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Operating Systems

Submission + - What should I put in my Dreamcast Linux distro? (dyndns.info)

Submitted by
00_NOP
00_NOP writes: "I have been working for months on getting the codebase back up to scratch for Linux on the Dreamcast. I have now, more or less, just finished a driver for the CD Rom, so it is time to think about publsihing a distribution but what should I put on it? Just games? And if so, which ones — given we have only bare bones X and no accelerated 3D available? Or are there other things people would find useful?

And how many of you have Dreamcasts these days anyway?"
Education

Submission + - Students 'should use Wikipedia' (bbc.co.uk) 3

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC has an article on these disturbing quotes from Jimmy Wales.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said teachers who refuse students access to the site are "bad educators". Speaking at the Online Information conference at London's Olympia, he dismissed the long-running controversy over the site's authority. He said he now thinks that students should be able to cite the online encyclopaedia in their work.
Privacy

Submission + - Should we have the right to breed? 11

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I just finished reading Garret Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons and I'm having a little trouble coming to grips with it. In the essay Hardin argues that in a world with finite resources we must stabilize the population at less than the carrying capacity in order to maintain quality of life. However, "Confronted with appeals to limit breeding, some people will undoubtedly respond to the plea more than others. Those who have more children will produce a larger fraction of the next generation than those with more susceptible consciences. The differences will be accentuated, generation by generation." Hardin therefore suggests that we must legally restrict freedom to breed.

However such restrictions would require a invasion of our privacy to a degree that strikes me as simply intolerable. But I'm curious, what do slashdot readers think? Is Hardin's logic sound? If it is, is controlling the population important enough that we should give up what we have long accepted as some of our most basic rights in order to achieve it?
Wine

Submission + - OS X Leopard now can natively load Windows Files.

Submitted by
Steven Edwards
Steven Edwards writes: "PE Files were rejected on Tiger but now can be loaded natively on Leopard, which is interesting to me because I don't think that this is just a hold over from EFI support because the behavior is new. I think it may be a sign of future addition of a Win32 subsystem to OS X. Check the following URLs for the detailed technical information.

http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2007-November/060846.html
http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2007-November/060851.html

I think this behavior may be a sign of a future addition of a Win32 subsystem to OS X. I think the powers that be at apple have decided that they are missing the pie that Parallels, VMware and CodeWeavers are getting. If you combine the value of all three products, I expect its adding up to a good chunk of change they view as "lost" every month. Having a system like Wine that runs in a clunky Classic like mode would mean better user tie-in than having to reboot with BootCamp."
Security

Submission + - Anonymity of Netflix Prize dataset broken (arxivblog.com)

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "The anonymity of the Netflix Prize dataset has been broken by a pair of computer scientists from the University of Texas, according to a report from the physics arXivblog. It turns out that an individual's set of ratings and the dates on which they were made are pretty unique, particularly if the ratings involve films outside the most popular 100 movies. So it's straightforward to find a match by comparing the anonymized data against publicly available ratings on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) (abstract on the physics arxiv). The researchers used this method to find how individuals on the IMDb privately rated films on Netflix, in the process working out their political affiliation, sexual preferences and a number of other personal details"
Spam

Submission + - Gamefly sold my e-mail address!

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I own a few domains for my own vanity and amusement. When signing up for any service online, I use the format [unique-servicename]@[mydomain]. Even slashdot doesn't get a hold of my 'home' address. This is great for filtering, redirection, etc. It's also a great tool to see who has been selling my e-mail address.

During a bored moment, I was perusing through my junk mail to see which addresses spammers were using. Lo and behold, a great number (about 33%, actually) of the spam I found was sent to gamefly@[mydomain]. According to their privacy policy, they may from time to time share my information with game related third-party vendors. However, at no point did they say, "you will receive ads for viagra and porn sites." Since most people utilizing the service are probably still in high school, is it appropriate for them to be receiving such material? Someone, please! Think of the children!

Has anyone had any experience similar to this? What are the legal (if not moral) implications of such a practice?

Feed Science Daily: Giant Fossil Sea Scorpion Bigger Than Man (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
The discovery of a giant fossilized claw from an ancient sea scorpion indicates that when alive it would have been about two and a half meters long, much taller than the average man. This find, from rocks 390 million years old, suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought.
Portables

Submission + - 7-year-old laptop designers' club (themorningnews.org) 2

Submitted by
Rosecrans
Rosecrans writes: "Hi guys,

Thought you'd enjoy these interviews we just published (plus a gallery of example images) with a bunch of 7-year-olds who designed their own laptops out of construction paper. It's remarkable what they assign different keys to, and Amy Tiemann (a CNET parenting author) does a good job of putting it all in context. I know I wish my Macbook had a "kitten" or "riley werd games" key, or numerals that went up to 11.

