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The Internet

Britannica Goes After Wikipedia and Google 385

Posted by CmdrTaco from the let-us-know-how-that-works-out-for-ya dept.
kzieli writes "Britannica is going to allow viewers to edit articles, with changes to be reviewed by editors within 20 minutes. There is also a bit of a rant against Google for ranking Wikipedia above Britannica on most search terms."
Transportation

Feds To Offer Cash For Your Clunker 740

Posted by kdawson from the distressed-assets dept.
coondoggie sends along a NetworkWorld piece that begins, "The government... wants to motivate you to get rid of your clunker of a car for the good of the country (and the moribund car industry). A 'Cash for Clunkers' measure introduced this week by three US Senators, two Democrats and a Republican, would set up a national voucher program to encourage drivers to voluntarily trade in their older, less fuel-efficient car, truck, or SUV for a car that gets better gas mileage. Should the bill pass, the program would pay out a credit of $2,500 to $4,500 for drivers who turn in fuel-inefficient vehicles to be scrapped and purchase a more fuel-efficient vehicle."
Power

Networked Fridges 'Negotiate' Electricity Use 217

Posted by samzenpus from the share-the-juice dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have developed a way to network household and commercial fridges together in a distributed peer-to-peer fashion that lets them 'negotiate' with each other on the best time to consume electricity. A retrofittable controller is attached to each fridge and then a temperature profile is built around the unit. The controller enables communication between other fridges on the network and also the power source. It enables fridges to work together to decide when to cool down, and thus consume power, based on how much surplus power will be available, and to anticipate power shortages and change their running schedules accordingly to use as little power as possible during these times."
Image

South Carolina Seeking To Outlaw Profanity 849

Posted by samzenpus from the f@#k-those-f@#king-f@#kers dept.
MBGMorden writes "It looks like in an act that defies common sense, a bill has been introduced in the South Carolina State Senate that seeks to outlaw the use of profanity. According to the bill it would become a felony (punishable by a fine up to $5000 or up to 5 years in prison) to 'publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.' I'm not sure if 'in writing' could be applied to the internet, but in any event this is scary stuff."
The Courts

SCO Proposes Sale of Assets To Continue Litigation 290

Posted by Soulskill from the know-when-to-fold-'em dept.
gzipped_tar sends in this excerpt from the Salt Lake Tribune: "The embattled SCO Group Inc. is proposing to auction off its core products and use proceeds to continue its controversial lawsuits over the alleged violations of its copyrights in Linux open-source software. The Lindon company has filed a new reorganization plan with the federal court in Delaware where it sought bankruptcy protection from creditors after an adverse ruling in the Linux litigation. If approved by a bankruptcy judge, the plan could mean SCO's server software and mobile products lines are owned by other parties while SCO itself remained largely to pursue the lawsuits under the leadership of CEO Darl McBride. 'One goal of this approach is to separate the legal defence of its intellectual property from its core product business,' McBride said in a letter to customers, partners and shareholders. Jeff Hunsaker, president and COO of The SCO Group, said the litigation had been distracting to the company's efforts to market its products. 'We believe there's value in these assets and in order for the business to move forward it's imperative we separate it from our legal claims and we allow our products business to move forward,' he said Friday."
Supercomputing

Roland Piquepaille Dies 288

Posted by kdawson from the in-memoriam dept.
overheardinpdx writes "I'm sad to report that longtime HPC technology pundit Roland Piquepaille (rpiquepa) died this past Tuesday. Many of you may know of him through his blog, his submissions to Slashdot, and his many years of software visualization work at SGI and Cray Research. I worked with Roland 20 years ago at Cray, where we both wrote tech stories for the company newsletter. With his focus on how new technologies modify our way of life, Roland was really doing Slashdot-type reporting before there was a World Wide Web. Rest in peace, Roland. You will be missed." The notice of Roland's passing was posted on the Cray Research alumni group on Linked-In by Matthias Fouquet-Lapar. There will be a ceremony on Monday Jan. 12, at 10:30 am Paris time, at Père Lachaise.
Windows

