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The Internet

Submission + - Open Source Economics Driving Web 2.0 Innovation (readwriteweb.com)

Submitted by
ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb writes: "Jitendra Gupta looks how the open source model is interacting with our market driven economic system. He writes that the open source movement has become a powerful value creator; that it has created an interesting and somewhat egalitarian wealth distribution mechanism, where on one hand it has made it hard for one stakeholder to extract inordinate rents, and on the other hand it has created the right incentives for a lot of people to participate in, and have a stake in, its success. Indeed, were it not for the LAMP stack, startup costs would have been a lot higher then they are today — and we would not be seeing the amount of innovation we are seeing from web 2.0 startups."

Marriott IT Exec Shares Network Horror Story 98

Posted by Zonk from the waps-that-kill-ip-layers-run-amok dept.
alphadogg writes "Neil Schubert is only partly kidding when he calls Marriott International's move toward a converged network a horror story. 'I'm here to tell you a terrifying tale of network design, support and administration,' he said at an IT conference in Boston, referring to a major bandwidth crunch caused by guests wielding Slingboxes and other network devices that overran the hotel chain's outdated network. 'One of the things we've learned about our guest networks is we have one of the most foreign, hostile environments known to man in the network administration world ... I can take 100,000 customers a night on that infrastructure and we actually have less incidents of harm than we do on our corporate back-office infrastructure.'"
Music

Why Music Really Is Getting Louder 388

Posted by Zonk from the what's-that-grandpa dept.
Teksty Piosenek writes "Artists and record bosses believe that the best album is the loudest one. Sound levels are being artificially enhanced so that the music punches through when it competes against background noise in pubs or cars. 'Geoff Emerick, engineer on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album, said: "A lot of what is released today is basically a scrunched-up mess. Whole layers of sound are missing. It is because record companies don't trust the listener to decide themselves if they want to turn the volume up." Downloading has exacerbated the effect. Songs are compressed once again into digital files before being sold on iTunes and similar sites. The reduction in quality is so marked that EMI has introduced higher-quality digital tracks, albeit at a premium price, in response to consumer demand.'"
Microsoft

Xandros CEO Doesn’t Agree Linux is Patent Violator 156

Posted by Zonk from the on-the-up-and-up dept.
whitehartstag writes with a link to a Network World article about statements from Xandros in the wake of their Microsoft deal. Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos made a point of stating that they don't believe their product violates any of Microsoft's patents. Nor, he said, did the software giant share with them exactly which patents they believe Linux violates. Just the same, he's disappointed with the reaction they've received from the open source community. "Feedback from the Linux community has been on the order of 'you shouldn't really be talking to the devil.' Linux and open-source advocates believe it is a big issue and say the Xandros deal, and another signed by Novell with Microsoft last year, erodes open source licensing provisions especially around intellectual property issues. Indeed, the Free Software Foundation is rewriting its GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0 to prohibit such patent deals in the future."
Security

Microsoft's IIS is Twice as Likely to Host Malware? 163

Posted by Zonk from the consider-the-source dept.
eldavojohn writes "According to Google, Microsoft's server software is at least twice as likely to host viruses or malware. The reason why? 'Google reports that IIS is likely used to distribute malware more often than Apache because many IIS installs are on pirated Windows versions which aren't configured to automatically download patches. (Even pirated Windows versions can automatically receive security fixes, however.) Our analysis demonstrates how important it is to keep web servers patched to the latest patch level,' Google notes."

Feed AT&T names new CEO: Randall Stephenson (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We don't expect any but the most devoted of telecom nerds to know the name of Ed Whitacre, long time CEO to AT&T -- now America's largest communications business (so far as we know). Well, at this point all you really need to know about the man is as of June 3rd he's stepping down, and a new chap by the name of Randall Stephenson, Whitacre's "understudy" and AT&T COO, is set to step up. We'll save you the corporate backstory here (that's what Wikipedia is for, or, if you've got the subscription, follow our link to The Journal), but all we can say is we sure do hope when we settle down our retirement package is at nearly $160 mil, like Whitacre's. Ed, baby, we're free for lunch -- it's on you, though. [Warning: link requires subscription]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Space

Submission + - Black Holes, a Doorway to Other Universes?

Submitted by
cez
cez writes: "Newscientist.com has an interesting story about a new theory on blackholes. "The objects scientists think are black holes could instead be wormholes leading to other universes, a new study says. If so, it would help resolve a quantum conundrum known as the black hole information paradox, but critics say it would also raise new problems, such as how the wormholes would form in the first place.""
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Happy 10th Birthday, Duke Nukem Forever

Submitted by GotWookiee
GotWookiee writes: That's right, ten years ago today on Sunday, April 27tn, 1997, 3D Realms formally announced the development of Duke Nukem Forever, the sequel to Duke Nukem 3D. Ten years later, it is still in development.

