13435928
submission
2muchcoffeeman writes:
Sharon Astyk of Scienceblogs.com brings up an ongoing discussion of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill at The Oil Drum, a site for industry professionals. A comment in that discussion brings up a frightening scenario: that the Gulf oil spill is past the point of no return or very close to that point, there's no such thing as a "cap dome" that can be put in place to shut it off, the relief wells can't be brought online soon enough and the structure of the originally-drilled well is degrading and will eventually collapse ... meaning that entire underground oil reserve BP and its subcontractors were trying to extract will leak out into the Gulf of Mexico via the damaged equipment and underwater well site.
6890930
submission
2muchcoffeeman writes:
The Associated Press tells the story of Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts government employee who was arrested in 2007 after child porn was found on his state-issued laptop computer. He was eventually clear of all charges after some digging by the defense found that the laptop was infected with malware that was "programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute---an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half. Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped---11 months after it was filed." The article also discusses the technical aspects of how it could happen and about similar cases in the United Kingdom in 2003.
748209
submission
2muchcoffeeman writes:
Former Linspire president and CEO Kevin Carmony — whose relationship with his former employer has turned acrimonious, to say the least — reported on his blog that Xandros and Linspire signed an agreement in principle to buy Linspire June 19. He includes a scan of the memo to Linspire shareholders announcing the deal, which says the deal includes substantially all of Linspire's assets related to developing, marketing and selling a Linux distro "and other Linux-based products and applications" and requires the former Linspire company to change its name. According to the memo, the stockholders voted to change the company's name to Digital Cornerstone, Inc.
Despite the wording of the Linspire memo to stockholders, this deal apparently came as a surprise to Carmony and other stockholders.
Some Slashdotters may remember both that Xandros and Linspire each signed patent protection deals with Microsoft in 2007 and that Carmony was named one of the 100 most influential people in IT by eWeek in 2006.
599918
submission
2muchcoffeeman writes:
Adobe announced Monday that it is joining the Linux Foundation and alpha-released a Linux version of its new Adobe Internet Runtime environment, which allows Internet-enable applications to run on Windows and Mac OS desktops, for Linux. According to Adobe, the alpha version lacks some key features that will be available in the final product and only runs with Sun Java, not GNU Java.
Adobe also released an alpha of Flex Builder for Linux Monday.
