Julie188 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Mapping the Price of Pot Across the Internet (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

Julie188

on Thursday September 01, 2011 @05:55PM

Julie188 writes: "You might not have known that you are paying $526 to get buzzed when that same high, same pot, costs $97 in different areas; but this and other important information can now be found, thanks to a site called FloatingSheep and the mashups it posts. FloatingSheep analyzes geocoded data provided by web users to discover stuff that would normally go unseen, like the maps of the price of pot, of business and sex, of religion, bowling alleys, guns, and strip clubs — yes, all in one map. One of the project's founders, Dr. Matthew Zook, says that FloatingSheep is interested in fighting censorship in all its forms, not just the state-sponsored kind but also "soft censorship or citizen censorship. I'm thinking of things such as the editing wars that can break out in Wikipedia (or rating websites like Trip Advisor) in which less prevalent opinions/viewpoints have a tougher time being heard.""

Submission + - Apple Wants to Talk Trash with Environmental Group (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Thursday September 01, 2011 @03:06PM

itwbennett writes: "Earlier this week, environmental watchdog groups released a report accusing Apple's Chinese suppliers of polluting. This came as no surprise to Slashdot readers. But what you may find surprising is that Apple has not only responded to the groups' complaints but wants to hold talks on the report. In an email sent to the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), Apple's supplier responsibility department said the company is 'focused on constantly improving' its suppliers and that it 'would be interested in hearing more specifics on what you have discovered about these suppliers,' but also notes that several of the suppliers IPE names in its report 'are not in our supply chain.'"

Submission + - Jim Zemlin: Only idiots don't give back to FOSS (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by

Julie188

on Tuesday August 30, 2011 @11:11AM

Julie188 writes: "Taking without contributing back to the upstream project defeats the benefit of open source and sooner or later, all open source users realize this, contends Jim Zemlin, executive director of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. So the time for cajoling those users — even commercial projects like Canonical — into participating is over. Contributing is "not the right thing to do because of some moral issue or because we say you should do it. It's because you are an idiot if you don't," he says."

Submission + - CERN: Sun, not man, causes global warming (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by tripleevenfall on Tuesday August 30, 2011 @10:50AM

tripleevenfall writes: New from über-prestigious CERN claims to have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done — demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, and thus the sun’s magnetic field determines the temperature on Earth.

Submission + - Computing Pioneer Tony Sale Dies Aged 80 (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Blacklaw on Tuesday August 30, 2011 @10:35AM

Blacklaw writes: Tony Sale, computing pioneer and the man behind the rebuild of the Colossus machine at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, has died aged 80.

Submission + - Google to pay $500M over fake drug ads (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Julie188

on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @12:22PM

Julie188 writes: "Regulators will announce Wednesday that Google will pay $500 million to settle government charges that it has illegally shown ads for online pharmacies that operate outside the law. Web sites are liable for ads on their sites from advertisers that break federal criminal law."

Submission + - OIN fights to limit Nortel patent sale (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

Julie188

on Monday August 22, 2011 @01:42PM

Julie188 writes: "The leader of the Open Invention Network has put out an all-call to help it fight the pending sale of Nortel's patent portfolio to a consortium of vendors led by Apple and Microsoft. Keith Bergelt, CEO of OIN, wants developers and users to step up and share their viewpoints and stories with the Department of Justice investigating the sale. The consortium hopes to get regulatory OK and close the deal in the third quarter. At issue is if the new owners of the patents would use the patents to sue for patent infringement in order to hinder the growth of Android and other up-and-coming open source mobile devices. Bergelt hopes that the DOJ can be swayed to rule on this sale the way it ruled on the purchase of Novell's patents. In April, the DOJ limited the sale of Novell's patents by making the patents subject to both the GPL and the OIN license, among other restrictions."

Submission + - The Top 22 Tools for Mac IT Admins (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

GMGruman

on Monday August 22, 2011 @01:39PM

GMGruman writes: "Windows may rule the business computing environment, but in companies large and small Macs are part of the mix. To help IT admins manage those Macs, Ryan Faas has put together a compendium of 22 mostly free tools to make Mac management easier."

