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99648 submission

Submission + - BBC Reported WTC7 Collapse Before it Happened.

Submitted by

zero_jd

on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @05:57AM

zero_jd writes: "A video was recently posted to Google which originally aired on BBC world between 16:54 and 17:36 EST on September 11th, 2001. In the video, a report came in that the Salomon Smith Barney building (aka: World Trade Center 7) had just collapsed due to a weakened structure. The report, however, had come in some twenty minutes prior to the actual collapse of the building. The video then cuts to a live correspondent in New York speaking with downtown Manhattan in the background. While she is discussing the collapse with the news anchor, WTC7 is clearly still standing in the background behind her. Then, just minutes before the building actually collapsed, her feed was abruptly cut. Despite Google Video containing numerous copyrighted BBC documentaries, another embarassing BBC moment (the taxi driver incident), and 9/11 conspiracy videos, several copies of this particular video were removed within 24 hours. New copies are curretly continuing to appear, but it seems abundantly clear that someone wants them taken away. The conclusions to be drawn are left to the reader, of course."

99470 submission

Submission + - Do we need to make voting mandatory?

Submitted by

gd23ka

on Monday February 26, 2007 @09:30PM

gd23ka writes: "Australia and Belgium force their electorate to the ballot boxes. Disaffected in Australia and don't want to get out of bed on election day? Pay a fine or go to jail or at least explain why you couldn't come. With these laws on their books both countries enjoy a high percentage of participation in their elections. Proponents say that forced participation in the elections strengthens democracy. What are your thoughts on the matter? You can read Slate's opinion piece first or tell me right away: Is mandatory voting a good idea for America?"

99280 submission

Submission + - Benefits of Windows User Access Control

Submitted by

Abtin Forouzandeh

on Monday February 26, 2007 @04:20PM

Abtin Forouzandeh writes: "Having used Vista for a few months, something keeps nagging me about windows user account control. For UAC to be useful, the user needs to have a fair amount of knowledge about a) what UAC is, b) what application its blocking, c) the consequences of blocking the action, and d) an alternate approach if the blocked action did something useful. Anyone who has ever worked with end-users can tell you that they are generally disinterested in learning anything about computer usage beyond how to use word and make a spreadsheet. Frankly, even as a highly technical user, I nearly always approve the UAC dialog even if I don't know the consequences. Since users lack knowledge, and Vista keeps asking esoteric/ambiguous questions, then users will always approve UAC dialogs.

So my question is, since UAC so clearly fails in its goal of making computing more secure, and substantially increases complexity, why is it common wisdom that turning off UAC is "not recommended"? For 99% of users, is there any true downside? Or has the community come up with ways to make UAC useful?"

99164 submission

Submission + - Windows Vista Validation Problems Arise

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26, 2007 @01:30PM

An anonymous reader writes: Is there a problem with Windows Vista validation or not? The issue is getting murky. In a recent KnowledgeBase update, entitled "You may be prompted to activate Windows Vista on a computer on which Windows Vista activation was not previously required," Microsoft claims to have fixed what they acknowledge is a system problem. However, two bloggers think there's still an issue. IWeek blogger Alex Wolfe writes that about his own revalidation experience, where a support person hung up on him. And ZDNet's Ed Bott discusses a wave of validation and activation problems. Finally, users themselves are weighing with their problems on Microsoft's own forums. Have you had any problems with WGA? More importantly, do you think this could seriously undermine adoption of Vista?

73438 story

Mandatory DRM for Podcasts Proposed 432

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 15, 2007 @05:51PM from the good-idea-bad-idea dept.

Knytefall writes "Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and two GOP senators are sponsoring a bill called the PERFORM Act that would require podcasts with music and satellite radio to be locked-up with music industry-approved DRM software. From the article: 'All audio services — Webcasters included — would be obligated to implement "reasonably available and economically reasonable" copy-protection technology aimed at preventing "music theft" and restricting automatic recording.'"

72772 story

Beware the Apple iPhone iHandcuffs 406

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday January 14, 2007 @10:26AM from the future-of-gizmos dept.

Nrbelex writes "Randall Stross makes a fresh and surprisingly accurate review of one of the biggest "features" in the upcoming iPhone and the iPod in general, 'fairplay'. Stross writes, 'If "crippleware" seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard "FairPlay," but fair it is not.... You are always going to have to buy Apple stuff. Forever and ever.' Can mainstream media coverage help the battle over DRM or will this warning, like those of the pas, continue to go unnoticed?"

72254 story

How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? 1487

Posted by Cliff on Saturday January 13, 2007 @07:23AM from the worthwhile-but-pigs-are-likely-to-fly-first dept.

thesolo asks: "Despite past efforts of the 1970s and 1980s, the United States remains one of only three countries (others are Liberia and Myanmar) that does not use the metric system. Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy. Attempts to get Americans using the Celsius scale, or putting up speed limits in kilometers per hour have been squashed dead. Not only that, but some Americans actually see metrication efforts as an assault on 'our way' of measuring. I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating. Are we so entrenched with imperial units that we cannot get our fellow citizens to simply learn something new? What are those of us who wish to finally see America catch up to the rest of the world supposed to do? Are there any organizations that we may back, or any pro-metric legislators who we can support?"

