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Networking

Military Pressuring Vendors On IPv6 406

Posted by Soulskill from the small-arms-fire-can-be-a-powerful-motivator dept.
netbuzz writes "US military officials are threatening IT suppliers with the loss of military business if they don't use their own wares to start deploying IPv6 on their corporate networks and public-facing Web services immediately. 'We are pressing our vendors in any way we can,' says Ron Broersma, DREN Chief Engineer and a Network Security Manager for the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. 'We are competing one off against another. If they want to sell to us, we're asking them: Are you using IPv6 features in your own products on your corporate networks? Is your public Web site IPv6 enabled? We've been doing this to all of the vendors.'"
Google

Wikipedia Pages Now On Amazon — With Product Links 130

Posted by timothy from the seems-like-a-cool-idea-to-me dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Last month, e-commerce marketplace Amazon.com launched a relatively unnoticed new feature that brings content from Wikipedia pages to its own servers in a shadowy new project that appears to be called 'Shopping Enabled Wikipedia Pages.' Hosted on the Amazon.com domain, they replicate Wikipedia's content but have added links to where a book can be purchased on Amazon. Amazon representative Anya Waring told CNET when asked via e-mail, 'As of November, we have rolled out in the books category, however [it] will be expanding to new categories in 2011.' If Average Joe scrapes Wikipedia and adds affiliate links to it, Google will remove and punish the domains with duplicate pages."
The Internet

Meet NELL, the Computer That Learns From the Net 272

Posted by CmdrTaco from the nell-like-lolcat-pew-pew dept.
bossanovalithium writes "Carnegie Mellon University has taught a computer how to read and learn from the internet. According to Dennis Baron at the Oxford University press blog, the computer is called NELL and it is reading the internet and learning from it in much the same way that humans learn language and acquire knowledge. Basically by soaking it all up and figuring it out. NELL is short for Never Ending Language Learner and apparently it is getting brainier every day."
HP

HP Sues Hurd For Joining Oracle 301

Posted by Soulskill from the following-the-hurd dept.
CWmike writes "Hewlett-Packard is reported to be suing former CEO Mark Hurd, who was named co-president of rival Oracle on Monday. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news, and has now posted the full text of the suit on Google Docs. Among other things, it says, 'In his new positions, Hurd will be in a situation in which he cannot perform his duties for Oracle without necessarily using and disclosing HP's trade secrets and confidential information to others.'"
Cellphones

Microsoft Kills the Kin 351

Posted by samzenpus from the we-hardly-knew-you dept.
adeelarshad82 writes "The Microsoft Kin is dead, or at least it doesn't have a future as a standalone product. Microsoft released a statement suggesting that it's cutting bait on the Windows Phone 7 spinoff and folding the project's staff and technologies into the main body of Windows Phone 7. For now, it seems like Verizon Wireless will continue to sell Kin phones. But with the Kin team essentially disbanded, it's hard to see future updates and support for the line being a priority within Microsoft."

Comment Re:Not to sound like an ass, but... (Score 1) 173

by Ann Coulter (#30219754) Attached to: Haskell 2010 Announced

Moreover, the DoAndIfThenElse extension merely extends the "do" syntax with if/then/else clauses; it is syntactic sugar. Empty data declarations are essentially union types unioned over no labels and therefore can have no values except for the bottom value.

References:
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/wiki/DoAndIfThenElse
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/wiki/EmptyDataDecls
The Military

Iraq Swears By Dowsing Rod Bomb Detector 652

Posted by samzenpus from the one-man's-junk-is-another-man's-junk-science dept.
jggimi writes "According to the New York Times, more than fifteen hundred remote sensing devices have been sold to Iraq's Ministry of the Interior, at prices ranging from $16,500 to $60,000 each. The devices are used for bomb and weapon detection at checkpoints, and have no battery or other power source. Sounds great, but according to a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, they work on the same principle as a Ouija board — the power of suggestion. He described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod. Even though the device has been debunked by the US Military, the US Department of Justice, and even Sandia National Laboratories, the Iraqis are thrilled with the devices. 'Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,' said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Combating Explosives."
Encryption

Thawte Will End "Web of Trust" On November 16 127

Posted by kdawson from the fencing-of-the-commons dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Thawte is ending their Web of Trust, including their free Personal Email Certificates, in less than 2 weeks' time. This hasn't been picked up by the media yet. Seems to me a lot of people, including myself, are hurt by this." Thawte is offering a 1-year free VeriSign cert to those holding valid Personal Email Certificates; after that you pay.
Software

Why Users Drop Open Source Apps For Proprietary Alternatives 891

Posted by Soulskill from the have-you-tried-this-foxfire-thing dept.
maximus1 writes "Hard as it may be to imagine, 'free' is not always the primary selling point to open source software. This article makes some interesting points about subtle ways Open Source projects might lose to the competition. Lack of features is a common answer you'd expect, but the author points out that complicated setup and configuration can be a real turn-off. Moreover, open source companies may not do enough to market major upgrades. If they did, they might lure back folks who tried and dumped the earlier, less polished version. This raises the question: what made you dump an open source app you were using? What could that project have done differently?"

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Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

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