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Microsoft

Submission + - Mr. Gates has left the building...

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Shouldn't /. change the Microsoft icon to something else
  • Chair throwing gorilla
  • Dancing gorilla
  • Borg gorilla
  • keep Gates of Borg
  • Borg Clippy
  • something else
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Physicists Reach Theoretical Limit of Precision

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "A team led by Geoff Pryde of Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, has managed to make a measurement on a quantum system at the greatest precision theoretically possible limited only by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the most fundamental and unavoidable source of 'fuzziness' in the quantum world. Pryde has demonstrated a way of reaching the Heisenberg limit of measurement precision by looking at photons traversing an interferometer's arms one at a time. The key is to avoid making measurements that determine which arm the photon is in, until the beams are recombined at the end allowing the shot noise to be more or less smoothed away. Pryde's method produces a much weaker light signal that would be hard to measure but the Australian team boosts it by looping the photons through the device many times while preserving their quantum state. Jonathan Dowling,a physicist at Louisiana State University confesses that he was very skeptical that it could be made to work when the team announced their plans at a conference at the start of the year. "I am now forced to eat my hat," Dowling says."
Unix

Submission + - Blog fundraising 100 OLPC laptops (olpcnews.com)

Submitted by
alexandre van de sande
alexandre van de sande writes: "http://www.olpcnews.com/laptops/xo1/olpc_news_100_laptop_fundraising_drive.html OLPC News, a blog dedicated to everything One Laptop per child had enough of waiting for the Negroponte organization to distribute the laptops to schools that actually had a curriculum or an implementation, and decided to take the matter on their own hands. They need 200 good geeks to donate a small amount of cash to fund a classroom full of students. They are also calling for schools around the world to apply to be the lucky ones."
Oracle

Submission + - Over 1,500 Customers Using Oracle's Linux (prnewswire.com)

Submitted by kripkenstein
kripkenstein writes: Oracle has released a press release stating that in a short 9 months it has signed up over 1,500 paying customers to its Linux offering, Oracle Unbreakable Linux, which is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and has previously been covered on Slashdot.

Oracle's press release stresses Oracle's various contributions to FOSS. Given that Oracle is now the largest corporation selling and and contributing to Linux (in terms of overall revenue at least; not Linux-specific), the FOSS community's reaction to Oracle's Linux moves is becoming increasingly important. Will Oracle be welcomed, or scorned?
Linux Business

Submission + - Wal-Mart Plans to Restock Sold Out Linux PC (informationweek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Good news for folks who want to get their hands on the sold-out, Linux-based Everex gPC from Wal-Mart. InformationWeek is reporting that the company plans to restock the $199 gPC in its online store. The story adds that a Wal-Mart spokesman describes the gPC as "one of the top peforming desktop computers on Walmart.com over the last few weeks." Apparently, the gPC is also still available at some Wal-Mart brick-and-mortar stores, according to the story.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Does everyone hate Vista?

Submitted by Pine Kernel
Pine Kernel writes: Vista continues its impressive run of failing to wow PC users — according to a reader poll on silicon.com the vast majority of respondents would prefer anything but Vista on their hardware.

The poll has found Windows XP is whupping Vista's ass in terms of popularity, with almost half of poll-takers favouring it. Steve Jobs should also be smiling as the Mac OS X gets a hefty thumbs-up too. Even Linux beats Vista in the vote. Redmond get back to your photocopiers?
The Courts

Submission + - Who is Matthew J. Oppenheim?

Submitted by scrantaj
scrantaj writes: Over on http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ Ray Beckerman reports on a new sighting of Mr Oppenheim. "Today in a telephone conference, a voice intervened which was not that of any of the participating attorneys. It was that of the RIAA's "mystery man", Matthew Oppenheim, who was secretly lurking, unannounced, in the background. (One obvious practice tip: ask the RIAA's lawyer who is participating in the phone call. You may not get an honest answer, but at least you will have asked the question.)" Now it seems that very little is known about Mr Oppenheim other than that he is working on behalf of the RIAA in some capacity. There is not much about him available via google and nothing more recent than a reference to him leaving law firm Jenner and Block in Dec. 2006. Who is this mystery man, why is he never clearly identified in RIAA cases and just what is his involvement with them and with RIAA attorney Richard Gabriel? Can SlashDot readers shed any light on this shadowy legal figure?
Space

Submission + - Strange new space weather phenomen discovered (physorg.com) 1

Submitted by
kfz versicherung
kfz versicherung writes: "Something strange is happening in the atmosphere above Africa and researchers have converged on Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss the phenomenon. Researchers liken the plumes to smoke billowing out of a factory smokestack — except instead of ordinary ash and dust, ion plumes are made of electrified gas floating so high above ground they come in contact with space itself. "The plumes appear during geomagnetic storms and they can interfere with satellite transmissions, airline navigation and radio communications," says Fuller-Rowell. Indeed, it is their effect on GPS signals that led to the discovery of plumes over North America just a few years ago."
Security

Submission + - eVoting Election Error Manually Corrected (chron.com)

Submitted by SvetBeard
SvetBeard writes: During the recent elections, Harris County, Texas officials failed to include a minor election on some ballots. The error was caught before election day, but it was too late to add the referendum to the eSlate voting system tally for some precincts. The mistake required election officials to access the "Adjustment" function of the system in order to manually enter the untabulated votes. Though the correction was made under careful supervision and manufacturer Hart InterCivic insists their product is secure, the ability to make such changes raises fundamental questions about the security of electronic voting particularly given the fact that researcher Dan Wallch has discovered flaws in the eSlate software.
The Internet

Submission + - Piracy isn't THAT bad and they know it (rlslog.net)

Submitted by
xxuaoxx
xxuaoxx writes: "The guys over at Releaselog [rlslog.net] have gotten quite a story. It seems a while back, they posted a torrent link and review of an indie movie "Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth". Shortly after that, the movie began to skyrocket. Their IMDB rating went through the roof. Curious as why, the producer sought out an answer. He found Releaselog. He then went on to write a letter to the staff at Releaselog, thanking them for what is turning out to be a blessing in disguise.

