Roofus - Slashdot User

Submission + - Stuffed microbes, the best worst idea ever? (giantmicrobes.com)

Submitted by Dark Twonky on Tuesday November 06, 2007 @03:48PM

Dark Twonky writes: Christmas is almost here, and the guys at GIANTmicrobes has the gift for the kid who has everything. According to their website they

make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes — only a million times actual size!
There's the ordinary Common Cold, Flu and Sore Throat. But also scary stuff like Black Death, Ebola and Flesh Eating. Even Martian Life is represented!

Is it a good idea? I mean, putting junior in bed with Gonorrhea seems a bit odd...

Submission + - Asus brings Linux to desktop with help from Intel (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

Technical Writing Geek

on Tuesday November 06, 2007 @03:41PM

Technical Writing Geek writes: "In terms of price, performance, and features the Asus Eee PC hits the trifecta and could be a game-changer in the mobile market. Thanks to its combination of Intel hardware and a non-bloated Linux install, reviewers found that Asus's little laptop performs just as well as much larger and more expensive Windows notebooks.

The device does support Windows XP, but Linux seems to be the OS of choice of reviewers for performance and ease-of-use reasons. In this respect, Microsoft has well and truly blown it, because this device is poised to introduce a few million Best Buy shoppers to a pleasantly usable, non-embedded Linux distro.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071105-game-changer-asus-eee-pc-a-win-for-intel-and-linux-at-microsofts-expense.html"

Submission + - Research Allows Bacteria to Store Computer Data

Submitted by

Istrancis

on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @04:22PM

Istrancis writes: "According to Japanese research, bacteria could someday be used to store computer data, not only temporarily, but on an extremely long term basis. The process of recording the data involves inserting artifical genetic material into the bacteria's genome, and the idea is that this data would be transferred over to the next generation of bacteria, and on to the next one, allowing this data to remain intact for far longer than a modern CD-ROM, USB flash drive, or even hard disk currently allows."

Submission + - An Inconvenient Truth on BitTorrent.com

Submitted by marick on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @04:04PM

marick writes: I'd like to congratulate the creators of An Inconvenient Truth, which won Best Documentary Feature (and also Best Song) on Sunday night's Oscars. In light of this, and the recent UN report on global warming, the dire reality of global warming is back in the headlines. Perhaps simple changes by a newly enlightened community can cause great effects.

If you still haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it. It's available on the BitTorrent Entertainment Network. I hear it's even one of the top-sellers.

Submission + - Google: Don't blame heat for disk drive failures

Submitted by

BobB

on Monday February 26, 2007 @09:14PM

BobB writes: "Temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit may not be damaging to disk drives, according to new research by Google engineers which casts doubt on previous findings linking heat to elevated failure rates. After studying five years worth of monitoring statistics from Google's massive data centers, researchers say they could find no consistent pattern linking failure rates to high temperatures or high utilization levels. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/022607-googl e-disk-drives.html"

Submission + - Power-Grab: ICANN to Become Internet "Word Pol

Submitted by

Robin Gross of IP Justice

on Monday February 26, 2007 @08:59PM

Robin Gross of IP Justice writes: "Top-Level Domain Policy to Bypass National Sovereignty and Free Speech
Civil Society Proposes Amendment to Protect Civil Liberties and Innovation

ICANN's Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) submitted a proposal to protect freedom of expression and innovation in the introduction of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). ICANN's policy council, the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), is currently developing policy recommendations to regulate the introduction of new top-level domain names on the Internet.

NCUC is troubled by the GNSO's draft recommendation to create string selection criteria that would prevent the registration of a new gTLD string that contains a controversial word or idea. In the 13 February 2007 GNSO draft report , proposed Term of Reference 2(v) of the string criteria states that "the string should not be contrary to public policy (as set out in advice from the Governmental Advisory Committee)".

According to the GAC guidelines: "No new gTLD string shall promote hatred, racism, discrimination of any sort, criminal activity, or any abuse of specific religions or cultures. ... If the GAC or individual GAC members express formal concerns about a specific new gTLD application, ICANN should defer from proceeding with the said application until GAC concerns have been addressed to the GAC's or the respective government's satisfaction."

Unless reformed, this ICANN policy will prevent anyone in the world from being able to use controversial words like "abortion" or "gay" in a new gTLD if a single country objects to their use. The proposal would further prevent the use of numerous ordinary words like "herb" and "john" in a string since they can have an illegal connotation in certain contexts.

In addition to any country in the world being able to stop a new gTLD string, ICANN staff would also be able to prevent any idea that it deemed too controversial to exist in the new domain space. The 13 Feb. proposal (Term of Reference 2(x)) gives ICANN staff the important job of making preliminary determinations as to whether a string is inappropriate and who the "legitimate sponsor" of a domain name (such as .god) should be.

