Comment Re:Why? (Score 2, Interesting) 181
Well, the CD-ROM standard they support is "Joliet". Which is their own extension.... I wonder how long until they are going with patents after others implementing it.
Comment Flash? (Score 1) 542
Who cares, when a Youtube Flash video is eating almost 100% of your CPU because it's idiotic use of X11? Playing a plain MPG video in mplayer uses almost no CPU.
Bluetooth Surveillance Tested In the UK 85
KentuckyFC writes "If you live in the city of Bath in the UK and carry a Bluetooth-enabled device, your movements may have been secretly monitored in an experiment designed to test surveillance techniques in prisons. Researchers from Bath University recorded the movements of 10,000 Bluetooth-enabled devices during their 6-month trial. They say the experiment was a test of a technique for monitoring the interactions between prisoners in jail that could be used to work out which inmates have become closely associated. The work was prompted by revelations that the Madrid train bombers who devastated the city in 2004 first met in a Spanish prison (abstract)."
Submission + - Red Hat, Novell issue back-to-back announcements (techtarget.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In the past 24 hours, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) beta became available through Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. While RHEL has been available in limited beta for a few weeks, this public beta announcement came on the heels of Novell's launch of SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10, its latest enterprise OS offering.
The launch of SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 is arguably the bigger announcement. Novell's new SUSE is a real time operating system, allowing critical processes to take priority over processor tasks.
Submission + - Sun refuses LGPL code for Openoffice; Novell forks (gnome.org) 1
TRS-80 writes: Kohei Yoshida wrote a long post on the history of Calc Solver, an optimization solver module for the Calc component of OpenOffice.org. After three years of jumping through Sun's hoops on his own time, Sun says it will duplicate the work because Kohei doesn't want to sign over ownership of the code. Adding insult to injury, Sun then invites him join this duplication. Because of Sun's refusal to accept LPGL extensions in the upstream code, Michael Meeks (who recently talked about Sun's OO.o community failings, and ODF and OOXML) has announced ooo-build (previously just for build fixes) is now a formal fork of OpenOffice to be located at http://go-oo.org/. Will Sun admit it's being a control freak or continue with pointless duplication?
Submission + - Paint that can generate electricity
An anonymous reader writes: Industrial Nanotech, Inc. based in Florida has announced it is now in the development stage of a thermal insulation material that will generate electricity. With the application of the paint coating, the thermal difference between inside and outside temperatures could be used to generate electricity, as well as save energy.
Submission + - Apple to shut current users out of boot camp
aws910 writes: It looks like Apple is going to shut current boot camp users out when they release OSX 10.5(leopard), according to this article. The boot camp homepage corroborates this, saying(on the right sidebar) "To continue previewing Boot Camp after September 30, click the Download Now button above to install the latest version of Boot Camp Beta. You do not have to reinstall Windows. This new beta license will allow you to continue using Boot Camp until Mac OS X Leopard is available (expected October 2007).". I do respect Apple for this, though... unlike their rival, at least they properly labeled their beta as "beta".
Submission + - Is HTML Validity Overrated
An anonymous reader writes: Hi all, in the office today coding away on some random website, checking my my XHTML coding was valid, in my boredom decided to check a number of popular sites thinking that they would would intern be valid, though to my surprise i struggled to find a single site that was 100% valid in it's coding. www.google.com — 30 errors, www.microsoft.com — 28 errors, www.apple.com — 4 errors, and i wont even mention how many eBay had. Hell even our beloved Slashdot didn't have a clean slate.
My question is "Is HTML Validity Overrated?" or is there a reason for all the big sites not caring about there code?
Now i'm a very (I must stress very) small time programmer, and my skills are pretty poor, but am i just waisting my time checking my code, is it wrong of me to believe in standards?
Submission + - Carbon Dioxide didn't end last ice age - new study (sciencedaily.com)
flyingfsck writes: Science Daily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070927154905.htm — Carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age, a new study in Science suggests, contrary to past inferences from ice core records.