Full Article can be read here"
Power

Submission + - Global Warming, Subsidies Fuel a Nuclear Renaissan

Submitted by Actual Reality
Actual Reality writes: It is ironic to me that much of the same sentiment that thwarted the Nulcear Power industry back in the 80's is paritally responsible for reviving it. Nuclear Power is very clean compared to any power source that burns fuel. According to the article: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/11/nuclear_economics , the US has missed several advancements in Nuclear Technology. We can only hope the environmentalists will not, again, try to stifle our progress.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Affinity Media Exposed as IGE (brokentoys.org)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: From BrokenToys: Court documents released in the Hernandez vs. IGE lawsuit reveal that, contrary to previous assertions, Affinity Media (owner of Thottbot, WoWHead, Zam, et al.) is still owned by IGE USA.
Media

Submission + - Where are people going... CNN.com? No....Mininova. (fastsilicon.com)

Submitted by
mrneutron2003
mrneutron2003 writes: "As proof positive of the relative disconnect mainstream media experiences on the internet, multibillion dollar news organization CNN is now outranked in sheer web traffic by......a torrent search engine. It appears that sometime in mid September mininova.org surpassed CNN , and as you can see from the accompanying Alexa graph continues to skyrocket well ahead of the worlds #1 news organization. Seems people are more interested in the next episode of Heroes, than they are the 2008 Presidential Election. I can't half blame them. http://www.fastsilicon.com/off-the-wall/where-are-people-going-.-cnn.com-no-mininova.org.html?Itemid=60"
Handhelds

Submission + - 30,000 Palm Apps Land on Nokia's Web Tablets

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: Some 30,000 applications originally written for the Palm Pilot PDA will soon run on Nokia's Linux-based web tablets. The applications will run on top of a virtual machine (VM) currently being beta tested by Access for Nokia's 770, N800, and N810 Internet tablets. The Garnet VM beta is available now for free download from Access, with registration. It has reportedly achieved 80 percent compatibility, with wider compatibility expected pending user feedback. Applications run within a QVGA-sized window (configurable as landscape or portrait) centered in the tablets' 800x480 displays.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - SCO found guilty of lying about Unix code in Linux (linux-watch.com)

Submitted by
mlauzon
mlauzon writes: "In the United States, SCO's Linux/Unix litigation has been stalled out while the company's bankruptcy trial is being dealt with. In Germany, however, several court cases have found SCO Group GmbH, SCO's Germany branch, guilty of lying about Linux containing stolen Unix code.

In the first case, reported on by Heise Online, the pro-Linux German companies, Tarent GmbH and Univention found that SCO was once more making claims that Linux contained Unix IP (intellectual property). Specifically, SCO GmbH made the familiar claims that "As we have progressed in our discovery related to this action, SCO has found compelling evidence that the Linux operating system contains unauthorized SCO UNIX intellectual property (IP)." This was followed by the usual threat "If a customer refuses to compensate SCO for its UNIX intellectual property found in Linux by purchasing a license, then SCO may consider litigation."

The German Linux companies had already successfully protested against these statements in 2003. Then they were granted an injunction against SCO from making its claims that Linux contains illegally obtained SCO IP, a.k.a. Unix source code. If SCO violated this injunction, SCO would have to pay a fine of 250,000 Euros.

Since Tarent and Univention brought the matter to the attention of the courts, SCO has taken down the offending page with its claims.

Of course, in the U.S. court system, it has already been ruled that SCO has no Unix IP. Novell, not SCO, owns Unix.

Tarent's managing director told Heise Online that he found "It disconcerting, though not surprising, to see SCO trying to do towards the end what it is really being paid for by its supporters: spreading falsities as disparaging as possible about Linux." Unlike 2003, where Linux companies had to nip things in the bud, exercising vigilance is due now where things are coming to an end: "Even though SCO has reached the end of the line in our opinion, one should not let them get away with this."

In a similar case, Andreas Kuckartz, a German Linux advocate, had been publicly stating since 2003 that "SCO IP Licenses for Linux" amounted to little more than "protection money pricelists" and that SCO is "spreading rumors about copyright violations in Linux." Further, Kuckartz claimed that "The SCO Group Inc. is probably is involved in crimes such as stock manipulation and filing a fraudulent complaint against IBM."

SCO took him to court over these claims and SCO has lost (German PDF document). The Higher Regional Court in Munich ruled, Kuckartz said in e-mails to Linux-Watch, "that my statements are allowed because none of the factual statements I made to support those accusations are false. I can now even go to a business partner of The SCO Group GmbH and tell him or her that SCO is probably involved in the named crimes."

Kuckartz claim that he believes is the most important one is that in the four years the case has dragged out, SCO never objected "to my statement that SCO has not presented any proof of copyright violations in the lawsuit SCO vs. IBM."

In the United States, however, SCO, even now, continues to drag out its unsubstantiated claims that IBM has stolen SCO's Unix IP. In the SCO bankruptcy hearing, SCO attorney Arthur Spector once more claims, "Our litigation is a tremendous asset" and "Our litigation with IBM could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars.""

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