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Windows

British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows 725

Posted by samzenpus from the deep-blue-screen dept.
meist3r writes "On his Government blog, Microsoft's Ian McKenzie announced today that the Royal Navy was ahead of schedule for switching their nuclear submarines to a customized Microsoft Windows solution dubbed 'Submarine Command System Next Generation (SMCS NG)' which apparently consists of Windows 2000 network servers and XP workstations. In the article, it is claimed that this decision will save UK taxpayers £22m over the next ten years. The installation of the new system apparently took just 18 days on the HMS Vigilant. According to the BAE Systems press release from 2005, the overall cost of the rollout was £24.5m for all eleven nuclear submarines of the Vanguard, Trafalgar and Swiftsure classes. Talk about staying with the sinking ship."
Education

What Restrictions Should Student Laptops Have? 1117

Posted by samzenpus from the the-less-you-know dept.
An anonymous reader writes "We're a school district in the beginning phases of a laptop program which has the eventual goal of putting a Macbook in the hands of every student from 6th to 12th grade. The students will essentially own the computers, are expected to take them home every night, and will be able to purchase the laptops for a nominal fee upon graduation. Here's the dilemma — how much freedom do you give to students? The state mandates web filtering on all machines. However, there is some flexibility on exactly what should be filtered. Are things like Facebook and Myspace a legitimate use of a school computer? What about games, forums, or blogs, all of which could be educational, distracting or obscene? We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely, lock the machine down at certain hours, prevent the installation of any software by the user, and prevent the use of iChat. How far do we take this? While on one hand we need to avoid legal problems and irresponsible behavior, there's a danger of going so far to minimize liability that we make the tool nearly useless. Equally concerning is the message sent to the students. Will a perceived lack of trust cripple the effectiveness of the program?"
SuSE

openSUSE Launches 11.1 173

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the i-am-lizard-hear-me-roar dept.
Novell has unveiled their latest release to the openSUSE line with 11.1. Offering both updates and new features, Novell continues to push for more openness and transparency. The new release includes Linux kernel 2.6.27, Python 2.6, Mono 2.0, OpenOffice 3.0, and many others. "[...] Our choice was also influenced by impressive changes that are transpiring in the openSUSE community, which is growing rapidly and is also becoming more open, inclusive, and transparent. Last month, the project announced its first community-elected board, a major milestone in its advancement towards community empowerment. This is a very good openSUSE release and it delivers some very impressive enhancements. The distro has evolved tremendously in the past two releases and is becoming a very solid and usable option for regular users."
Displays

The Age of Touch Computing 414

Posted by CmdrTaco from the touch-me-there dept.
DigitalDame2 writes "In 2009, touch computing will go mainstream. More and more devices will be legitimately touch-enabled with gesture controls for browsing through photos, tossing objects around the screen, flicking to turn the page of a book, and even playing video games and watching movies. In fact, Gartner analyst Steve Prentice told the BBC recently that the mouse will be dead in three to five years. PCMag has a full look at touch computing — the past, the present, and the future — including an interview with Sabrina Boler, touch UI designer."
Google

Google Chrome Is Out of Beta 444

Posted by timothy from the could-be-a-contender dept.
BitZtream writes "This morning Google announced that Chrome is out of Beta, and showing improvements for plugin support, most notably video speed improvements. It also contains an updated javascript engine, claiming that it operates 1.4 times faster than the beta version, and work has begun on an extensions platform to allow easier integration with the browser by third parties."
Software

Best Open Source Alternatives To Enterprise Apps 348

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what-do-you-think dept.
PeekAB00 writes "With 2009 IT budgets getting chopped down John Perez came up with this list of 25 best alternatives to enterprise applications (e.g DimDim over Webex, SugarCRM instead of Seibel, Zenoss over HP OpenView). John's list is somewhat eclectic. I am curious to hear what other enterprise (let's be frank ... expensive) apps I can replace this year with open source ones. I am particularly interested in back-up and email archiving suggestions."
Education