Submission + - First Malware Using Root Exploit On Android 2.3 (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey on Monday August 22, 2011 @01:07PM

wiredmikey writes: A team of researchers has uncovered the first malicious program to use a root-level exploit against Android 2.3. Researchers at North Carolina State University have reported finding GingerMaster, which they claim takes advantage of the most recent root exploit against Android platform 2.3 (also known as Gingerbread).

“The GingerMaster malware is repackaged into legitimate apps,” explained Xuxian Jiang, an associate professor at NC State’s computer science department, in a blog post. “These legitimate apps are supposedly popular to attract user downloads and installation. As this is the first time such malware has been identified, it is not surprising when our experiments show that it can successfully evade the detection of all tested (leading) mobile anti-virus software," he added.

GingerMaster registers a receiver so that it will be notified when the system finishes booting. Inside the receiver, it will silently launch a service in the background that collects sensitive information such as the device ID and phone number and then uploads the data to a remote server. After getting root privilege, GingerMaster malware will connect to the remote C&C server and wait for instructions.

Submission + - Can the SPDX spec stop FOSS license violations? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

Julie188

on Thursday August 18, 2011 @05:06PM

Julie188 writes: "Ever since Verizon was sued by BusyBox and the Software Freedom Law Center over GPL violations in its FiOS devices (in 2008), an entire industry has sprung up to help enterprises and developers avoid inadvertent license violations. Many of those vendors, and a host of other industry bigwigs, have been working on a method to share license information on open source packages as bits and pieces of code get used and modified. On Wednesday, the Linux Foundation and FOSSBazaar released a new specification they hope will do just that. The Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) is a data exchange specification that tracks license information in a standardized way and allows it to travel across the software supply chain."

Submission + - Most enterprises plan to be on IPv6 by 2013 (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

Julie188

on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @12:18PM

Julie188 writes: "More than 70% of IT departments plan to upgrade their websites to support IPv6 within the next 24 months, according to a recent survey of more than 200 IT professionals conducted by Network World. Plus, 65% say they will have IPv6 running on their internal networks by then, too. One survey respondent, John Mann, a network architect at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said his organization has been making steady IPv6 progress since 2008. "Mostly IPv6 has just worked," he said. "The biggest problem is maintaining forward progress with IPv6 while it is still possible to take the easy option and fall back to IPv4.""

Submission + - Novacut Open Source Video Editor Almost Funded (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by otakuj462 on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @11:58AM

otakuj462 writes: With $21,296 pledged by 670 backers on Kickstarter, and 59 hours to go, the Novacut Open Source video editor project is dangerously close to being funded.

Submission + - South Korean scientists create glowing dog (reuters.com)

Submitted by

cultiv8

on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @11:48AM

cultiv8 writes: "A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle, named Tegon and born in 2009, has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic, the report said.

The researchers, who completed a two-year test, said the ability to glow can be turned on or off by adding a drug to the dog's food.

"The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases," the news agency quoted lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun as saying.

He said the dog was created using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that the university team used to make the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005."

Submission + - Google plays the closed-open game with OK Go video (extremetech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @11:03AM

An anonymous reader writes: Curiously, despite being a major champion for HTML5, Google's latest Chrome music video — a masterpiece featuring geek rockers OK Go and interpretive dance troupe Pilobolus — doesn't work with any other browser. If Microsoft's IE Test Drive can be designed to work across every browser, why can't Google?

Does anyone remember when Apple created its 'HTML5 Showcase' which only worked in Safari? (http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/06/06/1344256/Apples-HTML5-and-Standards-Gallery-Not-Standard)

Submission + - SUSE Renews Deal With Microsoft (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruhlinger

on Monday July 25, 2011 @01:43PM

jfruhlinger writes: "SUSE, now the Linux subsidiary of Attachmate, has announced a four-year extension of the deal it signed with Microsoft as part of Novell in 2007. While there's plenty in the deal that makes a lot of sense for both sides, Linux advocates are still understandably anxious about the patent indemnification clause of the agreement, which essentially amounts to a major Linux vendor agreeing that Microsoft holds patents that Linux might violate."

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