70040 journal

Journal Journal: 2006 warmest year on record in the U.S 2

Journal by whathappenedtomonday on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @06:34PM

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reports that 2006 was the warmes year on record in the US. "No cause for alarm. Enjoy it while you have it," said Mike Halpert, head of forecast operations at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center. Jeff Masters disagrees and

70038 submission

Submission + - First Look At Final OLPC Design

Submitted by

blackbearnh

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @06:30PM

blackbearnh writes: "At the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday, AMD hosted a presentation of the final Industrial Prototype of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO Laptop. Linux Today has extensive reporting, including new photos and details about power consumption, networking details, and the logistics of distributing and servicing what will be the largest rollout of any computing platform in history, 5 million units in the first year. This will represent nearly a 10% increase in the total worldwide laptop production for 2007."

70018 submission

Submission + - Google Page Rank Update

Submitted by

rugjeff

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:40PM

rugjeff writes: "Are you ready for another update from Google...I know I am. My blog is only a few short months old and is still sitting on a page rank of zero. From the news I am hearing Google is set for another update on January 28, 2007. You can find out some more information from a site that predicts Google page rank updates.

If you are curious on how your page rank will be effected by the new update, check out this page rank prediction tool by iwebtool. If the tool is accurate, and I believe it is, my page rank will raise to 4. Not great but much better than zero.

Most of the information on page rank and page rank updates can be found here. I have to give thumbs up to the post and the blog. If you have the time check it out for tons of great tips and useful information.

Keep blogging, getting [tag]backlinks[/tag] and building relationships... You still have time to raise your page rank a little higher before the update."

70000 submission

Submission + - Micro-level spam research: a new approach

Submitted by

Bert

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:01PM

Bert writes: "Spam has been researched a lot. But what The Spam Test is trying to do is turn the spam research around. In stead of looking at e-mail spam on a macro level, the people behind The Spam Test are preparing for an extensive micro-level spam study. In order to get an interesting amount of data they're asking internet users to help them.... by getting them spammed. Even though they are looking at this from the popular side of science, it looks like an interesting view on spam research none the less."

69986 story

Open nVidia Linux Driver Pledge Nearly Complete 221

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:01PM from the encouragement dept.

Ciarán Mooney writes to let us know that the Pledgebank drive to raise $10,000 for Project Nouvaeu is almost complete — at this moment it needs only 196 more people to sign up. Project Nouveau aims to provide open source 3D acceleration for nVidia cards. The drive was started by David Nielsen, whose blog explains what he hopes will happen.

69994 submission

Submission + - The Home Server Cometh

Submitted by narramissic on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @04:39PM

narramissic writes: Apart from Apple's 'I'm cooler than you' ad campaign, you don't hear much about the Windows versus Mac battle these days. The reason: Today's battle isn't about 'what brand of computer sits on the desk in your spare room, or even what operating system it runs, it's going to be about who gets to dominate the market for home servers that will control your entertainment, television, telephony, and your home automation system,' argues Dan Blacharski in a recent article.

69970 submission

Submission + - Kernel 2.6.20

Submitted by

mcalwell

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @04:05PM

mcalwell writes: "For only being a release candidate the Linux 2.6.20 kernel has already generated quite a bit of attention. On top of adding asynchronous SCSI scanning, multi-threaded USB probing, and many driver updates, the Linux 2.6.20 kernel will include a full virtualization (not para-virtualization) solution. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (or KVM for short) is a GPL software project that has been developed and sponsored by Qumranet. In this article we are offering a brief overview of the Kernel-based Virtual Machine for Linux as well as offering up in-house performance numbers as we compare KVM to other virtualization solutions such as QEMU Accelerator and Xen.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item =623&num=1"

69958 submission

Submission + - Why are free-desktop developers wedded to Linux?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @03:48PM

An anonymous reader writes: We have been hearing promising predictions like "This year will be the year of Linux on the desktop" for the last decade. But Linux today seems to be as far away as ever from realizing the explectations of mass adoption we once had for it, without significant growth in home usage since the late 90s. Clearly, if Linux is unable to reproduce a third of Firefox's end user uptake over a much longer timeframe, there are deficiencies with the direction the GNU/Linux/X/Gnome/KDE system has taken. But almost all free software and desktop efforts and development remain unquestioningly oriented around Linux. Other free-desktop operating system projects which take different and innovative approaches like ReactOS, AROS, Mona and Syllable remain comparitively starved of developers and interest. An often cited reason for using a non-Microsoft OS is to avoid a monoculture, but free-desktop efforts have created a total monoculture around developing and promoting Linux, despite a decade of failure in supplanting Microsoft's properterial OSes with it. Why are free-desktop developers neglecting to consider an alternative to the penguin?

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