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Security

Submission + - Vista/7 more secure than Linux and Mac OS X (zdnet.com)

Submitted by heretic
heretic writes: "Vista today, post-Service Pack 2, which is now in the marketplace, is the safest, most reliable OS we've ever built. It's also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard", Kevin Turner COO Microsoft
The Internet

Submission + - Center for Responsive Politics data archive online (opensecrets.org)

Submitted by
Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: "Today the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics is putting 200 million data records from the watchdog group's archive directly into the hands of citizens, activists, journalists and anyone else interested in following the money in U.S. politics.

With today's announcement, skilled data-divers can explore the information that's already aggregated on OpenSecrets.org to its full depth. Web developers and database experts can grab federal money-in-politics data that CRP's researchers have standardized and coded, and mash it up with other data sets. Timelines, charts, maps, other graphics and mobile applications are just some of the projects that could result--all powered by CRP's unparalleled data.

"
The Internet

Submission + - The Depressing Truth About YouTube Stardom (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
Al
Al writes: "The arXiv physics blog reports that researchers from HP Palo Alto studied videos uploaded to YouTube and found that popularity has little to do with quality or persistence. Researchers Fang Wu and Bernardo Huberman studied the hit rates of 10 million videos uploaded by 600,000 users up to 30 April 2008 and they classified a success as a video that was among the top 1 per cent of those viewed. "The more frequently an individual uploads content the less likely it is that it will reach a success threshold," they conclude, adding that this may be because "when a producer submits several videos over time, their novelty and hence their appeal to a wide audience tends to decrease". Interesting, the researchers speculate that unsuccessful users carry on uploading because (like gammblers) "they overestimate the odds of success"."
Displays

Submission + - The 10000 Year Clock - Science Meets Art (cnet.com)

Submitted by
KindMind
KindMind writes: "CNet has pictures of a planned 10000 year clock to be built in eastern Nevada by the Long Now Foundation. From the article: Running under its own power, the clock is an experiment in art, science, and engineering. The six dials on the face of this machine will represent the year, century, horizons, sun position, lunar phase, and the stars of the night sky over a 10,000-year period. Likely to span multiple generations and evolutions in culture, the thinking and design put into the monument makes it a moving sculpture as beautiful as it is complex. This was reviewed on Slashdot in 2005. Really cool pictures, including one of a mechanical "binary computer" that converts the pendulum into positions on the dial."
The Internet

Submission + - Google Losing up to $1.65M a Day on YouTube 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The average visitor to YouTube is costing Google between one and two dollars, according to new research that shows Google losing up to $1.65 million per day on the video site. More than two years after Google acquired YouTube, income from premium offers and other revenue generators don't offset YouTube's expenses of content acquisition, bandwidth, and storage. YouTube is expected to serve 75 billion video streams to 375 million unique visitors in 2009, costing Google up to $2,064,054 a day, or $753 million annualized. Revenue projections for YouTube fall between $90 million and $240 million. Is it time for Google to rid itself of the YouTube burden?
The Courts

Submission + - SPAM: Blogger Fights Goldman Sachs Over Domain Names

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "After receiving a letter accusing him of violating Goldman's intellectual property rights by using its trademark, blogger Mike Morgan has filed a lawsuit against Goldman Sachs in hopes of protecting his anti-Goldman Web sites, including [spam URL stripped] and [spam URL stripped]. 'David didn't beat Goliath by waiting till Goliath threw the first punch,' Morgan wrote on his blog. Goldman Sachs has won court cases against similarly-named Web sites in the past. The company took down Netherlands-based Goldmansex.com after filing suit three years ago."
Link to Original Source
Linux Business

Submission + - He's a Mac, he's a PC, but we're Linux! (itwire.com)

Submitted by
davidmwilliams
davidmwilliams writes: "Earlier this year the Linux Foundation launched a competition for budding writers, film makers and just general Linux enthusiasts to make their own grassroots advertisement to compete with Apple's highly-successful "I'm a Mac" series of adverts. The winner has now been announced."
Google

Submission + - Google forgets DST change.

Submitted by
Ghost-in-the-shell
Ghost-in-the-shell writes: "Looks like Google forgot to change the time on their calendar servers last night. I guess I'll be showing up to classes an hour later than normal for the next few weeks. The problems documented here is only in effect for the next three weeks until the traditional date of the DST change of early April. Partial (for privacy reasons) screen shots included."
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Sony Learns From MS's Digital Rights Mismanagement

Submitted by
Divalent
Divalent writes: "As Sony ramps up their online service with promises of an environment similar to Xbox Live, it's obvious the Japanese giant learned from MS's experience dealing with the difficulties presented to users should they ever need a replacement console. They are allowing up to five consoles the unrestricted rights to access content paid for only once.

For over fourteen months, Microsoft has been aware of the problem that is presented to a user if they attempt to play offline an XBL arcade game or a game with premium paid downloadable content on any machine other than the one onto which the content was originally downloaded. This forum thread on the subject was started on 12/18/ 05

MS has yet to come up with a transparent or even easy solution for the end user. Whether it is concern over their bottom line or previous agreements with content owners, something prevents them from implementing a strategy similar to Sony's...at the expense of customer satisfaction. There has been no public acknowledgement that the problem even exists.

MS representatives on the forums have gone so far as to say, despite it's frank illegality, that those that had consoles stolen or replaced, in or out of warranty, from retailers will not have the workaround solution applied to their accounts unless they have explicit proof of said replacement. So, if your box breaks out of warranty, you cannot simply trash it and head to a store and buy a new one. You must somehow show continuity and PROVE to Microsoft that your old box is broken and has been replaced by the one you currently use.

You can get a synopsis of the problem here along with recommendations of what to do. Included is the suggestion, whether you've personally been effected by the problem or not, to sign a petition that asks Microsoft to change the Digital Rights (Mis)Managment scheme currently in place."
Programming

Submission + - Time measuring

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We all know computers can measure time in seconds and milliseconds. But how precise can computers be when measuring time? microseconds? nanoseconds? picoseconds? femtoseconds? attoseconds? zeptoseconds? yoctoseconds? How precise can you measure time on a x86 / home PC? How precise can you measure time on a computer? How do scientists measure time when accuracy and precision is very important?
Announcements

Submission + - What's new in study of human evolution?

Submitted by je ne sais quoi
je ne sais quoi writes: MSNBC/Newsweek has an informative article summarizing a lot of the recent advancements in tracing the evolution of modern humans. From the article:

Unlike the earlier wave of Homo erectus into Asia a million years ago, the first modern humans, the ancestors of everyone today, departed Africa about 66,000 years ago... These pilgrims were strikingly few. From the amount of variation in Y chromosomes today, population geneticists infer how many individuals were in this "founder" population. The best estimate: 2,000 men. Assuming an equal number of women, only 4,000 brave souls ventured forth from Africa. We are their descendants.
The article emphasizes that evolution is not necessarily linear, in that a given trait might show up multiple times before being used by a successful species. We've come a long way from the old story of humanoid evolution that goes in a more or less linear chain from Australopithicus to Homo Sapiens.

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