"The 13 Feb proposal would essentially make ICANN the arbiter of public policy and morality in the new gTLD space, a frightening prospect for anyone who cares about democracy and free expression," said Robin Gross, Executive Director of IP Justice, an NCUC member organization. "The proposal would give ICANN enormous power to regulate the use of language on the Internet and lead to massive censorship of controversial ideas."

NCUC proposes to amend the GNSO draft policy so that only the legal restrictions in the national jurisdictions of the string application in question will apply to the particular string. Under NCUC's proposal, national law would be the measure for what words are permitted to be registered in any particular nation, not ICANN policy.

NCUC's proposal recognizes the reality that there are competing standards of morality and competing public policy objectives and that ICANN should not try to set a universal standard. NCUC's amendment better protects freedom of expression, since only those words and ideas that are actually outlawed in a particular nation could not be registered in that nation.

Instead of engaging in censorship in the new domain space, ICANN policy should respect international freedom of expression guarantees. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." ICANN should adhere to Article 19 and permit the registration of lawful, but controversial strings in the new gTLD space.

Besides free expression, NCUC's proposal also protects national sovereignty, and the right of nations, not ICANN, to decide what words may be used in their jurisdictions. The current draft report would usurp the right of an individual nation to permit the use of words in its own country that are controversial in other countries.

Rather than blanketly applying 240 nations' cumulative restrictions on speech onto every country, NCUC's proposal is more narrowly tailored to limit only those words that are actually illegal where registered.

Milton Mueller, Professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies and NCUC Executive Committee member said, "There has always been a danger that ICANN's exclusive control of Internet identifiers would be used as leverage to enforce extraneous policies. ICANN needs to stick to its narrow, technical coordination role, We need to protect the Internet from globalized, centralized regulation."

The current GNSO proposal is further flawed because it is framed from an irrelevant 1883 treaty on trademarks that is inappropriate, both because of its archaic origin and because trademark law is intrinsically a narrow legal paradigm that does not extend to a full vision of societal benefits and rights. Most notably, trademark law is not designed to regulate non-commercial speech, which is vast majority of online communication.

NCUC's proposal to amend Term of Reference 2 (v) is the main proposal in a group of 5 NCUC proposals to reform the policy recommendations in the 13 Feb. GNSO draft report. It is possible that ICANN's GNSO Policy Council will vote on draft final report as soon as the next ICANN board meeting in Lisbon in late March 2007.

NCUC urges individuals and organizations that are concerned with protecting free expression and innovation to contact ICANN Board Members and their national representative of the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) to express their out the current draft and support for NCUC's amendments.

If you live in the United States, your representative on the GAC is Suzanne Sene from the US Commerce Department. Suzanne Sene can be contacted via email to SSene[at]ntia.doc.gov

The ICANN GAC representatives from other countries are listed here:
http://gac.icann.org/web/contact/reps/index.shtml

The ICANN Board of Directors is listed here:
http://www.icann.org/general/board.html

*Links to relevant documents:*
GNSO Draft Final Report on the Introduction of New Generic Top-Level Domains:
http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/GNSO-PDP-Dec05-FR13-F EB07.htm

NCUC proposal (Feb. 2007) to amend the draft report:
http://www.ipjustice.org/ICANN/drafts/022207.html

NCUC Comments on Fall 2006 Draft Report
http://www.ipjustice.org/ICANN/NCUC_Comments_on_Ne w_gTLDs.pdf

Internet Governance Project Alert:
"Will the UN Take Over the Internet" Through ICANN?
http://internetgovernance.org/news.html#UNTakeOver InternetThroughIcann_022207

GNSO Council Webpage on Intro of New gTLD Policy:
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/

*About the NCUC:*
The Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) is the part of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that represents the interests of noncommercial Internet users. NCUC is a voting member of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), which develops policy and advises the ICANN Board on matters regarding generic top-level domains on the Internet. NCUC develops and supports Internet policies that favor noncommercial use on the Internet. The NCUC is made up of 40 civil society organizations from around the world and maintains a website at http://www.ncdnhc.org/ ."

Submission + - Implement a relaxed immutability model in Java

Submitted by

BlueVoodoo

on Monday February 26, 2007 @12:17PM

BlueVoodoo writes: "This article shows an efficient way to implement a slightly more relaxed model of immutability, using normal cached fields whose values can still be accessed safely without synchronization."

Submission + - Stable Open Source NTFS After 12 Years of Work

Submitted by

irgu

on Monday February 26, 2007 @10:53AM

irgu writes: "Open source NTFS development started in 1995 by Martin von Loewis under Linux, which was taken over by Anton Altaparmakov in 2000. Two years ago Apple hired Altaparmakov to work on Mac OS X and made a deal with the team to relicense the code and return the new one, soonest in the spring of 2008. But the team also continued the work and Szabolcs Szakacsits announced the read/write NTFS-3G driver for beta testing last year. Only half year passed and NTFS-3G reached the stable status and has been already ported to FreeBSD, Mac OS X, BeOS, Haiku, 64-bit and big-endian architectures, and new CPU's!"

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