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Linux

New Linux Petabyte-Scale Distributed File System 132

An anonymous reader writes "A recent addition to Linux's impressive selection of file systems is Ceph, a distributed file system that incorporates replication and fault tolerance while maintaining POSIX compatibility. Explore the architecture of Ceph and learn how it provides fault tolerance and simplifies the management of massive amounts of data."

Comment The story from Google... (Score 4, Informative) 140

Hey, the fellows in netops asked me to clarify for you folks here's the story:

1e100.net is a Google-owned domain name used to identify the servers in our network. Following standard industry practice, we make sure each IP address has a corresponding hostname. Starting in October 2009, we started using a single domain name to identify our servers across all Google products, rather than use different product domains such as youtube.com, blogger.com, and google.com. We did this for two reasons: first, to keep things simpler, and second, to proactively improve security by protecting against potential threats such as cross-site scripting attacks. Most typical Internet users will never see 1e100.net, but we picked we picked a Googley name for it just in case (1e100 is scientific notation for 1 googol).

So there you go!

Comment Lots of comments on LWN.net's coverage (Score 5, Informative) 354

If you head over to LWN, we've already gone back and forth on this a bit. http://lwn.net/Articles/372419/. The short form is that if they don't like how we use the kernel, we're unlikely to be accepted upstream. It's all still released as source code to the world, but the mainline is not interested in most of what we've with to the kernel.
Image

Solar Machine Spins Sunlight-Shaped Furniture 71

Mike writes "Austrian designers mischer'traxler have created a solar powered machine that makes an incredible array of furnishings that vary based on how much sunlight it receives over the course of a day. Titled 'The Idea of a Tree,' the machine spins spools of thread into stools, benches, containers, and lamp shades that wax and wane as the available sunlight shifts. Furniture created during cloudy winter days will be wrapped more slowly, causing it to be darker in color, thicker, and smaller than pieces created during the sun-soaked summer months."
Google

Submission + - Google Summer of Code announces mentor projects!

mithro writes: "As everyone should already know, Google is running the Summer of Code again this year. For those who don't know, GSoC is where Google funds student's to participate in Open Source projects and has been running for 5 years, bringing together over 2600 students and 2500 mentors from nearly 100 countries worldwide. Google has just announced the projects which will be mentor organizations this year. It includes a great list of Open Source projects from a wide range of different genres, include content management systems, compilers, many programming languages and even a bunch of games!"

Comment Re:Android (Score 2, Informative) 92

I'd like to point out that the Kogan phone folks could have adapted the code to the screen size, but it would have taken longer than their product plan would have allowed. So in that case, you are right, but if they had started the screen porting stuff earlier, then they probably could have shipped something like what they put on their website.

Let me remind you that the structure of the droid licensing is very clear: linux kernel, then apache/bsd all the way up from there (With a dollop of lgpl). You don't need googles permission to ship an android based device. There are some apps (maps comes to mind) that you do need googles permission to ship, but those are closed anyhow.

Chris

Mars

Lots of Pure Water Ice At Mars North Pole 176

brink2012 writes "Planum Boreum, Mars' north polar cap contains water ice 'of a very high degree of purity,' according to an international study. Using radar data from the SHARAD (SHAllow RADar) instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), French researchers say the data point to 95 percent purity in the polar ice cap. The north polar cap is a dome of layered, icy materials, similar to the large ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica, consisting of layered deposits, with mostly ice and a small amount of dust. Combined, the north and south polar ice caps are believed to hold the equivalent of two to three million cubic kilometers (0.47-0.72 million cu. miles) of ice, making it roughly 100 times more than the total volume of North America's Great Lakes, which is 22,684 cu. kms (5,439 miles). The study was done by researchers at France's National Institute of Sciences of the Universe (Insu), using the Italian built SHARAD radar sounder on the US built MRO. SHARAD looks for liquid or frozen water in the first few hundreds of feet (up to 1 kilometer) of Mars' crust by using subsurface sounding. It can detect liquid water and profile ice. Mars southern polar cap was once thought to be carbon dioxide ice, but ESA's Mars Express confirmed that it is composed of a mixture of water and carbon dioxide. The study on Mars north polar cap appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union."
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia Edits Forecast Vice Presidential Picks (washingtonpost.com)

JimLane writes: "This story in the Washington Post reports on the findings of Cyveillance, a company that 'normally trawls the Internet for data on behalf of clients seeking open source information in advance of a corporate acquisition, an important executive hire, or brand awareness.' Cyveillance decided 'on a lark' to test its methods by monitoring the Wikipedia biographies of Vice-Presidential prospects.

The conclusion? If you'd been watching Wikipedia you might have gotten an advance tipoff of Friday's announcement that McCain was selecting Sarah Palin. 'At approximately 5 p.m. ET (Thursday), the company's analysts noticed a spike in the editing traffic to Palin's Wiki page, and that some of the same Wiki users appeared to be making changes to McCain's page.'

When McCain, a supposed foreign-policy expert, gave a speech on the crisis in Georgia, parts of it turned out to be cribbed from Wikipedia. (See this article from the Congressional Quarterly.) I guess the McCain staffers thought that, having used Wikipedia themselves, they should try to 'improve' it by editing the article about Palin."

Social Networks

A Cautionary Tale of Open Source Social Technologies 330

eweekhickins writes "The 'country' drop-down menu on one organization's donations pages omits Israel as a country and includes 'Palestine.' Among other things, this means that Israelis can't donate to the organization from these pages; it also presents the risk of a PR nightmare for the organization. This EWeek story cautions that while basic Web 2.0 technologies combined with open source can be incredibly powerful and productive, they can also lead to disastrous results for an organization that isn't paying close enough attention."
Education

Hawking Searching For Africa's Einsteins 276

nuke-alwin writes "Stephen Hawking has traveled to South Africa in search of Africa's Einsteins. The project will create Africa's first post-graduate center for math and physics. The British government has unfortunately decided not to back the project, which is hoping to fight poverty by identifying the kind of talent that can create wealth." Neil Turok is deeply involved as well; he was recently named to head the Perimeter Institute in Canada, whose server we brought to its knees this morning.
United States

Submission + - New book based on proof of election rigging (witnesstoacrime.com) 3

Troy Seman writes: "Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips, who provided the material for fully one third of Bobby Kennedy's Rolling Stone article "Was The 2004 Election Stolen" ( http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen ) is the ONLY guy to actually look at the evidence of election rigging in Ohio. He now has a book out based on his analysis of over 30,000 photographs of ballots signature books, and poll books. He basically proves, once and for all, that over a dozen counties in Ohio in 2004 were rigged in advance and on election night. The evidence is absolutely damning. Follow up studies show rigging continuing in 2006 in Ohio as well as records destruction. Phillips not only proves the election rigging but can also show several mechanisms that were used, a couple of which show collusion at levels of government higher than the county level and therefore indicate conspiracty. He's got a website up for the book at http://www.witnesstoacrime.com/"
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - MySQL Reverses Decision on Close Source (krow.net) 1

krow writes: "I am very happy to be announcing that MySQL will be forgoing close sourcing portions of the MySQL Server. Kaj has the official statement in his blog. No portion of the server of the sever will be closed source including backup, encryption, or any storage engines we ship. To quote Kaj "the encryption and compression backup features will be open source". This is a change from what was previously posted here on Slashdot. I've posted some additional thoughts on my own blog concerning how we keep open source from becoming crippleware. Word has it that we will also have a panel at this year's OSCON discussing this relevant topic. Contrary to the previous Slashdot post, this shows Sun's continued commitment to Open Source."

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