Best Introduction To Programming For Bright 11-14-Year-Olds? 962

Posted by timothy from the don't-forget-cty-and-other-nerd-camps dept.
firthisaword writes "I will be teaching an enrichment programming course to 11-14 year old gifted children in the Spring. It is meant as an introduction to very basic programming paradigms (conditions, variables, loops, etc.), but the kids will invariably have a mix of experience in dealing with computers and programming. The question: Which programming language would be best for starting these kids off on? I am tempted by QBasic which I remember from my early days — it is straightforward and fast, if antiquated and barely supported under XP. Others have suggested Pascal which was conceived as an instructional pseudocode language. Does anyone have experience in that age range? Anything you would recommend? And as a P.S: Out of the innumerable little puzzles/programs/tasks that novice programmers get introduced to such as Fibonacci numbers, primes or binary calculators, which was the most fun and which one taught you the most?" A few years ago, a reader asked a similar but more general question, and several questions have focused on how to introduce kids to programming. Would you do anything different in teaching kids identified as academically advanced?
Operating Systems

What Needs Fixing In Linux 865

Posted by CmdrTaco from the or-what-needs-breaking-in-windows dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek's Fixing Linux: What's Broken And What To Do About It argues that the 17-year-old open-source operating system still has problems. Leading the list is author Serdar Yegulap's complaint that the kernel application binary interfaces are a moving target. He writes: 'The sheer breadth of kernel interfaces means it's entirely possible for something to break in a way that might not even show up in a fairly rigorous code review.' Also on his list of needed fixes are: a consistent configuration system, to enable distribution; native file versioning; audio APIs; and the integration of X11 with apps. Finally, he argues that Linux needs a committee to insure that all GUIs work consistently and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel."

Comment Qt4 + SQLite3 (Score 1) 702

by der_alte (#23487626) Attached to: F/OSS Flat-File Database?
A statically linked app written in C++, with Trolltech's Qt4.4 + SQLite3 support will do the trick. If the statically linked binary results too big, just shrink it with UPX, or install the dynamically linked dlls with the app.
Censorship

Submission + - Internet Censorship in Paraguay

Submitted by
der_alte
der_alte writes: "A few days to presidential elections in Paraguay, the official party at government began dns-hijacking sistematically a number of websites they consider "objectionable content". Those sites are run by another political party and contains mainly strong criticism to well known politicians involved in embarrasing corruption acts.
The official party, the Partido Colorado (ANR), had doomed this little country since 1954, and currently have little chance of continuing in the power without resorting to massive electoral fraud.
The government has a monopoly on Internet fiber access in Paraguay, and there's no practicable way to reach the outside world without passing trough the COPACO infraestructure, wich is the statal telecomunications company. As a side note, the Internet access in Paraguay is probably the most expensive in the region, with a penetration of roughly 4% and a population of 6 million people.
Currently there are reports of four hijacked domains: www.partidocolorado.org and www.victorbogado.com (diverted to www.anr.org.py), www.bastacarajo.com and www.patriaquerida.org (diverted to porn sites).
The issue was notified to the ICANN and other authorities."
Government

Submission + - Free Speech (tocorre.com)

Submitted by
Luis Benitez
Luis Benitez writes: "In electoral times COPACO the statal telecomunication company of Paraguay decide to censore the Internet, as they can.

This company has a monopoly over the International Fiber access of all comunication over the Internet. Every single mail has to pass their infraestructure to reach its destiny.

But theses are electoral times in Paraguay, the "Partido Colorado" is ruling this litle south american country since 1954. Now they have truly chances to lose the national election on april 20th. A little party that is running against this stablishment is "Partido Patria Querida". They have a page outside Paraguay, on the Internet, but all customer at COPACO see a porn site if they try to access this page. This is a dns high jacking issue. (you can dig at ns1.copaco.com.py and any other dns server over the Internet and see by yourself)

COPACO is doing the same with other domains www.victorbogado.com is redirected to www.anr.org.py, www.partidocolorado.org is redirected to www.anr.org.py, www.bastacarajo.com is redirected to a porn site, maybe others?).



With this no only in China the local goverment is censoring the access to Internet, in South America is doing the same as well.



This is the way the local goverment understand how to manage the Internet."
Privacy

Submission + - Hijacking political adversaries domains

Submitted by psanta
psanta writes: Apparently, China is not the only country censoring Internet access. In Paraguay, South America, the ruling party owns the biggest ISP in the country, and they are hijacking political adversaries domains to prevent its huge customer base to access their sites.
These domains are bastacarajo.com, www.partidocolorado.org and www.victorbogado.com. If any regular DNS server is queried, the correct answer is given back. However, if using ISP's DNS server (201.217.1.230), they are claiming themselves being the Authority for that domain and redirecting all the traffic to the government's party official website in some cases and to pornographic sites in others.
What are the entities should ISP's user file a formal complain with? ICANN? IANA?

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