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Businesses

Submission + - Diebold rebrands what noone wants.

Submitted by Irvu
Irvu writes: Diebold has apparently failed in their bid to sell their tainted elections systems unit. Unable to find a buyer the CEO of Diebold promised that the system will be run more "openly and independently." To prove that they are serious, they renamed it. Diebold Election Systems is now Premiere Election Solutions. They still sell GEMS, AccuVote OS and the ever-unpopular AccuVote-TSX which performed so disastrously in California's Top-to-Bottom Review under the same names. Apparently their rebranding effort only goes so far.
Spam

Submission + - PDF spam is here, continuing to ruin internet (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
Christopher Blanc
Christopher Blanc writes: "Spam in the form of popular PDF e-mail attachments and electronic greeting cards is confounding e-mail security systems and annoying consumers. The recent Storm e-mail virus and several pump-and-dump stock scams are clogging inboxes and snookering consumers into downloading malicious software. And it could get worse as the holidays approach, anti-spam experts say.

Corporate America is loving this. As long as the internet is awash in viruses, spam and trojans, they have more exciting products to sell and an excuse to dumb them down "for your protection."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070816/tc_usato day/spammersfindnewwaystoslipthrough"
The Internet

Submission + - Skype Goes Down After Software Maintenance (skype.com)

Submitted by
JavaJack
JavaJack writes: "I don't know if its related but Skype performed some maintenance on the 15th of August and now on the 16th Skype users cannot log in. From the Skype web site, 'Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it's a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience. Additionally, downloads of Skype have been temporarily disabled. We will make downloads available again as quickly as possible.'"
Communications

Submission + - 9th Circuit Very Skeptical of NSA Surveillance (mercurynews.com)

Submitted by iluvcapra
iluvcapra writes: Yesterday before a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, the US government argued that two class action lawsuits against the government and AT&T should be dismissed, because to litigate them in open court would cause the revelation of state secrets. The lawsuits allege that the government has installed a vast system of electronic surveillance gear at internet gateways along the US west coast to monitor all internet traffic, and that this information is monitored without a warrant, even when both endpoints are domestic. The panel was extremely skeptical of the governments argument:

"Is it the government's position that when the country is engaged in a war, that the power of the executive when it comes to wiretapping is unchecked?" asked 83-year-old Judge Harry Pregerson, one of the court's staunchest liberals, of a Bush administration lawyer. "The king can do no wrong, is that what it comes down to?"


The government was unwilling to even provide a sworn affadavit that the eavesdropping was only of foreign correspondence. If the 9th Circuit allows the lawsuits to proceed, the government will appeal to the US Supreme Court.
Java

A First Look At Red Hat Developer Studio 149

Posted by kdawson from the ides-of-august dept.
juanignaciosl writes "The first beta of Red Hat Developer Studio was published yesterday. RHDS seems promising. This IDE is a bunch of Eclipse plugins that comes from the fusion of JBoss IDE and Exadel Studio. The main advantages it offers are: JSF development improved, in particular integrating RichFaces and Ajax4JSF libraries; Seam (next J2EE middleware standard?) integration; and plugins for JBoss, Hibernate... Here are my first impressions."
Unix

Submission + - Linus Torvalds Writes "Good Code" (kerneltrap.org)

Submitted by PupScup
PupScup writes: KernelTrap is reviewing the Linux process scheduler code over the years. The original code was written by none other than Linus Torvalds who described it in a 1993 email, 'the linux scheduling algorithm is one of the simplest ones possible'. An entertaining (and historically prescient) comment in the code proclaimed, 'this is GOOD CODE! There probably won't be any reason to change this, as it should work well in all circumstances (ie gives IO-bound processes good response etc).' The simple algorithm was evidently good code as advertised, judged by the fact that it took over a decode for another developer to come along with something better.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Top GunBound Player Kidnapped For His Password

Submitted by
Malygris
Malygris writes: "A gang of geniuses in Sao Paulo kidnapped the world's top GunBound player, with the intent of securing his game account password and selling it for $8,000. Unfortunately for them, they didn't count on the guy's dedication to his game: After five hours of gun-waving, he refused to talk, and the four-man gang gave up and turned him loose. They were quickly taken into custody by Brazilian police, while the hard-nosed GunBound player receives equal parts acclaim for his balls and ridicule for his stupidity for refusing to give up a game password to a man with a gun. Either way you look at it, it's a whole new level of hardcore."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Apple Stores to charge entrance fee

