gunny01 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Kevin Rudd wins Australian Election (abc.net.au)

Submitted by

gunny01

on Saturday November 24, 2007 @06:06PM

gunny01 writes: "Kevin Rudd, the head of the Australian Labor Party, has defeated the Liberal Party incumbent John Howard in Saturday's federal election, with a 5.8% swing. This ends Howard's eleven year term in office, and it also appears at this stage that he has lost his seat. If this turns out to be correct, Peter Costello will be the Opposition leader in the new government.

Rudd, among other things, has promised to scrap the current governments unpopular industrial relations reforms and give Australians access to access to 100Mbs broadband and free laptops to every senior school student."

Submission + - Sky's botched Google migration (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24, 2007 @04:00PM

An anonymous reader writes: Rupert Murdoch-owned British ISP Sky is migrating their customers to the Google Apps platform, and the customer experience is terrible. Their 1m customers were told that they need to change their client settings to enable SMTP Authentication and other settings on a certain date — but not to do it before then or their e-mail would break; but if you don't do it on the date your e-mail will also break. Oh, and if you're a POP user you also need to enable that manually in the 'Skoogle' interface, as seemingly they chose not to run a system-wide command to allow it for all users. In addition, if you want help then you're pretty much on your own. One user has made 7 support calls and still not been able to access his e-mail since the migration. Hardly surprising that the story has made the papers with their helpdesk in meltdown. It does make you wonder why they simply didn't put proxy servers in place to proxy the new service by modifying the old settings in the network and give their customers time to switch over without their e-mail breaking in the meantime. Or even a simple ActiveX tool to help out the less technical users. Apparently the move is all about a greater customer experience for their users. An interesting way of showing it.

Submission + - Content filtering for free wi-fi 5

Submitted by Munk on Saturday November 24, 2007 @11:04AM

Munk writes: My in-laws own a truckstop and want to start offering free wi-fi to their customers. Since the wi-fi would cover the restaurant and other public areas, they don't want folks surfing porn where other customers could see it. And as a side benefit, I would also like to be able to block P2P traffic that would use excessive bandwidth. Does anybody have an suggestions for a setup to handle this sort of thing? I would obviously like to use linux and other free software if possible.

Submission + - Ubuntu vs Fedora vs OpenSuSE vs Mandriva (lugradio.org)

Submitted by on Monday November 05, 2007 @07:59AM

An anonymous reader writes: Its been a good few weeks for distro releases with Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora and Mandriva all releasing new versions but which ones best? The Lugradio team talk to Adam Williamson from Mandriva then don asbestos suits and put all four through a series of real world tests. Find out which came out best and which just suck here

Submission + - Steve Jobs Announces SDK for iPhone and iPod Touch

Submitted by

gunny01

on Thursday October 18, 2007 @05:13AM

gunny01 writes: "Steve Jobs has announced on Apple's Top Stories that Apple will be releasing an SDK for the iPhone and the iPod Touch in February:

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers' hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we're trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once — provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones — this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than "totally open," we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone's amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.

It'll be interesting to see how this works out. And especially since this throws open the door for features such as VOIP on the iPhone and Mail and other iPhone apps missing on the Touch."

Submission + - Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) Desktop Edition - Review

Submitted by

Byul

on Thursday October 18, 2007 @05:10AM

Byul writes: "I'll cut to the chase and say from the start that Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) Desktop Edition is simply the best desktop operating system that I have ever used. From installation, to setup, to regular everyday use Gutsy is just a thing of beauty. I have been keeping up with the release since its initial rocky Alpha period, to the polished final Release Candidate released on October 15, 2007 and then apt-get upgrading to the final release. The end result is that the Ubuntu team has put together everything that you could possibly want in a desktop operating system and more. http://lunapark6.com/ubuntu-710-gutsy-desktop-edition-review.html"

Submission + - Schools Placing at 99th Percentile for Cheating 3

Submitted by

theodp

on Saturday October 13, 2007 @01:29PM

theodp writes: "Time reports that sometimes No-Child-Left-Behind really means No-Test-Scores-Left-Behind, creating opportunities for data forensics firms like Caveon (check out their Ten Most Wanted Cheaters poster). Take Houston's Forest Brook H.S., which was a shining example of school reform. In 2005, after years of rock-bottom test scores, 95% of its 11th graders passed the state science test. Teachers were praised and the school was awarded a $165,000 grant by the governor. But an investigation found a host of irregularities and last year's testing was monitored by an outside agency. Test scores plunged and only 39% passed science."

Submission + - OLPC Laptops used to browse porn (reuters.com)

Submitted by

gunny01

on Saturday July 21, 2007 @02:19AM

gunny01 writes: "The pilot program of OLPC's XO-1 Laptop in Nigeria has gone "off topic", with students using them to browse porn instead of schoolwork.

"Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials," NAN said.

Read the whole story here."

Submission + - French government choose Ubuntu Linux for National

Submitted by uberspider on Monday March 12, 2007 @06:21AM

uberspider writes: It's been talked about for some time, but finally the French government has finally chosen the standard operating system and applications for its National Assembly, of course its Linux not Microsoft. But more suprisingly the French didn't choose the local distro Mandriva, but instead it chose the seemingly unstoppable Ubuntu distro, according to this ZDnet article (in French) here.

The news was also picked up by Investment and Business News —

"Whilst France is currently in the throws of a vicious election campaign, it seems that quietly in the background another victory has taken place. The victory isn't just for freedom, it seems that the victory is for free software."

The article goes on to indicate momentum for Linux on the desktop in France after the Peugeot deal as well

"That Linux is accelerating rapidly in the server market is not in doubt, that it is now starting to make headway on the desktop should be a strong indicator of things to come."

Submission + - Teacher faces 40 years in jail due to popup ads

Submitted by mikael on Saturday March 03, 2007 @06:26PM

mikael writes: The Times is reporting that a teacher faces up to 40 years in jail for exposing children to online pornography.. The images appeared while she was out of the classroom. Also, the comments in the article suggest that UNIX and Linux users are responsible for 99% of the malware and viruses that plague windows systems.

Submission + - Apache and IIS: Another Firefox and IE?

Submitted by on Saturday March 03, 2007 @05:16PM

An anonymous reader writes: The article Apache vs. IIS at TechX World describes the current state between Apache and IIS. One notable item in the article is that in some areas, such as performance optimization, both Apache and IIS seem to share a lot of the same features. Are Apache and IIS headed down the same path as Firefox and IE? And if so, who is actually innovating?

Submission + - Linux.com | ESR gives up on Fedora

Submitted by catalinux_ro on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @07:11AM

catalinux_ro writes: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/02/21/13402 37 ESR gives up on Fedora! quote: "Fedora, you had every advantage, and you had my loyalty, and you blew it. And that is a damn, dirty shame.Eric S. Raymond"

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