Enjoy: http://themorningnews.org/archives/galleries/the_laptop_club/

Best,
Rosecrans"
The Internet

Submission + - Are you a victim of Wikipedia deletionists?

Submitted by CowardX10
CowardX10 writes: The recent Slashdot story Call For Halt To Wikipedia Webcomic Deletions combined with the commentary I read for the Wikinews article on this subject made me feel the scope of what's happening in terms of deletionist admins angering and driving away a lot of contributors. I posted the following comment there and now here hoping to get feedback showing that this problem goes far beyond Webcomics.

The assholes have definitely taken over

My friend who used to contribute a lot in terms of articles and even money decided to stop because the deletionist assholes made it such a pain for him that he now despises the site. And although almost none of his contributions were deleted, he hated the way half his time was spent arguing with deletors about his work.

Even Jimbo Whales has experienced this. He started an article on Mzoli's Meats , a butcher shop and restaurant in South Africa. When it was almost speedily deleted, he told the deletors to "excuse themselves from the project and find a new hobby.". In other words, get a life and stop ruining the project. Unfortunately, a bunch of editors added information to the article so it's now kept, saving Jimbo from having to confront either the bitterness many have felt in getting their work destroyed or remaking policy so that people like my friend would continue contributing.

These asshole admins are really making Wikipedia a crappy site, and their effect on valuable editors is worse than what any nasty vandal might do since admins are part of the power hierarchy. This is another valuable lesson in what happens when you give thoughtless small minded people a little power. They make their pronouncements and mass annihilations without any consideration on what the effect might be on a person who has spent sometimes hundreds of man hours creating, maintaining, and protecting his/her articles. They dismiss people by spouting some arbitrary interpretation of policy backed up by their cabals, while those who have better things to do like actually create content get fucked over. James Derk of The Daily Southtown wrote an article where he talks about having a similar experience.

Also, here's a good Slashdot thread illustrating the intellectual dishonesty of the deletionist admins. It is part of the Slashdot story Call For Halt To Wikipedia Webcomic Deletions which is filled with former contributors testifying to their own treatment at the hands of these assholes. It's sad how some people seem to really get off on destroying the work of others.

I think it's interesting how when I don't know about a subject, editing an article on it would be considered vandalism. But it's perfectly OK for the deletors to destroy work relating to things they often know nothing about. Sometimes they even use their very ignorance as justification.

I think Wikipedia has a choice right now. Allow a lot more in than they are currently doing and piss off the deletionists, or let these deletionists have their way and piss off the content creators(And I should add, it's not only deleted articles that are targeted, but plot synopses, trivia sections, clearly permissible images, etc. have all succumbed to the slash and burn mentality of these deletionists.). So Jimbo, who would you rather keep around?
Google

Submission + - WSJ spreads FUD on open source and Google Phone (wsj.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ben Worthen at the Wall Street Journal shows a laughable grasp of what "open source" means: 'Here's the first thing that will happen when a phone with Google's operating system hits the market: Information-technology departments will ban employees from connecting phones that run Google's operating system to their computers or the corporate network. The reason is that Google's operating system is open, meaning anyone can write software for it. That includes bad guys, who will doubtlessly develop viruses and other malicious code for these phones, which unsuspecting Google phones owners will download. Employees could spread the malicious code to the rest of the company when they synch their phones to their computers or use it to check email. The way to combat this is to develop anti-virus and anti-malware software for phones and to develop security procedures similar to those that have evolved for PCs over the last several years. But that's going to take time and money — neither of which the average IT department has. So until then, expect Google phones to be persona non grata at companies.'
Television

Submission + - 20/20 airing Hans Reiser interview on eve of trial 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ABCNews 20/20 television magazine will broadcast an interview tonight with Hans Reisier, the author of the Linux ReiserFS filesystem, who is accused of killing his wife, although no body has been found. Jury selection is complete, and the trial is schedule to begin next week.
Graphics

Submission + - New GPLv3 unbiased renderer launched (luxrender.org)

Submitted by zsouthboy
zsouthboy writes: From the site:

"LuxRender is a new, free software rendering system for physically correct, unbiased image synthesis.

It's an authorized fork of the PBRT project, focusing on production rendering and artistic efficiency instead of academic/teaching."

This renderer is similar to Maxwell Render, Fryrender, Indigo Renderer, and others in that it's based on unbiased rendering. It's dissimilar in that it's completely free and GPL code!

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