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Submission + - Conservancy running campaign to write better accounting software for nonprofits (sfconservancy.org) 1

Submitted by paroneayea
paroneayea writes: The Software Freedom Conservancy is running a campaign to improve accounting software, especially for nonprofits. To keep their books and produce annual government filings, most NPOs rely on proprietary software, paying exorbitant licensing fees. This is fundamentally at cross purposes with their underlying missions of charity, equality, democracy, and sharing. You can help Conservancy fix this problem by donating now!

Comment microid doesn't seem to factor into it (Score 2, Insightful) 155

by MisterBad (#24806365) Attached to: Hashing Email Addresses For Web Considered Harmful

It seems like the attack is just taking user names and other publicly-known data trying to determine an email address from them. Spammers don't need microid to confirm that their guess is correct; they'll just send to all 50 or 100 top email domains, hoping to get a hit.

The whole point of MicroID is that if someone knows your email address, they can tell that you are the author of the page. If your email address is easy to guess, then your email address will be revealed, _whether_or_not_ there's a microid here, there, or anywhere.

If an email address is easy to guess, then the email address is easy to guess. Not clear what new ground we're covering here.
Data Storage

Creative Sued for Base-10 Capacities On HDD MP3 Players 528

Posted by Soulskill from the basic-math dept.
Dorkz brings news of a class-action settlement from Creative Labs over the capacity of their HDD MP3 players. Evidently they calculated drive capacity in base-10 (1,000,000,000 bytes per GB) instead of base-2 (1,073,741,824 bytes per GB). The representative plaintiff is entitled to $5,000, and everyone else who bought one of the HDD MP3 players in the past several years gets a 50% discount on a new 1GB player[PDF]. They can also opt for a 20% discount on anything ordered from Creative's online store. Creative has made available all of the necessary legal forms. Seagate lost a similar lawsuit late last year.
Transportation

Early Contenders for the Automotive X-Prize 309

Posted by Soulskill from the i'll-take-an-aptera-please dept.
longacre writes "With the official entry period for the $10 million Automotive X-Prize contest just around the corner, Popular Mechanics offers a preview of the most promising entries. Among the 100-mpg vehicles that Detroit (and Japan) have claimed impossible to build comes a hybrid designed by a class of inner-city high school students in West Philadelphia. Also displayed is a futuristic-looking electric model with a range of 300 miles. We discussed the beginning of this contest earlier this year."
Caldera

Darl McBride Takes the Stand In Novell v. SCO 138

Posted by timothy from the utah's-own-information-minister dept.
UnknowingFool writes "Everyone's favorite CEO Darl McBride took the stand on Wednesday April 30 in Novell v. SCO. Chris Brown has posted his account on Groklaw of the 2nd day of trial. The first day's account can be found here. To refresh your memory in this ongoing case, Judge Kimball has already ruled that Novell owns the copyrights to Unix and has practically dismissed all of SCO's claims. This portion of the trial is about Novell's counterclaims that SCO never paid them the money from the Sun and MS deals. What is to be determined in this trial is how much of the money from the deals were for Unix licensing (SVRx) and how much were for SCO's server technology (Unixware)." (Read on for the rest, below.)
Programming

On This Date in 1964, the First BASIC Program 258

Posted by timothy from the if-$date->=-2008-then-goto-past dept.
palegray.net notes that on this day in 1964, the first BASIC program was run. From the Wired article:"Mathematicians John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz had been trying to make computing more accessible to their undergraduate students. One problem was that available computing languages like Fortran and Algol were so complex that you really had to be a professional to use them. BASIC is still alive and well these days, from Microsoft's VB.net to cross-platform variants like REALbasic. For the old-school among us, there's always Joshua Bell's Apple II BASIC emulator implemented in Javascript."
Cellphones

German Firms Patent Scented Text Messaging 127

Posted by timothy from the no-caller-id-tie-in-please dept.
praps writes "Two German companies have patented technology for sending scented text messages between mobile phones. The chip, which carries a range of around 100 pre-defined scents, has been developed by the Institute of Sensory Analysis and interactive services firm Convisual and will be on the market in one to two years. Naturally, the makers think that the chip will be used for sending pleasant odors to friends and family — vanilla, rose and Christmas cinnamon are on the list — but surely the claim to be able to send 'the smell of the beach and sunshine' is a little optimistic? SMS stink bombs cannot be far away."
Media

Submission + - Consumer Ad Blocking Doubles

Submitted by
Dotnaught
Dotnaught writes: "Consumers are fed up with ads, according to a story in InformationWeek. "In the past two years, the number of consumers using pop-up blockers and spam filters has more than doubled...and "[m]ore than half of all American households now report using these ad blocking technologies to block unwanted pitches." Citing a Forrester Research report, the story says, "Today, 15% of consumers acknowledge using their digital video recorders to skip ads, more than three times as many as in 2004.""
Editorial

Submission + - Do tech people do drugs?

Submitted by litewoheat
litewoheat writes: From the artilce "The better question is, "What kind of drugs?" Compared to New York, L.A, or D.C. the Valley is low on coke-addled dealmakers, drunk bosses, and celebrity rehab cases. But there's a decent chance some of the hardware and software you're using right now was conceived, and maybe implemented, by a big brain with a buzz on."

is it 4:20 yet?
Businesses

Submission + - The Top 40 Vendors Rated

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes: CIO Insight has asked its readers to rate their satisfaction with their vendors. Not surprisingly, "CIOs are disappointed and disgruntled with the performance of their most important vendors. In fact, the number of companies with lower scores in 2006 than in 2005 outpaces those with higher scores by a margin of two to one."

Coming in first place is CDW at 81%, edging out last year's top vendor, Red Hat (which took third place this year). Microsoft came in at 24. The package includes a pretty detailed methodology on how the survey was conducted. 826 qualified respondents participated.
NASA

Submission + - Why Discovery Isn't Going to Fly

Submitted by
mhokie
mhokie writes: "It would appear that one of the main reasons Discovery will not be launching is due to programming error.

From the article,
"Mark Polansky, who commands STS-116, says the problem is simple. 'When somebody designed these general purpose computers that we use to basically run the shuttle, nobody thought that you needed to have the timer such that it needed to reset itself when it went from one year to the next,' he says.""

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