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Enlightenment

Submission + - Video Games Train A Better Surgeon!

Submitted by
Phooey42
Phooey42 writes: "Reuters is reporting today that Surgeons who play video games are more skilled at laparoscopic surgery. From the article, "Playing video games appears to help surgeons with skills that truly count: how well they operate using a precise technique." It continues to say that, "Out of 33 surgeons from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York that participated in the study, the nine doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before." Sounds like every hospital needs a Wii with Trauma Center: Second Opinion."
Windows

Vista Security — Too Little Too Late 483

Posted by kdawson from the five-years-work dept.

Thomas Greene of The Register has a fairly comprehensive review of Vista and IE7 user security measures. The verdict is: better but not adequate, and mostly an attempt to shift blame onto the user when things go wrong. From the review: "[Vista is] a slightly more secure version than XP SP2. There are good features, and there are good ideas, but they've been implemented badly. The old problems never go away: too many networking services enabled by default; too many owners running their boxes as admins and downloading every bit of malware they can get their hands on."

Red Hat Software

Submission + - Eric S. Raymond switches from Fedora to Ubuntu

Submitted by kRemit
kRemit writes: Eric S. Raymond announced that he switched from Fedora Core to Ubuntu Edgy Eft for his workstation on the Fedora dev mailing list (https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list /2007-February/msg01006.html), because of numerous issues ranging from dependency-hell to the "culture of Fedora" — especially the apparent decision to give up the struggle for desktop-marketshare.
Robotics

Submission + - Bill Gates: A Robot in Every Home

Submitted by icehart85
icehart85 writes: Imagine being present at the birth of a new industry. It is an industry based on groundbreaking new technologies, wherein a handful of well-established corporations sell highly specialized devices for business use and a fast-growing number of start-up companies produce innovative toys, gadgets for hobbyists and other interesting niche products. But it is also a highly fragmented industry with few common standards or platforms. Projects are complex, progress is slow, and practical applications are relatively rare. In fact, for all the excitement and promise, no one can say with any certainty when — or even if — this industry will achieve critical mass. If it does, though, it may well change the world. Of course, the paragraph above could be a description of the computer industry during the mid-1970s, around the time that Paul Allen and I launched Microsoft. But what I really have in mind is something much more contemporary: the emergence of the robotics industry, which is developing in much the same way that the computer business did 30 years ago.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Eric S. Raymond Ditches Fedora/Redhat for Ubuntu

Submitted by exeme
exeme writes: Eric S. Raymond has had a major dummy spit on the Fedora-devel mailing list, announcing that he is ditching Fedora/Red Hat after 13 years of use for Ubuntu. Reasons sighted include governance problems, problems with RPM and Fedora's lack of interest in the Linux desktop market. Eric even mentions Ubuntu parent company Canonicals recent deal with Linspire and it's Click n' Run software which will soon make proprietary codecs and legal DVD playback available to Ubuntu users, for a price.
Censorship

Submission + - YouTube permanently bans Gisburne, changes story

Submitted by
mijkal
mijkal writes: "YouTube has told atheist member Nick Gisburne that he is now permanently banned from the site. This stems from his posting of a video slideshow of quotes from the Quran. Originally YouTube said it was because of 'inappropriate content', but now it has changed its story and is claiming copyright infringement because it has a soundtrack (nevermind that hundreds of lip-synch videos as well as official music videos readily available on YouTube). Had Nick known this was the reason to begin with (YouTube admits it made a mistake), he wouldn't have reposted the video (or encouraged others to do the same). YouTube has decide to evoke the DMCA and its '3 strikes' policy, and is trying to reassure us all that the content has nothing to do with the banning of a certain unnamed account, but rather because of recurring copyright infringement. YouTube is also covering its tracks by changing the reason the videos were removed. All of his videos from all of his accounts have been removed, and anyone who's spent some time on YouTube and seen Nick's videos should clearly see this policy is not routinely executed, so why is Gisburne being unfairly targeted here? Given the context, it seems Gisburne is being treated rather harshly by the YouTube censors. (And just to nip this in the bud, yes, YouTube has the right to censor; and we all have the right to call YouTube on it when we feel its unfair and YouTube can change its policy or we can move on; no one's equating this with government censorship.)"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft blunder: we're sorry for serving malware