32bit Win7 Vs. Vista Vs. XP 641

Posted by kdawson from the getting-a-feel-for-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes tested the latest Win7 build against XP and Vista and came to a surprising conclusion: Win7 performs better than the other 2 OSs in the vast majority of the 23 tasks tested. Even installation. 'Rather than publish a series of benchmark results for the three operating systems (something which Microsoft frowns upon for beta builds, not to mention the fact that the final numbers only really matter for the release candidate and RTM builds), I've decided to put Windows 7, Vista and XP head-to-head in a series of real-world tests...'" This review shows only a 1-2-3 ranking for each test, so there's no sense of the quantitative level of improvement.
Space

Falcon 9 Is Now Fully Integrated At Cape Canaveral 82

Posted by timothy from the neither-cape-ann-nor-cape-cod dept.
RobGoldsmith writes "SpaceX's Falcon 9 is now fully integrated: an update from Elon Musk states 'Falcon 9 is now fully integrated at the Cape! Today we mated the 5.2 m payload fairing to the Falcon 9 first stage. This was the final step in the integration process — one day ahead of schedule.' New images are now available showing the first fully integrated Falcon 9 Rocket. Once the launch mount and erector are complete, SpaceX will transfer Falcon 9 on to the erector and raise it to vertical early in 2009."
Privacy

Security Checkpoints Predict What You Will Do 369

Posted by timothy from the goes-the-theory dept.
An anonymous reader writes "New security check points in 2020 will look just like something out of the futuristic movie, The Minority Report. The idea of the new checkpoints will allow high traffic to pass through just as you were walking at a normal pace. No more waving a wand to get through checkpoints — the new checkpoint can detect if you have plans to set off a bomb before you even enter the building."
Bug

Microsoft Zunes Committing Mass Suicide 785

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-bet-a-bricked-zune-is-still-warm dept.
jddeluxe writes "There are multiple reports springing up all over the internet of a mass suicide of Microsoft 30GB Zune players globally. Check Zune forums, Gizmodo, or other such sites; the reports are spreading rapidly, except apparently to the Microsoft official Zune site."

NASA Releases Columbia Crew Survival Report 223

Posted by timothy from the sacred-cow dept.
Migraineman writes "NASA has released a 400-page Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report [16MB PDF.] If you're interested in a detailed examination and timeline of the events leading to the destruction of Columbia, this is well worth the time. The report includes a number of recommendations to increase survivability of future missions." Reader bezking points out CNN's story on the report, which says that problems with the astronauts' restraint systems were the ultimate cause of death for the seven astronauts on board.
Graphics

AMD Releases Open-Source R600/700 3D Code 307

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the playing-nice-with-others dept.
Michael writes "AMD has just released code that will allow for open-source 3D acceleration on their ATI R600 and R700 graphics cards, including all of their newest Radeon HD 4xxx products. This code consists of a demo program that feeds the commands to the hardware, updates to their RadeonHD driver, and a Direct Rendering Manager update. With this code comes working 2D EXA acceleration support for these newer ATI graphics processors as well as basic X-Video support. AMD will be releasing sanitized documentation for these new ATI GPUs in the coming weeks. Phoronix has an article detailing what's all encompassed by today's code drop as well as the activities that led to this open-source code coming about for release."
Security

Quicken 2007 For Mac Lacks EV Cert Support 108

Posted by kdawson from the untrusting-of-the-trustworthy dept.
adamengst writes "If your bank uses the Extended Validation certificates that require a higher level of identity checking on the certificate authority's part (as at least one Seattle bank does), you may not be able to download transactions using the Mac version of Quicken. Quicken doesn't gracefully ignore extra information in EV certificates as older Web browsers do, but instead throws an error and refuses to download transactions. Intuit says they're working on a fix — but users may have to wait 'a couple of months,' and even then the fix may not be applied to versions before Quicken 2007."

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