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Software

Submission + - Gentoo crisis continues on the -dev mailing list

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Following on from a previous Slashdot comment, Gentoo's main developer list seems to have exploded again.

In a scene that is all too often seen at Gentoo nowadays, an initial subject of whether to continue to allow user's contributions on a developer list blew up five days later with developers saying that they didn't care about the community or users, a developer leaving and users "finding it commonplace" in the Gentoo communication channels.

Is this another nail in the coffin leading to a fork or is Gentoo just losing excess baggage?"
Communications

Submission + - Sunrocket VOIP bites the dust (crunchgear.com)

Submitted by peril
peril writes: Thank god Sunrocket, an inexpensive good quality substitute to Ma-Bell, has been crushed by the monopolistic phone companies. Obviously, transporting voice data over ip is dangerous to out taxpayer subsidized monopoly. Thanks a lot for the 100Mbps connection to the house Verizon. (Oh wait — I know — I'll get that after Korea has standard gigE connections....) Today is their last day of service. DAMN, it only cost me 200 to renew in January (ooops)
Privacy

Submission + - A human buffer overflow to defeat printer dots (seeingyellow.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The Seeing Yellow project wants us to contact printer manufacturers to at last get their statement about the yellow dots that laser printers include to allow tracing of individual printouts. They say one person who did this was paid a visit by the Secret Service!
The Internet

Submission + - Sunrocket Is Dead

Submitted by Aaron
Aaron writes: VoIP provider SunRocket last Friday laid off a significant number of employees and left just a skeleton crew in place to handle the sale of operations, according to DSL Reports. This morning, after that sale fell through, the company laid off the remainder of their employees (including hundreds of outsourced tech support positions) and is now essentially just a husk of a company. As of this writing the service is still operational, but it may not be for long. There has been absolutely no communication to customers about any of this, but the 1-800 number confirms that they're no longer taking new orders or helping existing customers, and annoyed ex-employees have been telling tales of mismanagement in this fifty page thread in the DSLReports forums since late last week.
Linux Business

Submission + - ATM based on Suse Linux

Submitted by sas-dot
sas-dot writes: Slashdot earlier reported the government of Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, which has begun initiatives to convert all of their IT systems fully to OSS-based software. Now it's pushing forward for a Linux based ATM. The official incharge wrote in his email "ELCOT had successfully developed the first ever ATM (automatic cash dispenser) that runs on suse linux. The prototype was unveiled on the 21st March 2007. ELCOT also wishes to test the ATM in typical Government operations such as National Old Age Pension Scheme, cash dispensing schemes such as National Rural Employment programme etc. It depends on how the Government machinery is ready to accept a new technology such as an ATM" Here is the press release.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Trailfire: Social Bookmarking With a Twist

Journal by rtenalio
Social bookmarking has become extremely popular these days. It seems everyone that spends a lot of time on the Interent is probably a member of at least one of the many Social Bookmarking services today. Webmasters, web developers and bloggers have found them to be a good way to get the word out about their websites and blogs and to bring attention to their favorite articles and stories or even their own blog posts.
Media

Journal Journal: Information Overload: I need a library catalogue system 11

Journal by Interrobang
I have realised that I am suffering from information overload, especially pertaining to the streetcar project, which encompasses 500+ electronic documents, several books, a collection of internet bookmarks, various photographs, two videocassettes, some e-mails, and various other stuff. I am starting to realise that I need a database of some sort. A program like Library Master is looking good -- if expensive -- since I also have a dig
Quake

Submission + - Island Raised by Earthquake

Submitted by
StupiderThanYou
StupiderThanYou writes: " ABC News Australia is reporting that the island of Ranongga in the Solomon Islands has been lifted three metres higher above sea level by a magnitude 8.1 earthquake on the 2nd of April. A surrounding coral reef popular with scuba divers is now dying in the sunlight, and there are fissures opened up in the island and surrounding seabed. At least they'll be under less threat from rising sea levels."
Programming

Submission + - Blitz++... C++ as Fast as FORTRAN?

Submitted by j
j writes: For decades, FORTRAN has been the hallmark of academic computing, with object-oriented principles taking a backseat to slick matrix handling and sheer speed. Meanwhile, C++ was stigmatized for its bulkiness and verbose syntax of matrices and vectors. The Blitz++ library for C++ is rapidly encroaching on that. Nearly matching FORTRAN in performance, Blitz++ offers an intuitive matrix handling syntax (with an elegant cout response) essential for efficient mathematical expressions. With Sun's Fortress several years away, will Blitz++ be adequate to introduce robust OOP to numerical computing? And is that even needed?
Windows

Submission + - Personal local backup for windows

Submitted by
rangans
rangans writes: "I am a student in the hardware design field with lot of HDl code and schematic/documents to work with(on my laptop with windows XP Home Edition). I am looking for some way to do differential and incremental backups of my important files to a USB drive. I am now using Synctoy for windows. But I am in need of something more powerful that can restore files back to a specific date (incremental) and not backup the entire partition/folder (differential) all the time. I am tired of network based solutions as I dont have access to network at home. I am looking for something like rsync but locally on a windows system to a USB drive (sbackup for ubuntu?). The personal backup appliance on vmware player also only backups entire partitions. I am ready to run any virtual appliance(if any exists) for this job, if no native windows solution exists. It will be great if it is opensource and supports encryption too. Thanks a lot."

Feed Blood-brain Barrier Damage Could Affect MS Severity (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Immunology researchers studying a multiple sclerosis (MS)-like disease in mice have shown that the amount of "damage" to the central nervous system's protective blood-brain barrier -- in essence, opening it -- almost always correlates to the severity of the disease. The findings can be used for testing potential MS therapies and for better understanding the role of the blood-brain barrier in disease processes.
Announcements

Submission + - Cool Products Expo 2007

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cool Products Expo 2007 is being held at Stanford University on Wednesday April 11th. The annual event is held to generate interest in and excitement around "cool" products and companies in the field of manufacturing and design. This year's exhibitors range from Tesla Motors showing off high-performance, highly efficient electric sports cars to AiLive demonstrating LiveMove that allows motion sensitive devices, like the Nintendo Wii Remote, to learn to recognize any motion.
Space

Submission + - PC World's Techlog Will the Sun Knock Out My GPS?

Submitted by
mikesd81
mikesd81 writes: "Science Daily has an article about solar bursts knocking out GPS service. From the article: "During an unprecedented solar eruption last December, researchers at Cornell University confirmed solar radio bursts can have a serious impact on the Global Positioning System (GPS) and other communication technologies using radio waves."

Solar radio bursts begin with a solar flare that injects high-energy electrons into the solar upper atmosphere. Radio waves are produced which then propagate to the Earth and cover a broad frequency range. The radio waves act as noise over these frequencies, including those used by GPS and other navigational systems which can degrade a signal. On December 6, 2006, a solar flare created an unprecedented intense solar radio burst causing large numbers of receivers to stop tracking the GPS signal. Using specially designed receivers built at Cornell University as sensitive space weather monitors, Cornell scientists were able to make the first quantitative measurements of the effect of earlier solar radio bursts on GPS receivers. There are three key points to remember about solar radio bursts. "First, society cannot become overly reliant on technology without an awareness and understanding of the effects of future space weather disruptions," said Anthea Coster, Ph.D., MIT Haystack Observatory. Second, the December 6 event dramatically shows the effect of solar radio bursts is global and instantaneous. "Third, and equally important, the size and timing of this burst were completely unexpected and the largest ever detected. We do not know how often we can expect solar radio bursts of this size or even larger.""

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