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Mandriva

Submission + - Mandriva: An open letter to Steve Ballmer

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An entry on the Mandriva Blog, written by Mandriva CEO François Bancilhon, is suggesting that the Nigerian government, after ordering thousands of Classmate PCs with Mandriva Linux installed, has suddenly decided that they will instead install Windows replacing the pre-loaded Mandriva Linux installation on the low-cost computing devices intended for children in the developing world. The blog suggests that this was not a decision that the Nigerian government made on its own. Is this just speculation, or is there something much bigger going on here?
Software

Submission + - Nokia Buys Navteq for $8.1 Billion (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Nokia, the world's biggest cellphone maker, said today that it had agreed to pay $8.1 billion for Navteq, the maker of digital mapping and navigational software based in Chicago, as it seeks to migrate satellite-based location services onto its range of phones.

Nokia's president and chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, said that location-based services were a cornerstone of Nokia's Internet services strategy, which is part of an overall plan to expand beyond the production of cellphones into user services like photos, video, music and games.

Navteq data is used by Google Maps, Google Earth , numerous other online services, and many GPS products."
Communications

Submission + - Greek Phone Switch Hacked (engadget.com)

Submitted by coinreturn
coinreturn writes: Engadget is reporting that a Greek phone switch was hacked to allow wiretapping of high-level officials. With the USA's record on wiretapping, does any one doubt who did this?
HP

Submission + - More Ethics Woes for HP

Submitted by The Breeze
The Breeze writes: HP is in the news again for ethics issues, which is the last thing it wants. According to a Fortune Magazine story on CNN.COM, contrary to HP's previous assertions that the "pretexting" scandal was an "aberration", HP apparently has been doing all sorts of nasty stuff for quite some time, spying on Dell and obtaining confidential Dell documents about their printer strategy. Oops. And then they made the mistake of trying to run a dirty tricks campaign against one of the very guys who was involved in what he called "covert ops" for HP. Double Oops. To top it off, when the ex-wife-to-be tipped off HP inadvertently by sniffing around HP trying to find hidden assets, HP then threatened to criminally prosecute HER because she was married to a guy who somehow irritated HP. The story basically says, "we don't know everything that HP did wrong, but we've been able to find quite a bit."
X

Submission + - Are XServers on Win32 (Xwin/Xming) dead?

Submitted by afa
afa writes: Unlike the continuous development of Xorg trunk, the XServers for Win32 platforms, i.e. Cygwin/X and Xming seems to be laid aside for quite long time. Although there are something already running at present, even part of OpenGL accelerations, fully support of indirect OpenGL acceleration (see also, Cygwin/X To-Do List ) is still somewhere halfway. Does that mean that we could never show off beryl's eye-candy upon VMWare or simply we do not need such functionality in MS Windows?
IBM

Submission + - "Sex addict" sues IBM for firing him

Submitted by Red Samurai
Red Samurai writes: The BBC reports that 58 year-old James Pacenza is suing IBM for firing him after discovering that he used adult online chat rooms while at work. He issues the subpoena on the grounds that they were unsympathetic and offered no support towards his addiction, and he also uses his experiences in Vietnam to justify his actions. The BBC says this has "potential implications for employers across America and their attitude towards regulating how employees use workplace computers". So what does Slashdot make of this? I for one, welcome our new porn surfing IT worker overlords.
Security

Submission + - Linux Volume Encryption: TrueCrypt vs DM_Crypt

Submitted by
michuk
michuk writes: "Encrypting your data is the key to mobile security. PolishLinux.org has a couple of tutorials comparing DM_Crypt with TrueCrypt — two programs that can save your life when your computer gets lost or stolen. Find the differences between these two and encrypt your disk now! Tip: DM_Crypt better integrates with Linux kernel, but TrueCrypt works on Windows as well."
Privacy

Site Claims to Reveal 'Tattle-tales' 565

Posted by Zonk from the true-capitalism-in-action dept.
Dekortage writes "Have you ever ratted somebody out? If it was a legal case, you might end up on Who's A Rat, an online database of police informants and undercover agents, identified through various publicly-available documents such as court briefings. The data-mined information is now available online at a price. As reported in the New York Times, 'The site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files available on the Internet.' Understandably, U.S. judges and law enforcement agents are upset, although defense lawyers seem to like the idea. Where do you draw the line between legal transparency and secrecy?"
Businesses

Submission + - XM service outage continues for second day

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: From the Why DRM is Bad For You department. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18799252/

A software glitch cut service to an unspecified number of XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc.'s customers on Monday, the company said. "Some customers are not receiving a signal," said Chance Patterson, XM's vice president of corporate affairs. "We don't know the exact number, but some."
Can't they just turn off the encryption until they get everything corrected? GPS works that way. Call it a free sample day so that you don't have to admit to a mistake and you're gold.
Encryption

Submission + - AACS New Media Key Block Hacked Before It's Releas

Submitted by mrneutron2004
mrneutron2004 writes: It's ironic that after all of these years, licensing authorities like the AACS still don't understand the tenacity of hackers, programmers, and consumers intent on doing as they see fit with the content they pay for. A week before the official rollout of new "MKB's" designed to protect new high-definition media, Slysoft releases an update to AnyDVD-HD that can already bypass it. http://www.fastsilicon.com/latest-news/aacs-new-me dia-key-block-hacked-before-its-released.html
Microsoft

Submission + - Documents Reveal U.S. Incompetence with Word, Iraq

Submitted by
notNeilCasey
notNeilCasey writes: "The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, which formerly governed Iraq, accidentally published Microsoft Word documents containing information never meant for the public, according to an article in Salon. By viewing the documents using the Track Changes feature in Word, the author has been able to reconstruct internal discussions from 2004 which reflect the optimism, isolation and incompetence of the American occupation. Download the author's source document or look for more yourself."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft claims Linux violates over 200 patents

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Fortune Magazine has an article which states that FOSS developers and distributors could soon face a patent litigation blitzkrieg from Microsoft, which holds over 200 patents that the company claims Linux violates. The article further states that the recent Novell-Microsoft patent deal is a de facto admission of infringement — is anybody surprised?

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