to 90% * Real MS SQL UTF-8 support using ODBTP database driver * New question attribute for multiple options to enforce an input if the user chose \'Other\' * When working with multilingual survey the last tab chosen will be remembered after saving Also to keep LimeSurvey alot more maintainable and making updates easier in the feature we removed the following templates ( these are available now in our file repository instead): * blue_heaven * bubblegum * edgyblue * phpsurveyor * softgreencurves Another change is that the standard-set of the remaining 10 templates in the LimeSurvey package cannot be edited anymore. If you want to edit a template just create a copy - that way there is no possible danger that your template will be overwritten on your next update. Read the detailed change log or download your copy now !

ZigBee Pro, the New Home Automation Standard? 170

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the now-if-only-they-all-worked-together dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Echelon, Microsoft, Intel, Sun and the Electronic Industries Alliance have been trying to create a home automation standard for two decades — to no avail. Now the ZigBee Alliance, proprietor of a low-rate two-way wireless mesh networking technology, says it will prevail. In six weeks, automation vendor Control4, which has about one million ZigBee nodes installed, will flip the switch on the new ZigBee Pro, which promises interoperability among light switches, thermostats, door locks, motorized shades, security systems, remote controls and some 36 million electric meters."

Comment It's their sensorship, not ours. (Score 3, Insightful) 330

by cronostitan (#27253215) Attached to: Activists Use Wikipedia To Test Aussie Net Censors

'Last night, the link became the subject of "warring" between several Wikipedia administrators in the lead up to it's removal, with administrators saying they didn't want to be used to prove a point.'
That seriously sounds like that what German people said when the Nazis deported the Jews.

"I don't want to get involved."

aka

"It's their internet censorship, not ours".

This attitude fails to see that once this censorship has established itself in other countries it will eventually come closer to being a global issue more and more.
There is no point in having freedom and no censorship in your country when all others around you are already gagged and have censored content. The internet community has eventually to realize that they are sitting in the same boat.

Comment Re:gmail != thunderbird & imap (Score 1) 220

by cronostitan (#26638409) Attached to: Offline Gmail Launched

The difference would be that the gmail interface is different to the thunderbird interface and I happen to like the gmail one better?

I prefer the Thunderbird interface - the only thing that really sucks in Thunderbird is the search 'feature'. I find myself opening my gmail account using the webinterface if I want to quickly search a bunch of emails because the Thunderbird search makes me upset everytime.
The Courts

Lori Drew Trial Results In 3 Misdemeanor Convictions 568

Posted by timothy from the justice-or-not dept.
grassy_knoll writes "As a follow up to an earlier story, the Lori Drew 'cyber-bullying' trial has resulted in misdemeanor convictions." grassy_knoll quotes from the AP story as carried by Salon: "The Los Angeles federal court jury on Wednesday rejected felony charges of accessing a computer without authorization to inflict emotional distress on young Megan Meier. However, the jury found defendant Lori Drew guilty of three counts of the lesser offense of accessing a computer without authorization. The jurors could not reach a verdict on a conspiracy count. Prosecutors said Drew violated the MySpace terms of service by conspiring with her young daughter and a business assistant to create a fictitious profile of a teen boy on the MySpace social networking site to harass Megan. Megan, who had been treated for depression, hanged herself in 2006 after receiving a message saying the world would be better without her." Adds reader gillbates: "She now faces up to 3 years in jail and $300,000 in fines — a troubling precedent for anyone who has ever registered with a website under a pseudonym."
Encryption

Encrypted Torrents Growing Fast In the UK 432

Posted by kdawson from the deeply-inspect-all-you-want dept.
angryphase writes "The British Phonographic Institute (the UK's RIAA) has noticed a significant increase in the amount of encrypted torrents — from 4% of torrent traffic a year ago to 40% today. Whether it follows a trend for hiding suspicious activities or an increased awareness of personal privacy is up for (weak) debate. Either way, this change of attitude is catching the eye of ISPs, music industry officials, and enforcement agencies. Matt Phillips, spokesman for the UK record industry trade association explains, 'Our internet investigations team, internet service providers and the police are well aware of encryption technology: it's been around for a long time and is commonplace in other areas of internet crime. It should come as no surprise that if people think they can hide illegal activity they will attempt to.'"
Announcements

Submission + - Finalist announced for OSS award Trophees du Libre

Submitted by cronostitan
cronostitan writes: The "Les Trophées du libre" is an international competition for Open Source Software. With around 260 projects competing and 18 finalists in 6 categories it is the world biggest event to present and honor open source software projects and their achievements. This competition is primarily of interest for independent projects since, in addition to the prizes on offer, it will bring them recognition both amongst potential contributors and a large audience of users and end users. Today Les Trophées du libre announced the most promising projects in fields as diverse as security, scientific software or games and multimedia. The nominated projects are required to present their software personally in front of a Jury near Paris, France at the end of September. The jury is always consisting of famous open source representatives — for example during the last years Richard Stallman and Mark Shuttleworth were chairmain of the Jury, this year Georg C. F. Greve, founder of the Free Software Foundation, will take this role.
Space

Crater From 1908 Tunguska Blast Found 192

Posted by kdawson from the fire-came-by dept.
MaineCoasts writes "A team of scientists from the Marine Science Institute in Bologna claims to have found the crater left by the aerial blast of a comet or asteroid in 1908 in the Tunguska region of Siberia. The blast flattened 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest, but to date no remains or crater have been found. This has left open the question of what kind of object made the impact. The team believes that, contrary to previous studies, nearby Lake Cheko is only one century old and 'If the body was an asteroid, a surviving fragment may be buried beneath the lake. If it was a comet, its chemical signature should be found in the deepest layers of sediments.' The team's findings are based on a 1999 expedition to Tunguska and appeared in the August issue of the journal Terra Nova."
The Courts

Submission + - Grand Jury Subpoenas Seeks Online-User Info (editorandpublisher.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A grand jury in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA has issued a subpoena for detailed information about the viewing habits of readers of the online version of the "Net Times" Newspaper.

The request is for detailed information concerning the visits of everyone who has accessed the site since Jan 1, 2004.

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