Major development milestones:
April '97: 3D Realms announces the development of the game.
August '97: PC Gamer magazine publishes the first screen shots.
November '97: Scott Miller states that the intended release date is in 1998.
December '97: 3D Realms gets the Quake II engine source code.
May '98: 3D Realms unveils a first demo footage at E3.
June '98: 3D Realms switches to the Unreal engine. George Broussard states that DNF will be out in 1999. Lots of content is scrapped.
'99: DNF upgrades to the Unreal Tournament engine.
December '99: More DNF screenshots. DNF releases a Christmas card implying it will be out soon.
'00: DNF gets 2nd place in Wired magazines Vaporware Award.
December '00: Another Christmas card.
'01: DNF wins 1st place in the Wired Vaporware Awards.
May '01: Another demo video at E3. The last to date.
'02: DNF wins the Vaporware award again.
'02: New programmers are hired and the game engine is retooled. 95% of previous content is scrapped according to Broussard.
'03: Wired gives DNF the Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award, created solely for DNF.
September '04: Karma physics engine replaced with Meqon engine.
'05 and '06: DNF wins the Vaporware Award two years in a row, again.
January, '07: In-game screen shot released.

During DNF's record 10 years of development, many things have transpired. Also, many historical events have taken less time than DNF's development. Here are some things that have happened in less time than DNF's development:

1) The production and release of all 3 Star Wars prequels, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, along with every Pixar movie except Toy Story.
2) It took less time for NASA and its contractor's to put a man on the moon and return him to the Earth, from Kennedy's pledge before congress to Armstrong's historic "small step."
3) The career's of Britney Spears and Collin Farrel.
4) The two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity were proposed, authorized, announced, designed, launched and successfully landed upon Mars where they have been exploring the surface for over 2.5 years.
5) The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan (the largest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the world) was in contract, built, launched, comissioned, and began active duty.
6) The Wright brothers designed and flew the first airplane.
7) The American Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars I and II, the development of the Atomic Bomb, and the US involvement in Vietnam each took less time than DNF's development.

For a more complete list, check out The Duke Nukem Forever List.

In 2008, George Broussard will make you his bitch!
Caldera

Submission + - SCO receives official delisting notice from Nasdaq

Submitted by
fifteencattleprods
fifteencattleprods writes: "On the tail of two stories regarding possible delisting of SCO stock (reported on slashdot here, and here), today is the day the delisting process has started. Straight from SCO's own press release site, they have received their delisting notice from Nasdaq. While this doesn't mean their stock will be delisted immediately, it does mean they've come under notice by Nasdaq, and must fix their problems within 180 days, before October 22, 2007. If they don't get their stock above $1 per share for ten consecutive days between now and then, they're toast."
Censorship

Debate on Game Censorship Touches on Weighty Topics 35

Posted by Zonk from the incredible-mr-yee-and-co dept.
Last night a debate hosted by the XFire gaming chat/social network service went into depth on the subject of game censorship. Participants included notables like Entertainment Consumers Association President Hal Halpin, Sacremento Assemblyman Leland Yee, Escapist Editor Russ Pitts, and GamePolitics blogger Dennis McCauley. Transcripts are available of the discussion both on and off the main floor, and both make for some very interesting reading. From the Escapist post on the event: "On the whole, it would seem that everyone, from the senator on down, is concerned about adult-themed content in games and how to preserve the gamemaker's rights to create such content while simultaneously keeping it out of the hands of minors. The devil, of course, is in the details. Exactly how to go about doing that - and defining the types of content to be restricted - is where we all seemed to disagree wildly."
Science

Japan to Launch Maglev Trains by 2025 103

Posted by Zonk from the next-step-is-fuchikomas dept.
SpeedyTrain writes with a link to a story on the Mainichi Daily News site about the future of mass transit in Japan. Despite problems with Maglev technology in test-bed scenarios around the world, Japan has committed to building a line between Tokyo and Nagoya by 2025. The experimental system will allow trains to run at up to 310 miles an hour. "The new magnetically levitated, or "maglev," trains would slash the 100-minute travel time down the country's busiest transportation corridor and are envisioned as a successor for Japan's iconic bullet trains, or shinkansen, first introduced to the world in 1964 ... [a] spokeswoman declined to give an estimate for the cost of linking the capital with the Nagoya area about 269 kilometers (168 miles) to the west. But Kyodo News agency said the whole project would cost about 9 trillion yen (US$76.3 billion) and be divided between the company and the central and local governments."

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