Submitted by
Slinky Sausage
Slinky Sausage writes: "One for the "can't imagine Google ever doing this" files... Microsoft has admitted to and apologised for serving malware via its Windows Live Messenger software and MSN website network.

The Windows-only malware slipped under the radar disguised as a banner ad. Microsoft has now pledged to review its processes for accepting advertising to ensure other undesirables don't use Microsoft ad space for malware distribution.

APCMag.com has screenshots of the malware download in action."
The Courts

Submission + - Warez Leader Faces 10 Years in Jail

Submitted by Lennart
Lennart writes: From the article:

After spending nearly 3 years in a detention center fighting his extradition from Australia, a leader of notorious warez group 'DrinkorDie' was yesterday arraigned before a U.S. District Court to face charges of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of actual criminal copyright infringement. If found guilty he faces 10 years in jail & $500,000 fine.
Enlightenment

Submission + - New Energy Source - Organic Modules

Submitted by
QuatumCrypto
QuatumCrypto writes: "Approximately 90% power generation involves burning fossil fuels to create heat, often in the form of steam, to spin a turbine that, in turn, drives a generator that produces electricity. In the process, more energy is wasted in the form of heat than used. In an attempt to hardness this wasted heat, a research at UC Berkeley has successfully generated electricity directly from heat by trapping organic molecules between metal nanoparticles. This process not only allows the recovery of wasted energy, but it is also a more efficient way of producing electricity."
Announcements

Submission + - OpenStreetMap maps Baghdad

Submitted by
avantman42
avantman42 writes: "OpenStreetMap is an free and open collaborative map of the entire world. It has the most comprehensive map of Baghdad among any of the web mapping services, but they need help from people who know Baghdad. See the blog entry for details."
Linux Business

Submission + - Which Embedded Linux Distribution?

Submitted by Abhikhurana
Abhikhurana writes: I work for a company which designs a variety of video surveillance devices (such as MPEG4 video servers). Traditionally, these products have been based on proprietory OSs such as Nucleus and VxWorks. Now we are redesigning a few of our products and I am trying to convince my company to go down the Linux route. Understandably, our management is quite sceptical about that and so I was asked by our CTO to recommend a few RTOSs which have mature Networking stacks and which work well on ARM platform. I know that there are many embedded linux based distributions out there. There are commerical ones such as Montavista, LynuxWorks, free ones such as uclinux, muLinux and some Linux like distros such as Ecos, but which is the most stable and best community supported embedded Linux distribution out there?
Microsoft

Submission + - Debian Founder visits MicroSoft to Talk Shop

Submitted by wellingj
wellingj writes: As reported on ZDNet, Debian founder and chief technology officer of the Linux Foundation, Ian Murdock will be giving a 'Power Lunch' presentation at MicroSoft. On the table for discussion is the origins of Debian and it's community development model. The talk is being put on by Bill Hilf, former director of the Linux Lab at Microsoft. Microsoft Employee Rocky Heckman's blog might bring an cynical insider look of the talk. Stay tuned.
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Cutting through the hype on Second Life's economy

Submitted by
RogueyWon
RogueyWon writes: "The Register, which often takes a sceptical view of Second Life, has an article up that claims to cut through much of the hype surrounding the online world's economy. From the article:

"In other words, this economy has a population about the size of Ilkeston, Derbyshire, or Troutdale, Oregon. And each business has the prospect of a market of no more than 100 people in one place — a number easily accommodated by a church hall."
Unwarrented grumbling, or an valid rejoinder to the latest online media darling?"

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