Submitted by
BlackNova
BlackNova writes: "Apple Stores may soon start charging an entrance fee to keep out the iPhone gawkers and improve store security/safety. The $5 charged will be applicable against any purchases made — assuming you buy something. Really, they just want the 'right kind of people' coming into the store: "By 'right kind of people' I mean true Apple customers with money, willing to pay just to look at our newest wares,"says Vince Sciopiano, vice president for Apple's retail stores."
Toys

Submission + - Barbie gets a docking station (hughpickens.com)

Submitted by
Pcol
Pcol writes: "The New York Times reports that the new Barbie doll hitting the streets this week for $59.99 includes a docking station that unlocks games, virtual shops and online chatting functions on the BarbieGirls.com web site where 3 million users have already registered in the past three months. Instead of asking young Web surfers to punch in their parents' credit card numbers, the site sends young customers to a real-world toy store to buy her an extra outfit and get access to even more Web content. Products like these represent a change not only in the design and function of toys, but also in how toy makers market and monetize their products. While sales of dolls and action figures are down, electronics sales to children are up 16.6 percent over the last two years."
Education

Journal Journal: OLPC is in Production.

Journal by twitter

The BBC is announcing the start of OLPC production with an interesting and informative article. The five year history of the device, controversy and cost breakdown are all covered.

Discussion is here.
Supercomputing

Submission + - BlueGene/L ranked 1st in top500 for the 4th time

Submitted by paleshadows
paleshadows writes: The top500 list ranks the top 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world. It is published semiannually since 1993. The new list indicates that, for the fourth straight time, IBM's BlueGene/L of LLNL claimed the No. 1 spot at ~281 TerFlops per second. But while the No. 1 is still unchallenged, the list shows a lot of shuffling and the largest turnover among list entries in the history of the top500 project. This graph enumerates the number of systems each vendor has within the list, indicating that IBM is the dominant player, but that HP rapidly closes the gap. Of the top 10, the first 8 are situated in the U.S., while No. 9 and 10 are populated by Spain and Germany, respectively. Japan's first entry is at No. 14 with the EarthSimulator, which ranked first until 2004 when it was knocked off the top by the first blue BlueGene/L system.
Security

Submission + - Data breach exposes 900,000 soldier health records (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "In yet another case of seriously flawed security precautions, the personal health care records of nearly 900,000 troops, family members and other government employees stored on an a private defense contractor's — SAIC, Inc. — nonsecure computer server were exposed to compromise. SAIC said the information included combinations of names, addresses, Social Security numbers, birth dates and/or "limited health information in the form of codes." It was stored on a single, SAIC-owned, nonsecure server in Shalimar, Fla., and was in some cases transmitted over the Internet in an unencrypted form. The information was exposed while being processed, the company said. Although SAIC announced the data breach Friday, the company acknowledged it has known about the problem since May 29, when U.S. Air Forces Europe notified SAIC that it had "detected an unsecured transmission of this personal information," said SAIC spokeswoman Connie Custer, the Times said. The FBI and Secret Service are also looking into the breach. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/17717"
Wireless Networking

Submission + - 15 Gbps wireless speed at Georgia Tech (gatech.edu)

Submitted by
prostoalex
prostoalex writes: "Georgia Electronic Design Center is reporting achieving 15 Gbps wireless transmission data rate on unlicensed spectrum. Unfortunately, the quality quickly deteriorates once the distance between the transmitter and receiver increases: "The research focuses on RF frequencies around 60 gigahertz (GHz), which are currently unlicensed — free for anyone to use — in the United States. GEDC researchers have already achieved wireless data-transfer rates of 15 gigabits per second (Gbps) at a distance of 1 meter, 10 Gbps at 2 meters and 5 Gbps at 5 meters.""
Linux Business

Submission + - Alan Cox files patent for DRM

Submitted by
booooh
booooh writes: "Alan Cox has filed a patent for DRM (Digital Rights Management).
http://www.freshpatents.com/Rights-management-syst em-dt20050623ptan20050138406.php
A rights management system monitors and controls use of a computer program to prevent use that is not in compliance with acceptable terms.
The nice things about this are:
  1. According to Red Hat's patent pledge they will not license this technology if the patent is granted, but rather will probably sue to avoid others using it.
  2. It can probably be applied to the DRM that is in Vista...
see more details at: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread .php?p=2574359"
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Where to donate old hardware?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Like many Slashdotters, I have a surplus of old computers and parts that I (and family and friends) no longer have use for. Some of this junk is still useful, and although I'm too busy to sell it piecemeal on eBay, it'd be a shame to just throw it away. I'd prefer to just drop this stuff off, driver disks and instruction manuals included where applicable, at a major charity such as Good Will, AmVets, or the Salvation Army, but I suspect that they wouldn't be able to move it and would end up throwing it away. Anyone have any recommendations for the major charities or any suggestions for recycling options?

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