Lowell Stott, professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California, examines a sediment core. (Credit: Dietmar Quistorf)
"There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO2 in climate change," said USC geologist Lowell Stott, lead author of the study, slated for advance online publication Sept. 27 in Science Express.
"You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages."
Deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO2, the study found. The finding suggests the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming and may have accelerated the meltdown — but was not its main cause.
The study does not question the fact that CO2 plays a key role in climate.
Lowell Stott, professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California, examines a sediment core. (Credit: Dietmar Quistorf)
"There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO2 in climate change," said USC geologist Lowell Stott, lead author of the study, slated for advance online publication Sept. 27 in Science Express.
"You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages."
Deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO2, the study found. The finding suggests the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming and may have accelerated the meltdown — but was not its main cause.
The study does not question the fact that CO2 plays a key role in climate.
Submission + - Mystery illness from meteor crash is solved. (nationalgeographic.com)
Technician writes: The meteor that crashed in Peru caused a mystery illnesses. The cause of the illness has been found. The meteor was not toxic. The ground water it contacted contains arsenic. The resulting steam cloud is what caused the mystery illness.
"The meteorite created the gases when the object's hot surface met an underground water supply tainted with arsenic, the scientists said."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070921-meteor-peru.html
There is a very good photo of the impact crater in the article. The rim of the crater is lined with people for a size comparison.
Submission + - Hardening Linux (itwire.com)
davidmwilliams writes: "Out of the box, many Linux systems are insecure with open ports and unpatched vulnerabilities. Read about the essential steps to secure your server as well as how to solve them manually and via automated tools like Bastille.
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13976/53/"
Submission + - Facebook Source Code Leaked
Anonymous Coward writes: "We just received a tip that the source code for the Facebook main index page has been leaked and published on a blog called Facebook Secrets. There are only two possible ways that the source code got out — the first is that a Facebook developer has sent it out, or the more likely option that a security hole has been used on either one of the Facebook servers or in their source code repository to reveal the code....[ + ]"
Submission + - Vista Performance Hotfixes are Published
Annonymous Coward writes: Many have been anticipating the releases of the Vista Performance and Compatibility hotfixes this Tuesday, but it has not been clear that they would be released on Patch Tuesday (8/14). However, there is some good news if you are anxious to load these updates. The final updates are out (not the Beta), and available by searching for the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles.
Vista Performance and Reliability Pack:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;938979
Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;938194
Vista Performance and Reliability Pack:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb
Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb
Submission + - The Java Popup you Can't Stop (hackademix.net) 1
An anonymous reader writes: In his brand new hackademix.net blog, Giorgio Maone, known as the author of the NoScript security extension for Firefox, reveals how popup blockers can be easily circumvented using Java. Worse, popups opened this way are really evil, because they can be sized to cover the whole desktop (the wet dream of any phisher) and cannot be closed by user (the wet dream of any web advertiser).
Impressive demos available, all cross-browser and cross-platform, in the best Java tradition: "Write once, hack anywhere" (WOHA).
Impressive demos available, all cross-browser and cross-platform, in the best Java tradition: "Write once, hack anywhere" (WOHA).
Submission + - Physicists Propose Tarot Cards To Auger LHC
ObsessiveMathsFreak writes: "Via Peter Woit's Blog Not Even Wrong, comes one of the most bizarre papers ever seen on the e-Print archive arXiv.org[Wiki-link]. Two mainstream physicists propose that the enormous energies and exotic Higgs particles that will be created at the Large Hadron Collider could create effects that will(will have been?) propagate backwards through time, enabling us to predict proper parameters for the LHC beforehand. They propose choosing from a shuffled deck of cards with various luminosity or beam energy parameters written on them, as well as a few cards with 'close LHC', just in case some terrible accident should occur. Tommaso Dorigo gives a detailed summary of the paper at his blog. Right now, I'm so glad I didn't choose theoretical physics as a career."
